Comments on: DIY Voynich theory construction…

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:05:55 +0000

Hi Emily,

Please email Erni, your helpful and insightful comments will probably be exactly what he needs. He’s put a lot of work in over the last few years, and it takes (I can say from experience) a really sustained act of will to give that kind of research data some final shape.

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….

By: Emily

Emily — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:03:36 +0000

Thanks for the offer, but if you feel your paper isn’t really finished, I’ll wait for the revised version.

By: Ernest Lillie

Ernest Lillie — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 21:29:27 +0000

Thanks for the nod, Nick.

Indeed, Emily — In 2004 I put together a paper in which I summed up my ongoing project of interpereting the manuscript imagery based on similar images and diagrams I had found in various of the manuscripts of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
If you’re interested in discussing it — have Nick forward you my e-mail address and contact me directly.

I no longer maintain a copy of this paper online as I have added a lot to since and find it to be in sore need of a rewrite.

Thanks.

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:24:01 +0000

Hi Emily,

I’ll email Erni, he might well contact you directly, as his Dante theory is a work in progress.

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….

PS: thanks for the link!

By: Emily

Emily — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:14:53 +0000

Rich: I do like the idea of the Voynich manuscript as a prop book(which could imply that the text is meaningless, something like lorem ipsum in a made-up alphabet). And the idea of Shakespeare himself playing Prospero, which should lend support to the idea that Prospero is his self-insert character(the playwright as magician now bidding farewell to his art), a theory I’ve always liked.

Nick: Can you post a link to Erni Lillie’s theories (Google isn’t very helpful), or recommend any books on this matter? I’d like to know more about the Voynich-Dante connection in general. Also, here are some 16th-century charts of the Inferno which remind me vaguely of the “rosette” diagrams and the Voynich images of people in pools: http://www.worldofdante.org/gallery_vellutello.html

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:14:45 +0000

Hi Rich,

For what it’s worth, I think the Voynich Manuscript is like a glorious, warped microscope that magnifies (but distorts) the specks of Renaissance cultural interests embedded inside its pages – such as astrology, astronomy, herbalism, architecture, engineering, science, etc. And this is perhaps the way in which the VMs has most similarities with Shakespeare’s work, in that both sets of researchers endlessly criss-cross over progressively finer and finer details, like trying to tease out a long-dead mollusc from an empty shell.

So… will we close in on the author of the Voynich before they close in on the identity of the Bard?

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:05:06 +0000

Hi Emily,

If my cunning plan was to design the VMs as a book-selling prop, I can only say that it was not so much Machiavelli as Baldrick.

Dante Alighieri, yes: several times, but most notably (and recently) by Erni Lillie.
Shakespeare, yes (Will as well): but almost always in some secondary, hard-to-define way.
Though perhaps the right question to ask is “who hasn’t been linked to the Voynich?”

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….

By: H.R. SantaColoma

H.R. SantaColoma — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:32:37 +0000

Emily: Tongue-in-cheek mention or not, Shakespeare is a member of the circle of influence I am looking at. Not as a writer of it, of course, but as one who was immersed in the lore of the ancient tome… think of his books of Prospero… mysterious ancient texts, encompassing all the knowledge of the world. And it is believed by some Shakespeare scholars that the Bard himself may have played the part of Prospero at the Tempest performance for Princess Elizabeth and Frederick, in 1613. Ask yourself what the prop book for this would have looked like. But also, his fascination in the New World, and the utopian society. And he was believed close to Francis Bacon, and Ben Jonson, and had a symbiotic relationship with many of the other great thinkers, artists, Rosicrucians and writers of his time and place… many of whom I believe influenced the content of the Voynich. All of these were quite fascinated with mysterious ancient texts, ciphers, “The Arts” and alchemy, and also forgotten cultures, and imaginary ones… IMO, the Voynich reflects quite well Shakespeare’s time, and influences.
http://proto57.wordpress.com/

By: Emily

Emily — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:56:25 +0000

This post is a very good summation of the whole conspiracy theory “industry”– facts don’t matter(nor do sensible questions that might prove you wrong) so much as what you want to be true.

Here’s my theory: the Voynich is a 21st-century hoax by one Nick Pelling, presumably created so he could sell books– and on the Internet, he has spun an elaborate web of plausible-seeming historical details surrounding the manuscript, drawing more and more researchers into his Borgesian fantasy world. *wink*

That, or it enciphers President Obama’s real birth certificate. *wink again*

Lastly, a question with no winking involved, regarding how these theories might involve “anyone born between 1200AD and 1600AD”: has anyone ever suggested that Dante Aligheiri was involved somehow in the creation of the Voynich? Or Shakespeare?