Other Euro Voynich books…

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Having just blogged on up-to-the-minute German Voynichiana, what of the rest of Europe? Here’s a quick sampling to whet your appetite, should you ever wish to feast on such morcels…

Having worked with Enrique recently (he generously translated my History Today telescope article so that it could appear in Astronomia magazine), I’m very much looking forward to the forthcoming English translation of his novel… even if I do still have to wait until June 2009. *sigh*

Elderly professor, Voynich manuscript, high-level Vatican/Jesuit conspiracy, corrupt cardinal, people learn of the VMs and then they get killed, how will it all end?, la-di-da.

Yes, once again it’s those pesky Templars and their accursed book (what, the VMs? Quelle surprise!) *sigh*

The VMs, the Philosophers’ Stone and quantum physics all get woven together here: though any Voynich book without evil Jesuit priests and lost Templar treasure will always move swiftly to the top of my list, who’s to say what this will be like? All the same, first-time novelists probably have more than enough things to worry about without lumping the weighty baggage of the VMs onto their camel’s back.

According to Dennis Stallings, Maugenest’s story describes how Roger Bacon wrote the VMs during his 13-year confinement – and how Bacon’s ideas are so powerful that anyone who now tries to read them falls into an irreversible coma. Hmmm… though I must confess that Jacques Derrida’s “Of Grammatology” did give me a headache for a week afterwards, Maugenest might just be stretching believability past its breaking point here. Oh well!

German Voynich books…

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While adding categories to some old blog posts just now, up popped a mention of the Karlsruhe Virtual Katalog (KVK). I normally use KVK to find specific non-fiction holdings: but today I wondered what otherwise-unknown Voynich masterpieces it might be able to tell me about. At Dennis Stallings’ prompting, I’ve just started to add non-English Voynich novels to my Big Fat List, so this was a good opportunity to expand its scope in a rather more , errrm, “Teutonophile” direction…

What can 32.60 euroes buy you these days? Not a lot of explanation about the VMs, if the Amazon blurb for Roitzsch’s book is anything to go by. Somewhat unbelievably, its Unique Selling Point is that mainstream Voynich researchers will be eternally grateful for any insight readers might have into this mystery. Sadly, “condescending and hostile” might be a better prediction. Oh well. 🙁

Again, 19.90 euroes for a “Mystikthriller” might seem a little steep (particularly for those in the UK looking at the pound’s current 1:1 parity to the euro), but what the hey.  As with The Voynich Enigma, a Templar seal on the cover flags what you’re getting – a Euro-zone admixture of Church, Templar secrets, and (I’d predict fairly thin) cryptography. Ah, bless.

Alexander the Great, Persia, Voynich Manuscript, terrible secret, sexy archaeologist, Yale, bla bla bla. Sorry to be so immediately negative, but when will these people learn?

A bit of an oddity: 34 pages long, 8 euroes, a German-language magazine devoted to cryptozoology puts out an issue focusing on cryptobotany – and no prizes for guessing which bizarre manuscript is invited to the party. Might possibly be an interesting read – but I’ll admit to being somewhat skeptical.

The real curiosity of the day: a book describing the life and (odd) works a German mystic called Frederika Hauffe (1801-1829) whose convulsions and visions led to bizarre trance-like writing in both a “spirit language” and a “unique coded alphabet”. DeSalvo’s putative link between Hauffe and the VMs is anyone’s guess – but perhaps it would be worth having a look at his 224-page, pleasantly-affordable book. 🙂

Vinland Map latest…

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Two up-to-the-minute papers on the Vinland Map (the Beinecke’s other “VM”) for your delectation and delight.

Firstly, a 2008 paper by Garman Harbottle called “The Vinland Map: a critical review of archaeometric research on its authenticity” in Archaeometry, 50, pp.177-89 – this tries to discredit / undermine the analytical & spectroscopic chemical analyses of the Vinland Map by McCrone (1974) and Clark (2004).

And secondly, a late-2008 paper by Kenneth Towe, Robin Clark and Kirsten Seaver that seeks to vigorously rebut Harbottle’s rebuttal (and, indeed, appears to succeed).

Much as I would like the tricky fragments of cipher on the Vinland Map (as best described by James Enterline) to be a genuine piece of late medieval cryptography (after all, this is a cipher history blog), and even though I suspect Towe, Clark and Seaver might have overreacted somewhat to Harbottle’s paper, the science currently does seem to be more on their side than on his. Hmmm… I really ought to review Kirsten Seaver’s (2004) book “Maps, Myths, and Men: The Story of the Vínland Map” (where she names her suspect as Joseph Fischer, though her argument has been criticized for lack of evidence) here soon… so much to read, so little time. Oh well! 🙁

For a recently updated (and generally very comprehensive) online discussion of the Vinland Map, I heartily recommend J. Huston McCulloch’s Vinland Map webpage.