of Books um and today uh Professor Grafton is going to be uh here to speak with us about his most recent book uh codex and crisis which some of us have cop have been fortunate enough to get copies of they're kind of difficult toget a hold of uh handbound at the crumpled press in New York City um by diligent graduate students
that and in the Sanskrit tradition ition again there are wonderful people though not at Princeton who work on that and codex in crisis which comes from a piece I did for the New Yorker was an effortto bring this long perspective to bear on what's going on now um something
- Wow. - Because there's no... Those systems... I mean, you would expect that they have some protection or, like, an automatic forwarding, but how Codex or Claude sees your code base. Like, they start a new session and they know nothing about your product, project. And your project might have hundred thousand
So basically the "Gaia Codex " is what we're going to talk about and this is both an ancient found wisdom text and a sumptuous epic novel. "Gaia Codex " reveals the hidden histories of a world long forgotten, the secret wisdom of an ancient lineage of women. Set in a near future of impending societal and environmental collapse, the novel is a tale of hope and remembrance as well as an inspired vision of humanity's origins,
It's also a remembrance into the deep roots of our collective past. "Gaia Codex " is a reclaiming and the recasting of the lost history of the sacred feminine, which in many cultures is a lost part of our shared human story. So I'm going to read now from the prologue to the book.
These memory keepers are both empty and full as they carry the wisdom through the ages. Gaia Codex Node 44.54281." There's an ancient Buddhist sutra called the Avatamsaka Sutra, which is one of my favorite.
very engaging as a product design to be an interface that your AI will then go out into the world. It's something that is intangible between it and Codex ; it just feels warm and engaging, where Codex can often be as good from OpenAI, but it just, feel a little bit rough around the edges. Whereas Claude Code makes it fun to build things from scratch, where you just
This was made around 700. We have codex ,, it's a giant Bible made at the beginning of the eighth century and taken from Northumbria to Italy. It is one of the greatest treasures of Anglo-Saxon England.
Never mind. OK, right. Coming on to "Codex Amiatinus," this is the book that has been prefigured in what Claire was saying to you. This is-- for those who have been to the exhibition will confirm-- this is a gigantic book.
So a little bit about that and we'll go ahead and hand it over to her. So basically the "Gaia Codex " is what we're going to talk about and this is both an ancient found wisdom text and a sumptuous epic novel. "Gaia Codex " reveals the hidden histories of a world long forgotten, the secret wisdom of an ancient lineage of women.
with the feminine part of ourselves and our reconnection into Mother Gaia. So "Gaia Codex " is a novel written as an ancient found wisdom text. It's about an ancient lineage of women called the Priestesses of Astera who have been holding rejuvinecation codes for the planet for millennium.
happening on the planet. With the "Gaia Codex " there's been women that have been gathering around the book, around the planet, and it's really wonderful. And we're going to be, coming in the end of May, probably mid May, we're going to be having just free online gatherings so that those that are gathering--
- Yeah, it's a really special moment. I'm not exactly sure why it captured so much of the world's attention, but it did, more than Claude Code and Codex and so on. - Because consumers could reach it.
that didn't exist, which was a steam-powered civil war, which is a theme that comes up again. You get a game called the Codex of Alchemical Engineering, which is a game about alchemy, where you program little arms to move atoms around. This is both a follow-up, I guess, to Manufactoid.
What's he doing? He was mostly, like-- he liked to take things apart. I always call my characters Codex after the Ultima-- it's the book of infinite wisdom because that was what every-- it's just really nerdy.
Hidden from many, the Codex is known to those with the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and the heart to feel that which lies just beyond the veil. It is said that the Gaia Codex contains jewel seeds of planetary destiny for all beings and life on Planet Earth. These women, these priestesses of Astera have sheltered and protected the Codex , and when necessary, kept it hidden and ready for those moments of extraordinary crisis
And each of the women that are writing are adding in their own story. And how I understand the Codex is working is more as an open source code. It's a narrative, but it's also there as an activator for our essence connection with life.
She's passed. And I say she because she became a transgender at the end of her life. One of them for the "Gaia Codex " was, there's this extraordinary gathering of women at the Chateau Lumiere and all of the sudden,
Church Christians felt the need for ready reference and this is probably by lawyers and Christians were among the first people to adopt the Codex as opposed to the scroll form of the book as a codex is much much easier to search for information than a role is a role you know it's like scrolling a long PDF that you can't search it's a huge pain
And when I started, that was a tall order. Just for example, "Codex Atlanticus"-- well over 1,000 pages. Just to leaf through it exactly the way Leonardo wrote it, the only place I could find it was Special Collections at Stanford University Library.
And the idea went this way. You talk about the content being restricted to the codex .
Instead it is inscribed in holograms of light, in the leaves of trees, the hum of bees and the codes of spiral DNA. Hidden from many, the Codex is known to those with the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and the heart to feel that which lies just beyond the veil. It is said that the Gaia Codex contains jewel seeds of planetary destiny for all beings and life on Planet Earth.
And that's the thing that I think can be missed in Silicon Valley, in our bubble, that we're like, "It's already," everybody who's a software engineer is like, "I'm using Cloud Code, I'm using Codex ." That is not the vast majority of developers in the world at large. And so I think the race is still, like we're at the- like the gun just went off to start the race.
- Wow. - Because there's no... Those systems... I mean, you would expect that they have some protection or, like, an automatic forwarding, but And I did another rename. Like just Codex alone took like 10 hours to rename the project 'cause it, it's a bit more tricky than a search
What's he doing? He was mostly, like-- he liked to take things apart. Yeah. So this is where Codex was created-- Yeah.
Today I'm very, very excited to host our speaker, author Sarah Drew. And I have a little intro for her to talk about the "Gaia Codex " talk, the talk about feminine wisdom and the evolution of technology. I actually know Sarah as a personal friend and I think she's one of the most inspiring women who
at this critical point in our evolution. Now a little bit later we're going to go deep into the "Gaia Codex " and are going to be looking at how we, as women and men, can reconnect with the ancient wisdom that is the feminine wisdom traditions.
all of your stuff, if you let it, talks to you through Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, and whatever else messaging client. Uses whatever AI model you like, including Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT 5.3 Codex , all to do stuff for you. Many people are calling this one of the biggest moments in the recent history of AI, since the launch of
So over the next couple of decades here in the 20th and 21st century, it's not just GE and industrial diamond-making, new companies and new technologies And so one of the objects that I do spend some time in the book talking about is the Maya Grolier Codex , which for decades was
You'll see four or five more of these things, but this is where it all starts. Unsealed script, very posh kind of script, like the "Codex Amiatinus," so a fine thing. Oh, right. We seem to have missed one of our slides.
But after that was done, they had a speaker's party, VIP party. And Curtis Wong was there, who does Bill Gates's work on his "Codex Leicester," which is a famous Leonardo. And it's just been released again, I think.
Now to the easy part. "Through the flow of ages and the rise and fall of cultures, a secret codex has been inscribed with the tales and stories, the rites and rituals of priestesses who are emanations of the eternal goddess.
It is said that the Gaia Codex contains jewel seeds of planetary destiny for all beings and life on Planet Earth. These women, these priestesses of Astera have sheltered and protected the Codex , and when necessary, kept it hidden and ready for those moments of extraordinary crisis and transformation when it will be needed once more for the nourishment and regeneration of humankind."
So there's not much the survives. But there are some-- these are called codices, these codex , you'll see them. They're still in libraries.
And we feel very much like we're in the middle of that right now. It really does feel like, especially with the agents that we're seeing, Claude Code, OpenAI's Codex , you're seeing the automation of software engineering happening before our eyes.
MoE large language models, inference. And this one is to run agents and agents bang on tools, and- - Obviously, the design of the system had to have been done before Claude Code, Codex , OpenClaw. So you were anticipating the future, essentially. And that comes from what? From the whispers, from understanding what all the state- - No - ... of the art is about?
And then I revisited about four or five months later. And I'm like, "Okay, now let's use something even more experimental." And I, and I just typed, "Convert this and this part to Sig," and then let Codex run off. And it basically got it right. There was one little detail that I had to, like, modify afterwards, but it just ran for
that incredible? Like, when did you first close the loop on that? - Oh, because that's how I built it as well, you know? Most of it is built by Codex , but oftentimes I... When I debug it, I...... I use self-introspection so much.
Well, I thought it was important to get into Leonardo's mindset. Bill Gates, of Microsoft, both bought the only Leonardo notebook codex in private collection.
So over the next couple of decades here in the 20th and 21st century, it's not just GE and industrial diamond-making, new companies and new technologies about fake, how the material lives of this can change, I've thrown in the Grolier Codex as an example of it being able to go the other way.
But at the front of it, you have this portrait of King Edgar donating the charter-- you can see it in his hand there-- But the objects I was talking about were books, a codices, a codex , whereas a charter-- the ones that Simon was showing you-- were on single sheets,
and on the potential we hold for conscious evolution. Very important topic. With growing numbers of international readers, "Gaia Codex " is a flourishing phenomena that is capturing the passionate spirit of the feminine rising and our deepening reconnection to our Mother Earth, and very timely with Earth Day coming up.
I'm going to read another passage here. And these are from, at the beginning of each of the chapters, there's these codes, or Gaia Codex Nodes. "There are Priestesses of Astera whose bodies and minds have been dedicated as temples of memory.
themselves. So the word "shem," or name, in the Hebrew is linked to an idea of a codex , an idea of a source coding that creates a
We could not have organized coal, steam, and rail with codex .
Well, he's writing, and he's writing about every subject under the sun. So I'm going to give you a quick lesson on Leonardo's notebooks, also known as codexes or codice. He leaves us about 23 notebooks and roughly 7,000 pages.