This Paranormal Life - The Mystery of The Devil’s Bible - The Codex Gigas

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

What if there was a mysterious book written that contained all the knowledge of the universe? Not just the history of the world, but the secrets of alchemy, magic rituals, healing spells and more. This book is known as the Codex Gigas, but many know it by another name… The Devil’s Bible - a 640 page book that was written by one man in a single night. Get your tickets to our London Live Show! Become a commune member to get access to bonus episodes: ⁠https://thisparanormallife.com⁠ Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our Secret Society Facebook Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy Official TPL Merch!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Edited by Philip Shacklady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What if there was a secret book written that contained all of the knowledge of the universe? Not just the history of the world, but of the occult. A book that contained the secrets of alchemy, magic rituals, healing spells, and more. Would you believe me if I said this book exists today? Not only that, but the entire 640-page book was written in one night. But how could a book like this be handwritten in one night? Is it a gift from God? it a gift from God or the devil? And if it contains all the secrets of the universe, could the book

tell me the exact time I need to microwave popcorn so that all of my corn has popped? All of these questions you can find the answer to on This Paranormal Life. Hello everybody and welcome back to This Paranormal Life, the comedy paranormal podcast where every week we investigate something insane and decide whether or not it truly is paranormal. Today, we're researching and investigating one of the strangest books ever written. Is it available on audiobook on Audible? No, because the pictures are a big part of it, the illustrations. You know, and like the old, this is written in like medieval times, which we'll get into,

but you know how basically back then the books also had like illustrations and little designs and fun things alongside it? So I think you'd be missing, missing out. Yeah, every book was a picture book. It'd be hard if the audio book was like, and do unto thine brother as if thou was first from the harvest. Just next to it there, there's a man being impaled by a spear. Next chapter.

You know, it'll be a little hard for them to get across the kind of the beauty of the book. Yes. Yeah. But don't worry, I'm going to do that today using my words and some pictures. So don't worry, I've got you covered. Well, you know, if you need to tap me in, tap tap, please do. Because that actually used to be, that was my last real job. That was the last job I had before I was fired.

Okay, how do I tap you out? Was it? How do I, let's just say that I want you to just sit and I tap myself in? Let's just say I want you to just sit and listen. I think we need to kick things off and start investigating today's case. But before we do, a reminder that the best way to support this podcast is over on this paranormal life. dot com. Guys, listening to this podcast every week, you're reading the blurb.

You don't realize you can open that book up and there's borderline 18 plus pornography inside. Whoa, no. Come on. There's some raunchy stuff. It's pretty family friendly. We have people of all ages who enjoy the content over there on our website. Spread naked. Oh, my gold.

Over on this paranormal live.com, it's where you get the cool behind-the-scenes stuff. It's where you can get your extra shows every week. You can even get shoutouts at the end of the podcast. So if you want to support the show and get some awesome extras, head on over to this paranormal life.com. Our story today begins way back in the Middle Ages, in a small monastery located in what is now the Czech Republic. The legends say that at this monastery,

there was once a Benedictine monk who committed a sin so blasphemous that his name was erased from history. His crime is never clearly named in the stories, but based off the punishment that he received, I'm going to say at the very least he was a pito. The monk was called in front of the monastery and sat in silence while they decided his fate. I say we banish him from the monastery immediately. No, kick him in the nuts 100 times. A day.

One man stood up. You are all too kind. The punishment should fit the severity of the crime. The man will be walled up alive. That is what they decided. They were going to put the monk inside the walls of the monastery and break him up from the outside. Whoa.

Terrifying stuff. I guess it's one way to work around giving someone the death penalty, which presumably you're not supposed to do as a holy man. Yeah. In this situation, you could be like, What do you mean death penalty? We walled him up alive. Yeah.

We just restricted his movement to the point of death. He's probably, he died in there? No. Oh, we didn't kill him. But we left a sufficient amount of food and water. How did that even happen? I feel like that punishment is really dramatic. And like, I can just imagine the music and the vibe in the movie of this story.

Yeah. Day two of being walled up in there, super awkward. Just like you're just trying. you're writing a scroll. It's like, oh, girls, you know,

I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry. And I just think we can work it out if you just let me out. Shut up, bro. I'm trying to work. God.

Why did we wall them up in the dining hall? We should have done him like in the outhouse or something. Oh, smells so good. Is that roast beef? Yeah, it's rose beef, man.

Oh, bro. Slide some through the bricks. Slide a little, pour some gravy through the cracks. You know, when you guys told me I was going to be bricked up, I was like, that's a punishment? They get off the table. We have to open up the wall, kill him, and put the wall back. No, brother, let him die in peace.

He's just in there like, so bored. The whole group of elders agreed, so they grabbed the monk and dragged him through the halls. The man kicked and screamed, pleading with his captors for another chance. Please, if you set me free, I'll mop the floors. I'll pray every night and every morning. I'll tell you where the bodies are. But the rest of the monks weren't listening. They threw him into the hole and began sealing up the walls.

As the man watched brick after brick pile up in front of him, he cried out the only thing he could think of. I'll give you a miracle. The surrounding monks paused. No, keep going. Keep going. This is what he wants. He's clearly stalling.

Obviously, he's lying. Oh, yes, yes, a miracle. Yes, of course, I have many. The man said, If you spare me, I will write the greatest book the world has ever seen. Shut the fuck up, Phil.

Why are you laughing at my story? He gets to do that. A manuscript so vast and extraordinary, it'll contain all of human knowledge. It would include scripture, history, medicine, learning, wisdom, everything the monastery could ever want to preserve, all gathered in one enormous book. The monks huddled round to consider the offer. And to the man's surprise, they accepted. The monks were like, he is a wise, Pito. Let's get what we can out of him, then wall them up.

They accepted on one condition. The entire book had to be written. in a single night. Get back to praying. Get back to doing charity works in the community. Get back to, are they even doing any religious services of any kind? Listen, I kind of get where they're... What is this, Takeshi's Castle? I get where they're coming from,

because they've kind of got him in a bit of a catch-22, all right? Because there's about a 0% chance that he was going to be able to write anything of worth, let alone Checks notes, a book that contained all of humans' knowledge. But if by some magical mystery he did produce the book, the monastery would be in possession of a miracle, a book that contains all knowledge written in one night. Oh, don't doubt a motherfucker with ADHD. You give him a deadline and a couple Adderall. You're about to see the Bible two. The Bible two points. Sorry, there is the Bible two, the New Testament. The Bible three, the Third Testament.

I was going to say, as someone who clearly suffers with quite severe ADHD, the idea of starting a mammoth task the night before the deadline, maybe doesn't sound that terrifying to me. I mean, this podcast alone, I finished writing five minutes ago. Well, yeah, however long ago we've been recording, that's when you finished it. That's when I started. I was up till two-eight. I was the monk. I was the monk like panic scribbling all of the shit down onto a page

I saw you this morning and I was like so how'd the writing go and you were like bro I didn't do any last night and I didn't do any I went to bed telling myself I'd do it this morning and I didn't do it this morning either so you did it between lunch and starting this right now

I was up all night watching those Pirates of the Caribbean films you guys seen those films but they all agree Agreed. Okay? So the monastery locked the sinning monk in a room alone with a parchment, some ink, and a pen. And if the book wasn't completed by sunrise, he's going in the walls. So the monk put his hair up in a messy bun, stuck on some gangster rap, and dealt with it. Stop. This mother f*** was writing. He was writing. He was writing. Burr!

turning through pages, parchment after parchment. But even after hours of work, he'd barely scratched the surface of what he'd promised. So with nowhere else to turn, the monk went down on his hands and knees and began to pray. But not to God. He called upon the devil. Oh no. So he offers to make a deal with the devil. In exchange for his soul, he asks for the impossible.

finished the manuscript in one night. The next day when the sun rose, the whole monastery went to check on the monk, eager to see how far he made it into this ridiculous challenge. But when they opened the door, they couldn't believe what they were seeing. On the table in front of them was an enormous book. Over 640 pages of expertly illustrated designs. This book contained the entire Latin Bible, handwritten, start to finish. Also, ancient stories, passages about alchemy, entire

alphabets. This thing was huge, so big that it didn't make any sense. The monks had only left him with parchment and a pen. This book was so big that they theorized the amount of leather used alone would have taken 160 donkeys to produce. It's not possible in a night. Not possible. It's not possible in theory. I do like the idea of, you know, anytime someone usually makes a deal with the devil, there's like, this is what you get, but it comes at the cost of this. It's quite funny that the monk was like, let me be able to write the book and I'll give you my soul.

And the devil's like, okay, but I think you'll find it comes, wait, did you say the soul thing already? Yeah, I know how this works. I'll just give you the soul. I'll just give you the soul. and I have to explain to you that, you know, you might lose something more precious, but no, you get it, yeah, it's the soul. It's your soul, yeah, okay.

I've already got like five books here. I can just give you one of those. You could take a nap. Really? You're fine about the soul stuff? Hmm. Shit. You really are, Pido. You're coming here anyway, weren't you, you little f***? Oh, you got one over on Old Singh. Let me write the book and I'll give you my heavenly soul.

The devil's like, bullshit. I've seen what you're doing, you nasty little boy. He's like, I'm checking my calendar. You are coming here tomorrow. All right, yeah, you caught me. Yeah, he gets the soul. Wait a minute.

This thing's blacker than cold. Needless to say, the monks were stunned as they scanned through the pages of this book. This, this is impossible. How on earth did you manage to? The monk froze as the pages turned to reveal an enormous full-page illustration of the devil. Tees. Drawn so viciously and with such detail, it was as if the writer had seen the face of Satan himself. Geez.

Now, Kit, I don't know how much you or our audience listening knows about this book referred to as the Codex Gigas, which isn't the name of a Digimon, which isn't the name of a Digimon, which I originally thought. Yeah, yeah. But let me potentially shock some of you by reaching the point in the podcast where I let you know that this book is real. Really? Now, the story might be a legend, but the Codex Gigas commonly referred to as the devil's

Bible is a real book that still exists and you can even go visit to this day. Show me the devil. To give you an idea of the size of this book and to show you a picture of the devil. drawn inside. We have a few pictures and I'm going to get them up. Editor Phil, show us the book. This is the Codex Giga. So what I'm looking at is, it's great that we have a human for scale here, two humans for skill. Yeah. Because we can see that this is an absolutely, I totally see how you would have needed 16 donkeys to make this. It's absolutely huge. Now I do want to quickly focus in

on the pages that are on display, this looks very old, very ancient, very cool. The devil looks a bit like Gannendorf or something. Yeah. Certainly the head. I would say if you saw this in the 1500s, you would piss your pants on the spot and be crying for your mummy. If, Phil, if you scroll across two more images, we can actually see I have a close-up scan of the devil illustration. We might as well look at that one now. One more. Might as well look at that one right now. Here he is. Yeah, this is... It's pretty horrible.

Terrifying. It looks... It actually looks a little like maybe like a... I guess what would that be? Almost like a Chinese dragon on, you know, Chinese New Year or something like that. Yeah, it's definitely not... I mean, it does have red horns,

but we're talking about... It looks like sort of the physique of an old man squatting, wearing some kind of loincloth. But yeah, the head is very... It almost looks like a dragon with claws and fiery eyes, big red horns, and claws on the hands with razor sharp kind of nails. The name Codex Gigas literally translates to giant book. The book is three feet tall when closed.

Yeah. Which is for a book. If you think closing over the book makes it stand. three feet tall. As they said, scholars believe it took around 160 donkeys to make that book. And that's not saying that like, you know the phrase if you get a million infinite number of monkeys at typewriters. Yeah.

They'll write the work of Shakespeare. This is the donkey skin. Yeah. They're making it from donkeys. This book has more backbone than me and Roy put together, I think. Moving the book from one place to another takes at least two people just to lift it. So when we tell this story about the monk writing the book in one night, I think you have to understand that it's not just handwriting a book.

I mean, as you can see, Phil, if we go over one more picture and kind of zoom in, you can see the level of detail on each page. Not only are the pages enormous, but this guy's using what size 8 font? It's nerly. It's crazy. It's genuinely the amount of detail. And this is all handwritten. Now that we understand a little bit more about the book

and what it looks like and the sheer size of it, what we need to really investigate today is not whether the book is real. We know it's real. It's deciding how much of the legend surrounding the book is true. And if the creation of the book really is paranormal. So, let's look at the book itself, because there are some pretty insane details about how it was made that do feel otherworldly. Firstly, scholars estimate that writing this book from start to finish probably took somewhere between 20 to 30 years.

Jeez, what? Of consistent writing. You know, from beginning to end, writing this book would take, especially, at that time, most of a human's life. Or 20 guys, one year. Well, Kit, that would be the logical explanation, but to make things even crazier, extensive handwriting analysis has proved that the entire Codex Gigas was written by one person. By one in cell. That's right, one very sad individual who had absolutely no babes in his life. Yeah, scholars have examined the book and they all agree they're like this this was one dude yeah whoa which is when you start thinking that one dude

wrote a book and it took him 30 years to do that already is starting to become an impossible thing that exists touch grass bro touch grass not only that but the handwriting doesn't change or show any deterioration which it usually would if one guy was writing for 30 years right so this is where the original legend with the monk starts to creep in and the mystery surrounding the book starts to really become a thing. And then of course you have the devil. You have the enormous drawing of the devil that kind of blindside you as you're going through the book.

This is the image that gives the Codex Giga's its most famous nickname the Devil's Bible. You've seen the photo kit. It's pretty disturbing. Now it is worth noting, of course, that a lot of medieval manuscripts often contain religious art, including the devil, but the son of a bitch rarely gets his own spread like that. Right. You know? I mean, they gave him a lot of real estate in that thing.

Yeah. And it's not like the other page was angels. It's just him chilling. It's like a jump scare, the original jump scare. Yeah, he's got the page spread as if he's Tom Cruise and the newest GQ to promote his new movie. You know, it's got, he's like, the devil is sitting at home, like gets the call from his agent. It's like, you're kidding. I got the cover.

Oh my, oh my God. Oh my God. Which one? It's gonna be like a small place though. The gigas codex? The biggest book ever written? Oh my God. Oh, it's such an honor. Oh, it's such a...

Oh, Margaret, Margaret Thatcher. Get over here. Yes. I'm in... Yes, I'm in the gigas codex. Oh my God. It's so cool. He's like,

I mean, it's probably not going to be out for a while. I heard it takes like 160 donkeys to make... Overnight? They're printing it overnight? Holy f***. God is gonna be so pissed. Oh, I would pay to see the look in his face. He's gonna be so pissed.

And which shot did they go for? The one where my waist is looking snatched? Okay, amazing. Amazing. Now, the Codex Gigas has a few strange passages buried in its pages. Talk of the occult. Alchemy, magic spells, and ancient rituals. Here's just a few examples of some of some of the occult. examples of some of the stranger parts of the book. First off, exorcism prayers. Now, this isn't the

weirdest, but the book does contain traditional Christian rights used to cast out demons that may have taken over human bodies. I guess maybe not the weirdest thing at the time when presumably exorcisms were more commonplace. It does feel a little strange to include exorcisms in the devil's Bible. Yeah. You know, probably should have left that one out. Maybe the devil was like, don't put, did you already print it? Did you already hand it over? It's like, yeah, yeah. You told them how to banish my demons from humans? Like, come on, dude. I guess this is the question, you know, are the people calling it the devil's Bible? Are they judging thine book by its cover? Have they read it? Have they, you know, gotten in there? I mean, to be fair, I think the illustration, the giant picture of the

and the story surrounding its origin are why it's called the devil's Bible. The actual context of it are exactly what the monk promised to deliver. Right. So it's not like the whole thing is written for the devil or by the devil. It's literally just, I think, devil powers were used to create it in one night. Got it. So, yeah, it's not really like for or against anyone. The book does also, however, contain healing spells, three minor incantations

meant to cure sudden illnesses and fevers, which is pretty fire. I don't think we've ever dealt with kind of ancient books that just straight up have healing spells inside them. This is Wikipedia. This is the first Wikipedia. If an insane monk wrote Wikipedia in one night. I love that this is guys who have never heard of encyclopedias,

but there are literally people listening who have never seen an encyclopedia. Guys, there used to be this thing before Wikipedia, and it was like you put all of Wikipedia in a book, and it was everything you needed to know about the whole world. We're even dumber than that. We're like, this is like Wikipedia. The entire Star Wars Wikipedia. But about regular stuff. But yeah, it is like someone tried to put all of earthly knowledge in one book.

Yeah. And listen, at the time, sure, there was a little less earthly knowledge kicking around. Well, still 160 donkeys worth isn't bad. Of knowledge. That's pretty good. Honestly, even if I was the rest of the monks, I'd be like, dude, I mean, you laughed out a ton of shit. But honestly, this is really impressive. Right.

Come out of the walls. Yeah. Honestly. I'd still be very impressed. So we've got some healing spells. We got some exorcism prayers. This is my personal favorite. The book contains a guide to thief-catching rituals.

which are magic formulas intended to help uncover or capture thieves. Oh, interesting. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, the entire book is written in Latin, so I wasn't able to particularly locate or translate the thief-catching spells. Because as someone who's had their phone stolen four times in London, really could have done with some of those spells at the time. Yeah. You know?

The modern thief-catching spell is just find my iPhone. I would have really enjoyed the satisfaction of someone snatching my phone from my hands, and I go down on one knee and say, Higotus, Rigetus, Molokazig! And the phone like explodes in their hands, just blows their arms off their bodies. Something cool like that, you know? He didn't even catch the criminal or get your stuff back. Oh, he's not hard to catch after that one.

Higgitus, Ziggis! So look, that's a lot of the weird, occult, paranormal stuff inside the book. What's the logical explanation behind the Codex Gigas? How did the book end up in Sweden? Well, it turns out the real-world existence of the book is just as paranormal as the legend that created it. Scholars believe that the Codex Gigas was created in the early 13th century,

somewhere around 1204 to 1230, in Bohemia. After its creation, the book was passed around between religious institutions before eventually falling into the hands of Emperor Rudolf II. If you don't know who this guy is, which I didn't when I was reading it, he was the Holy Roman Emperor in 1576. Now you might be wondering why a guy like this would be so obsessed with getting his hands on the manuscript, and the truth is that Rudolph was obsessed with the occult, with alchemy, astrology, and magic. So much so that his home in Prague became a gathering place for the occult. The more I read about it, the more I just wished I could have attended one of the parties being held in his royal grounds.

It sounds like he used to throw these huge events and just invite wizards, alchemists, witches, anyone who was remotely interested in this thing and just throw huge parties. Do you think it would be good or do you think it would be annoying? Do you think it would be the most pick-me MFers in the galaxy? You know, the closest I've probably ever got to this in real life was I once attended the world's largest magic convention. Yeah, pretty close, yeah. In Blackpool. And, you know, it was one of the weirdest things I've ever been to in my life.

And at the end, there's a hotel bar that most of the people who are at the conference go to afterwards. And this bar is straight out of Lord of the Rings. There's like, you know, guys in the corner with their hoods up smoking pipes. There's one man like just making cards levitate across the bar. There's like a puff of smoke and like and people applauding. It was just like anywhere you looked, there was some crazy, quirky person performing real magic in front of you. Be real with me. How horny are the magicians.

High horny are the magicians. Because we all know the stories about the furries. We don't need to get into that. we all know what the Renfair people are up to. So how much are the magicians? Listen, brother, all I'll say is there are a few people bricked up that night and they weren't in the walls. Okay.

That's all I'll say. But did I read that? It's like the magic society used to not admit women? Yeah. Yeah. It's also, uh, yeah. I think there's a, I think there's a podcast somewhere. Maybe it's an after party about, uh, me talking about my time at the convention.

And how a bunch of our friends started. verbally attacking a magician who was just being openly racist. And we got kicked out of the auditorium because we were yelling at him. That was very disappointing. But fuck that guy. Racist magic. It's like, dude, throwing stones and glass houses. Like, Jesus Christ.

I don't know. It's a really compelling combination of words, racist magic. I want to make it clear. He was just a racist person. doing magic, he wasn't performing racist magic. Because that's where my head's going. He wasn't like making the minorities disappear from the crowd. I want to make that very clear.

Racist magician. You there, sir, in the front row, I want you to pick a color between black or white. It's like, all right, shut this down. Shut it down. Rudolph II even went on record at one point to state that his lifelong quest was to find the Philosopher's Stone. That's how you know a motherfucker's into alchemy. You know, when he starts talking about the Philosopher's Stone.

And listen, guys, don't get Rory Powers started on the Philosopher Stone and ancient alchemy books, because we will be here all day. I don't know why I'm so interested in this, but I am. And if you do want to learn more about it, I would suggest listening to an episode that we did on The Count of St. Germain, which is a book about an alchemist who found the secret for immortality. And weirdly enough, if you remember Kit, he also wrote a very strange book in the shape of a triangle. That's right. The triangular book of Count St. Germain.

Truly imaginary. It also exists. And I think it's in like a museum in Los Angeles now. It's very strange. Oh yeah, you're right. But it's a fantastic episode. Go check that one out. We're not going to talk about the philosopher's story.

on today's episode, because we're talking about a big book. Now, look, it seems safe to say that there's a good chance Rudolph II believed that all the answers in the occult that he was looking for were written inside the devil's Bible. The question is, did he find them? I mean, we have the book. If there was some sort of ancient, hidden knowledge inside of it that Rudolph discovered, we would know about it, right?

Well, this is where the mystery gets even deeper. because the Codex Gigas in its current form is missing 12 pages. 12 pages? And to this day, historians have no idea who took the pages or when. At some point... One of the donkeys escaped. It wasn't quite dead. He was writing on its ass.

It turned around to get more ink. It was like, what the is taken off in the distance? Some people, me, theorized that maybe Rudolph II when he got into possession of the book, it did contain some ancient knowledge or wisdom or occult secrets that he had been searching for. And knowing that he might not have the book forever, he tore the pages out. Because, you know, that sounds selfish. But say you come upon the penis lengthening spell. If that gets out, it's like a nuclear arms race.

Suddenly, oh, everyone's got a nuke, no one's got a nuke. Exactly. It's the famous line from The Incredibles. If everyone's super, no one is. Exactly. Yeah. So he's kind of like eternal life, mooring, you know, the alchemy of turning, you know, metals into gold, boring. Ooh.

I'll take a look at this, rip that out. Yeah. It's one of these things where I think it would be selfish. if when I'm telling this story, any of us had any idea who Rudolph the second was. But the fact that we don't, I guess that's a testimony to the fact that he never used any of those powers

for the wrong reason. He took it out, but like, I don't know who this f***er is. He doesn't have any stat... Well, he probably does have statues, but he's not like the biggest historical figure of all time, you know? Yeah, he wasn't levitating like Goku. I mean, he... You know, like I've heard of the guy, but not more than Alexander the great Napoleon or any of these powerful men of history.

Yeah. Yeah. So it seems like if he did take secrets from the book, he was pretty responsible with them. Yeah, he kept it low key. Transformed into a reindeer, of course, at Christmas time. Yeah. He used the power of the philosopher's stone to remove the redness from his nose. Santa asked him,

Rudolph II with your philosopher's stone so bright won't you guide my sleigh tonight? Then all the other wizards. The book remained in Prague with Rudolph for decades, but eventually, after a big old war

in 1648, Swedish troops stormed into Prague and raided Rudolph's occult collection which included the Codex Gigas. The book was taken and transported to Sweden where it became part of the Swedish royal collection. Swedes were at war that far south, really?

Yeah. I referred to it as a big old war in 1648. I believe it's also referred to as the 30-year war. Oh, sure. One of the biggest that Europe had ever had at the time. Yeah, I don't know much history. I think it was a lot of like, this country raids this country and gangs all their shit.

And then another country raids that country, ganks all their shit. So that's why whenever, you know, a few episodes ago we talked about the Holy Grail. And there's probably, that would have been one of these artifacts that has been ganked over time through crusades and raids and things like that. One of those things is also this big old crazy book. Now, with the book safely stored in the Swedish Royal Collection, you'd think the dramatic journey would be at an end. But no. In 1697, a huge, a huge, huge fire erupted in Stockholm's royal castle, destroying parts of the palace and incinerating thousands of books and manuscripts. Staff raced through the collection trying to save as many books as

possible when they came across the devil's Bible, somehow untouched by the flames. Knowing that this was one of the most precious books in the collection, a rescuer managed to lift the book by himself and hurl it through a window to save it. He died, of course. Unfortunately, according to the vicar Johann Erickson's, the book flew out the window and crushed a bystand. Almost killing them. Oh dear. I mean, if there's ever a book you don't want to hit you.

I mean, yeah. It's the f*** gigas. You've heard of a judge, though, when the book is somebody. The gigacodex. Kegar Codex. Damn. The judge really threw the book at him. It was the death penalty.

I actually, as I say, I'm not a big historian. I do know about this event because this was really, this was really tragic because in that fire, this is like the burning of Alexandria. In that fire, they lost so many valuable books. They actually lost the original recipe for the IKEA meatballs. Wow. Wow, wow. And what it's been replaced with is already pretty amazing.

So imagine what it was like beforehand. Yeah. Yeah. No, I did the history book say that if you munched upon the meatballs, people just nutted where they stood before that. We don't know what was in them. We don't know what was in them. And it was lost that fire.

Unfortunately, you'd think the book containing all human knowledge would also contain the recipe for the meatballs. I think it was one of the stolen. pages. I think Rudolph ganged that one. He was like, yoink. He just ripped it out and gave it to his chef. He was like, I'll have that every night, forever. And Phil

over here is shaking his head and laugh at him whenever I said that, as if he hasn't just come back from Rome and won't shut up about the meatball. How good the meatballs were in Rome. So this guy... They did make me knock. Oh, geez. It's been

a long time since I've had IKEA meatballs, but here's my controversial take. I think they're overrated. I don't know if that is controversial. I mean, they're famously just cheap. Isn't that really the appeal? Oh, I thought everyone was all glazing them up. They're all excited about them. I think they're good for the money. Do you remember, Phil? I think they're fine. I think they're just like crazy cheap maybe. It's probably similar to the Costco hot dog. Famously, Costco in America has a hot dog that I believe costs $1 or $2. Yeah, it was like $1.50 or something. It's something really cheap. It's almost. It's always. It's

only managed to stay that cheap because the CEO of Costco refuses to let anyone increase the price of the hot dog. Yeah, wasn't there a quote, he was like, if the new CEO increase of the price, quote, I'll fucking kill him. I got to look up the direct quote because it's incredible. It's like, all right, man, the business is failing in like several areas. This is not really a big point of contention. It's already kind of weird that a local store is serving hot dogs anyway.

The direct quote, when the form. Former Costco executive, Craig Jelenek, told the co-founder Jim Sinigal that they were losing money on the $1.50 food court meal. He famously replied, if you raise the f*** hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out. Now, that is business. Incredible. What a way to talk to your co-finder. Wow.

If we just raised the price of the hot dog to $1.80, I will execute you in the boardroom right now if you touch the f*** hot dog. Luckily, the bystander who was hit and the book survived, and it remains in Sweden to this day. In fact, you can even go visit it in the treasury room there in Sweden, in their museum. And while you can't go through the pages themselves, donkey by donkey, you can explore digitized images that they have on display surrounding the book. Nice. Which I guess makes sense. They probably presumably have it open to the devil page, but they're like, look, if you want to go through the rest of it, we have high resolution scans of the rest of the book. You can go through any page that you want.

Yeah. If you want to try and find the meatballs, you can find them. If you want to find the philosopher's stone, the healing spells, the thief-catching rituals. It's all there if you can read Latin. And that's where it remains to this day. Well, here, you know, I said earlier, here we go. Tap, tap, tap myself in here. I'm convinced, right, we need the audiobook version. Now, I know what you're thinking.

It's in Latin. What are we going to do? Does someone need to translate it? No, no, no. I'm going to bring back the theory that I don't know if you remember in the 90s and 2000s. People were big into audio tapes. This was the proliferation of the idea that you might even be able to listen to audio tapes of someone teaching you German.

at night. And then in the middle of the night, you'll kind of be like, you're like, you're subconsciously learning. You're subconsciously learning. I think we get, I mean, the audiobook,

it's going to be three years long, by all accounts. It's going to be a very big book. So, but a very long audio book, but then you're just kind of, you're in your sleep and it's like sanctumiluminatus and it's just going in there. And so you're learning it all subconsciously.

You don't even need to know Latin. You're just getting the vibes. How many audio hours is one donkey? What's the exchange rate between donkey and time? How much time is a donkey worth? You're going to need more than one audible credit. That's for sure. You know they get one credit a month, this is going to cost you.

But still. That sounds like a mafia thing. You know, being like a measurement of money. Yeah. Like a pony. Well, yeah. Can I have a donkey of time, please? Or like a cockney rhyming slang.

Yeah. I'm going to, should I search and see if, I mean, I just presumed that it doesn't exist in audio. form. It very well could. I'm going to guess no audiobook, but maybe a Kindle edition. Ladies, if the man you're dating is reading the Gigas codex on the train, that is a red flag. That's performative reading. If he's got the Trader Joe's tote bag and ice matcha and the codex gigas. Just sitting like this on the train. You can't even see him. It's three feet wide. It looks like a medieval broad shield. It's like you can barely see him over the book.

Yeah, that doesn't fit in a traitor to his bag. It just says it cannot be read as a traditional audiobook. Wow. Well, yeah, a normal audiobook producer wouldn't be able to pull it off, but this guy. Me? No, me. I'm telling you, this is going to make my life's work. I'm going to figure it out somehow.

Yeah, I actually, I'm sure you can find a translated version online at the very least, and then it's simply about recording the audio for that. So, hey, take a swing at it. Maybe that's a reward that we could offer people on Patreon. You know what? I think let's bring back encyclopedias. They exist. They still exist.

But I'm saying owning them. Do you know anyone who still owns an encyclopedia? Like I'd say our parents' generation might have an edition of like the Encyclopedia Britannica kicking about. But we need to bring back having a coffee table book that when people come around, you go, it's such a weird thing to happen that people used to do in the past. Still do, I understand, but it's kind of an older thing. It's like, please, come around for coffee and take a look at my many books. Yeah.

You have little books set out on it. I still kind of do that. I have so many books. But I have books that are like fun for guests to look at, whether like art books, like print books, things like that. Sure, sure. But one with the entire history of the world. Made entirely of donkey.

Yes. Please. Explore my many donkeys. I remember that from school. being a little kid, you open it up. And it's like, time to learn about the sub-Saharan African wildlife habitats. Right. I'm just going to spend the next five minutes going deep on the spiders of Morocco.

Yeah. That does sound like you're just doing your homework. Like you were just coming home from school. Like, and there were all these books that had like crazy knowledge in them. Well, yeah, it's your school books. One plus one equals two. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting if true.

Interesting, interesting. Yeah, yeah, this would be a pretty hard book to kind of like just have casually in your house. If you need a team of movers to just get it into your living room. You know? But listen, I think today's story is so cool because the book exists. I think that is the most insane thing. And whenever we talk about, because this isn't the first case we've done, we've talked about like weird paranormal books.

And the cool thing usually is that they do actually exist. Sure. For example, the Count of Saint Germain and his triangle book. The Toebleroon of books. Which doesn't sound weird until you Google it and look at a picture and you're like, yeah, that book's f***ed. There's a reason why we don't make triangle books. It's a real book.

All of like alchemy and spells, which is really cool. There is, I forget where it is in America, but I totally. talked about it on one of our live shows that we did on tour a few years back, the book made of human skin. That is a real book that exists. I do not remember why it is made of skin, but it's pretty weird. But that's the cool thing, even in today's story, that this, the devil's Bible, it is a real thing that exists and you can go see it. I know we have some listeners in Sweden. There probably are some people who have seen the book. Kind of surreal. Yeah, that'll be cool to see.

If you want to own a weird book, here's an accessible weird book that I'm in possession of is on the theme of the devil's Bible, the whatever, you know, these weird-ass things, the skin Bible. You can buy a copy of what some people affectionately know

as the hippie Bible, which is called Be Here Now by Ram Dass. But it's like a totally square book and it's almost like every page is kind of like parchment. and it's really quite beautiful because every page is like a crazy mandala drawing

and the words are kind of in it but they curve round and crazy patterns and circles and it's written by this guru type guy who I've talked about in the past but it's a really fun piece of paraphernalia to own yeah I recommend it

there's also these other books called goosebumps and they're pretty scary I will say so I'll warn you before you do it. But some of them you can actually choose your own adventure. Jeez. You get to decide what happens in the books.

And those are also written by a pedo. What? I'm joking. For legal reasons, I'm completely joking. I would have said that about any author as a joke. All right, I think we have to come down on our conclusions here on today's story. Listen, we're not debating whether or not the book exists. We know the book exists.

What we have to decide is... Does Sweden exist? Was it created through paranormal means? Do we really think that the way this book was written was in one night by a guy who made a deal with the devil? That doesn't mean that we fully understand how it was created, because obviously, as we have said, even scholars are like, this is insane. It was clearly written by one person over 30 years, which is ridiculous. But we're not here to debate that.

We just need to take that into consideration when we decide whether or not we think the book is itself paranormal. I'm going to throw to my mind kit here. I've been talking quite a bit. I want to hear your theories. It's really tough. Was this possible through the power of the devil and some kind of paranormal spiritual ability connection

which he was able to just go absolutely nuts in the space of one night? I think in this story is a lesson that I think potentially this is less a story of what's possible through paranormal. kind of spell means and more what's possible if we channel the superhuman focus of people on the autism spectrum. And I think if we let those people cook for 20, 30 years at a time, they can produce some of the greatest works the world has ever known. Some of the most useless books ever written.

They'll be in a museum someday. Okay. I'm being for a small, But it's, I think what I'm saying is, I think this is a product of a special and wild amount of focus on maybe apparently one individual's part for 20, 30 years. That is the feat. Yeah. And I think sometimes in human history, when people produce feats of unimaginable craziness, because we can't imagine them, we blame them on supernatural things and the devil and spells and curses. That is actually one of the pervert spells in the book. Produce feats. It's the produce feats spell.

Produce unimaginable feats. But we've seen it before on this podcast. A long, long time ago, we talked about the works of Robert Johnson, one of the most groundbreaking blues guitarists of all time, who was so good at guitar that people were convinced he was a Satanist. True. When actually he was just really that good at guitar. If anything, it could be a shame that the one guy who spent 30 years writing this no longer receives any credit because people are like, oh, it was the devil. The devil must have done it.

He's like, no, I spent so long doing this. Like, of course I wrote it. What are you talking about? And now he just doesn't get the credit anymore. That's how things used to work. You know, if you were Michael Phelps and you broke every record at the Olympics, they would go, congratulations. Here's your medal at the top of this burning pile of sticks. You witch get up there and burn. Yeah. And I think this achievement feels so impossible to us now because we're living that 21st century life. Sometimes I start daydreaming halfway through an email.

I'll start scrolling Instagram halfway through a WhatsApp message to my friend. I cannot even maintain that level of focus, let alone 30 years of writing one-inized attention deficit, hyperactive disorder. But yes. You don't know that. You don't know that. Nobody knows that. But yeah, that is true. But I still think, I mean, 30 years on one book is pretty damn impressive.

Yeah, it is. Let alone catching 160 donkeys. Because after you're 100 donkeys in, the next 60 are going to be pretty skeptical. Yeah. The first five donkeys are easy to. to catch, then the rest of the rest of them start catching on. Yeah, they're like, you're like, Eeyore, come on in here for a second. I got a bunch of donkey food that I think you would be interested in.

He's like, no, because nine donkeys have gone into that little room and not a single donkey has come out yet. 95 donkeys in, you've run out of carrots. You need a new weapon. And you haven't written the chapter yet on how to catch don't. So you don't know yet how to do it? It's a no for me this week, unfortunately. Does the book exist? Yes. Is the book definitively paranormal? No, it is not. But it is still an awesome story. I hope some of our listeners out there have either gotten to see the book before or go see the book. That would be so cool. I want to hear stories. I want to see more pictures. Hell, maybe we need to take a trip out there and see the book for ourselves.

Speaking of things we need to bring back, we need to take from, you know the way Spain's got the siesta. You know Sweden has Fica. Well, I don't know where that is. That's like a break in the day to have coffee and cake. Whoa. Okay. Is it kind of happen at any time or is it restricted to one period? I think it's more of like a mid-morning afternoon thing. Oh.

And so you'd meet your friends for FICA. That's pretty cool. We need to bring that in. Yeah. You know, mix it up a little bit. Maybe coffee is beer. Okay. Maybe cake is another beer.

Okay. And we can have it at 11.30 a. Yeah. You can have it anytime I feel like it. How about that? Thank you guys so much for listening to this week's episode of the podcast. I hope you enjoyed our investigation into the Codex Gigas, also known as the Giant Book. Thank you so much to everyone that supports us over on Patreon. You guys are the reason why we can continue to do this show.

You guys are the reason why we can continue to make all the fun extra stuff that we make, too. The bonus episodes, the after-party episodes, the behind-the-scenes stuff, And the shoutouts and thank you is at the end of every episode of the podcast. Why don't we, sorry, crazy idea. Why don't we tap, tap, why don't we do a couple right now? Whoa, I like that. Basically, you know how at the end of a book, you'll say like thanks to all those people? Acknowledgements, yeah.

Yeah, that's what we're going to do right now. All right, thank you to Nicole Chase. If I had a nickel, every time I had to chase Nicole down, I'd have a whole bag of Nichols. Let me tell you, there's a reason why we call her the donkey in the commune, you know? Because Nicole has seen a few people go into the headquarters of the Kings and not come out the other side. So we have to chase Nicole down. She's been a witness too many times type beat.

Unfortunately, yeah. And the spell to erase her mind was one of the 12 pages stolen from the book. So, yeah, it's tricky. Nicole kind of knows all the secrets and now we're trying to catch her. Yeah. Nicky Chase is that crazy name, isn't it? Yeah, Nicky Chase? That's such a cool name.

It's not like you're a character from the Fast and the Furious movies. Yeah, so true. Thank you, Nicole. Thank you also to Cheryl Longo. Well, we've known Cheryl a long-go-long-go time. Gosh, we used to, in the early days of the commune, we used to sit around the campfire and Cheryl, a few stories, you know.

It was really something. So Rory, I remember it well. We were all pour a little glass of whiskey and Rory would open up the Codex gigas. That's right. He'd find a second copy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I managed to photocopy it before the Swedes got it. Yeah. It's a hard book to read from at a campfire. Yeah.

Because every time you turn a page, the campfire goes out. It's so enormous. It's like... Yeah. Cheryl had to like hold onto the tent. Everything was almost blown away. All those good memories. I think she was crushed by the book in the end. end, unfortunately. Right. You just left it, you left it upright and then in the night it fell on her tent.

And then it was back to just me and you. Cheryl was actually commune member number one. That's crazy. Well, Cheryl, I hope you are recovering. Thank you for supporting the show. And finally, thank you to Alexandra Deutsch. Alexander, you might sprecken Deutsch, but do you spreken Latin, specifically kind of satanic medieval, dense, dense Latin. Because we do need a translator. We have a, let's say, a gigas-sized job for you that we are going to need your help for. Luckily, it is mostly pictures. There's a lot of pictures in there that will help.

So, you know, it's a good illustration. If you don't know Latin, you can maybe decipher it. It does kind of look like the writing in the book kind of looks like elvish from Lord of the Rings. You know, like how it's like all italicized? Yeah. It's pretty cool. So, you know, the book took 30 years to write. So what is that?

Like two years to transcribe probably? I mean, you're not writing. Yeah, nothing, yeah. Yeah, it's nothing at all. Yeah. And I will say, Alexandra was involved in the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Ah. Okay, well, it's not good because that makes me feel like they're going to burn the book.

But like she says it was a mistake, you know what I mean? and so... So they burned it? Yeah, but as a mistake, it was a mistake. It wasn't supposed to happen. That's why she changed it in from Alexandria to Alexandra.

How flammable is donkey? That is what we need to know. The amount of Alexander drinks, very. Okay. All right. We'll keep the book for ourselves for a better thing. Drinking paint stripper just drawing on donkey hides.

Thank you, Alexandra. Thank you to everyone who supports us on Patreon. The show could not exist without your support. We are so grateful. as kids said at the start of the episode, come see us live. We're going to be performing live in London on stage.

We're going to be not only performing, but we'll be hanging out afterwards, meeting everyone, taking pictures, and having a little siesta of our own after the show. We're doing like a full after party, right? Right, not sleeping, yeah. Oh, yeah, I forgot that's what that means. Fiesta, is what I meant.

There we go. We're all having an official siesta after the show. Lumber party. No, there will be an official after party on Sunday, the 11th of October. We're coming to the Clapham Grand for the biggest, craziest freaking show ever. It's going to be awesome. Grab your tickets right now, links in the description of this podcast. Also, support us at Thisparnormalife.com.

Crazy. Guys, thank you so much for listening. Hope you love this episode. And of course, we will be back next Tuesday with another paranormal tale.