Here’s something you might like: a handy cut-out-and-keep map of historical conspiracy clichés, inspired (I’m sorry to say) by Peter Blake & Paul Blezard’s “The Arcadian Cipher” (2000). Of course, there were countless more conspiracy clichés I could have included (aliens, Roswell, MIB, etc), but seeing as the Elders of Zion paid me handsomely to leave many of those out, you’ll just have to figure them out for yourselves. 🙂
Though these are grouped in a (vaguely) thematic kind of way above…
- Red – art conspiracies
- Blue – political conspiracies
- Yellow – religious conspiracies
- Grey – conspiratorial bodies / mechanisms
- Green – architectural conspiracies
- Purple – literary / textual conspiracies
…please don’t imagine for a minute that there’s any real abstract / analytical structure to this – it’s just a bunch of stuff to bear in mind when picking up historical conspiracy mystery thrillers. Oh, or when constructing demented theories for well-known historical cipher mysteries (I’m sure you know the ones I mean). Enjoy! 🙂
Now what you do is make all of these boxes into identical cards.
You also make several cards which all say “Voynich Manuscript”.
You then proceed to put all the cards in separate stacks (one stack for each color and one stack for the VMS cards) face down, shuffle the cards, and pick one card from each stack.
Read the cards.
Congratulations, you now have your own Voynich conspiracy theory!
The pyramids were built by Teutonic knights from 2012 based on readings of sacred shapes enciphering Langue d’oc texts by Francis Bacon who received letters from the future written by Nikola Tesla!
And those sacred shapes are what the VMS enciphers!
Of course, it all makes sense now…!
Hi Nick,
out of curiosity, what is the Sendivogius conspiracy?
Thanks, Rene
If there is a single alchemical name which seems to thread through everything, it’s Michael Sendivogius. Yet is there a conspiracy to keep him out of conspiracies?
Oh… now I’ve told you, I’ll have to kill you. 🙁
The illuminati already tried and failed 🙂
By the way, I did find this one:
http://www.2iceshs.cyfronet.pl/2ICESHS_Proceedings/Chapter_15/R-7_Soukup.pdf
but I’ve seen more solidly based conspiracies…
Cheers, Rene
Sendivigius, Bacon, Tesla, da Vinci, and so on… these were great people, great minds. It is undeniable that they had their influences on every aspect of alchemy, science and history. Whether or not their circles of associates and influences can be defined as “conspiracies” is a hazy issue. If you have a group of people who both share and hide information… perhaps even project an air of mystery, in order to elevate their self-importance, or to protect themselves from religion and the law… is that a conspiracy? I’ve no doubt it can be seen as such. And the reality of their conspiratorial links was so well hidden, they keep novelists and historians guessing to the present day.
I’m no fan of conspiracy novels. But perhaps it is an imperfect way either celebrating the mystery of real and manufactured conspiracies, or attempting to understand them in a more emotional context. But people are people are people… and if someone is motivated to write a conspiracy novel in 2009, I would not be so quick to assume that in a much more gullible time, when we were supposedly more easy prey to our imaginations, it would not be even more likely to find fictions inspired by them. Well, we know it is so… there are cases. One is the great 1616 conspiracy novel, “The Chymical Wedding”. That work was both believed and mocked in it’s time, just as a Dan Brown fiction is today. Of course I believe the Voynich may have been created under much the same motivation, and that it causes much the same confusion, as a result. The New Atlantis does not dwell on it’s conspiratorial nature, but it is in-arguably linked… as it contains clearly RC themes. The motivation to create fictions… sometimes including fictional conspiracies… has always been there, and is, even today, as your post amply points out.
Sooner or later someone’s going tp notice that a figure on fol86v wears a hat similar to that worn by Sedziwoj in his portrait. (You didn’t hear it from me).