Could the Voynich Manuscript really be anything to do with the group of supernatural beings who allegedly visited the Navajo homeland in 1996, as documented by Maureen Trudelle Schwarz in her 1998 Ethnohistory paper “Holy Visit 1996: Prophecy, Revitalization, and Resistance in the Contemporary Navajo World“? Her abstract begins:-
“In the spring of 1996 supernaturals visited the Navajo homeland to deliver a prophetic message of potential import to all Navajo people. In response, thousands of Navajo made pilgrimages to the site, while others had ceremonies conducted in their home communities and ceremonial practitioners made pilgrimages to the Navajo sacred mountains. In national recognition of the event, the Navajo Nation Unity Day of Prayer was established.”
Now, this other person’s “Restore The World” website thinks that the Voynich Manuscript (specifically the Quire 13 “balneo” section) documents the Navajo belief that the “First Man” escaped the flood by planting a cedar tree, then a pine tree, then a male reed, then finally a female reed. So somehow the VMs is caught up with an impending (2012) world flood, these visiting supernaturals, and the Navajo: a pretty potent cocktail of concepts to be mixing together!
OK, visual correspondence with some Q13 pages is a pretty thin reed to be building end-of-the-world-flood theories upon, but… it is what it is. Enjoy!
oh dear.
Diane: yeah, that’s what they all say when told of their impending death by drowning in a global flood. 🙂
I suppose you could be “grasping at reeds” as well as “grasping at straws” 😉
Hi Nick, and Happy New Year! Actually I see a possibility. “In addition, there are 9 wonders which certainly need to be restored in order to save humanity… ” and they leave 6 entries open. Why wouldn’t one restored mystery be the meaning of the VMs? Here’s our chance!
I’d settle for someone revealing the mysteries of Windows 7!
Creator of the website here:
“So somehow the VMs is caught up with an impending (2012) world flood, these visiting supernaturals, and the Navajo: a pretty potent cocktail of concepts to be mixing together!”
VM has little to do with the visiting supernaturals. I was reading the article by Maureen Trudelle Schwarz and her description of the Navajo creation stories and the words “female reed” with “The water followed them as they climbed inside the giant reed” made me immediately recognize a parallel with the VM (Females in VM, something that looks like a reed with water coming out of it.) Supernaturals are a different story.
I find it very odd that this Story that the Navajo have been passing on for hundreds of years matches the illustrations in the VM, which existed on a completely different continent and “In 2009, University of Arizona researchers performed C14 dating on the manuscript’s vellum, which they assert (with 95% confidence) was made between 1404 and 1438.”
Also, in closely related Hopi prophecy…
“The transformed elder brother, the True White Brother, will wear a red cloak or a red cap, similar to the pattern on the back of a horned toad. He will bring no religion but his own, and will bring with him the “Tiponi” tablets. When he returns to find his younger brother, the Tiponi will be placed side by side to show all the world that they are true brothers.”
Nick Pelling, I think you should take a copy of the VM’s pages and go see the Elders of the Navajo and/or Hopi nation. I have reason to believe that the VM is a transcription of the “Tiponi” Tablets that were given to the “Fire Clan” (White people) long ago. Even if they aren’t, I bet it would be a good experience and nice vacation.
Well, *splashes bucket of cold water*
to bring things back to a more reasonable place and time:-
I’ve found some interesting parallels in the anthropomorphic imagery to the style employed in pieces of a hoard credited to Albanian workmanship. The date to which those pieces are assigned is later than the date I’ve argued for the first compilation of the Voynich ms material, but nonetheless the similarities are there.
More interesting, perhaps, for Voynich researchers is that this hoard was discovered before 1902, and pieces gradually acquired by Pierpont Morgan between 1902-1907.
This nicely coincides not only with Voynich’s activities, but also with those of Aurel Stein.
What I should dearly like to learn is the nature and extent of Wilf Voynich’s connections to the antique/museum/antiquarian trade of his time, and more specifically whether any communication is documented between himself and Stein, or himself and Pierpont Morgan.
All insights gladly received.
Oh, two articles on the hoard:
Kathleen J. Shelton, Gesta XVIII/1 pp.27-38
(jstor.org/stable/766787)
and the seminal article by strzgowski, referenced in footnote 1 of Shelton’s article
.. just in case.