UFO’s - real? imagined? us?
The Voynich
Welcome to our ‘insightful, tense and sensibility’ blog where Basic Instinct meets Jane Austen and sits down to have a cup of tea and a good debate.
We will cover the topical and tropical. From great books to weird mysteries. We will debate and get down to the bare bones of the matter, quarks and all. If it holds your interest, piques your imagination or captivates your enthusiasm then we’ll discuss it.
I thought to get the ball rolling as it were it would be a good idea to revisit The Voynich a 230 page long, 7 inch by 10 inch, vellum covered, unsigned manuscript which continues to be a mystery. It consists of 17, 16 page, quires and approximately 170,000 glyphs. It was found in 1912 by Wilfrid M. Voynich, a Polish-American book dealer, in the library of a Jesuit college near Rome and now languishes, as item MS408 in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/SearchExecXC.asp?srchtype=CNO
The text is written with a quill pen in an unidentified script using a unique alphabet and the pages decorated with strange and mystifying water-color images of astrological symbols, naked nymphs and unfamiliar flowers. It is suggested that it was written in the late 1400’s but so far it has defied all attempts at decoding and has baffled the world’s leading cryptographers and linguists. Some believe that Roger Bacon orchestrated the manuscript writing it in code to avoid persecution.
Recent thoughts are that the strange language is actually an old form of Welsh however as it seems there is not any recent examples of this type of text it can only, at best, be counted as one of the theories on the table. It has also been suggested that the language is a polyglot oral tongue based on a type of Flemish, French, Italian and High German but again all attempts at a plausible cipher has eluded historians to date. According to the nomenclature there are unfortunately several pages missing and currently the manuscript holds 240 pages of the original estimate of 270. The script reads smoothly and does not appear to be a labored attempt to lay down a difficult code but more an easy script describing items which are commonplace to the author. The red, blue, brown, yellow, and green drawings, although captivating and attractive, are however somewhat crude and, in some instances, physically incorrect. Additionally a couple of the plants which bear resemblance to identifiable vegetation appear to have mismatched roots producing odd looking hybrid plants.
It appears to have six sections: Herbal, Astronomical and Zodiac, Biological, Cosmological, Pharmaceutical and Recipes. On face value the type of hairstyles evident on several of the nude bathers would suggest that it was created some time in the latter part of the 1400’s. It is a shame that the bathers were not clothed as their dress would have provided another valuable clue. The first documentation regarding the book states that it was purchased by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II for a princely sum of 600 gold ducats but his scholars failed in their quest to break the code and the manuscript was lost for decades until Voynich discovered it again.
Is it an example of an elaborate hoax written purely to extort money from a gullible, occult obsessed monarch? Or does it actually hold valuable information awaiting its day of explanation. Will it only be deciphered when we are ready to know and understand the hidden meanings? The unusual mixture of items from strange plants to bathing nymphs may lend itself to the idea that it was written as an herbalist homeopathic, possibly alchemistic book but written in code to protect the author from accusations of heresy.
Some scholars feel that it is Glossolalia (speaking in tongues) a stream of consciousness or channeling by the author as there are some similarities between the illustrations and those drawn by people with intense migraines however to prove this is in fact Glossolalia the text would have to be deciphered. Steganography or micrography have also been put forward as possible explanations that is that the words themselves do not actually mean anything but there are hidden meanings within the text. Could the script be, as it conforms to parameters within Zipf’s Law, an old natural language? Maybe one used by the Cathars? Or did Wilfrid Voynich himself pen the codex?
One thing is certain however that after all these years and intense study by brilliant minds the secret of the Voynich has yet to be disclosed. It is beyond belief that it has withstood all attempts to unlock its hidden words. It is as mysterious today as it ever was and if it was written as a hoax than it was masterfully engineered and one wonders who on earth would take such time and meticulous care to perpetuate such a deception.
My thoughts however are that the manuscript was written by a young boy who is both confused by his sexuality and fascinated by the process of reproduction. Leonardo da Vinci lived in the recognized time period, he was brilliant, homosexual, loved mirror writing and enigmas, studied plants and the human form and even from a young age was a truly unique individual. Could the Voynich have been written by this troubled, creative and inquisitive mind as he quantified his adolescent dull days in rural Florence? If you compare the magnificent sketches in his later Journal there are similarities and how many people in history could have written a codex which has defied interpretation and translation for centuries other than the truly incredible genius of Da Vinci? So, I feel that, the Voynich screams its penmanship secret to all: The one and only, Leonardo Da Vinci.
