Cipher Mysteries

A few weeks ago, some new ciphertexts pinged on my Cipher Mysteries radar: the story goes that they had been found just after WWII in wooden boxes concealed in the wall of an East London cellar that German bombing had exposed. Hence I've called them "The Blitz Ciphers", but they're probably much older than the 1940s... They were handed down to ...

Like many people, I've always vaguely wondered how the alchemical 'code' worked: that is, how the abstruse (and indeed playfully indirect) language of alchemy mapped onto actual things and processes in the real world. Even though the early 20th century saw a succession of natural philosophers and historically-minded empirical ...

There are colours in my eyes, history flickering and sputtering as a beautiful infinity reaches out to hold my bloodsoaked hand... * * * * * * The Brazilian girl's plan is stone-cold in its vision, fractal in its detail, awesome in its thinking. Yes, the organizers have put the necessary overnight protection squad in place: but the two guards merely ...

Blogger of the visually bizarre BibliOdyssey has a number of nice online herbal scans you might well enjoy: each page has a brief description of the related manuscript and links to other places you can read more about the subject, while each picture links to its own Flickr page (which is handy). 'Arzneipflanzenbuch' [BSB Cod.icon. 26], Augsburg circa ...

Jan Hurych has very kindly emailed in a translation of the short piece of text I uncovered relating to the 14th century Prague apothecary Antonio of Florence. With a few minor style tweaks, here it is:- The restoration of gothic painting in the house U Lilie ["By Lilly"] no. 459/1, Malé náměstí ["The Little Square"] 11. During the 14th century, this house ...

I've just received (directly from the author, thanks!) a copy of Vladimír Karpenko's admirably thorough 1990 AMBIX paper on the "cesta spravedlivá" pair of manuscripts. From his analysis, it seems very much as though these are both genuinely 15th century and (just as Rafal predicted) entirely unconnected with the VMs. Oh well! :-( Even so, the secret history of the mysterious "Antonio of Florence" ...

Fingers on buzzers for a quicky historical quiz: name these three historical characters and the unusual link they share... A 13th century speculative English monk A 14th century Parisian bookseller (and his wife) A 15th century Bohemian disbeliever in alchemy How did you do? The first one's easy, particularly for Voynich Manuscript devotees - it's the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon. The second one's also pretty easy, ...

Today's Cipher Mysteries post comes from long-time Voynich researcher Jan Hurych, who very kindly agreed to go through Otakar Zachar's (1899) monograph on the "Cesta spravedliva v alchymii" ("The True Path of Alchemy") manuscript by Antonio of Florence dated 1457. Here's what Jan found... * * * * * * * While Otakar Zachar's name is now generally unknown, he appears ...

A big tip of the hat to Rafal Prinke: thanks to a swift reply from him last night, I can now say definitively that "The True Path of Alchemy" is not the VMs (confirming Rene's suspicion), because both still exist independently. And the romanticized 1904 mention of the former by Henry Carrington Bolton that quickened my historical pulse yesterday with its uncanny ...

A vast constellation of curious books revolves around the hazily uncertain core of the Voynich Manuscript: as with most things, some are outright good, some are just plain bad, while most live in a mixed-up zone in the middle. Henry Carrington Bolton's (1904) " The Follies of Science at the Court of Rudolph II" is a poster-child for that mixed-up zone - equal parts ...