Let’s imagine you had two fairly unhealthy (but specific) obsessions: (1) retro jars, bottles and containers, and (2) the Voynich Manuscript. When added together, might these two wrongs somehow make a right?
If that just happens to be a question you have long pondered, then I’m pleased to be able to tell you that your wait is over! The free electronic book Glossodahlia by Tarek Joseph Chemaly, and pulished by 7UPstairs Publishing surely places this whole contentious issue beyond discussion. Tarek writes:-
The Voynich manuscript has been decoded. Its flowers have given up their secret. They speak in tongues – glossolalia. And they tell stories of brokenhearted cosmic lovers and of a retired intergalactic bureaucrat as she tends to her garden once baking is done.
With my Voynich researcher hat on, I’d point out this whole thing feels like a collage scraped from the Beinecke’s old “CopyFlo” images. Also, not all the pages are plants (a couple of pharma jars have crept in as well), and tiny scraps of Voynichese pepper the edges of the collaged images, like hardy barnacles clinging to curiously shaped ships.
Anyway, make of it what you will. 🙂
Nope, not gonna go there, either! I just got back from visiting the Boenicke’s “V”-blog discussion page. I left directions for how to “visit” the Ancyranum Monumentum Augustus archaelogical site, and verify my translation of folio 116v and citations (in re Busbecq’s long visit in Suleiman’s court (of which I’ve recently documented on various of your “Voynich” discussions. I’ll be giving you a break for a few days while I compile my notes/downloads. I’m almost as fast at documentation as I am at researching the WWW unlimited resources.
You know I won’t be far away — just lurking while taking a coffee break now and then. 🙂
Good lord!!
Just so you know (if you don’t already): apparently Carolus Clusius visited the Ottoman territories before Busbecq. So, now I’ll continue my search of Leiden U’s correspondence files of the two gentlemen and compare the chronology of their visits to the Ottoman territories and subsequent correspondence. I’m also going to search for any correspondence by Dodoens.
Nick and all
speaking of collages.. I’ve just added 5 more to my silly postcards about Voynich-related things. Rather proud of nos. 40-44 (inclusive). They imagine what might happen if popular media decided to make the Voynich ms theories the subject of a 2-anchorperson tv series.
Let’s hope it never happens in reality.
oh dear – a Voynich theorists’ reality “house” show would be truly silly, wouldn’t it?
*thinks*
Diane, “thinks” — deeply?
The difference between constructing plots for an internally-consistent historical novel, and writing what is meant for history, is that in the first case the story need merely be plausible, but in the latter should be demonstrably true. That is, it cannot pass over as irrelevant any aspect of the primary source. It must accord with the document’s dating, imagery, stylistics, palaeography, pigments etc., and be contextualised by reference to other works of similar age and of certain provenance.
This is not a complaint. it’s a genuine question and I’m genuinely puzzled.
On the one hand you have a person who writes a single essay, such as the ‘Crossbow’ essay – which reads well if you accept all its unexamined hypotheses. It’s about one figure in one folio of the manuscript. It becomes a classic and constant reference.
Or you have people like (with all due respect) Klaus Schmeh whose work seems – I stress seems, because no-one seems to say differently – to do no more than summarise and re-present work he’s found done by other people. He becomes termed an ‘internationally recognised Voynich expert’.
On the other hand, you have mountains of genuinely well informed and original research, plus continuous reviews and summaries of others’ current ideas – all here in this blog, by Nick Pelling, from about 2008 or so until whever he got/gets sick of it. Recognition? Footnotes? Acknowledgement? Scarcely a sausage – except insofar as the data is reprinted or re-presented with no acknowledgements. Nick may not care. I find it peculiar.
And then of course, there’s me. Literally NO-one but Stolfi looked continental Europe when I began work on the manuscript. I’ve analysed its sections in detail, written more essays on the botanical section than the crossbow chap did and so on… same for me as for Nick.
Sometimes I think it’s because people don’t so much want to understand the manuscript as to ‘win’ by having people believe their own pet hypothesis. Other times I wonder if it’s just too hard to deal with external cultures and learn all that contextual history and stuff.
But other times.. well it just makes NO sense.
You know, Nick, the mailing list has just re-invented the idea of ‘per-degree’ astrology. And now, for some reason, it suits the current mood tho’ Rene agrees that ‘the list’ has always know it, and known the basis for the manuscript lay in ancient texts. News to me. When I said so, the one and only ‘ancient’ item mentioned by anyone was Ptolemy’s tables.
Oh – and apparently now no-one is ‘against’ a middle eastern origin for the Vms materials. THAT’s nice to know. Very new.
PS
And someone on high seems – at LAST – to have registered and approved the fact.. explained in detail by me these past five years… that the imagery and codicology indicate a non-authorial work. Three months ago there wasn’t a single person accepting it. Now, it seems, it’s all ‘go’. But no-body in particular recognised. WAINS.
I ‘get’ the Voynich manuscript.
The Voynich manuscript is the most mysterious manuscript in the world.
That’s sure. Definite. No argument.
So anyone who says it’s not mysterious is wrong.
That means anyone who thinks they understand it is wrong.
Imagination, fantasy, unprovable propositions and plain failures are all ok – really. Really.
So long as they don’t pretend to be right, they’re not wrong, because they add to the proof that it’s still the *most mysterious manuscript in the world*.
You can’t say it’s not mysterious. You’d better not claim you can read it. It’s *the most mysterious manuscript in the world*.
Anyone suggesting different – well, clearly something wrong there, probably you.
Repeat after me: it … is.. the …most…mysterious…etc.