Cipher Mysteries

If you accept the basic notion that the Voynich Manuscript is both (a) very probably a genuine (if perhaps rather convoluted) cipher, and (b) mostly rational, then you run into the issue of what kind of sensible stuff lies beneath - in other words, its "secrets". All the same, how sure are we that our modern notion of "secrets" is anything like the Early Modern / ...

Was the "Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus" really written by John Dee? I first saw this several years back, when I stumbled upon Joseph Peterson's transcription of it on the Esoteric Archives website. The link with Dee seemed (and still seems) to me to be spurious: even though he is mentioned right at the start of the text, for ...

Day One of the Early Modern Research Techniques course was easy to write about, as was Day Two: but Day Three? Tricky... If I close my eyes, the single image from it burnt into my retinas is of Charles Hope sardonically half-warning participants about the historical Class A drug that is archival research. Yes, he personally had partaken of ...