Cipher Mysteries

The century since Wilfrid Voynich unearthed his now-eponymous manuscript has seen many groups of codebreakers take a tilt at its cryptographic windmills. The most famous of these was William Friedman's "First Study Group" of WWII cryptologists: but I've recently become interested in finding out to what degree WWI codebreakers tried to get in on the act. Those were the halcyon days ...

I remember when I first saw the "Roger Bacon Manuscript": Wilfrid Voynich brought it with him to Philadelphia for his lecture back in 1921 - my old friend Bill Newbold was there, taking in every word, nodding like the crazy-but-brilliant spiritualist and Antioch-obsessed nutter he was. So it just had to be Bacon behind it all, right? I sat at the ...

Ethel Voynich's story (1864 - 1960) is quite fascinating: while the young Ethel ('Lily') Boole was studying music in Berlin, she became inspired by Stepniak's revolutionary writings. As a result, she became closely involved with Russian dissidents living in London, and in 1893 married the very charming Wilfrid Voynich. Voynich himself often travelled around as part of the ...

When Wilfrid Voynich bought his (now eponymous) manuscript in 1912, it was accompanied by a 1665 letter from Johannes Marcus Marci to Athanasius Kircher. In that, Marci noted three things that Raphael Mnishovsky (King Ferdinand III's Czech language tutor) had told him about the strange artefact:- "that the said book belonged to Emperor Rudolf" "that [Rudolf II] presented 600 ducats to the messenger who brought ...

Diane O'Donovan has asked if Cipher Mysteries can help make researchers aware of her recent work on the Voynich Manuscript. Rather than just host her paper here, I've split it up into a number of individual blog posts so that you can leave feedback on each individual section; and have added a commentary connecting each part with existing research. This first tranche relates to her herbal / ...

Do I have a problem with the fact that the Internet appears to have a machine continuously cranking out second-rate stories about the Voynich Manuscript? No, not really - an "unreadable historical manuscript" presses many of the cultural buttons left exposed by large numbers of mainstream Netizens. What does annoy me, however, is that virtually every VMs account ever written fails to come ...

Why, lookie here. An eBay trader is selling a $999 crystal ball allegedly from a boarded-up Voodoo family estate. It says here that the ball was manufactured according to the "alchemic recipe" given in "Apocalypsis spiritus secreti" (by the Venetian Giovanni Battista Agnelli, a book best known from its 1623 printed edition, but John Dee owned a copy too). And ...

Much as I enjoyed watching Micky Bet covering the Voynich Manuscript, I couldn't help but wonder how much better it would be had it had a slightly funkier script. So (courtesy of the kind people at Overstream) I added my own captions. Enjoy! :-) (If you can't see this in your browser or email client, here's a ...

Alas, sometimes the limitations of Twitter are all too apparent. The follow-up to my previous VMs limerick simply refuses to be shoehorned inside the 140 character limit:- A dodgy bookdealer called Wilfrid Hotly denied he had pilfered Or hoaxed, faked or shammed His "Book Of The Damned" (That he’d bought off a geezer in Ilford) Alternatively... Did the Emperor purchase "The Voynich" For 600 ducats of coinage? Perhaps he had hoped It ...

Just to let you know that a Voynich Manuscript radio interview I gave a few days ago (either download it, or click on the Flash Player play button [half a screen down on the right] to hear it) has just gone live on the Red Ice Creations website. They wanted me to chat about all things ...