So no one knows who wrote this book, no one can read it, and absolutely not a single person living can tell you, with any kind of authority, what it’s about. Like a good mystery? Welcome to the Voynich Manuscript.
Discovered by a Polish bookseller amidst a lot of boxes abandoned by Jesuit priests, and carbon dated to the 15th century, the Manuscript is WEIRD. Written on treated calf skin, the script looks elegant in its tawny-gold strokes and calmly stacked lines. What do these words mean? Who knows? World class cryptographers have had a go at it, and have come up blank. It’s not Latin, not Greek, not any kind of code that anyone can recognize. There is a clear repetition to the symbols, and the same ‘words’ pop up with a frequency that suggests a kind of obsession, but, well…what does that imply? Anything you’d like it to, basically.
Oh, and shall we talk about the illustrations? Let’s talk about the illustrations. They are INSANE. At first it looks like some sort of scientific manual on plants and herbs, but as we turn the pages each flower becomes more bizarre, until the thorny spines and twisting roots more resemble deep sea animals then any kind of flora. And then, just when you were getting used to THAT, the author starts drawing naked women in, I dunno, public baths? Except the baths connect to OTHER baths on the same page via a plumbing systemic so anarchic it would have made Dr. Seuss green with complication envy. And THEN there are stars, and mandalas, and those naked women are back holding solar systems around what are, possibly, zodiac signs and THEN…
This thing is so unique it’s fascinating. It’s an obscured glimpse into the mind of someone with TREMENDOUS focus, and is, I think, a great example of what the normies like to call ‘Outsider Art’ (ie. art made for the pleasure of the artist alone, and the rest of the world can go to hell). Is this a fancy of some forgotten duke? A secret alchemical text? The gardening section of the Necronomicon? I have my own theories, and I’m sure you will have yours as well. Dive in, and give it a ponder. Me like books.
Me Like Books 