Cicada 3301 & the book of Daniel

Cicada 3301 & the book of Daniel
Solving the cover of the Liber Primust through the book of Daniel.

Since I am not a skilled cryptographer, mathematician or programmer, but an academic theologian with a kick for puzzle solving, I turned to the collage that is the cover of the Liber Primus. Many have tried to interpret it before, but I seem to have found a possibility that I have not found anybody else having tried. So here, for better or worse, is mine. My primary assumption is that the interpretation of the cover is connected to the biblical figure of Daniel (from the Hebrew Bible book with the same name).

The cover is divided in four tiles, all segments of works by William Blake: Nebuchadnezzar (c. 1795), Newton (1795), and The Ancient of Days (1974). The first painting is of Nebuchadnezzar, especially as depicted in the Biblical book of Daniel 4. In this chapter, the king of Babylon – commonly reffered to as Nebuchadnezzar II (reigned c. 605 – c. 562 BC) – is taught a lesson by Israel’s God, ‘who is able to bring low those who walk in pride’. After seven years of God-induced madness, he is cured and praises God, as Daniel predicted when interpreting the king’s own dream earlier.

The third segment is that of the frontpiece of Europe a Prophecy, respectively drawn and written by Blake in 1974. The frontpiece depicts one of Blake’s divine entities, known as Urizen, associated in Blake’s mythology with Reason. The frontpiece itself is called ‘Ancient of Days’, one of the many names given to the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible. The specific notion of ‘Ancient of days’ (palaios hemeron in the Greek Septuagint, and antiquus dierum in the Latin Vulgate) is found – again – in the book of Daniel.

The second fragment, of Blake’s Newton, seems to have no connection with the book of Daniel, but I beg to differ. In the first place, Blake took serious issue with two Newtonian ideas: absolute space and time, and supramechanical force (C. Kaiser, Creational theology and the history of physical science (1997), p. 328; online). In the second place, in 1773, Newton himself published a book about – yes, here we are – Daniel, called Observations upon the prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (1773, online).

If have more porbably clues between the cover and Daniel, but it is too much to post here. If you want, please visit my post on https://frankgbosman.wordpress.com/2020/02/11/cicada-3301-the-book-of-daniel/. Please, you thoughts. I do not think I have cracked the cover, let alone the rest of the book, but maybe it helps others.