Monday, June 29, 2015

Back from the Eighth Enoch Seminar

THE EIGHTH ENOCH SEMINAR happened last week on 21-26 June at the Villa Cagnola in Gazzada, Italy, focusing on the subject of "Apocalypticism" and "Mysticism." There were many interesting papers and lots of good discussion. I got some good feedback on my paper, which I will incorporate into the published version.

On Tuesday we took the day to travel to Turin to the Egyptian Museum. And once there, how could we not stop to view the Shroud of Turin on (as it happened) the last day, perhaps for many years, on which it would be on display? We rounded off the day with a boat trip on Lake Maggiore. Click on the images below for a larger view of all but the first one.


The Villa Cagnola.*


The view from in front of the Villa Cagnola. Those are the Alps.


The view of the garden in back. That's Lake Varese.


The same scene at sunset. The bright star is the planet Venus, approaching a rare conjunction with the planet Jupiter (just visible up and a little to the left).


At a certain point it was cool to erect faux ruins in your Italian garden. This tower was put up in the garden in the late nineteenth century to give the impression that it was all that remained of an ancient building such as a monastery.


The last session of the Seminar, which happened to be my paper. You can see me sitting in front of the screen on the right side.*


A column from one of the manuscripts of the Book of the Dead in the Egyptian Museum in Turin. That's the funerary god Anubis.


The Shroud of Turin. It looked just like in all the photos you've seen. Past posts on the Shroud of Turin are here and here and many links.

*Photos with asterisks are courtesy of Gabriele Boccaccini. The other photographs are my own.