#VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT CONSPIRACY THEORIES SKIN#
#VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT CONSPIRACY THEORIES SERIES#

#VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT CONSPIRACY THEORIES SKIN#

For instance: the manuscript was probably produced in Southern Germany or Northern Italy the bookвЂ™s parchment was probably made from the skin of fourteen or fifteen calves. They all take stabs at the bookвЂ™s provenance. In the essays accompanying the Yale edition, experts try to penetrate these mysteries. Voynichese bears so much resemblance to a Western language I found myself mouthing the вЂњwords,вЂќ like when we sing along to lyrics we donвЂ™t actually know.

ThereвЂ™s a limited alphabet and an irregularity to the paragraphs itвЂ™s as if ideas are really being communicated. The language shows no signs of correction or emendation, yet neither does it seem randomized. WhatвЂ™s interesting about the Voynichese is that sentences never repeat themselves. After more drawings of fictitious plants and devices that strangely look like hookahs, the manuscript concludes with pages and pages of Voynichese. The pharmacological section, the last part of the book, feels almost familiar by comparison. If thereвЂ™s a climax to the Voynich Manuscript, itвЂ™s during the baths. Within this fantastic idyll, still other fantasies create jarring swerves: Is that a mermaid in the bath, or a woman being happily devoured by a fish? A few have windows, while others look like wedding cakes floating in midair. Some baths look like holes in the ground, others seem made of solid stone. SeussвЂ“like aquifers or pipes into baths in which rosy-cheeked blonde and brunette women cluster. The Voynich Manuscript probably wouldnвЂ™t be so famous were it not for the balneological section, in which an already bizarre book becomes something like medieval science fiction. In the center of some charts are what look like flowers or stars in others, youвЂ™ll find echoes of conventional astrology: goats, what could be a scorpion but looks more like a lobster, and a courtier with a crossbow. Within many of these astrological wheels are sketches of nude women-some pose in buckets, others have stars attached to their hands like balloons on strings.

#VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT CONSPIRACY THEORIES SERIES#

It includes a series of foldout illustrations of what resemble celestial charts, though theyвЂ™re incongruous with any calendar. The second section, the astrological, is the most detailed of the manuscriptвЂ™s sections, and it suggests a total cosmological system. A creature, a mix between a dragon and a sea horse, suckles on a speckled leaf. Colorless flowers perch on leaves with spikes like Venus flytraps. Hairy bulbs sprout rust-red tubers and yellow pods. ThereвЂ™s something unsettling about the drawings itвЂ™s almost like a catalogue of extinct species. The long herbal section, our first indication that something is off, comprises colorful drawings of what look like uprooted plants alongside paragraphs of text. And the illustrations donвЂ™t illuminate the mystery they only throw further shadows on the darkness. The symbols arranged in prosaic lines look like language, though the significance of the вЂњVoynichese,вЂќ as itвЂ™s called, has never been established. ItвЂ™s traditionally divided into four sections-herbal, astrological, balneological (pertaining to baths), and pharmacological-not for what those sections are but for what analysts, grasping for understanding, think they resemble. The Voynich Manuscript isnвЂ™t a beautiful book in fact, itвЂ™s crude and cheaply done. But no matter how hard people search for answers, the book refuses to yield meaning-itвЂ™s totally incomprehensible. More cynical thinkers believe that the manuscript is a hoax, probably created by medieval charlatans. Some have suggested it was written by the philosopher Roger Bacon, while others insist it must have been bestowed on humanity by aliens. Scholars have tried to decode it for centuries. ItвЂ™s as outside of genre as dancer Vaslav NijinskyвЂ™s diary, and indeed itвЂ™s hard to shake the feeling that it was composed by someone descending into madness. And while the illustrations appear to be plants or stars or baths, in fact they have no analogue in the known world. It isnвЂ™t written in a foreign language rather, this language is totally unknown. Yet as soon as you try reading the book, it resists. The Voynich Manuscript, an early fifteenth-century volume housed in YaleвЂ™s Beinecke library, looks at first like any such edition, with its loopy text and colorful illustrations.

Even editions made from common calfskin can inspire the same awe as the upper reaches of cathedrals. Medieval manuscripts are survivors-of Viking raids, of damp and decay-but even with delicate, fragile pages and binding, many of them remain luminous, their vellum illuminated in gold and silver, embellished with vegetal and animistic imagery, and sketched through with the marginalia of generations of owners.

Voynich manuscript conspiracy theories