The ‘hot Templar/hot template’ hypothesis finally makes it into the mainstream media.

 

Postscript (correction: ‘prescript‘) added July 2019:

You have arrived at a 2014 posting. That was the year in which this investigator finally abandoned the notion of the body image being made by direct scorch off a heated metal template (despite many attractions, like negative image, 3D response etc. But hear later: orchestral DA DA!  Yup, still there with the revised technology! DA DA! ).

In its place came two stage image production.

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Stage 1: sprinkle white wheaten flour or suchlike vertically onto human subject from head to foot, front and rear  (ideally with initial smear of oil to act as weak adhesive). Shake off excess flour, then cover the lightly coated subject with wet linen. Press down VERTICALLY and firmly (thus avoiding sides of subject). Then (and here’s the key step):

Stage 2: suspend the linen horizontally over glowing charcoal embers and roast gently until the desired degree of coloration, thus ‘developing’ the flour imprint, so as to simulate a sweat-generated body image that has become yellowed with centuries of ageing.

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The novel two-stage “flour-imprinting’ technology was unveiled initially on my generalist “sciencebuzz” site. (Warning: one has to search assiduously to find it, and it still uses a metal template, albeit unheated,  as distinct from human anatomy):

 

 

So it’s still thermal development of sorts, but with a key difference. One can take imprints off human anatomy (dead or alive!).

A final wash of the roasted flour imprint with soap and water yields a straw-coloured nebulous image, i.e. with fuzzy, poorly defined edges. It’s still a negative (tone-reversed) image that responds to 3D-rendering software, notably the splendid freely-downloadable ImageJ.  (Ring any bells? Better still, orchestral accompaniment – see , correction HEAR earlier – DA DA!))

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This 2014 “prescript” replaces the one used for my earlier 2012/2013 postings, deploying abandoned ‘direct scorch’ technology.

Thank you for your patience and forbearance. Here’s where the original posting started:

Original posting starts here:

 

 

 

Yes, I bided my time yesterday, waiting for that wacky earthquake/neutron fantasy to appear somewhere with a decent comments facility. My patience was rewarded – the Independent duly obliging.

Independent article (Wed Feb 12, 2014) on the supposed role of earthquakes and neutrons in producing the Turin Shroud  in AD 33  (indifferent or contemptuous of the carbon dating to AD 1260-1390)

This morning I placed another  comment on the thread, the first time as I recall that my hot Templar/hot template hypothesis has appeared in the MSM, as distinct from the blogosphere. Here’s my hastily penned comment, together with the one that preceded it.

Anders Tangvald

One thing that nobody appears to mention here is the odd coincidence that the figure seems to match what was considered an aesthetic ideal for men in the late middle ages, in fact just around the time that carbon datings indicate that the shroud was made. Just look at how God or Jesus are portrayed in Michelangelo’s art, for example. Back then, the middle-aged beardy man was an aesthetic ideal. Problem is, according to biblical sources, Jesus was considerably younger at the time of his death – we don’t know if he had a beard, but the figure on the shroud is clearly older than the how the gospels describe him when he was crucified.

newsjunkie (aka Colin Berry)

Are you aware of a school of thought that says that the man on the TS was intended originally to represent Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Knights Templar or one of his close lieutenants (Geoffroi de Charney?) who died with him on the same day in 1314?  They were slow-roasted over coals, possibly in a manner akin to that of the 3rd century martyr St,Lawrence of Rome, i.e. horizontally on a metal grid. That might explain why the first documented appearance of the shroud in Europe was at Lirey, close to Troyes, France, the owner being a post-Templar knight, Geoffroi de Charny, who some, notably genealogist Noel Currer-Briggs, believe was de Charney’s nephew. The man on the Lirey pilgrim’s badge does not look at all Christ-like. What’s more there’s a trellis-pattern on the reverse side between a series of supports that might well be an allusion to the iron grid on which the Templars (and St.Lawrence) met their end.The TS image looks like a heat scorch, and may indeed be one, the resort to pyrographic art being deliberate – a grim visual metaphor, so to speak. (ed. see site banner for model studies with a heated brass crucifix). The artist wanted us to imagine a hot semi-roasted corpse being placed prematurely in a shroud. I call it the hot Templar/hot template hypothesis.Search the internet for (shroud of turin scorch templar) and look for my postings under shroudofturinwithoutallthehype (of which there are some 200 in total now). Sorry for the self-promotion, but it’s so difficult to get non-exotic ideas into the public domain. The media much prefers giving free publicity to the wackier ideas.

newsjunkie

PS. I omitted to mention that the ‘hot’ template would have been something metal, life-sized and a rough approximation to a Knight Templar, especially when viewed as a negative image (contact scorches from templates producing negatives that need to be reversed by modern photography to see the ‘real’subject, first achieved in 1898 by Italian lawyer Secondo Pia).What if the template had been a life-sized crucifix of Jesus, cast in bronze, and thus heat-resistant. Might that be the reason why an image of a fallen Knight Templar became quickly re-branded as representing the crucified Jesus? There are no obvious wounds on the TS image. All the much-vaunted evidence for crucifixion rests on strategically sited blood wounds (at location of nails, crown of thorns, lance wound, scourge marks etc) and could have been added later by an over-zealous monk with a pot of blood, or post-coagulation haemolysed blood serum.#######################################################On a different matter, having said just a day or two ago that I have no wish or need to add links to social media sites to this site, a string of them has suddenly just appeared, not only on this posting, but all previous ones.  Why? I have no idea, having done nothing to my settings. It may be linked to cutting-and-pasting entire comments and furniture from the Independent. Alternatively, it might be linked to a screen flash yesterday from WordPress, congratulating me on a sudden surge in hits (thanks Independent), and deciding (without consultation) that this blog would benefit from some wider publicity. Given the icons are in a discreet monochrome, and not distracting or unduly self-promoting, I may leave them in place for a week or two, and then decide whether or not to delete, assuming that my settings still offer that option.

Afterthought: or was it the result of priming the comments on a site called WebProNews which appeared yesterday on Page 1 of Google listings under (shroud of turin).  Clever cookies?

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