Cipher Mysteries

For a decade, I've wondered whether any of the Voynich Manuscript's circular drawings depict astronomical instruments - for before satnav there was celnav ("celestial navigation"). Here's a brief guide to three key instrument types from the VMs' timeframe, and my current thoughts on the enigmatic circular diagram on f57v... * * * * * * * A key navigational problem of the 15th ...

I've just had a nice email from my old friend GC, asking what I think happened with Quire 8 ("Q8"). You see, the problem is that Q8 contains a whole heap of codicological oddities, all of which fail to join together in a satisfactory way:- f57v has a bottom-right piece of marginalia that (I think) looks rather like "ij" with a bar ...

Peter Marshall's (2006) "The Mercurial Emperor: The Magic Circle of Rudolf II in Renaissance Prague" takes a sideways look at everyone's favourite mad Holy Roman Emperor, by using those around him as a kind of slightly wonky mirror. The choice of who makes the cut is a bit arbitrary in places: John Dee (who never came close to gaining Rudolf's favour) gets rather more ...

If (like me) you enjoyed Roman Polanski's film "The Ninth Gate" (I happened to see it in a hotel room in New Haven, giving it a particular resonance for me) which I mentioned recently, you might think about reading the novel from which it sprang, Arturo Perez-Reverte's "The Dumas Club". Its main protagonist, Lucas Corso, gets described early on as ...

I've often wondered what Lynn Thorndike thought of the Voynich Manuscript: after all, he (his first name came from the town of Lynn, Massachusetts) lived from 1882 to 1965, and continued to publish long after his retirement in 1950, and so was active before, during and after the 1920s when Wilfrid Voynich's cipher manuscript mania/hype was at its ...

I'm just collecting my thoughts after an exhilarating lecture by William Kiesel (the publisher and editor of Ouroboros Press) on magic circles at Treadwell's in Covent Garden (Christina's post-lecture blog entry is here). William presented a long series of images of magic circles (manuscripts diagrams, woodcuts, paintings, etc) from the Middle Ages right through to the 19th ...

One very early cipher involved replacing the vowels with dots. In his "Codes and Ciphers" (1939/1949) p.15, Alexander d'Agapeyeff asserts that this was a "Benedictine tradition", in that the Benedictine order of monks (of which Trithemius was later an Abbot) had long used it as a cipher. The first direct mention we have of it was in a ninth century ...

Anyone of a Voynichological leaning who is near London on Wednesday 19th March should consider popping by Treadwell's in Covent Garden for a lecture by William Kiesel on "The Circle of Arte - Magic Circles in the Western Grimoire Tradition" (Ouroboros Press). It's £5 (though reserve a place earlier if you can, it's only fair): as normal with ...