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.
Jean Richer on Shakespeare and Ophiucus
Professor Jean Richer, the concealed author of Le Serpent Rouge, sprinkled his works with clues as to his hidden authorship of the celebrated mystery poem. The images above appear in his extraordinary 1988 book on astrological symbolism in the works of Shakespeare, in a chapter on the play of Antony and Cleopatra. In this series of essays, Richer analyses the writings of the author of the Shakespeare works (Francis Bacon, but that's another story), and shows how they are grounded in the archetype of the zodiac. It is an extraordinary tour-de-force of analysis and scholarship which demonstrates his profound insight and ability to reveal the deep structure of astrological symbolism embedded in classic texts. On the left, he shows an image of the constellation of Ophiucus from a 1549 work on astronomy. Next to it, on the same page, he displayed an image from the Astrolabium Planum of Engel, published in 1488. It shows the symbolism of the 30th degree of Scorpio, described by Richer as "un Grand Serpent". Notice that the serpent is identical to the serpent held in the arms of Ophiucus. Thus, Richer is clearly signalling his understanding that the so-called sign of Ophiucus was considered to be part of the sign of Scorpio. This insight is the key to unlocking the geography of Le Serpent Rouge. See The Map and the Manuscript for the details. This is by no means the only example of the trail of clues left by Richer. I did not include this one, and many of the others, in my book, because there comes a point where simply piling up the evidence makes no difference. People see what they are ready to see, and cannot see what they do not want to see. Søren Kierkegaard, the celebrated Danish theologian, poet, and philosopher, put it very well. He wrote: "There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." Perhaps it wasn't specifically intended to be about the Rennes Affair, but it certainly applies.
|
|
Beyond the Map and the Manuscript
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.
I'm pleased to announce that the video of my recent presentation, entitled Le Serpent Rouge and the Zodiac of Rennes-les-Bains, is now available for viewing on my Youtube channel. This was a two-hour talk delivered to a small group on the evening of 14 November 2025, at La Confluence Events Centre in Couiza, Aude, France. It was a special night for me, in more ways than one, an opportunity to present the results of my work to an appreciative audience in a warm and welcoming environment. So...
Original 1886 version of Boudet's map comes to light confirming the presence of the inch-grid A photograph of the map included in the original 1886 edition of Henri Boudet's La Vraie Langue Celtique has been located online, as reported in a recent blog post at the Rhedesium website. No link to the original page is provided, but it is said to appear on a Cambridge University Library catalogue. It is clearly genuine. Importantly, it includes a reference measure, which now makes it possible to...
New review of The Map and the Manuscript calls it "the first sensible book to be published on the Rennes-le-Château mysteries" "This book is probably the first sensible book to be published on the Rennes-le-Château mysteries. The problem is that there's so much bumpkin been written about it that it's difficult to persuade even those with a lifelong obsession that it's actually worth reading and "not like the rest". Rest assured, Mr Miles knows that the famous parchment were forgeries. This...