Unseen & Unknown Aspects of the Turin shroud
The recent events in Turin regarding the revelations in respect of the
Turin Shroud have forced my hand, and I feel it is my duty to disclose
to the public at large certain hitherto undisclosed facts regarding
the Shroud purported to be that of Jesus, and its inherently
extraordinary characteristics. I say on "my behalf" because at the time I was a total newcomer on the scene, my only credentials being my expertise as Lecturer in Colour Studies at Brighton University, and the publication of material on early Christian Gnosticism.
My discoveries were therefore unintentional and a result of chance events which led me into a realm of the totally unexplained and inexplicable, which in turn led me to many travels in the Middle East: the Sinai and Negev deserts, Jordan and Petra, Cappadocia in Turkey and, in addition, remote areas of Greece, where there seemed all over these areas of the world to be traces and imprints of the trail I was following, confirmed particularly by the caves of the Nazara in Petra.
Now there is no doubt in my mind, after these years of research, that the Turin Shroud is indeed genuine because there are marks and signs that unmistakably define the personality of the deceased which throughout history have never so far been identified, partly because the marks have been confused with other manifestations i.e. blood and thorns and also because there have been inbuilt assumptions about the historical Jesus which have never been questioned or explored, except by a handful of early heresiologists such as Epiphanius, Hippolytus, Irenaeus, or more modern scholars such as G.R.S. Mead, Kurt Rudolf, Robert Eisenmann and others.
However no one could have falsified those signs because they were true secrets of the early belief systems of his followers, and what is more would never have been known by any kind of medieval forger, painter, or used in some kind of primitive photography. Did he himself not say "To those who are without I speak in parables, but to you I give the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven?"
So what are the signs and why can we be so certain that we are looking at a genuinely paranormal event appearing to Secondo Pia in 1898 as a three dimensional image of a man unlike any other in the long history of Mankind?
The process by which this ensued is not the purpose of this communication, but rather the visual evidence from a different viewpoint, of the true identity of this man of the Shroud so completely synchronistic with the form and content of the Resurrection occurrence.
Initially, when I finally realised what seemed to be the reality of this happening, I was extremely loathe to publish my findings, because I wished at all costs to avoid religious dogmatism, as it has always seemed to me that the essence of the Gospels is about God and Love and the metaphysical aspects a natural outcome. Yet to Christians the Resurrection is central to their faith and it would seem that such a life as Christ's would conceivably result in a special kind of death.
Yet if this stretches our credibility to the limit we must nevertheless open our minds to the possibility that something remarkable did ensue, which much as our convoluted rationality seeks to analyse, nonetheless leaves matters unexplained, matters of visual truth that I will now seek to elucidate.
What are the keys then that may unlock the door to this most revered image? We have to enquire as to what the gospels tell us about Jesus which been have recorded for generations for all mankind. Firstly, it is said in Matthew 2:23 that he was a Nazarene, a talmudic term used in reference to Jesus and secondly, most crucially important, that he was a priest forever after the order of Melchisedek (Hebrews 7:17).
Curiously both these facts are linked, but first let us look at what the Pia image has to tell us.
If we look closely at the first monochrome photographic images ever taken, there appear to be a series of fronds around the head that stand out in relief around the brow. Now on the Shroud cloth itself these have been seen as blood trickles or a crown of thorns. Neither are in the least likely, since Ian Wilson pointed out that they are too magenta in colour to be blood, and futhermore the Crown of Thorns would hardly have been buried on his head by his compassionate disciples, Indeed it would at all costs have been removed and it is probable that these marks, so long identified with blood trickles, are in fact the result of pressed leaves against the cloth. The staining is a common result of pressed plants against either paper or cloth and commonly known as the Volkringer effect.
When these findings were presented to the Shroud Museum at Via San Domenico in Turin, in August last year, my husband and I had a unique opportunity to study alone and unimpeded the exact shape and exhibits of the Crown of Thorns and also a specimen of the plant itself, the Gundelia Tournefortii from the Holy Land, and what was regrettably self evident was that neither bore any resemblance to the shapes discernible on either the Secondo Pia or the later Enrie life size photographs. As a professional artist used to drawing the structure of more plant forms than most, the difference between sharp or rounded is immediately discernible and the shapes on the Shroud photographs were more rounded than sharp, obviously precluding a crown of thorns.
Not only did we have the privilege of viewing those objects at close range but also my husband drew my attention to a profoundly significant inscription around a plinth in the centre of the museum carved in French that, according to the Museum was made by the nuns of Chambery who darned the cloth in 1532. It was a description though greatly generalised of Jesus' visual appearance, one of the very few ever to have existed, which stated: "that the beard was neither too long or too short according to the manner of the Nazarenes".
It was a bolt from the blue, and no doubt handed down by tradition possibly pertaining to evidence in the early Christian cemetery of Pamphilj in Rome, where the following inscription was found over 70 years ago:
NACZAPIOYC
INNOKENTIOYC
Nazare[e]us, Innocentius
Rivisia di arch cristina, III, 1926, p.75. The discoverer of this text a certain Mr. Josi, said of it: "Il nome Naszarius non e frequente nelle iscrizione di Roma"
The Nazarene connection is therefore of very great importance. Who then were the Nazarenes? From where did they arise and how does this relationship manifest itself on the Shroud?
According to E.S. Drower, perhaps the greatest recorder of source material during the last century, Jesus was a Nasurai baptised by John in the Jordan, a pure Mandean rite of Baptism, and though at one with certain aspects of the Belief system, rejected their orthodox practice to forge a new way.
The link between the Nazarenes and the Mandeans is that of initiates and laymen, the Nazarenes belonging to the realm of "Observers" or "Passers by". Their origins were in the Jordan Valley but after persecution from Jewish orthodoxy they fled to the Median Hills and eventually to the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates.
The word Nazura from the original Aramaic signifies branch or shoot and it is most likely that we are dealing with a sacred tradition handed down from generation to generation and adopted and transformed by Jesus and his followers.
Having now placed the Mandeans within the historical setting at the time of Jesus, we may now, having differentiated the inner and outer functions of these people restrict our description to the burial rites involved in our thesis as being Nazarene-Mandean. It is fully realised that what is being said is likely to raise many objections and polemics but since the Shroud itself reveals unprecedented new aspects in its total appearance, these things must be said, as they offer explanations which so far have never been recognised as having very precise meaning and identity.
Let us start with the use of myrtle in the rituals for a high priest - or Melchi - king of light. To those born into the realm of light, a crown of white silk or Tagha would be placed around the head of the deceased, and into the circlet would be placed the plucked down pieces of myrtle the lower leaves of which would be removed so as to place the twiglets into the crown making a burial wreath, symbol of immortality and eternal life.
This crown, in fact, was also worn during other rites by the priest at the ceremonies of baptism, marriage and the Masiqta or mass. It was a sign and mark of inclusion into the long line of Melchisedek ordained to minister to the one light the one who acts through innocent mediation between Man and God by virtue of forever a abiding in the practice of his presence.
Over this myrtle wreath was then placed the rectangular face cloth or Padan to prevent pollution to those in contact with the dead, and lastly the shroud would be placed over the entire body as in the manner of the two cloths found in the tomb according to the John Gospel.
Maybe we are too familiar with the well recorded and oft repeated biblical account to realise that they could have been very real symbolic events, taking place in everyday space and time and not the language of myth at all, but actual, though utterly exceptional realities. The rectangular cloth has since become mythologized into the Veronica cloth or Mandylion on which Christ was reputed to have wiped the sweat off his face on the road to Calvary and on which he imprinted his image. It was instead a true cloth placed over his face initially for more mundane reasons, later to be deeply revered as an indication of the Resurrection. We now know it was taken to Edessa and was certainly there between 620-658 AD as we have the confirmation by Archbishop Isho-Yahb, head of the Nestorian community to the church in Edessa (see issue 54 November 2001 of the British Society of the Turin Shroud Newsletter) as it was found recently amongst a collection of papers, by Archbishop Gewargis Silwa (Head of the church in Baghdad), written in Syriac relating to the face on the cloth:
"In the city of our Lord, the city of our God (i.e. Edessa). He granted us the simple designation of his venerable exile so as to render it a sanctified throne for the image of his adorable face and his glorified Incarnation"
It is interesting that the flowering cross of the Nestorians is the essence of their faith, just as the myrtle is the flowering emblem of Christ's Resurrection and healing on the Shroud.
The last great sign is of astonishing significance yet by far the most ambiguous and indefinable. Here we must look very carefully at the piece of cord that appears to be suspended from the myrtle wreath with some kind of ring shape on the end of it At first it seemed impossible and improbable but nonetheless it was there to be examined. After much research and endless rumination, I finally concluded that it had to be the result of the Mandean-Nazarene burial custom to attach an iron seal ring to the body of the dead person for three days after death to support the soul on its journey to the beyond.
The furore that such a statement may make can only be imagined, but it is no more strange than aspects of burial even today, aspects which I have been assured by Suhaib Nashi, the secretary to the Mandean Society of America, are common procedure in the burial of their dead in which the ring I have mentioned, known as the Skandola, is actually handed down from generation to generation and apparently only removed from the body on the third day after demise.
When searching in Jordan for evidence of this Skandola seal ring, I did actually see an iron ring in the Aqaba museum similar, though definitely not identical, to the one I have mentioned, but all I know is that such seal rings were commonly in use during the lst Century AD. However the one I have mentioned has very unique and revealing visual features insofar as it is emblematic of the Nazarene sect, bearing the marks of the Lion, Bee, Scorpion and Uroborus, the latter being the image of eternity.
Somewhere in the world this ring still exists and it would be of the utmost importance if it could be found and its relevance revealed and thoroughly researched and identified.
I recognise that the revelations concerning the man of the Shroud are so unfamiliar to anything previously assumed that they will possibly shock many people and be rejected by most, yet the fact remains they are there on the Shroud to visually examine and explore, and the colour intensifications that accompany this paper have enhanced data that no other process has yet revealed.
If this were not startling enough, because of the pure urgency of the situation, I find myself obliged to relate a matter of profound importance regarding the analysis made by Israeli botanist Avinoam Danin of the Gundelia Tournefortii (Crown of Thorns) pollen first taken from the surface of the Shroud by Max Frei on sticky tapes during the examination by STURP in 1978. Danin's analysis of the pollens in 1999 concluded these to be predominant on the Shroud, thereby vindicating its authenticity and challenging the carbon dating, making world news following the l6th International Botanical conference at St Louis Missouri.
However, to his everlasting credit and impeccable professionalism,
he decided to get a second opinion, and sent the sticky tape pollens
to be analysed by Professor Thomas Lift by the use of advanced
microscopy in the dept. of Palaeontology of Bonn University and all
that has so far been revealed is, firstly that they are definitely
not the Crown of Thorn pollens, and secondly that they are most
certainly from the Holy Land. So if they are not, what then are they?
Perhaps we may soon have answers from another source, when the tests
on the surface of the Shroud as the result of the Flury-Lemburg
overhaul are finally released in Mid-September.
Meanwhile it is incumbent upon myself to relate my methodology in the use of Colour Intensification by which I have been able to identify the nature of the images on the Shroud and to point to their identity.
Having discovered by experiment, with the co-operation of students at the University of Brighton, a series of colour scales based on the musical octave used to define the meaning of colour throughout the history of painting, I had, with the application of superimposed acetates over a flat, though variably painted colour ground, established a means of producing distinct colour resonances with different attributes.
Using the particular scale of fluorescence to project personality from monochrome photographic images, it was found that this resonance produced a singularly heightened sense of personal identity in whatever subject we chose to enhance.
As it happened, at that time, I had just seen an exhibition on the Turin Shroud and though it was not in any way a preoccupation of mine, I nonetheless felt such an image to be interesting from the point of view of colour intensification, the actual process being simplicity itself but vitally dependant on the correct frequency of the ground, which no computer simulation can capture to the same degree, requiring two factors, a flat painted ground and the superimposition of an acetate transparency of the Turin Shroud.
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I started with a small image that turned out to be so revelatory and so totally different to the original monochrome black and white taken by Secondo Pia (See Fig 1) that I was convinced of the efficacy of the scale used to enhance detail. |
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It was this first life size image that was presented to the British Society for the Turin Shroud (Fig 2). |
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I then went on to use a colour film on the Enrie life size figure and the result revealed the volume and the mass of the myrtle wreath on the back of the head. These are clearly curved and rounded, in no way akin to a Crown of Thorns (Fig 3). |
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Fig. 4 is a much later 1999 colour intensification using a high degree of fluorescence and yielding far greater detail, even showing the half opening eyes as if awakening from a deep sleep. It must be absolutely emphasised that no hand or brush ever touched these images that were purely the effect of flat background colour, yet no other use of colour has shown this, which remains quite invisible on the Secondo Pia photograph. The myrtle plant itself was then placed over the brow in the position that it might have occupied over the brow area, demonstrating how the similarity in mass and proportion may have correlated, after which the whole was photographed. |
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Fig 5 is taken from E.S.Drower's "The Mandeans of Iraq and Iran" showing the manner in which a Mandean priest arranges the myrtle into a head filet or Tagha, akin to the manner in which it appeared on the Shroud in fronds around the head. |
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Fig 6a. By the use of a blue recessive colour ground the images on the acetate are pushed forward and defined, revealing the rectangular cloth about the face known as the Padan but generally interpreted as the Veronica or Mandylion. |
These innovations may, for better or for worse, radically, if we dare to accept them, alter what we have so far perceived to exist on the Shroud, the origin of which now seems to be an ongoing revelation of the presence behind it. A presence yet to be understood, experienced, and realised, of a reality beyond our sense-based view of the world.
Should readers require Life Size Colour Intensifications of the recent material on the Shroud delivered September 2002 for Shroud specialists in Rome, please send your request to the Hove Ikon Gallery.
A2 size Intensifications are £50 each inclusive of postage and packing.
Prismatics in Art
The Artist: Norma Weller
The Ikon Gallery
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