Keeping with this week’s Spanish theme, here is a small selection of Voynich tapas to dip into the spicy sauce of your prejudices rich life experiences. Tasty!
(1) René Zandbergen’s recent Voynich talk seems to have gone off OK: here’s a brief mention of it by Hugh Deasy in a blog post.
(2) Here’s a novel (though only partially formed) Spanish Voynich theory presented in the form of a Youtube video: it suggests a link between the Voynich Manuscript and Juan Ponce de León (1474-1521), the soldier who famously went searching for the fountain of youth (though this was only said of him after his death). The irony, of course, is that Florida (to where he travelled) has come to be stuffed full of retirees doing much the same thing. Personally, I suspect he was more interested in gold than any claims of eternal youth: but never mind. Oh, and if you do choose to look at the webpage, don’t forget to turn the shouty rock music backing track off. 😮
(3) Here’s a Voynich theory that is even less well-formed than the above (yes, it’s possible). “Lord Trigon” suspects that the VMs is an elvish school book that fell up from Middle Earth through a well, in basically the same way that he/she once threw his/her own 5th grade maths book down a well (and said he/she’d lost it). Ah, bless.
(4) Finally, a big Cipher Mysteries Guten Tag! goes out to Michael Johne, who puts up brief German summaries of (usually) English-language Voynich news stories on his blog. At first, it was a little strange to see my own posts pop up there (a bit like having a multilingual stalker), but I’m starting to get used to it. I hope to read some of your own posts there soon, Michael!
The “Elvish textbook” idea reminds me of a joke-theory I’ve occasionally contemplated while doodling(sometimes Voynich-inspired plants and celestial designs, alongside political caricatures and repetitive geometric patterns) on the margins of my school notes– the Voynich manuscript is just that, namely school notes with probably-irrelevant margin doodles. I have nigh-unreadable handwriting and some of the subjects I’ve taken(like Economics) involve lots of graphs… so maybe if I threw my Econ notes into a well, I’d be giving the equivalent of the Voynich manuscript to the Elvish people, thus more than compensating for their lost textbook.
Hi Emily,
Having taken Economics myself, I can only say that I do not condone treating Elves in such a wantonly cruel way. They are a proud and ancient race, and have done nothing to deserve such a vicious act. 🙂
Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….
PS: I am strangely reminded of the “Elveranto” gag on p.117 of “Bored of the Rings”, not sure why. 😮
Hi Nick,
don’t tell me you know Hugh…
Rene
Hi Rene,
Yeah, we’re all in a great big conspiracy. 😉
Actually, no I don’t, sorry to disappoint. 🙂
Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….
Supposedly the Voynich Manuscript was possibly written by John Dee and Edward Kelly. If this is True then the language would be something similar to Enochian or one of the many languages alchemists used to write with back then (I think there are 70 languages or so). Im sure this must have been checked before now but you never know. Or maybe its read like Merlins writing….Can only be read while looking at it in a mirror.