On the one hand, “Linus’ Law” asserts that if enough people collaborate to solve a problem, it becomes simple - hence open source software. On the other, even though more people have eyeballed the Voynich Manuscript in the last two years (thanks to the Beinecke Library’s scans posted on the Internet) than in the previous four centuries, [...] Read more »
Halfway through Blunt and Raphael’s “The Illustrated Herbal”, a small lightbulb flickered briefly to life in my tired head. And it was to do with the VMs’ Occitan marginalia, something that has bugged me for years…
To my codicological eyes, the VMs appears to have had a busy time in the 15th century (with three or [...] Read more »
It’s an oldie, but a goodie: first published in 1979, Wilfrid Blunt and Sandra Raphael’s “The Illustrated Herbal” (particularly the revised 1994 edition) is a must-buy first read for any Voynich Manuscript would-be herbal decipherer - if only to make plain by how much its herbal pages differ from other contemporary herbals.
Of course, Blunt has [...] Read more »
Do you fancy a little personal journal with a front cover loosely inspired by the VMs (the plant at the top of page f18r, to be precise)? If you do, someone called “Black Pepper” has put her design on CafePress… just in case you have $14 to burn. Alternatively, here’s a Voynich Manuscript-themed screensaver from Amaranth Publishing [...] Read more »
A few years ago, people Googling for “Voynich” started to see a sponsored “AdWord” link on the right hand side provocatively posing the question of whether there might be some link between the Voynich Manuscript and Leonardo da Vinci, and pointing them to www.edithsherwood.com.
Naturally, I pointed out that this hypothesis was a load of rubbish, primarily because Leonardo was [...] Read more »
A few days ago, my wife suggested that the plant depicted on f36r might be a variety of geranium: on a hunch, I thought I’d compare it with the plants in Fuchs’ famous herbal - and Google quite unexpectedly directed me to a museum in Tuscany.
You see, in 2002 the Aboca Museum in Sansepolcro embarked [...] Read more »
Over the years I’ve spent looking at the Voynich Manuscript, I’ve become progressively more accustomed to its ways, to the point that it is no longer an enciphered grimoire to me, but simply a book we cannot as yet read. When learning to juggle, the primary force which keeps the ball in the hand is [...] Read more »
Today, I stumbled across yet another Voynich book: which then led me to a whole cache of them, like a hidden nest of gremlin eggs high atop a mountain. Don’t give them any water, whatever you do…
First up was “Les Livres Maudits” (1971, J’ai Lu) by Jacques Bergier, chemical engineer and [al]chemist, French resistance fighter [...] Read more »
