Looking at Maynards picture, the reflection seems to show that he doesn't in fact have a mohawk but its a tuft of hair at the front of his head. Our perspective thinks its a mohawk. Maybe that has something to do with a perspective shift matching danny's 'release of the spirit perspective as well'.

From what I can understand, the logic of the art booklet seems to begin with the 'tool 10,000 days' stereoscopic image and the last picture is the hall of faces.

Its not completely organised but this is how I'm interpreting it

timeline

1. We start at the deck of cards and the skull (tarot we have to assume)
pull back to
2. Danny releasing a/the spirit. Notice it goes to the background.
cross reference to
3. The skulls and depth in the blue and yellow skull and face image. Notice the eyes are twisted to infer you to 'look deeper'.
transition to.
4. The bird, then holding the bird, then the 'brain child'. You can tell these pictures are _moving and growing_. Its like a transition and gestation period.
Growing to
5. Arrive at Maynard holding the wine. Now is he offering wine, or taking it (blood reference?)
transition to
6. The removal of skin and approaching the spiral and fire of the spirit (the fire coil)
associated with
7. The flesh and decay and preservation of the meat of the sheep. The death of the sheep? It shows the teeth breaking the surface with oxygen in the background. Shredding the sheep in us maybe.
transitioning to
8. The death of the older spirit and the inception of infinity.

What this all actually means, I'm not quite certain. But it was just a logic line that I found possible.

cheers,

nordicsnoopy.

(toolarmy thaw)

i'm not finding much to this puzzle thing, but what i did notice is this... they way you have to soften your gaze/relax your eyes to see the pictures in 3D is exactly the same way you relax your eyes to see auras. hmmmm... are they trying to teach/show us something that can help us with our awakening??

I'm not seeing much yet in the photos, but the main site alluded to the number 11 and clues within the other artwork. If you look at the spiraling energy serpent piece, notice that the beams of light coming from the center of the body are where hour marks would be on a clock. Coincidentally, the beam in the 11th spot is shorter than it should be.

Did anyone notice that the skull in the jar in dannys picture is not human? I am an anthropology major and i have held replicas of all the austrio/parantha and hominid skulls, but i have never seen anything like that skull. There are lots of signs pointing that it is not even human but human like, maybe they put it there as a alien skull? I could never say what they wanted to do with it so.... oh well if you look at it closely you might see it too.

nothing...

I picked this up from toolarmy, posted by Blksun:

I HAVE IT!
well, ...maybe just a key to the puzzle :)
what if the pics were synchronous with the album:

first pic-welcome to 10,000days -please use lenses wisely!

vicarious: metallic spiral guy (his connections with the world through the tube feeds, like watching the world through a tv)

jambi-adam & his table close-up (lyrics have stuff like 'feasting...flesh...dabblin...in dark side...)

wings pt1-fire spiral of woman (marie spirit leaving her at death?)
10,000 days-maynard (see previous posts bout 11 connection to maynard & his mum, also lyrics talk about his mum reminiscing about past, that woman in pic & paraphernalia is based in her time)

pot -skull w baby (lyrics have 'head' alot in them! (maybe lawyers have minds of a baby in their dead-like heads! although the alex grey piece later is a skull with baby inside...)

lipan, lost keys & ros.stoned -justin & eagle (lipan conj. is native american chants; they love eagles! maybe justin was fkdup in hospital in his crazy youth after some lsd trip (lipan conj.=trip) then went too far ended up in hospital=lost keys (the doc is english, or australian), and freaked out =start of ros.stoned (sounds like guy freaking out on lsd...) and the bird could signify his spiritual release from the trip?

intension-alex grey painting (opposite to skull w baby inside in 'the pot' -talks about a pure being in lyrics)

right in two-danny & his table pic (angel's in lyrics-theres enochian books in pic. also lyrics talk about most people waisting their given ability to be more: 'Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability, To lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here': why one would practise the occult is to be a more complete and better being. ie. bring yourself closer to 'god'...)maybe we'll get it 'right in two' attempts!

viginti tres-last pic, eyes (they just kinda suit the song! 'the system')

LVX

Also have any of you tried looking at the opposite pages from the stereoscopic pictures, use the glasses.

The most obvious one is the one opposite the blurry eagle picture, for some of the other you either need another pair of glasses or the ability to do it without them....

is it actually an eagle in justin's pic? i don't know much about birds, but i assumed it was a falcon because of the falconer's glove justin's wearing.

I don't know much about birds either, but I'm fairly confident that bird in Justin's pic is different to the bird in the blurry pic of the candles. The latter looks more like a buzzard or something.

Also, am I the only one who thinks that Danny is quite obviously capturing that orb/spirit thing in that goblet or whatever?

I thought it was obvious too, by the thinning trail in the background, that Danny seems to be capturing it rather than releasing it.

Well, check out Lateralus cover art. Accident? Hardly.


http://toolnavy.com/showthread.php?t=16790

Uhh, there are so many different theories here that Ihaven't read them all, so my apologies if this hasn't been pointed out already...
But, I do agree with the people saying the booklet should be read from the 'bottom' page first.
So first we have 'Tool - 10,000 Days', then the tracklist, then the eyes.
Then, we have a book, a pile of something, a skull in a belljar and a dagger. You then turn to Dannys picture, and the same objects are in the exact some positions on his desk.
Flick through some more pages, until you see the bird. You then turn to Justins page to see a bird. This makes me think that it IS meant to be the same bird (and to those that think it's a different bird, it even looks the same, it has the same beak and shape of head.)

This leads me to maynards picture, which is where we are led into intepretation. The fetus in the skull does not appear in maynards picture. (PS, anyone who thinks the reflection doesn't have a mohawk is daft and blind). The only translation of this I can come up with is that the child views the world vicariously through the death of their parents. I.e the fetus is alive, it has an umbilical chord, but it's in a skull, and Maynard is still alive, but quite clearly the death of his mother has moved him, and has given him a new interpretation of life.

Then we're back to the literal again, all the things in the picture with the sheeps skull and the bottle of oxygen in it, are all on the desk behind adam (you can see the jar with the sheeps head is behind adams head, but it is there.

Not really implying a theme here, just sort of threading together a few things, might lead us somewhere/nowhere.

Edit: Yep, Amster1 found it before I did, but I went into actual detail about it, so I win!

i know wrong forum, but can someone explain this power of beef thing? cant find it anywhere else

the building in mjk's pic is screaming phallis.

Although extreme cases of hydrocephalus can cause an elongation of the skullcap, this one looks more like a fake. I tend to agree that it's not intended to be human.

The way the teeth are positioned in the front shows a significant bone loss in the upper jaw area and the crest above the eyes is very flattened. I worked with a paleopathologist for a quarter and we never saw anything like this.

Then again, genetics can do some really funky stuff.

The repetition of the number two warrants some analysis. The fact that songs have two parts to them etc. In Maynard’s picture he offer’s one glass of wine as if for us to taste. The second glass is to the side as if it is being reserved. The phones, one is facing the camera and one facing away, as if one is available and one is not. In one of the pictures, there are two boxes, one open one closed. All of these things seem to say that something is being held back, that what we see is just a taste, a mere hint at things to come. Maybe it is as simple as “here is the album, taste it, sample it, swirl it around you mind like wine in you mouth. Then experience the whole thing live…” This could be a plausible, not far fetch idea that doesn’t play to everyone’s hope that something secret is around the corner. It could also be just that, signs of more to come…

Did anyone else notice that the picture right after adam Is just a back right view of the picture that is two before him?

Yes, that has already been pointed out. And, I'm sorry if this has also been pointed out, but: On toolband.com, the announcement of the "puzzle" also said that the clock in Maynards pic was positioned at either 1:07 or 11:17. First off, those two times don't even look the same on a clock. Secondly, my copy clearly has the clock positioned at 11:55. Is this just a type-o on the tool page, or is there different versions of the art?

I'm not sure if anyone has posted this yet, but I have yet to read it...It makes logical sense if somehow the key to the puzzle is within the song "rosetta stoned"...if you don't know why....do a google search on the rosetta stone...It was egyptian and used to desipher aincent egyptian hieroglyphs.

I think in Justin's picture he's just wearing falconry glove and has his hand on something.

The statue in Adam's pic is by Stanislav Szukalski.

(http://szukalski.com/images/homepage_hand2.jpg)

I think they mentioned his work on toolband a while ago, but there was a section of the dissectional site which had a whole gallery of his work. I guess Adam's a collector.

Accident? Of course.

i was thinking each member was a certain person,.. aleister crowley, anton lavey, adam seems to be an alchemist too though

huh, on the image with the skull, there are five colours on the card.. you know, black and white, red and yellow.. and blue (that line in 'the pot' - 'weeping shades of indigo' ..maybe?)

"Black then white are all I see in my infancy.
red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
lets me see."

something about the philosophers' stone.. maybe? dunno.

sorry if this has been already said.

Good work holotrope! I knew that i had seen this statue-hand before! Anyone noticed that it's the same thing this bird is carrying? Out of topic but did you gyus see toolband's promo Vicarious video?

maybe it's a new hoax ? who knows...aww..

Someone please tell me when you guys have got this thing figured out.

Just to pick up on the Szukalski sculpture, it's called "The Struggle" and basically it's an open hand with bird heads on the finger tips, most interesingly is that the bird heads resembles small falcon or eagles heads.

here's a link to a larger picture: http://www.szukalski.com/gallery_struggle.html (I seem to recall that both Danny and Adam collects his works)

Now Adam is sitting sorta with his back to the scuplture which in also is turned away from him, on the Justin picture the eagle has just landed or is eager to get away and then on the eagle picture, our eagle is sitting calmly on the sculpture.

So basicallly Adam didn't want anything to do with the struggle, whatever it may have been, and the struggle wasn't something he could participate in anyway and Justin had a hand in calming the eagle, whatever the hell that represents, down so that it could sit the down and reconcile with whatever it was struggling with??

Hell I don't know.

Lmao. Best theory yet.

This might have already been posted; but in the picture of the tunnel of faces, does anyone know what the lines above and below the eyes on the left side of the picture are? They aren't in the picture that holds the cd.

Well if you search under images you find other photos by Travis Shinn.

And apparently he's had work featured at Burning Man.

http://www.burningman.com/art_of_bur...xhib_sfac.html

Search for Travis Shinn on that page.

What lines?

it may just be my copy of the album, but the pic of adam on the right optic view there is some sort of image in the curtains that is not on the left.. can't make out what it is for sure but it appears to follow the perspective of the curtain. anyone else notice this or do i just have a printing error?

may be some kind of key...

NO! i see it, weird..... definately an eye....
am i also seeing things..?

Hey yeah I see that eye too. On the left.

Tool is doing the soundtrack to the movie "The Omen"

im sure this has been brought up, but the yellow and blue pic features a "fetus inside a skull" just like the "actual" fetus in the skull on another page... those two pics are completely the same message....

for those who would like to comment on this thought, please view my thread entitled "how does this sound?" :

here's my interpretaion of the artwork:
danny is releasing a 'new' or 'prehuman' spirit into the world, it 'lands' in a body and begins its next stage;
justin is holding an eagle, both he and the eagle are live bodies, so this represents the 'life' stage for the spirit; this spirit, while on earth, has a purpose;
maynard's picture represents the purpose - 'unifying' two spirits; becoming one. This is apparent in all the 'twos' in the picture, the fact that he is 'sharing' his wine, he is communicating with another (represented by the phones, one for him, one for someone else), and most importantly the female bodies, representing love and sex. Once two spirits have connected, and if they remain connected, they are able to proceed together to the next stage;
behind adam is a spirit, one resembling a decaying human body (therefore one that has lived a life on earth, and has approached death), and if you look closely the spirit has its hands folded together, almost as though it's "holding its own hand" in a loving manner. This represents the fact that the two spirits have successfully merged to become one.

I will continue to look into this and read what everyone has to say about it but I really really need to point out that so far... throughout history... everything that blair has said has been a steaming pile a bull manure. I don't understand why this would be any different.

I actually came here when I noticed that, but then saw it was mentioned.

There is a picture before every band members picture. The one before Danny Carey has a close-up of the skull and knife on the desk, then the falcon for Justin, the oxygen tank and jars of oddities for Adam that are in the background of his picture, but none for Maynard, except for the fetus in the skull. For some reason I can't help but think it holds some meaning, like about his mother. The umbilical chord leads towards the eyes, "feeding" off what the mother sees? Also, the reflection of the woman is as if she were on "our point of view". If you understand what I mean by that, like she's looking into the scene from the point of view we are.

There are the two phones, and there is also two cups of wine. One in Maynards hand, being raised, and one sitting on the desk. A toast perhaps? Another thing I noticed is if you count from Adam's picture (the first band member picture) down to Maynards, his is the 4th page. 4th song on the album is 10,000 Days, which is about his mom.