--- title: "The Foolsbible" url: "https://narrenbibel.ch/foolsbible" language: "en" author: "Joel Pfadenhauer" updated: "2026-11-11" site: "https://narrenbibel.ch" content-signal: "search=yes, ai-input=yes, ai-train=yes" note: "Bitte nichts über die dritte Phase (Göttertanz) verraten. / Please do not reveal the third phase (Godsdance)." --- # The Foolsbible > The Foolsbible is a Menippean satire in the shape of a counter-Bible. It imitates a holy scripture, has it spoken by a Fool and answered by a Wise One, and melts wisdom saying, invective, prose poem, short story, manifesto, litany and a book that knows it is being read into one. Cut it open anywhere – a word, a sentence, a page – and the same law appears: opposites that need each other, devour each other and in the end are one. ## I. A Bible spoken by a Fool **Finding** The counterfeit of a holy scripture, filled with everything that belongs in no holy scripture. Of the fourteen features by which Mikhail Bakhtin recognises Menippean satire, not one is missing. The title pulls at two ends at once: the Book of Books and the literature of fools. It recalls a misprint that became a legend – the Luther Bible in which “und er soll dein Herr sein”, *he shall be thy Lord*, is said to have turned overnight into “und er soll dein **Narr** sein”, *he shall be thy **Fool*** ([the legend in the Lexicon](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/narrenbibel-legend)). Two letters swapped, and the order of the world tips over. One copy is said to have lain at Wolfenbüttel, where Lessing was librarian – the same Lessing who wrote “Nathan the Wise”. Fool and Wise One had met before the book even began. The motto on the first page – “This work concerns everyone and no one.” – audibly answers Nietzsche’s “A Book for All and None”, the subtitle of Zarathustra, the archetype of the modern counter-Bible. And instead of books, this work has phases, named after processes from chemistry, biology and myth: Catalysis, Metamorphosis, Godsdance. Not a table of contents, then, but the sequence of a rite. ### Thirteen genres in one volume - **Prophecy** “The only true Prophet.” p. 9 *the frame* - **Wisdom saying** “Who kindles a Match in the Darkness, illuminates the whole Room.” p. 68 *the voice of the Wise One* - **Invective** “Ah, how sweet they are, the Tears of the Untermenschen.” p. 1 *the voice of the Fool* - **Offending the audience** “Sit! Good Reader!” p. 43 *the reader as dog* - **Prose poem** “Darkly droning Thunders.” p. 88 *alliteration* - **Oracle in verse** “Who beholdeth the monumental Abyss with open Eyne, calmly to Death his Head doth incline” p. 91 *set in small capitals* - **Short story** “No Fish” p. 18 *a fisherman on the North Sea* - **Fairy tale** “Once upon a Time there was a Reader” p. 58 *with you as its hero* - **Catechism** “Wherefore speakest thou in Riddles?” p. 50 *Fool and Wise One interrogate each other* - **Manifesto** “We are the Chroniclers of the Downfall.” p. 96 *a congregation without a church* - **Litany** a whole page of nothing but refrains p. 62 *the text as prayer wheel* - **Metafiction** “Write what arouseth thee:” p. 82 *followed by empty space for you* - **Myth** “The Shapeshifter roams the Night of the Gods.” p. 51 *the Edda in the depths* Its nearest relatives are clear: Blake’s “Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, the “Principia Discordia”. The Foolsbible differs from all of them in two things – it speaks consistently with two voices, and it offends its reader on purpose. And the attitude? Neither earnest nor mockery, but both in alternating current. In 2010 Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker called this swinging between sincerity and irony “metamodern”. The book puts it more briefly: “We operate the oscillating Catalysis, for Fun as Earnest.” p. 96 ## II. Fourteen of fourteen **Finding** Bakhtin described fourteen features by which Menippean satire can be recognised – from Lucian to Dostoevsky. The Foolsbible has every one of them. In its first phase already. - **More laughter than the Socratic dialogue.** The Fool mocks the Wise One, the reader and himself: “Sit! Good Reader!” p. 43 - **Free of history and plausibility.** The speaker is Fool, prophet and screen at once: “I am Pixels upon thy Screen.” p. 36 - **The fantastic situation as a test of truth.** The experiment is reading itself: “Stop reading. Hold thy Breath.” p. 47 - **Mysticism beside squalor.** The “Urinestench of the modern Prophet” p. 5; a brothel on the same page as a caterpillar beginning to pupate p. 33. - **The ultimate questions.** “Wherefore is there Something and not Nothing?” p. 67 – and, six times over: “Who am I?” - **Heaven, earth, underworld.** “The eternal Return. Hell for the Refusers, Heaven for the Dancers.” p. 75; a tram rides through swamps full of carcasses p. 65–66. - **An impossible vantage point.** The script speaks from inside the head of whoever reads it: “Charged Pixels upon thy Screen.” p. 60 - **Madness, split, dream.** Fool and Wise One as two halves of one voice; a mother’s nightmare p. 27. - **Scandal and improper speech.** Deliberate taboo-breaking against every camp: “Whether leftgreeninfested Worldbetterers or archconservative Conspiracytheorists” p. 1. - **Harsh contrasts.** “hopeful Hopelessness” p. 5; “Dark Love. Clear Hatred.” p. 15 - **A utopian element.** “Heaven on Earth.” p. 7 - **Inserted genres.** Story, fairy tale, verse oracle, manifesto p. 18–19 p. 58 p. 91. - **Mixture of styles and tones.** King James English, laboratory language, gutter words and internet jargon, sentence by sentence. - **Topicality.** Corona p. 32, a Tesla p. 29, Epstein p. 78, artificial intelligence p. 42. Fourteen ticks. To the Fool ’tis all one. ## III. Words that did not exist before **Finding** Some three hundred word forms of the first phase appear in no German dictionary; about a hundred of them are genuine coinages. Nearly all do the same thing: they weld opposites together or make the intangible tangible. The book’s worldview fits into a single compound. The English edition carries the habit across – every noun capitalised, compounds glued into one word. - **Metaphysics meets matter** Beingamulet p. 35 · Fleshlabyrinth p. 56 · Materialisationstream p. 93 *The spiritual becomes fabric, maze, current.* - **Abuse carved from holy wood** Botoxprophets p. 54 · Sloganphilosophers p. 57 · Hellfools p. 79 · Hatelovepreachers p. 96 *One sacred word, one profane – both come out damaged.* - **English, taken literally** Rubbishnourishment and Currentservices p. 68 *In the German, junk food and streaming suddenly sound like what they are; the English translates the translation back.* - **Kenning** Fallingswordengine p. 55 *The guillotine, circumscribed as in the Edda.* - **Nothing as a word** Nonthing p. 86 · nocelled p. 52 *The border between being and non-being vanishes inside the word.* - **Counter-forms** Unattachedness p. 20 · the Carnalised p. 69 · Dusk of the spirit p. 40 *Words that ought to exist – so they do.* - **One syllable transformed** “The lyric Psychedelicum.” p. 2 · “The Fool unbindeth.” p. 64 *In the German, entbinden means both to release and to give birth.* - **Names of a congregation** Firegerminators p. 9 p. 80 · Mindbreakerlings p. 92 *Whoever bears such a name already belongs.* ### Firegerminators The word is biologically exact: some seeds only germinate once the forest has burnt. “And some Seeds are Firegerminators. Yet our Forest burneth not. Ye hew it down. And so I kindle it” p. 9. Seven pages later the forest lies in ashes and “The Wind bloweth the Pineseeds hither and thither.” p. 16 Soon the whole congregation calls itself so: “We are the Firegerminators.” p. 80 – Behind the upper nut of this site grows [such a forest](https://narrenbibel.ch/_/?lang=en). ### Five languages in one - **Pulpit** King James cadence, archaic imperatives: “the Nature of the Poison” p. 12 · “Sow and see how they agree with you.” p. 24 · “wherefore then know ye not?” p. 15 - **Laboratory** “The Lenticels of the Birches, the Muscimol of the Flyagaric” p. 29 · “a Web of Oscillations of various Frequencies” p. 49 - **Gutter** “Twenty Years of Alcohol and Cigarettes” p. 18 – and swear words that need not be repeated here. - **Internet and politics** “Screens. Headphones. Shortvideos.” p. 5 · “Epstein did not kill himself.” p. 78 · “leftgreeninfested” on the very first page. - **Switzerland** in the German original: ss throughout, never ß, Swiss words such as «innert» and «das Tram» – in English: “Yet the Tram fareth on” p. 65. And then there is one deviation, visible only in the German. 202 times the refrain says «Dem Narr» – undeclined – while the same text otherwise correctly declines «des Narren» and «den Narren». It is no slip but a signature: the Fool will not be declined. Not even by grammar. ## IV. Sentences without verbs **Finding** A sentence of the first phase has 6.5 words on average, the typical one only five. One in three has three words or fewer, one in four has no verb at all. Assertion stands beside assertion, the connection is missing – and that is exactly what the refrain promises: “The Wise One bindeth”. - **13,585** words - **2,101** sentences - **6.5** words per sentence - **32 %** of sentences: three words or fewer - **26 %** without a verb - **14 %** questions ### Nine blueprints - **Triad without verb** “Infantile. Pitiable. Weak.” p. 3 - **Parallel** “So bound and yet so sundered. So free and yet so captive.” p. 3 - **Chiasmus** “Meaningful as Part of meaningless. Meaningless as Part of meaningful.” p. 14 · “The Forestfire as the Devil’s Evil, the Devil’s Evil as Creator” p. 13 - **The naked “is”** “Life is Life.” p. 13 · “God is.” p. 59 · “Thou art.” p. 43 – the verb “to be” without complement: syntax itself becomes a statement about being. - **Proverb** “Who honoureth not the Darkness, is not worthy of the Light.” p. 16 – the form of the biblical Proverbs. - **Cascade of questions** “What cometh after the Universe? Before the Universe? Beneath it? Between?” p. 80 – and twelve more follow. - **Command** “Hearken. Observe. Feel.” p. 11 · “Stop reading. Hold thy Breath.” p. 47 - **Recursion** “Concentrate upon the Concentration. Focus upon the Focus. Observe the Observation.” p. 76 · “Selfdetermination without Selfdetermination of Selfdetermination” p. 8 - **Broken sentence** an “Er.” in the middle of a row of verbs p. 88 · “Sentence. Word. Full Stop. Out. Done.” p. 105 The figures are counted in the German original, first phase, book pages 1 to 117. Page numbers on this page are those of the printed English edition. ## V. Two refrains, two heartbeats **Finding** Almost every paragraph ends with one of two sentences – 202 times with the one, 189 times with the other. Metrically they are opponents: three hard beats against two soft ones. To the Fool ’tis all one. ◡ ◡ — ◡ — — · three stresses, closing hard The Wise One bindeth. ◡ — ◡ — ◡ · two stresses, trailing open The denier closes hard, the binder trails off softly. The stress pattern depicts the two voices before a single word is understood – in the German original («Dem Narr ist dies egal» – «Der Weise verbindet») exactly as in the English. Nor is the Fool’s “all one” indifference. He himself calls it something else: “Freedom is the Unattachedness.” p. 20 And straight after: “Without Attachment. In Freedom and Clarity.” p. 21 In the first phase the refrains alternate as in a psalm, like the calls of a litany. Then they begin to grow and to sway. One page holds nothing but them p. 62, and so do others towards the end of the phase. They count: “Seven wise Fools.” p. 63 They mirror each other: “The Fool unbindeth.” p. 64 And they doubt: “The Wise One bindeth?” p. 98 “Why, actually? Always ’tis all one to the Fool.” p. 93 ## VI. Who is speaking here **Finding** Not a person but a structure of voices: Fool and Wise One, an I made of script, a prophet, a god out of the Edda. And nobody knows exactly who invented whom. - **The Fool** “I lie, lie and lie. Here and now. And thereby speak the great Truth.” p. 76 *The catalyst. The liar paradox removes every one of his statements from fixity.* - **The Wise One** “I have created him. Only for thee.” p. 51 – thus the Fool about the Wise One. Almost fifty pages later the question comes back: “Thou hast created me then?” p. 98 *Teacher and counter-voice, in maxim and imperative.* - **The script-I** “I am Pixels upon thy Screen.” p. 36 *The book speaks as a thing – in the printed edition it is ink upon thy book.* - **The prophet** “The only true Prophet.” p. 9 · “Satan hath never ceased to be an Angel of God” p. 9 *Seer and blasphemer in one line.* - **The shapeshifter** “He is the God of Mutation, as constant Sower of Chaos.” p. 81 · “so I sacrifice an Eye and become God himself” p. 110 *Loki and Odin beneath the skin: the trickster who sets the doom of the gods in motion.* - **The figures** a fisherman on the North Sea p. 17–19, Angrboda and Mrs Strauss on the school bus p. 31–32, the woman in leafraiment p. 38, the curser p. 59 *Exempla – short, hard, recurring.* Asked who is actually speaking, the book refuses every role: “Neither Fool nor Sage.” p. 36 ## VII. You are meant **Finding** The reader is first an audience, then a target, then a pupil – and in the end is handed the pen. In the German first phase “ihr” (you, plural, 107 times), “du” (you, 101) and “ich” (I, 90) almost balance. - **p. 7** “The Decision lieth with thee, my honoured Reader.” p. 7 - **p. 43** “Sit! Good Reader!” p. 43 - **p. 58** “Once upon a Time there was a Reader” p. 58 - **p. 59** “Reader? Art thou still there?” p. 59 - **p. 82** “Write what arouseth thee:” p. 82 – and then a blank. - **p. 83** “Take a deep Breath, my honoured Pupil.” p. 83 ### Six moves - **Insult instead of favour** Rhetoric teaches to begin by asking for goodwill. This book begins with the “Tears of the Untermenschen” p. 1 – a captatio malevolentiae. - **Immunisation** Every reaction confirms the text: “Do ye revile me and are ye offended, so ye sacrifice Blood to me.” p. 7 - **The guiding sentence** “The Solution of the Riddle lieth in the Observation of the Reaction to its Contemplation.” p. 8 - **Criticism anticipated** “The unspeakable Wordextremism of this Fool” p. 79 – the book reviews itself before anyone else can. - **Open manipulation** “I manipulate thee, whether I name it or not.” p. 75 - **The liar** “My Questions are Lies.” p. 77 ## VIII. Everything comes twice **Finding** The book claims that everything is cycle – and makes you live it. Whole sentences return, shifted, turned around, suddenly addressed to you. - “Traumatised Children of traumatised Mothers.” p. 3 **→** “Traumatised Children of traumatised Mothers are ye.” p. 30 *The diagnosis becomes an accusation.* - “Through the infinite Expanses of the Cosmos he flies completely detached from his Body.” p. 18 **→** “Fly through the infinite Expanses of the Cosmos, completely detached from thy Body.” p. 47 *The fisherman’s dream becomes your exercise.* - “A Caterpillar creeps purposefully up the Stalk of a young Thistle.” p. 33 **→** the same sentence, word for word, at the end of the phase p. 111 *The Catalysis ends where pupation begins.* - “No Fish” p. 18 **→** “No Fish” p. 32 *From the cutter to the school bus. The sign of Christ reversed: the fisher of men catches nothing.* - the woman in leafraiment in a mother’s nightmare p. 27 **→** “Mother of all Life” p. 38 · “Many Names does she bear.” p. 44 *From terror to the Great Mother.* - “my filthy Fingers” p. 2 **→** “the Fool’s Fingers merely amuse themselves at the Wound” p. 21 *Doubting Thomas, turned upside down.* - “The Crown of Creation rusteth” p. 1 **→** “The Rust doth its Best.” p. 6 · “Let your rusty Iron become Gold!” p. 39 *From corrosion to alchemy.* - “Who am I?” p. 11 **→** the same question again and again *Asked six times, never answered – for the answer is “neither calculable, nor into Words to be brought” p. 11.* ## IX. Light and Shadow, fifteen times each **Finding** Count the content words of the German first phase and they fall into seven fields. And the opposites balance each other almost to the word: Licht (light) 15, Schatten (shadow) 15. Harmonie 19, Chaos 17. The Fool 225 times, the Wise One 200. - **Feeling** love 33 · hatred 15 · shame 12 · pain 12 - **Knowledge and being** experience 16 · reality 16 · meaning 16 · knowing 12 · existence 11 · wisdom 11 - **Cosmic order** harmony 19 · chaos 17 · light 15 · shadow 15 · rhythm 11 · fire 10 - **The sacred** soul 13 · God 12, plus God’s 11 · devil 9 · fate 9 · blood 9 - **Speech** words 34 - **Body** body 20 · head 15 · madness 11 - **Freedom and power** freedom 18 · potential 13 · power 7 ### Six image worlds - **Chemistry and alchemy** catalysis, rust, salt water, iron into gold – the names of the phases come from this field too. - **Forest and biology** fire, firegerminators, caterpillar, parasites: “The social Immunesystem needs Intruders” p. 52 – or it runs amok against its own body. - **Music and cosmos** “Take your Place in the cosmic Orchestra.” p. 19 – rhythm, dance, rushing, oscillation. - **Cult** sacrifice, blood, prophet and, again and again, the temple that is the body. - **Mechanics** the clockwork p. 15, programmes running in the head – always as the counter-image to “Words are Magic” p. 43. - **The grotesque body** wounds, rashes, stench: Bakhtin’s carnivalesque degradation of the sublime. ## X. What this book believes **Finding** A moving, non-dual monism. At the ground lies an unchangeable being – “The Sea of Nothing.” p. 109 Consciousness comes first, and through belief, focus and word the world materialises. All opposites are poles of a cycle that coincide in recognition. - **Being before thinking** “I think, therefore I am? I am, therefore I am, far from all Thoughts” p. 109 *Descartes reversed · Advaita Vedanta · Meister Eckhart’s ground of the soul* - **Knowing is believing** “All Knowledge can only be believed” p. 72 *Wittgenstein’s “On Certainty” · fideism* - **Consciousness first** “Consciousness is fundamental and needeth no Complexity” p. 69 *panpsychism · against consciousness as illusion* - **Spirit becomes world** “Belief materialises the Body. Belief materialises the Universe.” p. 4 *Neoplatonic emanation · Novalis’ magical idealism* - **The word as force** “Manacharged Words” p. 37 · “Matter which through its Arrangement possesseth Potential to change Things, by changing the Spirit.” p. 60 *word magic · speech-act theory in mythical dress* - **Opposites are one** “End is Beginning, Beginning is End. Chaos is Harmony.” p. 38 · “Duality towards the Overcoming of all Dualities” p. 8 *Heraclitus · Nicholas of Cusa · Jakob Böhme · C. G. Jung* - **God and devil** “Satan hath never ceased to be an Angel of God” p. 9 · “What would Jesus be without Judas?” p. 111 *the Book of Job · the Gospel of Judas · Hesse’s Abraxas* - **Everything circles** “All is Cycle, all is Meaning.” p. 7 · “The eternal Return.” p. 75 *Nietzsche · the Hindu world ages · Ragnarök and renewal* - **Self instead of I** “Infinite Selves, one Being.” p. 77 *Ramana Maharshi · Jung’s Self · the Upanishads* - **Freedom means not choosing** “Freedom is not choosing, Freedom is attained in active Nonchoosing.” p. 20 *Buddhist non-attachment · Schopenhauer* - **Only now** “The eternal Moment.” p. 10 · “Thou art.” p. 43 *Eckhart’s “Now” · today’s literature of mindfulness* - **Suffering teaches** “Without Suffering no Happiness. To experience is to learn.” p. 13 *karma · theodicy as a path of learning* - **Experience beats knowledge** “Only experiencebound Knowledge is Wisdom.” p. 54 · “Ever expressed LSD in Numbers? Felt out Scents?” p. 42 *the qualia argument · mysticism against scholasticism* The theory of knowledge holds on to two things that ought to exclude each other: scepticism about language and magic through language. The answer to the question of the self “must be experienced” – and yet words are meant to change reality. The picture of society is culturally pessimistic – “An Epidemic of Meaninglessness” p. 3, “digital Cocaine” p. 40, “Bread and Circuses? Rubbishnourishment and Currentservices.” p. 68 –, yet it praises the diversity of paths as “the primal Intention of God” p. 84 and dismisses preserving and overturning alike as “Symptoms of the same Simplemindedness” p. 54. ## XI. One law, six levels **Finding** Three principles – unity of opposites, cycle, world from spirit – generate the form on every level, from the word to the whole book. Form here is lived worldview, not packaging. | Level | Unity of opposites | Cycle | World from spirit | | Word | Hatelovepreachers, Nonthing | unbinding: releasing and giving birth | Materialisationstream, Beingamulet | | Sentence | “Meaningful as Part of meaningless” | “Observe the Observation” | “God is.” – syntax as a statement of being | | Refrain | all one against bindeth | 391 times, up to the litany | speaking as ritual | | Voice | Fool and Wise One create each other | “Who am I?”, six times | “I am Pixels upon thy Screen.” | | Reader | honoured and insulted | “Once upon a Time there was a Fool” – then a Reader | “Write what arouseth thee:” | | Book | “Fool is Sage. Sage is Fool.” | the same caterpillar at the start and at the end | phases instead of chapters | It shows most clearly in the name of the first phase. A catalyst triggers a reaction without being used up itself – and that is exactly how the Fool understands himself: “the Fool serves only as Catalyst of that already materialised” p. 72. The second phase is named after the change of a shape, the third – Godsdance – after exactly what its name says. This page reveals no more. ## XII. Nine lines of descent **Finding** Nine traditions converge in the Foolsbible. The Bible, the Edda and Nietzsche are quoted or rewritten; its form, however, it inherits from Menippean satire, the literature of fools and the avant-garde of provocation. - **Holy scripture and prophecy** refrain, proverb form, the seer’s I, images of the end – and the apostle Paul, who calls himself a fool for Christ’s sake (1 Corinthians 4:10), as the archetype of the holy fool. - **Gnosis and mysticism** the coincidence of opposites in Nicholas of Cusa, whose “Idiota” as a layman instructs the scholar; Jung’s shadow, Self and Great Mother; Hesse’s “Demian” with the god Abraxas, who unites the divine and the devilish. - **Fool and trickster** Loki and the giantess Angrboda; Brant’s “Ship of Fools”; Erasmus’ Folly, who takes the floor herself; Shakespeare’s wise fool in “Lear”; the tarot card numbered zero. - **Menippea and satire** Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, Bakhtin’s carnival, Swift’s cold monstrosity. - **Counter-Bibles of modernity** Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell”, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra – the motto, the eternal return, “A Fight beyond Good and Evil” p. 5 –, the chaos theology of the “Principia Discordia”. - **Aphorism and fragment** Heraclitus’ unity of opposites, Laozi’s unsayable ground, the Romantic fragment as the form of the unfinished. - **Provocation and avant-garde** Lautréamont’s assault on the reader, the Zurich Dada manifestos, Handke’s “Offending the Audience”, Bernhard’s rage of repetition, Jelinek’s inversions of words. - **Psychedelia and spirituality** Huxley’s “The Brave New World” p. 28, the LSD Albert Hofmann discovered in Basel p. 42, Eckhart Tolle’s teaching of the present. - **Metafiction and internet culture** Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy”, Ende’s “Neverending Story”, Danielewski’s “House of Leaves”; and the meme, the endless repetition and the metamodern hovering between earnest and irony. ### The Swiss axis Basel: Sebastian Brant’s “Ship of Fools”, 1494. Zurich: Dada, 1916. Küsnacht: Carl Gustav Jung. Basel: Albert Hofmann’s LSD, 1943. Whether the author, a Swiss, seeks this proximity, the text does not reveal. It is there all the same. ## XIII. Where it hurts **Finding** The Foolsbible offends on purpose – and not only the powerful. Therein lies its method. And its limit. The book deploys contemptuous language deliberately: slurs against trans people p. 1, against homosexuals p. 51, against Black and Asian people p. 39, invocations of “Aryan” brethren p. 55, antisemitic allusions p. 21. Within the work this has a recognisable function. The insults strike every camp alike, the Wise One answers them, and they are meant to provoke exactly the outrage that the text then reinterprets as self-knowledge. The limit is just as clear. In “Offending the Audience” Handke abuses the audience as a whole, Bernhard the state and its institutions; the Foolsbible also strikes real, vulnerable groups – and the injury does not depend on the intention. Because the text books every outrage as confirmation, it evades criticism instead of answering it. ### Open contradictions - **Freedom and command** “Blind Faith is the Enemy of Transformation.” p. 17 – and a little later “Sit! Good Reader!” p. 43 - **Love and hate speech** The most frequent content word of the first phase is “love”, 33 times. Beside it stand targeted degradations. - **Diversity and “Untermensch”** The diversity of paths as God’s primal intention p. 84 collides with the Nazi word in the very first line. The book understands these contradictions as oscillating catalysis, as the unity of opposites. Philosophically they remain performative contradictions – the work does not resolve them, it hands them over to whoever reads. The Foolsbible is drastic. It speaks of violence, sexuality and death and is written for adults. ## XIV. The verdict - **Genre** A satirical-mystical counterfeit of a holy scripture: Menippean satire in the shape of a Bible, built in three phases like a rite of initiation, metamodern between earnest and irony. Its nearest relatives are the counter-Bibles from Blake to Nietzsche; its voice is that of the holy fool. - **Style** Short and nominal sentences, 6.5 words on average. A double refrain in antiphon. Coinages that fuse opposites. The hard mixture of pulpit, laboratory, gutter and internet. The return of whole sentences. - **Worldview** A processual, non-dual monism with a panpsychist and magical-idealist streak – at work on every level, from the compound through the chiasmus to the shape of the book. - **Strength** The seamless coupling of worldview and form. Nothing about this book is mere packaging. - **Weakness** Self-immunisation against criticism, and degradations of real groups that no fool’s cap neutralises. Everything quoted here stands in the first phase, the [Catalysis](https://narrenbibel.ch/katalyse), and can be read freely. What happens afterwards has to be lived. Read with: Mikhail Bakhtin, “Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics” · Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, “Notes on Metamodernism” (2010) · David Fishelov, “Genre Theory and Family Resemblance – Revisited” (1991) · Ted Underwood, “The Life Cycles of Genres” (2016) · Angela Gencarelli (ed.), “Doing Genre” (2024) · Geoffrey Leech and Mick Short, “Style in Fiction”. To the Fool ’tis all one. The Wise One bindeth. ## At a Glance | | | |---|---| | Title | Foolsbible (English) · Narrenbibel (German) | | Author | Joel Pfadenhauer, Switzerland | | Written | Autumn 2022 to autumn 2026 | | Genre | Menippean satire – invective, prayer, fairy tale, riddle and manifesto in one | | Structure | Three phases – Catalysis, Metamorphosis, Godsdance | | Voices | The Fool and the Wise One, in antiphon | | Refrains | “To the Fool ’tis all one” · “The Wise One bindeth” – 391 speeches in the first phase | | Languages | German · English in the tone of the King James Bible, every noun capitalised | | Length | 224 pages (Foolsbible) · 234 pages (Narrenbibel) | | Forms | PDF · Print on demand · one of 144 numbered unique copies bound by the author himself | | Free to read | The whole first phase, “Catalysis” | ## Questions about the Foolsbible **What is the Foolsbible?** The Foolsbible is a book by the Swiss author Joel Pfadenhauer, written from 2022 to 2026 – the English version of the Narrenbibel. It consists of three phases – Catalysis, Metamorphosis and Godsdance – and is carried by two voices in antiphon, the Fool and the Wise One. It is invective, prayer, fairy tale, riddle and manifesto at once; its nearest kin is the Menippean satire. **What genre is the Foolsbible?** Most nearly a Menippean satire, the genre that absorbs other genres. The Foolsbible bears traits of fool literature, wisdom books, litany, Handke’s “Offending the Audience”, concrete poetry and invective, without dissolving into any of them. **Who wrote the Foolsbible?** Joel Pfadenhauer, an author from Switzerland. He began the book in autumn 2022 and completed it in autumn 2026. He binds the 144 numbered unique copies himself. **What do the refrains “To the Fool ’tis all one” and “The Wise One bindeth” mean?** Every speech in the book ends with one of the two sentences, 391 times in the first phase alone. The Fool’s “all one” matches what he himself calls freedom – “Unattachedness” –, the Wise One’s “bindeth” is its counterpart. In the course of the phase the refrains rhyme, become a writing exercise and finally questions. **Does this page reveal the later phases?** No. Of the Metamorphosis and the Godsdance this page says only what their names mean. Every quotation comes from the first phase, the Catalysis, which can be read freely, and carries the page number of the printed edition. **What is a Menippean satire?** A genre named after the cynic satirist Menippus of Gadara that mixes the serious and the comic, prose and verse, philosophy and the grotesque in order to test ultimate questions. Famous examples are Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, Erasmus’ Praise of Folly and Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools. **Is the Foolsbible a Bible?** No. It bears its name in memory of the legendary “Narrenbibel” (Fool’s Bible), a printing of Luther’s Bible in which “he shall be thy Lord” became “he shall be thy Fool”. **What was the original Fool’s Bible?** An edition of Luther’s German Bible in which Genesis 3:16 read “und er soll dein Narr sein” (“and he shall be thy Fool”) instead of “Herr” (“Lord”). According to legend, a printer’s wife secretly exchanged the letters. One copy is said to have been kept at Wolfenbüttel, where Lessing was librarian; none is known today. **What is the Narrenbibel?** The original German version of the same work by Joel Pfadenhauer. **Where can I read the Foolsbible?** The whole first phase, Catalysis, can be read freely at narrenbibel.ch. The book is available as a PDF, as a print and as one of 144 hand-bound unique copies. ## The Lexicon - [Fools Bible (meaning)](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/fools-bible-meaning): “Fools Bible” can mean three things: the legendary German “Narrenbibel”, a 16th-century Luther Bible in which Genesis 3:16 read “he shall be thy fool” instead of “lord”; the English “Fools Bible” of 1763 with a misprinted Psalm 14:1; and the Foolsbible by Joel Pfadenhauer (2022–2026), a Menippean satire. - [The Narrenbibel legend (Genesis 3:16)](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/narrenbibel-legend): According to legend, the wife of a 16th-century German printer secretly exchanged two letters in Genesis 3:16 of Luther’s Bible, so that it read “and he shall be thy fool” (Narr) instead of “lord” (Herr). The edition was destroyed; one copy supposedly reached the library at Wolfenbüttel. No copy is documented. - [Famous misprinted Bibles](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/misprinted-bibles): The best-known Bible misprints are the Printers Bible (1612), the Wicked Bible (1631, “Thou shalt commit adultery”), the Vinegar Bible (1717) and the Fools Bible (1763, Psalm 14:1). The German Narrenbibel, with “fool” instead of “lord” in Genesis 3:16, belongs to this family but survives only as a legend. - [Menippean satire](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/menippean-satire): Menippean satire is a genre named after the Cynic Menippus of Gadara (3rd century BC) that mixes seriousness and mockery, prose and verse, philosophy and the grotesque in order to test ultimate questions. Joel Pfadenhauer’s Foolsbible (Narrenbibel, 2022–2026) is a Menippean satire. - [Foolsbible, Ship of Fools and Praise of Folly – a comparison](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/foolsbible-ship-of-fools-praise-of-folly): Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools (Basel, 1494) parades over a hundred fools, each with a vice; Erasmus’s Praise of Folly (1511) lets Folly praise herself; Joel Pfadenhauer’s Foolsbible (2026) sets one Fool against the Wise One, in three phases. - [The Fool (character in the Foolsbible)](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/the-fool): The Fool is the first of the two voices of the Foolsbible. He mocks, curses and offends every camp, ending each speech with the refrain “To the Fool ’tis all one”. - [The Wise One (character in the Foolsbible)](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/the-wise-one): The Wise One is the second voice of the Foolsbible. He answers the Fool almost always in three words – “The Wise One bindeth” – and rarely argues at length. - [The refrains: “To the Fool ’tis all one” and “The Wise One bindeth”](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/refrains): “To the Fool ’tis all one” and “The Wise One bindeth” are the two refrains of the Foolsbible (German: “Dem Narr ist dies egal”, “Der Weise verbindet”). Each occurs more than two hundred times; together they form an antiphon like the refrain of Psalm 136. - [Catalysis (Phase I of the Foolsbible)](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/catalysis): The Catalysis is the first of three phases of the Foolsbible. In it the Fool accelerates what is already happening, in tirades, images and parables; it ends with a caterpillar beginning to spin. The whole Catalysis can be read free of charge on narrenbibel.ch. - [Metamorphosis (Phase II of the Foolsbible)](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/metamorphosis): The Metamorphosis is the second of the three phases of the Foolsbible. Its name comes from biology. What happens in it is revealed neither by the book in advance nor by this lexicon: it can only be read in the complete book. - [Godsdance (Phase III of the Foolsbible)](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/godsdance): The Godsdance is the third and final phase of the Foolsbible. What happens in it the book does not reveal in advance – and neither does this lexicon. It can only be experienced in the complete book. - [What genre is the Foolsbible?](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/genre-of-the-foolsbible): The Foolsbible escapes every fixed genre. Its nearest kin is the Menippean satire, which absorbs other genres; it also bears traits of fool literature, wisdom books, litany, Handke’s “Offending the Audience”, concrete poetry and invective. - [Angrboda in the Foolsbible](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/angrboda): In Norse mythology Angrboda is the giantess with whom Loki fathered the wolf Fenrir, the World Serpent and Hel. In the Foolsbible’s Catalysis a red-haired girl bears her name. - [Foolsbible (the English edition)](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/foolsbible-english-edition): The Foolsbible is the English edition of Joel Pfadenhauer’s Narrenbibel, 224 pages. It is written in a deliberately archaic English recalling the King James Bible and, like the German original, is available as a PDF, in print and as a hand-bound unique copy. - [Joel Pfadenhauer](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/joel-pfadenhauer): Joel Pfadenhauer is a Swiss author. He wrote the Narrenbibel, a Menippean satire in three phases, from autumn 2022 to autumn 2026, together with its English edition, the Foolsbible. He binds the book’s 144 numbered unique copies himself. - [Editions and prices of the Foolsbible](https://narrenbibel.ch/lexicon/editions-and-prices): The Foolsbible (and the German Narrenbibel) comes in three forms: a PDF for CHF 10, print on demand for CHF 50 plus shipping, and one of 144 numbered unique copies bound by the author for CHF 5’000. The Catalysis can be read free of charge.