Might the Voynich Manuscript be a Finno-Baltic birth registry? Might the names of some of the nymphs really be “Ellda, Sellai, Saisa, Saillar, Sia, Ella, Sara, Saisa, Rllai, and Eillkka”?
On the positive side, Claudette Cohen already has more words decrypted than Stephen Bax (she has a plucky ten to his stodgy nine), so she should clearly take some comfort that her brave-hearted Finno-Baltic decryption is numerically more of a success than his plainly inferior effort. And she also thinks that she has found thirteen points of similarity with a 1910 map of Sortavala, though with more than a passing nod towards “Karelian embroidery” (it says here).
Cipher Mysteries readers surely don’t need an advanced diploma in telepathy to know what I’m thinking here.
“Good for you, Claudette Cohen – even though you’re wrong for about a thousand different reasons, I’m happy for you that this is how you’ve come to the Voynich Manuscript. Enjoy your stay, and try to have some fun with it!”
It looks like she independently recognized the common knotweed 🙂 No second chance to have first impression about the VMs. When I go back to read my first impressions of the Voynich manuscript – they are hilariously ridiculous.
Ellie,
My earliest days on this manuscript were spent in a daze of incredulity. I supposed that its European origins were established beyond doubt, but there was nothing in the imagery – almost nothing – I could recognise from that environment. It was only after I realised how much of what is said with great confidence has been built by placing one layer of assumptions upon another that I began feeling that I wasn’t really “through the looking glass” at all.
Still lots of slog; first breakthrough was f.25 which very clearly deliniates the distinction between the older matter and later European addition. Then the red containers.. that was a great day. And so gradually it opened out.
Not that anyone seems to want the results. At odds with almost every pet theory and not even a final pronouncement on the probable language 🙂
Diane: I have long pointed out that the Voynich’s pictures only rarely seem to refer to anything tangible, let alone anything definitively European. But that’s the mystery of the thing, innit? 😉
Nick, what do you mean by intangible? Are we moving into caves and shadows, god help us?
Diane: by “tangible”, I mean something that actually makes sense and connects with the real world in a way that doesn’t embolden nutters to propose whatever indehiscent stuff that pops into their heads. I mean, nymphs in pipes? Hybridized imaginary plants? Circular arrays of naked nymphs? Lord ‘elp us all. 🙁
Hello Nick et al,
I believe the Quire 13 diagrams do indeed refer to tangible items, albeit there are layers of reality involved in the portrayals, and they are not European in all cases. I am currently working on a detailed depiction of the representations within Quire 13 which I hope will help better display some of the layers I did not describe in my world tour outline, which was based mainly on the bodies of water and/or shorelines depicted. I hadn’t actually even discovered many of these representations at the time of posting my paper, and revelations continue to occur. I must admit there is incredulity on my part as well as I see these layers unfold, but this makes it all the more exciting insofar as the depth of knowledge portrayed in the manuscript. Most of the diagram representations dealt with thus far in my current work are tending to either support or update the earlier identifications in the paper I posted, so I am still feeling relatively confident about my original location matches. Have you had a chance to take a look? The location of the paper is attached as my website, and I had also left it in a reply earlier this month to an older post regarding the page ordering of Quire 13, which I also cover. I would very much appreciate your thoughts (and those of others reading this as well) regarding the identifications outlined.
Regards,
Linda
Hi Linda,
This is a really difficult area for me. While I understand both where you’re coming from and what you’re observing, the overwhelming problem for me is that I’ve seen so many Voynich theories that build up a sustained correlation between some series of features or details in essentially the same way, that I find it extremely hard to have faith in that whole approach as a valid way of making genuine research progress.
To my eyes, the practical challenge is how to ground these theories on historical fact rather than on sustained resemblance, because they are all (almost by definition) plausible-sounding and rational-headed. But they can’t all be right at the same time, even though they are all largely as convincing as each other: hence I really don’t know what the best overall response should be to any of them. Dunno, sorry. 🙁
Cheers, Nick
Nick,
I’m not really astonished that you should find it easier to suppose the imagery “intangible” (i.e. irrational) rather than accept that we have a European copy of non-European (and non-arab) material.
Bit like the good mother in the story of Solomon, but I doubt the ending will be as happy.
Linda’s revelations, I hope, will be assisted by her now having collected every post at voynichimagery. 😀
Diane: I used the word “tangible” (and in quite a different sense, and carefully qualified it), and have never expressed an opinion on whether “we have a European copy of non-European (and non-arab) material”; so I’m not really sure what to make of your comment.
So what shall I do with your comment? Split it into two or delete it? 🙂
PS – the idea of a world ‘tour’ or tourist in the early fifteenth century is a staggering anachronism in itself. Ibn Battuta was no tourist, and the narrative of his travels shows just how hair-raising travel could be, even for a Muslim travelling under the aegis of religion. Poggio Bracciolini’s representation of da Conti’s life in the east – as a kind of gentleman’s ride through the Italian countryside on a grander scale – is such a nonsense that it is hardly worth the trouble of reading. What it tells us is just how limited Bracciolini’s life and intelligence were, and how desperate his social ambitions.
There were no tourists as such; as far as Europe is concerned, the nearest you find are the pilgrims – and they generally went no further than the eastern Mediterranean. The “Voynich world” (as I’ve shown) is considerably larger than that.
Nick, I’m still not quite sure what you intend by ‘intangible’, but grant that I inflicted here a fury that has nothing to do with you or your work on the manuscript.
So now I’ve vented the spleen on the appropriate (fictional-archetypal) type of Voynichero, and in the appropriate place: my own blog.
Cheers.
Diane: I didn’t use the word ‘intangible’, you did, so I’m the wrong person to be asking the question. 🙂
Nick,
Perhaps you want to keep your current opinions ambiguous; that’s ok. But on reading:
“I have long pointed out that the Voynich’s pictures only rarely seem to refer to anything tangible, let alone anything definitively European”
I don’t think it is remarkable that I should have heard you as meaning that in general the imagery often seems to refer to matter intangible.
It’s not a point worth quibbling about: we’d have to check our mutual definitions of tangible and non- for a start. 🙂
And I perfectly understand any urge to keep things laconic, if not cryptic. You may recall that I used, at first, to write my offerings in the form of short papers, complete with footnotes and references. Over time, I realised that this did nothing but assist the lazy, and those less interested in my work than in finding another source to mine. Over time, I’ve offered less and less of that easy-to-digest format, and more in skeleton form, with pointers to where the information is to be found. Either way, my work has never in six years, been acknowledged or credited anywhere. Which of course has left me very vulnerable to the “re-work and publish” sort of plagiarism.
Apparently the latest excuse for such dishonesty – since it is obvious that the work itself is of value – is to excuse the taking of it unacknowledged by saying the original is ‘lazy’. The excuse used to be that it was not a ‘properly formulated theory’. In fact, my background in archaeology and lab analysis means that I do not ever begin with a theory: I begin with the evidence, and only after being convinced that I have enough evidence to rightly explain it, will I propose any “theory” at all.
Not the way modern historians and high school debaters approach objects, of course. But it works.
Just for the record – among the ‘firsts’ presented in my research was the clear identification of folio 86v as a world-map, this presented together with much of the internal evidence which had led me to that conclusion.
I was also the first to raise the issue of the Armenians – which I did in 2010, speaking of their presence in the eastern world, and especially in Nusantara.
This idea Thomas Spande took up, and researched for himself, pretty thoroughly. I am happy to credit him for most of the meat on those bones, though I myself fairly early moved away from any idea that the manuscript was from an Armenian Christian exemplar. I still hold that the region is critical to the evolution of the imagery and would have elaborated that point in my ‘Chronological strata revisited’ posts.
I also, and quite independently, came to the view that the majority of the botanical section is concerned with eastern and not western plants. I did not read Wiart and Mazar’s paper until considerably later, but wrote to Dr. Wiart and have since constantly acknowledged precedence.
I was also the first to draw attention to the unusual detail for the shorelines in f.86v – nothing like it would exist in western charts for many centuries and it stands as proof of that folios non-European origin and character. In both cases, I tracked the source – first of the idea of a ‘square world’ and secondly of that kind of drawing, though I have not published the second.
I also traced and explained that the imagery consists of discernible chronological strata, and that the latest of these connects clearly and closely with the western ‘portolan’ charts whose emergence and centres of production I described, together with some documents which illustrate the difficulties facing people working on script and language.
With all objectivity, I have to say that most of the “new theories” which are appearing on Stephen Bax’s site these days are no more than a re-formulation of evidence and conclusions which I’ve presented these past few years. I do not suggest that individuals there took their material directly from me; but I have more than once been told by a colleague that they have been told “in the abstract” that one or another of my conclusions “is an idea that might be worth working on”.
I had hoped that at some stage, my name and work might at least be registered among those recognised by the ‘Voynich researchers..’ or ‘Voynich theories’ posts at ciphermysteries, but as always, such things are ad.lib.
Again, for the record. My conclusion, overall, is that the specialists who commented on the manuscript before the involvement of Friedman’s group were correct – the matter in the manuscript is early; it is a compilation and though I have not seen evidence of medicine, the fifteenth century compilation/copy was possibly made to serve medicine. I agree with Panofsky that the source-works were gained from ‘Spain or somewhere southern’ and that the most reasonable explanation for the matter in these images is that they had come from communities of eastern Jews. The enciphered or encoded text – I agree – might not have had this form before our fifteenth century manuscript was made, but I do not see this as inevitable. In my opinion, the determination of a certain group within Voynich studies to quash any suggestion of non-western or non-Christian origins for the matter in this manuscript, and to see that any contrary proof is ‘re-worked’ to conform with it are the chief reason why the study as a whole has not moved since 2002 and some might say not since Brigadier Tiltman’s few perceptive observations.
PS if you’re interested in Fulgentius, you should study him in parallel with Origen and Ephrem the Syrian. imo.
Dear Diane,
As a regular lurker and occasional poster here I have endured your hysterical rants for years. Time and time again people have tried to tell you what you just won’t hear: enough about the plagiarism already, it’s all in your mind.
Your website is a maze of rambling posts which are exhausting to read. No one will ever plagiarize them because no one is masochistic enough to want to suffer reading them in full. You expect your poor readers to trawl through years of your posts and to deduce what may or may not be your original work, when you yourself consistently fail to attribute the material you use.
The claim that you are the “first” to imagine that the VMS might be oriental, that it might compile older material, that a folio with a TO map on it might be a reference to… a map (really?!) or that anyone suggesting any of this is ripping you off somehow, is completely ludicrous: as you yourself admit in the above post “I agree…” people have been following extra-european leads on this MS almost from the get-go.
Finally, please stop acting as if you are the only person with a college degree to have ever laid eyes on this MS, or even the only person with qualifications in Art History. If only people were qualified, they’d agree with you, right? Do you think that art historians are always in agreement about art and artifacts? If so, please burn your diploma.
What is even more despicable than your delusions of grandeur is your idea that somehow non-academics, or more broadly those who disagree with you, should not bother investigating at all (how not to Voynich).
To you there are only two categories of Voynicheros: those who are “plagiarizing” you and those who have different ideas from yours and therefore, shouldn’t bother with the MS at all…
Megalomania breeds paranoia and you are one pathetic example of this sad devolution. Please, do get help.
Good luck!
It saddens me to keep finding that the manuscript itself is far more straightforward than the people commenting on it.
Dear Goose,
Thank you for your input.
Since you feel so strongly on the point, I wonder if you can assist. I am always concerned about not recognising precedents.
Can you name anyone before me who:
1. recognised that folio 86v was a map of the world, referring only to the primary document and its internal evidence (not ‘imagining’)?
2. Anyone who, before me, demonstrated the eastern origins of vessels in the ‘pharma’ section?
3. anyone who before me had demonstrated, and explained, that there are details in folio 86v which relate it to the fourteenth century western ‘carte marine’ or “portolan chart”.
None of this, you understand, is the result of a “theory” or what I “imagine”. It is an explanation, with comparative examples and documentary evidence of what the folios mean.
But perhaps you are better acquainted with the herbal crew? Do you know someone before me who should be credited either with my analysis and explanation of how the botanical images are constructed or, on the other hand, the individual identifications I’ve offered?
How about a precedent for my analysis of folio 75r? Anyone? Anyone who would be able to claim honestly that my work was not the original?
What about my analysis of the winds diagrams? I really couldn’t find any precedent for that, either, though you may know better.
All in all, it seems as if you are reluctant to believe that the study of a fifteenth century manuscript can depend on anything but ‘free-for-all’ imagination, and so you imagine that any exposition is nothing more than that.
But my blog allows comments, and notice of precedents are always responded to.
Speaking of which – where does one find any of your original contributions to this study? Seriously.
Pt 1, as you admit on your own blog, was made well before you by P. Han. Same for pt 3 about the portolan charts, which you acknowledge had been made before in the same post on your blog. Once again you are being disingenuous here.
Re: pt 2, your blog discusses the vessels of f88v alone, not “the pharma section”. Furthermore, as shown in the W. Lechner presentation mentioning Samovars, or the pages at the Nabataea.net, or countless others, many people have had a passing thought that and other parts of the MS may (MAY, as in it’s a possibility, nothing more) reflect oriental influence. What you mean by Eastern is also conveniently vague, which allows you to claim that anyone suggesting any origin (or even influence) from Lebanon to Hong Kong is therefore plundering your blog… what a joke.
What is most ludicrous is the idea that you have “demonstrated” or established anything beyond doubt. Your interpretations are just that. Your “demonstrations” on the “vessels” are no more or less convincing than the theories put forward by Rich SantaColoma, who has considered these objects as optical devices. Or is he also someone who “shouldn’t bother” because he has a different view from yours? This point is also true of the interpretation you make of 86v: it looks like a map, but is it a world map? You haven’t proven that, just done what everyone else does, which is post a bunch of pictures that sort of look like they might be similar to VMS illustrations.
You now claim that disagreement with you means disagreeing with “anything but free for all imagination”. This is so silly it needs no response! By the way, imagination is not the enemy. Ego, in your case, certainly is.
What convinced me to confront you was your arrogant response to Linda, who had the misfortune of sharing a theory about the VMS as “not European”… which you immediately responded to by accusing her and others of plagiarizing your site. Linda’s work draws nothing from your blog, but you would have had to gaze beyond your own navel and actually read her link to see that.
You do realize that extra-European elements have been suggested ever since Baresch’s 1639 letter to Kircher, right? Oh but let me guess… Georg Baresch robbed you!
Hi Nick,
Thanks for taking a look. I can understand the reticence to offer an opinion given various other theories, but I don’t see my correlations as being quite in the same category as any others I’ve seen. Can you give me examples of other presentations which fit into the same category? I can’t be sure of which you mean to compare, although I have some in mind.
Myself, I’ve not ruled anything out at this point, the layers of information that I’ve seen so far feel like they were meant to be unwrapped slowly, each layer both confirming and detailing the previous layer of information, so much so that it could easily contain unrelated information as well that might require an alternate perception of what is displayed from the one I am currently utilising.
Perhaps my next paper will help, although it is still based on comparisons of the imagery. I think this time the comparisons will better allow opinions to be made on their veracity, if not their origins, which I will also touch upon. I’m about 3/4 the way through with the next level of detail, I hope to upload soon. I’m hoping this next paper is going to help show the true nature of such items as the rings, olive branch, spoon, and cross, and I think my identifications of these items will be surprising to most.
My two main ideas towards the decoding of the text in this quire are to a) try the Cartagena to Florence imagery pattern with the letters, words, and/or lines. i.e. put one underneath, let the next one go beside, then the next one underneath that, etc. I did try it with letters but I will need to take a different approach for which I am not yet properly prepared. b) try to figure out the correlation between the double labels on the diagram I have identified as representing Lake Urmia, and the rivers that I believe are signified by the diagram. Perhaps it is a Rosetta Stone of sorts with the diagram elements standing in for the third language.
Hi Goose, thank you. I’ve been able to delete the words in my head now after seeing them posted.
Hi Res, I’m not sure if the manuscript can be described as straightforward, but I do admire its political neutrality in its surface presentation of information. I am very much enjoying peeling the onion.
I think Diane is right about the manuscript incorporating information from disparate societies, although I’m not sure as to which are included, but I suspect we’re dealing with far more ancient material than anyone has been working with thus far.
Regards,
Linda
Hi Linda,
It would be an interesting challenge to compile a ‘landscape’ of visual Voynich theories, each tucking a sprawling set of disparate drawn features under a worryingly wonky wing. I can already think of about twenty such off the top of my head, but I suspect the real figure would be closer to a hundred or so. Probably best done as a (somewhat depressing and TL;DR) blog post rather than trying to squeeze it into the marginal confines of a comment box. 🙂
Cheers, Nick
Dear colleagues,
I think any broil of the kind (although unfortunately not rare in scientific circles) misbecomes the VMS research community.
Scientific priority is an important thing and it should be respected, but frankly the VMS research has hitherto led to so little decisive outcome, that it is a bit ridiculous to discuss any priority, and moreover to put it in the first place, as if anybody who has noticed the map of the world (I just take the first ready example and by no means wish to offend Diane) made an achievement equal to inventing radio or something like that.
The VMS research is, in my opinion, a good example of a research conducted by a wide community, where “priority” is blurred due to the wide nature of internet discussion, where everyone has a chance to make an input, and even most weird theories can be valuable in that they provide some hint or occasionally turn the research in the right direction.
In proposing hypotheses and suggestions, as well as in criticizing those, we should be guided by the criteria of scientific truth, and not by any subjective or personal considerations.
Let us spend our ardor on the further research, not on the useless personal disputes. When the VMS is deciphered, future historians will distribute the priorities in a fair way.
Nick,
I think it is about time that I pulled all my conclusions together and tried to elaborate some s.u.t. for you to demolish. I’m as reluctant to do this as Darwin was, and had hoped to defer the moment another twenty years or 😀
Darwin is a curious precedent to cite, given that he is alleged to have plagiarised the theory of natural selection from (among others) Patrick Matthew and Albert Russell Wallace…
Dear Anton,
Your high mindedness I appreciate, but unfortunately the world of publishing in much more hard-headed, and I do feel it a nuisance to have to insist here on the originality of my discoveries about the manuscript, given that the usual courtesies have rarely been observed in regard to my work.
Since my analysis of folio 86v provides not only the first discussion of it as a map – that credit should be given here one would think should be routine – but it also serves as key to much of the other explanation offered for the widely varying styles and content of the rest.
Imagine that I were to publish all Philip Neal’s translations without reference to him, or adopt “with a twist” Nick Pelling’s work on codicology, or take without attribution entire slabs from Voynich.nu, or the whole argument which Rich created about the ‘Drebbel’ telescopes as explanation for the pharma vessels. The issue is not that members of the Voynich audience do not become indignant about plagiarism, only that they do so with such selectivity.
SirHubert –
well said. Thanks for lightening the moment..
Diane: for what it’s worth, I suspect people have proposed ‘map’ explanations for f86v for at least 20 years (and I’ll have to check D’Imperio when I get back home this evening).
Nick, you seem profoundly jaded, brah.
Thanks – I have a copy. And some time ago.. quite some time ago, I checked with you on this point. You directed me to a couple of vague remarks, which I’ve acknowledged. Otherwise, zilch. (That comment to P. Han’s blog was one of mine; I’d forgotten it).
from d’Imperio regarding one section only ( ). “An outer ring of text surrounds the whole, its start clearlv marked by a decorative sign. This design. with its double-four
structure. may also refer to the seasons, ages, humors, or the like. It may also have a geographical implication, since
the [T-O] svmbol occurs elsewhere in medieval iconographv as a form of symbolic map of the inhabited world.”
As I’ve pointed out -in detail – the small graphic above the north roundel (thus marking North) is not a T-O map, though it may imply that the place referenced was considered a ‘little paradise’. I’m increasingly inclined to think it might represent Tblisi, but the evidence is not sufficient for proof.
I don’t think that such vague, brief remarks qualify as an identification of folio 86v as a world-map whose reference extends from Avignon and Ceuta(?) in the west to at least the Persian Gulf in the east – with full details of routes and explanations of geographic features and other structures. Do you?
Diane: thanks for looking that up, you’ve saved me 5+ minutes of drudgery this evening. 🙂
As to other visual theories (including nine rosette maps), I’ve started on a post trying to collate a lot of these. Luckily I’d listed a few of them here back in 2010 – http://ciphermysteries.com/2010/05/29/a-miscellany-of-nine-rosette-links – which has plenty of comments by a certain ‘Diane’ person. 😉
My point (and others’ too, I believe) was simply that the notion that the nine rosette page contains a map is in itself quite old, and I don’t really see how the degree of sophistication of the expression of that notion really affects priority. After all, one could say (quite reasonably) that a large part of “Curse” is just a riff on this page as a map of Northern Italy (sort of).
Nick: thank you for reminding us all of that post and the comments which follow. Very illuminating in the circumstances 🙂
Pure sophistry, Nick.
I have of course mentioned those few, very vague suggestions, but you might as well suggest that Philip Neal deserved no acknowledgement for his translations because the letter from Marci to Kircher had been translated by Voynich in the 1920s.
What I have done is the equivalent: I have translated and annotated the imagery. Would you have agreed that your ‘Curse’ should not have been published, simply on the grounds that someone, somewhere had made some vague allusion to an idea – a possibility – that some of the drawings might refer to architecture?
Are none of the people working on the botanical section to be credited with their first proposal of this or that plant because “everyone knows” the botanical section has plants in it?
No, this is pure sophistry. The first analysis of folio 86v which described it as a world-map, oriented it correctly, dispelled the illusion that the “castle” was meant for one in Europe, identified the triangular court and tower as most likely in Avignon, linked details in the folio to the western ‘portolan’ cartes marine, and tracked the route in detail.. was the undersigned, and I think it not unreasonable to claim that it is an original contribution to the study.. just one of many Iv’e made, to tell the truth.
Sorry you don’t see it that way.
I have always referred to this blog as a rare example of scholarly integrity in Voynich studies. Some conclusions require re-evaluation.
.. and this includes P.Han’s work. My analysis of the folio doesn’t agree with his, but he certainly deserves credit for seeing the thing as a map and taking some effort to interpret it. I’ll attend to that now.
Diane: of late, you have been persistently ventriloquizing straw man arguments into my (virtual) mouth, then expressing aggrievement with the position you perceive me to have taken, then finally rebutting those supposed arguments and claiming triumph (and usually priority). I’m sorry, but this ill becomes you.
Right now, there’s only one person here employing sufficient logical and verbal acrobatics to qualify as “sophistry”.
I suppose in the end, Nick, it’s up to the publisher’s legal department to decide. No need to fret about it in public.
In that case, Diane, would you please stop fretting so publicly?
SirHubert, I have been approached by a publisher, who reasonably enough wants to be sure that the work is not imitative and makes an original contribution to this study. I did not think it would prove such an enormous thing. Not after having donated as much time and effort as I have, and the result being – by any reasonable criteria – original.
But that is certainly my last word on this subject.
Diane: I would certainly agree that your “work is not imitative and makes an original contribution to this study”. But then again, that can be said of many people…
He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.
The Hunting of the Snark (An Agony, in Eight Fits)
I like her interpretation better than any other interpretations so far. There is a tangible truth in what she says about vain bloke-centered approaches. Anyway, there are too many theories and very few tries of translations. At least she tried giving translation to the text, and her theory looks only incidental to that, and nothing outlandish like the zillions of theories without a single plausible snippet of translation.
Thomas,
Thank you.
I just finished reading Claudette Cohen’s blog, and I found it refreshing, for the same reason I find Linda Snider’s contributions to VMS studies a joy to read: it’s always humbling to see what person with a fund of knowledge seldom seen among VMS researchers sees when they filter this enigma through their conceptual filters.
Claudette’s frustration with being a woman navigating many male worlds shows clearly. I can see why some might find this theme of her blog and her Voynich theory extraneous, hard to relate to, or annoying in some other way, but I for one respect the candor and humor with which she approaches this cross she’s borne. She’s very upfront with potential sources of bias, which I’ll take any day over a VMS theorist with a hidden agenda.
What I like most about Claudette’s blog and theory is that is considers a possibility that — like the hoax theory — is hard to prove in a way that makes it unsatisfying: The idea that the VMS records real human communication that had little or no influence from [I]or[/I] to any other chain of comminication that left traces in the historical record. An example that I dreamt up once would be a traveling merchant or missionary, who invents a new script to write an unwritten language he encounters in his travels, and then writes a book in it by taking dictation from a village elder. Claudette Cohen, meanwhile, theorizes that the VMS was by women healers for other women healers somewhere in the Finnic world, and recorded colloquial informal speech and trade jargon, in a new script. This script, like Sequoyah’s Cherokee syllabary, was designed by a barely-literate person with a superficial familiarity with Roman writing, [I]for[/I] other barely-literate women to learn easily, and hide burning-at-the-stake-worthy secrets from the prying eyes of literate men. In either my scenario or Claudette’s, the VMS clearly falls into the category of Outsider Literature: only loosely related to dominant mainstream literary traditions if at all, and completely untempered by the feedback of critics and customers. Since it’s highly unlikely the unwritten, vernacular, jargon-laden, and possibly pidginized or syncretic source language in either scenario is still spoken or was ever historically documented, this makes any potential translation highly speculative, even if the source culture and subculture from which the VMS comes are correctly identified.
I can see why Claudette’s blog seems to have gotten very little attention in the major fora where Voynich researchers gather. For good reason, status in these circles awards to those who follow a strictly bottom-up construction and defense of theories, founded on demonstrable facts alone. Respect is in short supply for VMS theorists who go the opposite way, proposing a grand overarching theory for the book’s origin, and then fitting the facts to the story. But if there truly is a paucity of discoverable scientific and historical facts to provide any more context to the VMS than we already have, I fail to see what other option we have, if we’re to ever solve the mystery, as much of an affront to the scientific method as it may be.
The hard part is abandoning a beautiful fleshed-out theory, when the facts as we know them just don’t fit.
David: it’s nice to know that even an out-there fruit-loop Voynich theory can attract admirers. :-p
David: I very much like Claudette’s theory, the problem that I have with it is that I think it is very far from the truth for so many reasons that I could list. Often the most attractive theories are the least plausible.
One thing that I did glean from Claudette’s writings and which I had not noticed is that artillery/cannons are often represented on Medieval maps., something that fits a bit with my own analysis if the 9 Rosette page.
David,
When you speak of ” .. a traveling merchant or missionary, who …writes a book … by taking dictation..” take heart.
It is more or less what Georg Baresch believed in the seventeenth century, and which one or two researchers have thought possible since then.
I have never ever observed that any Voynich researcher was not taken seriously, just because she is a woman.
It could only be if she were an annoying woman.
For me, among the Voynich researchers I most respect there are numerous women. And some of the more annoying researchers are men.
Nick and Mark, I’ve only taken a cursory look at Claudette’s theory, but I must say, when I read her transcription alphabet (crib, essentially) and her translation of a number of words using a variety of different Finnic languages, I felt my credulity stretching thin. I also know far too little about art history to appraise the Finnic cultural motifs she sees in the imagery (I’d trust Diane’s input on something like that.) But my appreciation for Claudette’s theory is more general, even if she’s dead wrong about the details: She provides a plausible explanation for how we ended up with A) a medieval book that doesn’t appear to belong to any known tradition of literature, and B) written language that is recognizable as written language, but doesn’t seem to behave statistically like any other written language we have from that time period.
Diane, I’ll humbly admit it’s quite possible the idea you mention that I describe as “mine” was not something original I came up with, but that I don’t remember when and where I learned it. I hate it when that happens.
David: I agree with you in some respects. A theory doesn’t need to be right to be valuable and Claudette has made an interesting effort. On balance I am of the view that we benefit from more distinctive theories rather than fewer; if they are rehashes of existing theories then I think they serve little value. Now I know this is something that some other people will completely disagree with.
Anyway I do think there is some value in Claudette’s work, but one has to exercise caution before embracing any Voynich theory.
I suppose as one of the few surviving females who have attempted to contribute to the manuscript’s study I’ll have to be the one to say that while I do not dispute that Rene has “never ever observed that any Voynich researcher was not taken seriously, just because she is a woman”, one can only sympathise with his having such poor powers of observation.
To suggest that any woman who opposes him, or who has better observed the succession of women attempting to contribute but systematically ignored until they leave – unless they behave as thoroughly girly girls, entreating male advice, pleading their ignorance, never attempting to offer, or pursue a formal argument, but instead say constantly that it’s “just an impression…just an idea”.
The usual first stage – let’s take the forum format – is that the woman is warmly welcomed and her first few contributions met with civil responses, especially if she asks advice from the ‘old hands’ and seems set to adopt whatever she is told as gospel.
Asking questions, however, brings responses indicating that a woman who asks critical questions, such as ‘Where can I read the original argument and evidence which introduced x idea to the study” will incur an admonishment or ‘kindly advice’ not to do that sort of thing. Persisting has been met in the past, on some forums, by ‘pack attacks’, as has any expression of doubt about whether e.g. there has been an over-emphasis on a sentence from Marci’s letter of 1665, compared with the near-complete ignoring of Georg Baresch’s letter to Kircher.
You might think these are fairly interesting academic questions, and so they might be treated if raised by a male, or by a woman on an academic mailing list. I can attest to the reaction on two Voynich forums. Every comment I made about *it* – the manuscript, pigments.. even posting a good reference to the library … was met with comments that always, invariably, unrelentingly began “you….”
A woman with a theory no less without foundation in fact than most male Voynicheros is put in virtual ‘isolation’. She can make a thread. She can post to the thread. It will be pretty rare that anyone will engage in conversation.
I suppose a woman with a point of view, or who has the effrontery to expect authority figures to justify their assertions is annoying by definition.
Even a highly qualified linguist such as Emma Smith, though she at first received genuine interest and attention to her work (linguistics being a manly work) was eventually put into the ‘silent room’ because she failed to produce any support for the old, and now mainstream sort of theory.
I’m sorry to say, but it is simply true that there are enough of the old-fashioned sort of chaps in Voynich studies that the atmosphere still reigns by which the shape of one’s genitals are tacitly believed to determine the quality of one’s mind.
Where are they… Barbara Barrett who had an opinion about the Voynich ‘hands’? dear bdid1dr, who for years responded to comments and posts and received, sometimes for months, no engagement at all. Sure I think she was wrong, but really it was because a woman who isn’t ‘girly’ is deemed responsible for the hostility. The usual ‘blame the victim’ thinking. Voynicheros, as a group, constantly behave badly towards female members. They like to feel all ‘club-able’ and matey, and since the woman isn’t the right type to treat so, it’s annoying. Therefore, the ‘ungirly’ women who aren’t public figures with their photos on facebook and websites, can be treated rudely, and insulted, because they’re not behaving as ‘girls’ should do – and there’s no bloody way the sex difference will be ignored by the current lot.
I think we need a forum in which the male population is limited to the younger, and more civilized generations. Say 35 and under. Sexism is so oooold.
By the way, how have the women at voynich.ninja been faring lately? anyone left a comment on Ruby’s blog, lately? Or on mine, come to that?
Any woman interested in the Vms – here’s the tip. While the guys concentrate on a collaborative exercise – you concentrate on the manuscript itself. And be prepared to do a lot of serious – I mean serious – reading and learning by yourself.
Now I suppose Nick will tell me off for annoying everyone with another too-long comment. (He’s right about the ‘too long’ bit, though).
Diane: no, I’ll tell you off because I think you’re talking out of your arse here. A “silent room” for women Voynich researchers? I’m really sorry, but I think that’s just imaginary bullshit of the highest order.
The reality is that hardly anybody leaves comments on any Voynich blog, whether male, female, “girly” or alien. I believe the reason people do leave comments on Cipher Mysteries is that I let most stuff through, censoring only the really industrially toxic stuff. I even let your comment here go through, even though I disagree with basically every sentence and every thought behind every sentence in it.
D.N. O’Donovan: “Even a highly qualified linguist such as Emma Smith, though she at first received genuine interest and attention to her work (linguistics being a manly work) was eventually put into the ‘silent room’ because she failed to produce any support for the old, and now mainstream sort of theory.”
I think this is complete nonsense. It borders on pure fantasy.
I’ve seen many respectful remarks about Emma’s work, more than a lot of people get, and I don’t see anyone “ignoring” her (I assume this is what you mean by the ‘silent room’) nor have I ever seen anyone reject her work because it is not “old mainstream”. She simply hasn’t been posting as much lately.
The world is changing. Judging people by their sex / gender is completely out, specially in Europe. (Maybe it’s still different elsewhere).
I could name at least 5-6 women who greatly contributed / are contributing to progress on the Voynich MS, but it would be inconsistent with my previous statement to actually do that.
It is also worth mentioning that there are numerous ‘anonymous’ contributors to the various fora, whose sex / gender is completely unknown. And it doesn’t matter. And even if they called themself Alex we would still not know.
And it does not matter.
I think is fair to say that we all have subconscious prejudices and biases; these kind be the obvious ones gender, race and as well as other less obvious ones that we have no awareness of.
I think we can all also be prone to attribute prejudices or biases to the disagreements that we have amongst ourselves.
Discerning true biases from only perceived biases is hard.
I think if there are biases in this area then they are not sufficient to significantly inhibit someone from making real progress, ultimately nobody is preventing anyone from doing Voynich research and if one is significantly concerned about such biases then one could use a pseudonym.
D.N. O’Donovan wrote: “By the way, how have the women at voynich.ninja been faring lately? anyone left a comment on Ruby’s blog, lately? Or on mine, come to that?”
Ruby is cherry-picking. Anyone can find words in a 200-page manuscript by cherry-picking. The test of accuracy is in larger blocks of text and that’s not happening.
I left comments on Ruby’s blog (and on the forum) a long time ago. Nothing has changed, so there’s no further need for comments.
D.N. O’Donovan: “I think we need a forum in which the male population is limited to the younger, and more civilized generations. Say 35 and under. Sexism is so oooold.”
This is the most sexist (and demeaning) remark I’ve ever heard from any Voynichero.
Wow — looks like I woke a sleeping dragon when I made passing reference to the anti-sexist vibe Claudette Cohen’s blog gave me. Sorry Nick, I wasn’t trying to start drama. I only brought this up because I think it’s key to understanding how Claudette interprets the VMS. Just let me state for the record that I did not mean to imply that Claudette’s experience of sexism happened in any Voynich circles, only that it colors her viewpoints on the VMS.
I’m hardly an A-lister in the world of Voynich studies, but as far as I’m concerned, Emma May Smith, Ellie Velinska, Linda Snider, and the woman who goes by Searcher on voynich.ninja (her real name escapes me at the moment) are VMS scholars in good standing. Diane, I really hope you persevere in getting your research published and recognized despite your differences with others in the field, because you’re clearly a serious art historian with a lot to contribute. The politics of scholarship is certainly a whole different challenge than scholarly inquiry itself, and not nearly everyone who succeeds at the latter succeeds at the former, sadly.
I’ve been reminded of the “denial” scene in “Finding Nemo” more than once, recently. So maybe the time is right for:
“Voynicheros Anonimous”.
Scene:
Bruce: “Hi I am Bruce and I have a really bad Voynich theory”.
All: “Hi Bruce!”.
Bruce: “I know I’m wrong and the others are right and I will work hard on changing myself.”
All: (applause)
Leila: “Hi I am Leila and I have a really bad Voynich theory”
All: “Hi Leila!”
Leila: “Actually, it is not a bad theory but it is being ignored because of X,Y,Z”
All: “Denial!!!”
The most impressive recent example is a several-thousand-word explanation at one blog, why a prominent theory is not finding support from everyone.
Nick – spell check – Snyder or Snider?
Diane: Snider (it says here).
KJP – … and ageist. 🙂
David, I’ve just noticed your kind remarks. In fact I was commissioned by an academic publisher to provide 2 vols of essays for publication.
For the usual reasons, I don’t want to say more here, but if you like you’re welcome to email me. You can find the address on the ‘contract’ page at voynichrevisionist.com
Diane mentions sexism and ageism. I note Diane has not added anti-Australian to her list of prejudices. I supposed we can state a prejudice against ourselves on the basis of every attribute we have. I suppose one could add anti-science versus anti-arts biases given that some Voynich researchers are firmly from a science background(I.e. familiar with cryptography and statistical analysis) and others from an arts background(I.e. familiar with medieval history and manuscripts). Clearly many researchers try to bridge that science/arts gap.