Daïm Aggott-Hönsch

The expert consensus on “The Mystical Microzoology of Mathematics” is that it is a late 20th century hoax manuscript of mixed anonymous authorship, scans of which were first unveiled at a private, invitation-only America Online forum catering to Esperanto enthusiasts in 2001.

The origin story that captured the popular imagination is based on the codex’s internal claim that it is a faithful recreation of documents, themselves reproductions of earlier medieval tomes, entrusted to Zamenhof during the inaugural World Esperanto Congress of 1905.

The primary thesis of the text is that there exist an infinitude of “animalcules” on the immortal mathematical plane, and they have inscrutable sympathetic connections to the other planes of reality, allowing their arcane placement into specialized configurations to reify mystical pre-human prayers of supplication on behalf of the arranger, thus being akin to immobile prayer wheels of sorts.

Of course, the endotextual claims of the manuscript’s pre-modern origins along with its other propositions are contradicted by the very focus of their mystical enquiries, as the microbial-looking forms featured on its illustrated folios are fractal figures more commonly known as Pickover biomorphs, only discovered in the late 1980s.

Nonetheless, this programmable cryptoart work is intended to facilitate the digital reification of all possible valid patterns within the limits stated and implied by extant fragments of the codex, well in excess of the handful of surviving illustrated pages believed to be authentic.

150 billion unique combinations of the biomorph figures, spread through 5 trees, are possible, and taking all other parameters into account, there exist precisely 6.75 trillion visually unique configurations that layer owners can bring to life.

The folio number in the left corner uniquely identifies every single possible variant.

Extracts from The Mystical Microzoology of Mathematics

The note in the lower right corner customarily appears in one of 5 languages: Arabic, Archaic English, Esperanto, Hungarian, and Scots.

In all cases, the text translates to something like, "Connections between microscopic mathematical animals.", suggesting that the configurations are not seen as arbitrary, but have some internal logic of their own.

Most experts believe that the languages correlate to the ethnic backgrounds of the anonymous authors of the manuscript.

The Note

The note in the lower right corner customarily appears in one of 5 languages: Arabic, Archaic English, Esperanto, Hungarian, and Scots.

In all cases, the text translates to something like, "Connections between microscopic mathematical animals.", suggesting that the configurations are not seen as arbitrary, but have some internal logic of their own.

Most experts believe that the languages correlate to the ethnic backgrounds of the anonymous authors of the manuscript.