LibraryThing.com reviewer elenchus writes:
This third entry in Lambert's Notebooks opens with an intriguing discussion of Dali's Crucifixion , and proceeds into a giddy survey of hypercubes, dimensionality, Cartesian coordinates, and Platonic solids ("speculative geometry"). Lambert then holds up for examination, over the next nine chapters and 140-odd pages, his speculations concerning an ancient system used to transmit sacred mysteries over time, intact and encrypted. Lambert posits a "conspiracy" in which Plato endeavoured to preserve while yet hiding these mysteries, a grand feat of steganography in that Plato's writings are widely considered important enough to preserve (by those ignorant of the mysteries), thereby enabling the encrypted content to survive undetected. [26, 38-41] |
| Dali's Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) |
Note that Lambert examines in this volume, the hidden system for encryption , and not (with one exception discussed briefly below) the mysteries allegedly encrypted by application of this system.
Lambert's argument in this third notebook is vastly more ambitious than those of the previous notebooks, and that much more open to critique. My skepticism falls under two broad heads. First, it seems far less likely for a single system to employ multiple keys, yet be understood by a single group of people and be utilised for a single coherent purpose; than it is for the various texts examined (Gospel of Thomas, Creation Story in Genesis, Plato's Timaeus ) to have been encrypted by varying people, at different times and for varying purposes, mostly if not wholly ignorant of one another. (If in fact, any or some of these texts are encrypted at all, though on this count I'm less skeptical.) Second, Lambert's method is not verifiable in the manner that, for example, Reed's decryption of the Steganographia was verifiable. Here, no comparable messages are revealed which are self-evidently genuine. The closest candidate Lambert offers is the suggestion that the Genesis creation story can be read as an encrypted analogue of the current scientific account of biological evolution on Earth. Even this, though, is not verifiable: he does not uncover a literal and specific message, precisely what an encryption system is designed to transmit. Rather, Lambert argues one logical structure has been recast in terms of another structure, that an analogue is to be found.
The Gnostic Notebook
In view of all this, Lambert's notebooks continue to hold my attention insofar as they introduce fascinating concepts, uncover historical archives, track ideas he finds curious or interesting, and draw intriguing connections between ideas and interpretations I'm exceedingly unlikely to do on my own. I am persuaded that many of the parallels and connections Lambert makes are more than coincidence, that something is there. Lambert's notebooks are invaluable for these reasons, and their publication offers an opportunity to widen the conversation, precisely the rationale for a conceptual notebook.
// Keys examined: 1 - close packed spheres / structures (Democritus) 2 - tree of life / zodiacal sign / days of week 3 - Euclidean geometry / dimensions / Platonic solids 4 - Genesis creation myth / Evolutionary lifeforms (bacteria, etc) 5 - I Ching trigrams & hexagrams
