Schools of the Folio
The first Corvus Folio was found in 1700 in the newly discovered Newgrange monument of the Bru Na Boinne Complex located in The Royal County of Ireland. After its discovery it was naturally assumed to be a native artifact of the region, and due to the prominent crow imagery, and the three pronged symbol on the cover, the Folio was almost immediately associated with the phantom queen of Irish mythology, the Morrigan.
However, after early analysis of the Folio yielded anachronistic details and regionally inconsistent imagery it's Irish origin came into question by some and flat out denied by others. Competing schools of thought emerged almost immediately, offering wildly divergent theories on the origin and nature of the small sheaf of images.
Compounding the lack of consensus is the fact that the Folio has never been subject to proper academic scrutiny. It changed hands many times in the following 200 years and was variously lost, sold, and stolen by no less than six private collectors and has not been verifiably seen since 1806. It's remained a curiosity among antiquarians with a taste for the bizarre but was largely forgotten and dismissed by a the archeological community. But those who claim to have actually laid eyes upon it have insisted that it holds unparalleled significance.
Then a second folio was found.
It was discovered in the the ruins of the Royal Tombs of Ur during ongoing excavations throughout the 1920s. Aside from the order of the pages, it was reported to be identical to the Newgrange Folio, though the two have never undergone any credible comparison. Of course a second, rearranged, Folio renewed discussion and controversy from all sides, creating a rather heated debate(as archeological squabbles go) that reached a fevered pitch in 1977 when a third Folio was found in Northern China(in what is now known as the Yi Tomb). While some theories existed that plausibly explained the geographical disparity of linked Folios found in Ireland and Iran, extending those theories as far east as Hubei, China strained any previously tenable theories.
Like their predecessor neither the Ur nor Yi Folio has found a proper, permanent home and none have been made available for any significant scientific study. Of course this lack any modern forensic evidence has made the Corvus Folio nothing more than an unsubstantiated myth to most respected individuals and institutions. But the mystery surrounding it has somehow endured, with its most ardent followers insisting that the secrets it contain must remain just that.
Despite that air of secrecy(or perhaps because of it), it has invited theories from a wide range of speculators oscillating from some of the most well established archeologists in the field to the most extreme outliers including cryptozoologists and doomsday conspiracy theorists. From this milieu three distinctive, sustaining theories have emerged. The Folio's connection to the Morrigan has also endured and the names of these unofficial schools reflect that in reference the first discovered copy.
Badb, Macha, Anand, the three aspects of the the Morrigan, a deity that, like the folio, has remained a mystery despite the tireless, and some would say obsessive, efforts to fully understand her.
Anand: