The 7th Puzzle: What does The Istanbul Puzzle symbol mean?

Over the past 7 months I have published a series of posts related to the mysteries of Istanbul. This 7th post will be the last in this series. Further posts will cover more general mysteries related to the series of novels coming up over the next few years and updates on writing each novel.

The 7th puzzle related to The Istanbul Puzzle is about the meaning of the symbol you will find below. This symbol is discovered by Sean and Isabel during their Istanbul Puzzle adventure.

Here is the symbol:

At first glance it appears to simply be a square with some lines inside it, which form an upward shaped arrow with 4 double-headed eagles at the compass points.

As I explored what this symbol might mean I uncovered a series of interpretations. These interpretations might help you solve the puzzle and win a £200 prize. The details of that prize are after the above link.

One of the first interpretations that struck me was that the shapes were also used in a Byzantine children’s game. The objective of the game is to see how many shapes you can create with just four basic elements. The first test in the game, under the old rules, is to see how fast you can create a pyramid and a devil shape.

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The second interpretation I found was that some astrological charts used the same shape to chart the positions of the planets at the moment of birth.

Here is an astrological chart taken from the Tractatus Astrologicus II, which contained the astrological charts of early European states. It was created by Luca Gaurico, one of Nostradamus’ teachers, and was published in Rome in 1524.

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The third interpretation of the image is as a Byzantine magic symbol.

The square is universally acknowledged as the magical symbol of earth and the triangle as the symbol of fire. These symbols can be seen on banners from the middle Byzantine period, around the time of the 4th Crusade.

The banner image shown here illustrate the original colours of the four Byzantine double-headed eagles.

The fourth interpretation is as a Kabbalistic symbol.

After the expulsion of jews on 31 March 1492 by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain many settled in Ottoman territories. Rabbeinu ben Adaret, a rabbi and early scholar  of the Kabbalah, moved to Constantinople during that period. The symbol shown is taken from a commentary on his work published in Constantinople in 1574.

There are other interpretations of this symbol too. It was used by the Marcianius family, one of the earliest aristocratic families of the Byzantine period as their family symbol.

The symbols of the square and the arrow are also alchemical symbols for soot and zinc. The combined symbol is believed to be an alchemical recipe. The Byzantine eagles were part of the formula, whose meaning has since been lost.

And finally, at this stage of the plot, and because all the books in this series will form a complete story, the seventh interpretation of the symbol is a symbolic representation of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

None of the above interpretations is the answer required to win the prize, however, but in them you will find a clue.

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, an 1887 painting by Victor Vasnetsov. The Lamb is visible at the top. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

The 1st Puzzle: What’s hidden beneath Hagia Sophia?

Hagia Sophia is the only building in the world to have served as a Catholic Cathedral and as the seat, the real focal point, of two religions, Orthodox Christianity and Sunni Islam, each of which has hundreds of millions of followers. Yet no guidebook shows any part of the building below ground level. Why?and

Hagia Sophia 1852, lithograph by Fossati, (Athens Gennadeios Library)

When Ataturk turned Hagia Sophia into a museum in 1934 and gave the powers of the Sunni Caliphate to the Turkish parliament, he enraged many in the Islamic world. Indeed, some are still trying to resurrect the Caliphate. That has been one of the main objectives of many Islamist extremists for the past eighty years. To understand why, just imagine what the reaction would have been if Mussolini had turned the Vatican into a museum and had then ordered the Pope to leave town.

The Hagia Sophia we see today is, despite the rebuilding work carried out after regular earthquakes, the building that was consecrated on the 27th December 537 by the Roman Emperor Justinian. It would be the greatest church in Christendom for a thousand years, until St Peter‘s in Rome was completed. And after the city was captured by the Ottomans, it was the greatest mosque in the world for nearly five hundred years.

There is no other building in the world with anything like that history. Hagia Sophia’s massive dome, its unprecedented proportions, were believed by many to have been the work of the divine. Its architecture influenced mosques and churches worldwide. Its grandeur was said to have led Russia to convert to Orthodox Christianity, not Catholicism. Relics such as fragments of the true cross, the undefiled lance, the most sacred tunic, and the God-bearing winding sheet (this was probably the Turn shroud) were only some of its treasures, until the city was ransacked by a Catholic army during the Fourth Crusade. That list was taken, by the way, from a military harangue delivered to Byzantine troops on behalf of Constantine VII (905 – 959).

Underground architectural features were well known at the time the first Hagia Sophia was designed. Both the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, constructed in 326-330, and Old St. Peter’s in Rome, both constructed around the same time, have extensive underground areas. Indeed, they are the most sacred parts of these buildings. Justinian’s Hagia Sophia was designed by Isidore of Miletus and mathematician Anthemius of Tralles. Both were well known for their interest in tunnels. There are also major underground structures, including the Basilica Cistern, in the vicinity. Did they simply forget to design underground levels for Hagia Sophia? Or were they hidden later?

Isn’t, I hear someone say, the tomb of the Doge of Venice located in Hagia Sophia? Yes, it is, but it wasn’t constructed until 1205, and it’s not impressive. It’s a slab in the floor of the upper gallery. But was that it’s original location?

Tomb of Dandolo, Doge of Venice, Hagia Sophia.

When Constantinople fell to the Ottoman armies in 1453, it would have been clear to the guardians of Hagia Sophia that the great church, the Vatican of the Orthodox world, would be desecrated and probably turned into a great mosque if the city fell. Those in charge before the city walls were finally overrun, on Tuesday, 29 May 1453, had motivation and plenty of time to conceal many things, to sow many deceptions. Ottoman intentions had been clear for years.

So, why hasn’t there been a proper modern investigation, a geophysical survey using ground penetrating radar and the latest magnetometer equipment?

It is true that there has been some limited small-scale explorations under Hagia Sophia, a few narrow tunnels and cisterns have been discovered, but isn’t it time for the whole area to be properly explored and documented? The publicity, and increase in tourists alone, would justify the costs. What is everyone afraid of? Hagia Sophia has been a museum for seventy five years. In The Istanbul Puzzle you will find an answer to these questions.

Click here to go to the 2nd Puzzle: The Lost Book of Magic.

The 2nd Puzzle: The Lost Book of Magic

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• The Secret Riches Visualization Tool

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  Most people know what The Secret is. They know about the power of positive thinking, repetition, self belief.

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  Few people know however that these ideas were once the key elements in ancient books of magic. Such books often also contained medical knowledge and practical personal advice. The success of such ideas gave these books a long life. They were much sought after and argued over.

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  And in some periods you could be burnt at the stake for possessing such books.
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  These days you can buy books of magic and positive thinking for a relatively low cost, and without much danger to your health. You can even go to seminars on how to see your success, or you can give away your money to people selling seals and hoodoo correspondence courses.
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  So what has any of this got to do with Istanbul?
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  At the time of the fall of Constantinople (since called Istanbul) in 1453 thousands of scholars fled to Italy. They went to Florence and to Milan and beyond. Among them were physicians, astronomers and mathematicians.
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  Marsilio Ficino, whose family fled from Constantinople to Italy, was one the most important figures in the Italian Renaissance.
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  He was involved, with Cosimo de’Medici, in trying to heal the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.a
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  He was also a vegetarian, a priest, and at one point was lucky to escape with his life after being accused of magic before Pope Innocent VIII.and
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  Ficino’s father was a physician under the patronage of Cosimo de’ Medici, who took the young man into his household and became the lifelong patron of Marsilio, who was made tutor to his grandson, Lorenzo de’ Medici.
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  So where did Marsilio get his most important ideas?
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  Many of his thoughts are common sense now, such as advice to keep your body in good order, but some of his other ideas are more far reaching, even to this day.
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  Marsilio Ficino
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  In the Book of Destiny, Marsilio details the links between behavior and consequence. He talks about the list of things that hold sway over a man’s destiny,
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  He practised astrology too and believed in talismans and symbols. His most famous prediction was that the son of Lorenzo de’Medici would become Pope. He did.
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  His most famous achievement though was in the blending of the occult, the magical traditions of astrology, with the teaching of the Catholic church.
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  He wrote a treaty on the Immortality of the Soul, which after his death, became dogma of the Catholic and eventually the Protestant churches. This was a theoretical advancement on the Christian belief that we will all live on after death. His theory synthesized Christianity and Platonism, and created a foundation for the Renaissance.
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  He subscribed to the notion that there was hope for world renovation (best remembered in the word Renaissance – rebirth – itself), which would occur through art, science and technology.  He declared that religion’s basis had to be philosophy and believed that Plato should be read in churches. Ficino wrote that the human soul was both immortal and divine, made in the image of God.
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  This guy was responsible for the theory behind the Renaissance, and Christianity’s slow acceptance of the idea of human advancement, which underpins the positivism and dynamism of the West over the past five hundred years.
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  The Fall of Constantinople, 1453 
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  So what’s the puzzle here?
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  Marsilio’s family had moved from Constantinople before the fall and the ideas he was taught by his uncle, Manuel Chrysoloras, included specific magical concepts such as the power of self belief, the use of ritual repitition and the divinity of the soul.
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  The legendary Byzantine manuscript “The Seventh Book of Destiny”, quoted by Marsilio in a letter to his uncle, included detailed magical ideas about positivism and dynamism and the power of the mind and how you can attract good fortune.
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  The Seventh Book of Destiny was one of the books specifically targeted for burning during the Inquisition. Every known copy was destroyed for ever, except one, which we know about from a legend of the fall of Constantinople. The legend states that a copy was lost overboard in a metal trunk the night before Constantinople fell on Tuesday, 29 May 1453.
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  A Venetian galiot, a small galley, with a single mast and twenty fast rowers, had, so the legend goes, managed to reach a hidden gate in the sea wall near the Golden Horn at around midnight, despite a night bombardment of the sea walls by the Ottoman artillery, the most advanced in the world at that time.
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  Five close members of the last Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos’ entourage, including his sixteen year old illegitimate daughter, given the title of Princess only hours before, were taken on board. Each was allowed to bring only one very small chest.
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  One chest was lost into the sea as the passengers boarded, the chest containing Constantine XI’s personal illuminated copy of The Seventh Book of Destiny.
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  The position of that small sea gate was well known at the time. And Mehmed the Conqueror had that area of the Bosphorus dredged after the conquest in search of that lost trunk, which was observed going overboard, but the average depth of the water in that area, 160 feet, and the swift currents and eddies, some of which flow in different directions at different levels, must have taken the trunk some distance as it tumbled to the sea floor.
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  Present day archeological equipment, including the latest seismological underwater mud-penetrating metal detection equipment are likely to offer the surest route to the rediscovery of that legendary lost trunk. The book containing the lost Secrets of Byzantine magic will eventually be found.
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  But when, and what else does The Seventh Book of Destiny talk about?
  
  
  For more on all this buy The Istanbul Puzzle or go to the next puzzle of Istanbul here.

The 3rd Puzzle: Where are the plague pits that mark the beginning of our world?

In the sixth century the word’s smallest organism, Yersina Pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, achieved its greatest growth spike. During the reign of Justinian (Emperor 527 to 565CE) the plague hit Constantinople, the capital of the Roman Empire. Almost every city of the Empire was devastated in an apocalyptic manner.

Justinian the Great from a mosaic in Ravenna

Gibbon (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) describes the effect of the epidemic as follows: Justinian’s reign is disgraced by the visible decrease of the human species, which has never been repaired in some of the fairest countries of the globe.

Cyril Mango, Professor of Byzantine Literature at Oxford University describes the apocalyptic effects in his book Byzantium, The Empire of the New Rome, in this way: it is possible that one third to one half of the population of Constantinople died in 542.

John Julius Norwich had this to say (Byzantium, The Early Centuries) about the plague: Beginning in Egypt it quickly spread across all the lands of the Eastern Mediterranean to Constantinople where it raged for four months, the toll rising to 10,000 a day and on one day 16,000, as many as the entire army in Italy…..Plague was succeeded by famine and the number of its victims was estimated at 300,000, two out of five of the population of the city.

Justinian's Empire at its greatest extent (red & orange areas - courtesy Wikipedia)

Gibbon describes where the dead were taken as follows (Ch XLIII, The Decline and Fall): A magistrate was authorized to collect the promiscuous heaps of dead bodies, to transport them by land or water, and to inter them in deep pits beyond the precincts of the city.

Initially, burials would have taken place according to the normal Orthodox practices, anointing the body with oil, singing laments and burial in a grave. Burials of prominent individuals or clerics would have taken place in crypts or in consecrated land near great churches.

The Islamic successes of the seventh century, they quickly captured Egypt, Jerusalem and North Africa, were made possible, to a significant degree, by the devastation of constantly returning plagues at that time. The plague had returned to Constantinople, the capital of the Roman Empire, in 555, 558, 561, 573, 574, 591, 599 and again in the early seventh century. Waves of unrest followed across the Empire. Evidence for the collapse of cities is available. The psychological effect must have been appalling. In Constantinople, during some outbreaks, John of Ephesus wrote, “no one goes out without a tag with their name on it.”

It should also be noted that the Arabian desert was typically plague free during these years. If ever an Empire was set up for defeat it was the Byzantine Empire in that period. It could be said that most of our current conflicts are a result of the impact of disease at that time and the subsequent ascent of a new religion.

In Constantinople plague pits are likely to have been dug outside the great Theodosian walls, where parkland exists today separating the old city from its new suburbs. Many bodies were also reported to have been dumped into the sea. It is likely too that bodies were buried, at least in the initial phase of the outbreaks, in the complex of Hagia Sophia.

The Hagia Sophia complex we see today, completed in 537 just before the first of these major outbreaks, included the Samson Hospice and Hagia Eirene, all in the same enclosure and governed by the same clergy. The Samson Hospice was likely to have been overrun quickly during any outbreak, but some burials nearby were very likely to have taken place.

One of the reasons Mehmed the Conqueror may have left the ground generally undisturbed under Hagia Sophia was the fact that it contained plague pits. The Black Death visited Constantinople eleven times between 1348, when the epidemic surged again in the Mediterranean world, and 1453 when he took the city for Islam.

To this day excavations under Hagia Sophia are discouraged and no proper, wide ranging, modern archeological survey has ever been conducted of the underground areas directly beneath Hagia Sophia or Hagia Eirene. But why?

And where are the plague pits that mark the beginning of our world?

To go to the fourth puzzle click here. To order The Istanbul Puzzle click here.

The 4th Puzzle: St. Paul’s Cathedral

The history of St Paul’s is a real historical puzzle.

Between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941 Nazi bombers dropped tens of thousands of tons of explosives on London.

St Paul’s Cathedral survived almost unscathed. In September 1940 alone, the Luftwaffe dropped 5,300 tons of high explosives on London in just 24 nights. The image of St Paul’s rising above the smoke of a burning London is an enduring, seemingly miraculous, symbol of the defiance of the English speaking peoples against fascism.

St. Paul's during the Blitz

It’s survival of course could simply be due to good luck. All this is well known, as is the history of the present St Paul’s, designed by Sir Christopher Wren following the destruction of the previous cathedral in the Great Fire of London in 1666. What interests me is the earliest and most mysterious secrets of St Paul’s.

The present St Paul’s is believed to be the fifth Christian church on the site since the first Saxon cathedral was built by Mellitus in 604. Before that the city spent a period sparsely occupied following the expulsion of the Roman civilian administration in 409 recorded by Zosimus. It is uncertain whether the site of St Paul’s was a Christian site when Londinium was under Roman rule, but it may well have been towards the end of that period, and it most likely would have been the site of a Roman temple before that.

As to what happened after the decline and fall of the Roman Empire archeologists have found evidence that a small number of wealthy families managed to maintain a Roman lifestyle until the middle of the 5th century, inhabiting villas in the southeastern corner of the city.  It was during this period that Arthur, according to legend, drew the sword from the stone in the churchyard of St Paul’s.

In Arthurian romance, a number of explanations are given for Arthur obtaining the Kingship by pulling a sword from a stone. In most accounts the act could not be performed except by “the true king,” meaning the divinely appointed king or true heir of Uther Pendragon.

In English mythology the stone which holds Arthur’s sword is “…the genius loci, the spirit of the earth beneath us…” (Catlin Matthews, Arthur and The Sovereignty of Britain). It is likely that the legend has religious significance. Secret initiations carried out by Druids in that period would have been influenced by and perhaps have been similar to the mystery school ceremonies of Greece and Egypt, which were imported into Roman Britain in the previous centuries. These mystery schools incorporated underworld reenactments of the Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries.

The anvil atop the stone in Malory’s story is an example of the allegorical symbols used to depict spiritual ties to the underworld. The anvil holding Arthur’s sword may represent the lower or animal worlds and the drawing of the sword may have a symbolic meaning related to the struggle of our human intellect over our animal instincts, as well as the power of the phalus.

The rock the anvil rests upon may be symbolic too of the lower world from where the goddess reaches upward to profess her vision and destiny. It would seem highly appropriate that Arthur’s sword would be drawn from a stone in the yard of St Paul’s if it was previously the site of a temple to a goddess. But was it?

According to long held tradition, a Roman temple to the goddess Diana once stood on Ludgate Hill at the site of St Paul’s. Diana was the goddess of the hunt,  and also of the moon in Roman mythology. She was one of the three maiden goddesses, Diana, Minerva and Vesta, who swore never to marry.

Image via Wikipedia

Diana of Versailles, 2nd c marble

Diana was regarded with great reverence by lower-class citizens and slaves, who could receive asylum in her temples. She had a shrine in Rome on the Aventine hill, dedicated by King Servius Tullius by the sacrifice of a bull.

Though today we call most pre-Christian religious buildings “temples,” the ancient pagans would have referred to a temenos, or sacred precinct. Its sacredness, often connected with a holy grove, was more important than the building itself, as the altar on which the sacrifices were made may have been outside in the grove. The building which housed the cult statue in its naos was likely to have been a rather simple structure, which is probably why no traces were found of it by Wren.

What existed there before the Roman’s chose the site for a temple is even harder to prove than any of the above. It is likely that a late iron age hill fort existed on the site and there may indeed have been an ancient grove there at one point. It is likely too that the site had cult or religious significance and that it was part of a network of Druidic sites. What the names of the gods or goddesses worshipped there were we can only guess. What rituals and sacrifices took place there we can only imagine.

But there is some evidence as to what took place in Druidic ceremonies. According to Strabo, druids stabbed a victim with a sword and divined the future from his death spasms. According to Julius Caesar, the slaves and dependents of Celts of rank would be burnt along with the body of their master as part of his funerary rites. He also describes how they built wicker figures that were filled with living humans and then burned. It is known too that Druids supervised such sacrifices. According to Cassius Dio, Boudica‘s forces impaled Roman captives during her rebellion against the Roman occupation, to the accompaniment of revelry and sacrifices in sacred groves. Boudicca burnt Londinium to the ground in AD 61 when she captured the city. Were defeated Romans sacrificed on Ludgate Hill?

Whether any of these things happened is only wild conjecture. Whatever the truth, the mystical significance of St Paul’s is hard to argue with. Two thousand years of sacrifice and prayer cannot be ignored. What do you think is the truth about the origin of St. Paul’s?

To go to the fifth puzzle click here.

The 5th Puzzle: Why are the Treasures of Istanbul unknown?

When I was growing up I heard nothing about the beauty and wonders of Istanbul. I heard a lot about the wonders of Paris and Rome, but nothing positive about Istanbul. And I am a voracious reader of newspapers and magazines. Istanbul was the city of Midnight Express, a one-sided depiction of pure violence, and occasionally a political story would appear about a coup or a new government.

Imagine my surprise when I went to Istanbul to discover:

1. A museum that was the largest cathedral in Christendom for a thousand years, Hagia Sophia, which displays many of most important Byzantine artworks and mosaics ever created. This building influenced mosques everywhere and inspired millions. This is simply one the most important buildings in the world. Everyone should see this.

2. A palace, Topkapi, containinig Moses’ rod, original harem buildings, a treasury containing an 86-carat pear-shaped diamond, perhaps the most beautiful in the world, priceless art and artifacts and a view over the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn that thousands died for their masters to possess.

3. A Grand Bazaar and Spice Market, a vision of ages past, one of the oldest and largest covered markets in the world dating from early Ottoman times.

The list goes on too, the remains of a Roman Hippodrome, gigantic fortified Byzantine city walls and palaces, and mosques that are as beautiful as any in the world. The views everywhere in the city make Istanbul perhaps the most beautiful city in Europe and certainly one of the most beautiful in the world.

So why have all these treasures been ignored, and why do we rarely see mention of the beauty of Istanbul anywhere? Is it simply that many people just haven’t been there? I believe so. And I hope you enjoy Istanbul as much as I do if you go there.

Before you go though, one last treasure must be mentioned. The vast majority of Istanbulers are among the friendliest and kindest people in the world. Perhaps they are its greatest treasure.

To go to the 6th puzzle click here.

The 6th Puzzle: The Mystery of the Missing Link Mosaic

In my mystery novel The Istanbul Puzzle, Sean & Isabel discover a clue early on, a photograph of a mosaic. The mosaic is similar to the iconic Christian images of the Virgin & Child that are so well known all around the world.

Here is an example from the Louvre museum in Paris. This is a copper plate believed to have been “taken” from Constantinople in 1204. “Looted” is probably what they meant:

Photographed at the Louvre, July 2011

The puzzle for Sean & Isabel is that their mosaic is not Christian. But where is it from?

Images of a mother and child have been used for thousands of years as objects of veneration. Here is Isis, for instance, with her son Horus:

Isis & Horus statue at the Louvre, July 2011

Isis was a goddess in Ancient Egypt, whose worship spread all over the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the Queen of Heaven, the friend of slaves and the downtrodden.

According to Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, Isis was the only goddess worshiped by all Egyptians, whose influence was so widespread that she eventually became venerated all over the Greek world.

Worship of the Queen of Heaven was also picked up by Jews. It is recorded in the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, circa 628 BC, in the context of the Prophet condemning such religious worship as blasphemy and a violation of the teachings of the God of Israel.

In Jeremiah 7:18: ”The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes of bread for the Queen of Heaven. They pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger.”

Later the Romans used images of a mother and child for depictions of Aphrodite and Eros and other Roman and Greek Goddesses with their offspring. Here is another picture from the Louvre in Paris:

Virgin & Child from the Louvre, July 2011

The mosaic discovered in The Istanbul Puzzle is a clue that helps Sean and Isabel.

The imagery in the mosaic is so similar to what we all take for granted as an image of the Christian Virgin and Child, they assume it must be a Christian mosaic.

But it’s not. It’s a mosaic that shows where Christian artists got their inspiration from. Many such pre-Christian images of Virgins would have been destroyed as being pagan when Christianity came to power, but this one survived. The reason it did, and where it has been for almost two thousand years, are all key parts of the The Istanbul Puzzle.

To go to the 7th puzzle click here.