AARI: The Book of Ioxotot

AA-073Ah
The Book of Ioxotot
AA Class: manmade/artificial
Hazard class: Psi 2


Introduction

The AA known as the Book of Ioxotot was first brought to the west in 1939 by the German expedition to Tibet funded by the SS-Ahnenerbe. Unfortunately little can be said about the true circumstances it was found in, because the only surviving documents from the Nazi regime contradict known facts. Though the book was said to have been kept in an ancient Tibetan monastery, the location and name of the alledged monastery are at odds with available data. There has never been a monastery in the loction described, nor is any monastery by the name given by the documents known to have existed in Tibet during the 20th century. This leads to the conclusion that for some reason these details were falsified, but for what end is not known.

AA-073Ah disappeared from its last recorded holding place in Germany when the Third Reich fell, and was assumed to have been destroyed in an RAF bombing raid of Ulm, until it unexpectedly resurfaced in an antiques auction in New York in 1997. It turned out that the book had been taken from the Ahnenerbe library by a British soldier, Private Jonah Warden, who smuggled it to England, where it lay hidden until Warden on his deathbed insisted that his grandson take it as far away from the family as possible. Whatever Mr. Warden had learned of the book had clearly been enough to disturb him deeply, but any details concerning his experiences were lost with his death. Further inquiries have failed to produce any more information on the subject.

AA-073Ah was bought by the wealthy antiques collector Robert F. Mayns, who committed suicide two months later, presumably because of the effects of being exposed to the book. During the subsequent investigation the book came into the custody of the Anomalous Artifact Research Institute. Its anomalous properties manifested themselves during the initial study period, and subsequent events have lead to the classification of this AA as Psi 2. Access to the Book of Ioxotot now requires Blue level clearance.


Description

AA-073Ah consists of 43 engraved metal plates made of an alloy consisting mostly of gold and copper, bound together by lead rings. Each plate is covered on both sides by symbols of a previously unknown writing system, with the exception of the first plate, which is smooth except for what appearst to be a single word, independently identified as "Ioxotot" by numerous people exposed to the book with no prior kowledge of the artifact. The writing does not correspond to any known ancient writing and has no obvious predecessor nor antecendant. As it stands its use appears to be limited to AA-073Ah, never having been used prior or after its creation.

The book has traditionally been protected by leather wrappings made of either yak or water buffalo skin. This was the case even until the Auction of the book in 1997. The wrappings are described by German documents to have been decorated with a unique mandala pattern which corresponded to the fibionacci sequence of numbers, probably a complex fractal pattern based on the textual description. Unfortunately fire damage, presumably dating back to the bombing of Ulm in 1943, has obscured all such detail.

Another remarkable feature of the wrappings is a single word, a name, written in Tibetan umê script. It reads "Theurang". This is the name of a monstrous being from Tibetan mythology, from whom descended the first Tibetan king. Interestingly the surviving Ahnenerbe documents refer to the artifact as the "Theurang Codex" and suggest this was the name by which it was known among the few Tibetans aware of its existence. Apart from this nothing is known for certain of the connection between the book and the mythical creature.

It is however worth noting that AA-067T, the "Theurang hand", is highly suggestive that some connection may exist between the myth and both AA:s. The anomalous properties of AA-67T suggest an extraterrestial or non-natural origin, opening potential hypotheses for the unexplainable properties of the Book of Ioxotot. Should a definitive connection between the Theurang hand and the Book of Ioxotot be verified, it would also suggest a historical origin for the Tibetan myth. [DATA REDACTED]

The leather wrappings have been determined to be from the 13th century CE, much younger than the book itself. Dating the book has been wrought with difficulty, as different dating methods have given highly disparate results. Complicating this is the fact that the lead rings have been replaced at least once and are younger than the plates. [DATA REDACTED] The minimum measured age for the book has been determined to be 3000 years while the highest result gives it the age of 6800 years. The best estimate places its age at around 5000 years. This might place the creation of the book around the time when the original inhabitants of Tibet were replaced by people from Northern China.


Origin

The origin of this anomalous artifact is unknown, as its history can be traced back reliably only to when it came into the possession of the German expedition to Tibet. However there are hints in certain permanently classified documents that the Ahnenerbe was already aware of the book prior to this, and procuring the book may have been a secret objective given to the expedition from the outset. Due to lacking documentation it is unknown what sources the Ahnenerbe may have had concerning AA-073Ah, but considering that they referred to it as the "Theurang Codex" in the few surviving documents suggests they were not familiar with the name "Ioxotot", unless all use of the the name was being intentionally omitted.

While the book itself cannot be traced back to a single location and the exact age of the AA is difficult to pinpoint, its exact origins can only be speculated at. However there are several textual references in ancient documents that reveal fairly widespread awareness of the artifact even in Europe during antiquity and up to the middle ages. [DATA REDACTED]

[Due to the ongoing investigation concerning the Dangxiong incident, all information concerning sources relevant to AA-073Ah prior to early 20th century is reclassified and requires Indigo level authorization.]

It has been suggested that the early 20th century pulp author Howard Philips Lovecraft must have had some knowledge of the contents of the Book of Ioxotot as exemplified in his use of the name "Yog-Sothoth" for an elder god in his fantasy mythology. Certain other details align with what is known of the text of AA-073Ah, suggesting that Lovecraft had access to some fairly reliable second or third hand information about the book, most probably from researching obscure occultist sources. It does however not appear likely that he had any more intimate knowledge of the book or its content. The possibility of exposure to the AA itself can safely be excluded.


Anomalous properties

AA-073Ah appears to be entirely inert, emitting no extraordinary radiation or vibration that can be detected with the latest available equipment. Despite appearing nothing more than an archeological curiosity, it has a remarkable and unexplained effect on anyone that tries to decipher its writing. To date all who have tried to read the book have gained the inexplicable ability to translate some parts of it. Taking a quick glance at the plates that make up the AA has no such effect, but experiments show that merely looking at the lines of symbols on the plates with the intention to memorize or copy them is enough to trigger the process.

While the effect of the book still defies explanation, it has been well documented through the study of voluntary test subjects. Subjects instructed to copy a page of text from a single plate expressed no knowledge or understanding of its meaning immediately after being exposed to them. Only after sleeping a minimum of 30 minutes, the subjects received unexplained insights to the contents of the book. Repeat experiments with isolated test subjects showed a remarkable overlap between the descriptions of the book's translated content, even though subjects rarely knew the meaning of more than a fraction of the text on the plate they had been exposed to.

EEG readings from the test subjects during the sleep period immediately following the exposure to the AA showed a remarkable prominence of slow-wave sleep, with up to 80% delta waves. This effect persisted for up to 10 hours in subjects given hypnotics in order to prolong the period of sleep. The length of time the test subjects spent in slow-wave sleep also correlated to a degree with how much of the text's meaning they were able to decipher. However in rare cases a nap no longer than 60 minutes has enabled a person to translate up to 62% of a single plate.

A puzzling aspect of this phenomenon is that none of the subjects able to decipher the meaning of the text they have seen can actually point to where a specific phrase can be found among the symbols. The phrase "matter and energy are one as time and space are one" is one 90% of all test subjects exposed to plate 3 are able to recite from memory, with minor variation in wording, but which sequence of symbols on the plate corresonds to this phrase has escaped even the most thorough analyses. One hypothesis is that unlike all other written languages, the Ioxotot script does not progress in a linear fashion in a given direction but meaning is dispersed across an entire side of the plate, coded into the pattern of all of the symbols visible at one time.

It is worth noting that the outward-facing side of plate 1 contains a single row of symbols. Everyone exposed to this plate agrees that the meaning of this sequence is either "Ioxotot", "the book of Ioxotot" or "about Ioxotot". There is currently no explanation to this dicrepancy, nor to the fact that no one has been able to provide any information on what Ioxotot means or what it refers to. There are only a small number of such unexplained words, names or phrases found in the book, [DATA REDACTED] each similarly enigmatic in their meaning.

Another phenomenon worthy of note is the variations in translations between subjects of different levels of education or IQ. One of the more obvious examples comes from a fragmentary sentence on plate 3. Subjects with high level education and above average IQ cite the sentence as: "spheres of iridiscence within the multiverse" while subjects with only primary school education and below-average IQ tend to word it as "shining bubbles inside the universe". This suggests that the knowledge base and intelligence of the person strongly correlates with how accurately the meaning of the text can be deciphered, hinting that before the advent of modern science, many of the concepts in the Book of Ioxotot would have been impenetrable to would-be translators.

For unknown reasons, exposure to replications of the text from the plates has no discernible effects on people. This has been tested with hand-copied excerpts from the book, photocopies, photographs, 3D prints and live video of the plates. Whatever the cause of this phenomenon, it is intimately connected to the physical object itself, even though no signs of interaction between the test subjects and AA-073Ah have ever been recorded by any means at our disposal, including EEG and APFD. More study using novel approaches is required to uncover the mechanism of action.


Hazard assesment

Exposure to AA-073Ah has detrimental psyhcological effects on humans, that depend on the extent of initial exposure as well as repeated exposures. Most test subjects reported having vivid yet highly abstract nightmares for up to two weeks from being asked to examine the text on a single plate for 30 minutes. After this period the nightmares subsided permanently in 95% of the cases. This seemed to coincide with the inability of said subjects to remember any exact phrases from the portion of text they had previously examined.

A longer exposure to the book seems to have more lasting effects on the mind. The first person to attempt the translation of the entire book, Dr. Chan, spent up to ten hours a day for four weeks intentionally exposing herself to AA-073Ah in its entirety. At the end of the four week period, Dr. Chan deleted all of the files and notes she had compiled on the book before going home for the weekend. She was found dead in her apartment two days later, having committed suicide. She left a note addressed to the current head of the AARI, saying: "I have learned everything in the book. Do not allow any others repeat my mistake."

A colleague of Dr. Chan, Dr. [NAME REDACTED] had similarly repeated exposore to AA-073Ah but far more sporadically. Surveillance records reveal that he aided Dr. Chan in deleting the files pertaining to the contents of the Book of Ioxotot from the AARI mainframe. When confronted with this evidence, Dr. [NAME REDACTED] suffered a nervous breakdown, first exhibitig hysterical behavior before falling into a persistent catatonic state. An MRI of the brain revealed [DATA EXPUNGED]. He is now being held in a closed ward at the mental institute of [DATA REDACTED]

Due to these events, no person has been allowed to expose themselves to more than two non-adjacent plates from the AA for a maximum of eight hours every two weeks. No one is to be allowed access to more than 50% of the book's content under any circumstances. This precaution has allowed our research staff to decipher much of the contents of AA-073Ah. So far we have a database of overlapping translations of each of the 43 plates with only a few known and a number of currently unverified gaps on seven of the plates.

It is however to be noted that each researcher involved in the project has expressed an overpowering sense that what they are able to glean from studying singular plates constitutes only the most superficial level of knowledge contained in the book. Some have professed knowledge of there being at least two higher tiers of information that can only be accessed by seeing the whole book in its entirety. However none have been able to give more than vague and sometimes apparently conflicting impressions of what these higher tiers might be about.

It has currently been seen necessary to limit our attempts to decipher the contents of the Book of Ioxotot beyond the verifiable "lowest" tier, referred to as Tier 1. Though originally considered psychotic delusions, Dr. [NAME REDACTED] specifically warned against pursuing the "highest level of knowledge" in the book. It appears that whatever content the AA may hide from superficial analysis has a severely traumatizing and destructive effect on the human mind, [DATA EXPUNGED] and full exposure should be avoided in all circumstances for the time being.

Due to these reasons AA-073Ah, the Book of Ioxotot, has been assigned indefinitely to hazard class Psi 2. Any access to the physical artifact requires Blue level authorization, and has to be approved and supervised by at least one Indigo level operative. Due to no evidence of risk, copies, scans, photographs and other reproductions of the plates may be accessed by all personnel with Yellow level clearance.


Conclusions

The Book of Ioxotot is an artefact of unknown, possibly non-human, non-terrestrial origin, that has profound effects on the human brain through an as of yet unexplained mechanism. It contains a wealth of data that is currently impossible to access without the risk of severe psychological trauma. Data is insufficient to determine the exact origin and nature of this AA.


Appendix 1: Contents of the book

[Indigo level authorization required]