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Beyond the Map and the Manuscript

Simon M. Miles

Author, researcher, speaker. My first book, The Map and the Manuscript: Journeys in the Mysteries of the Two Rennes, was published by Ignotum Press in 2022. I blog here on topics connected with the book, including landscape alignments, ancient sites, France, the Pyrenees, Jean Richer, Rennes-les-Bains, alchemy, geometry, Jung, Gérard de Nerval, Le Serpent Rouge, the Affair of Rennes, and more.

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The Alignments of Brigantia

Beyond the Map and the Manuscript The Alignments of Brigantia Published in 1976, Guy Ragland Phillips' Brigantia: A Mysteriography, is a special book. It's a wide-ranging compendium of folk knowledge and oral history about the land fomerly known as Brigantia, now corresponding roughly to northern England. Yet such a description barely does it justice. What makes this book one of my favourites is that it records traditions and local lore which have surely all but passed away now. It is truly a...

about 2 months ago • 4 min read

Beyond the Map and the Manuscript Martinism and the Affair of Rennes Henri Delaage (1825 - 1882) A video has recently been posted to the Agrippa's Diary channel on YouTube, entitled "The Martinist Order - The Unknown Heirs of the Christian Kabbalistic Arts", which offers an excellent introduction and overview of the history of Martinism. It provides a detailed account of the personalities and ideas which shaped the development of this extremely fascinating branch of Christian esoteric...

3 months ago • 3 min read

Beyond the Map and the Manuscript Megalithomania 2023 talk: video now available online for viewing Back in May of this year, I was invited to give a presentation at the Megalithomania 2023 conference in Glastonbury. The video of my talk has now been posted on the MegalithomaniaUK channel on Youtube and is available for viewing here. Hope you enjoy it! The Map and the Manuscript: Journeys in the Mysteries of the Two Rennes Available in Kindle, paperback, hardback and now ePub. Amazon.co.uk...

5 months ago • 1 min read

New Angles on Ancient Babylonian Geometry (Part 2) The tablet shown above was found by a French archaeological expedition in 1934 in the ruins of the Royal Archives of Susa, in modern day Iran. It has been dated to the period of King Hammurabi of the Old Babylonian Empire, around the 17th century BC. The photograph above appears in the official expedition report published in 1961 Quelques Textes Mathématiques de la Mission de Suse par E.M.Bruin (available online here). The tablet displays a...

5 months ago • 10 min read

Jung, Nerval and Visionary Art In 2015, Princeton University Press published On Psychological and Visionary Art: Notes from C. G. Jung’s Lecture on Gérard de Nerval's Aurélia. (Cover and link above.) Assembled from materials in the Jung archives, this book includes previously unpublished original notes for two lectures given by Jung in 1942 and 1945 on Aurélia, the short novel which was the final work of the nineteenth century writer and poet Gérard de Nerval. It is accompanied by an...

7 months ago • 6 min read

Umberto Eco and the Affair of Rennes-le-Château I imagine that some readers of The Map and the Manuscript might be surprised, even perhaps a little disappointed, to find the final chapter devoted to a discussion of the novel Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Rather than, say, an explosive claim to have found some extraordinary treasure, or terrible secret, or grand conspiracy. If so, I hope they won't feel too let down. I'd like to think that Umberto Eco's novel is a far richer treat and a...

7 months ago • 5 min read

New Angles on Ancient Babylonian Geometry (Part 1) In recent years, insights from two Sydney University mathematicians, Prof Norman Wildberger and Dr Daniel Mansfield, have shed fascinating new light on aspects of ancient Babylonian geometry. In particular, fresh analysis of two tablets, known as Si427 and Plimpton 322, has revealed the role and importance Pythagorean triangles played in their cosmology. As these and other tablets date to as early as 1900BC, this is more than a millennia...

7 months ago • 6 min read

Marking the Centre of the World: The Occitan Cross and the Zodiac of Toulouse (Part 2) We've seen in Part 1 that Toulouse has historically been represented by the Occitan Cross. We've also seen that the Occitan Cross is associated with the zodiac, in esoteric lore. Then, in 1997, a sculpture of the the Occitan Cross, with the zodiac added, was installed in the Place du Capitole, the geographic and symbolic centre of Toulouse. So after that year, the Occitan Cross with a zodiac marked the...

7 months ago • 5 min read

Marking the Centre of the World: The Occitan Cross and the Zodiac of Toulouse (Part 1) At the heart of the city of Toulouse, in southern France, is the Capitole, housing the Mairie or city hall, and municipal administration. Its buildings date from 1190AD, whilst the origins of Toulouse itself go back at least another thousand years. In front of the Capitole is a large public square, the Place du Capitole, which can be considered the cultural, historical and geographical focal point of the...

7 months ago • 4 min read

Beyond The Map and the Manuscript: A blog about the book. And beyond. It's now been just over a year since the publication of The Map and the Manuscript: Journeys in the Mysteries of the Two Rennes, and a lot has happened in that time. It's been quite a rollercoaster ride. I've been really thrilled with the reaction the book has received from many readers. At the same time, it's probably fair to say that, from some quarters, the response has not been quite what I had expected, or hoped. Which...

8 months ago • 2 min read
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