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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.necronomicon,alt.magick,alt.lucky.w
From: Dennis 
Subject: Re: Voynich Manuscript
Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2000 23:53:47 -0500

	A few comments.  

tyaginator wrote:
> 
> 
>    In two works by Colin Wilson, "The Return of the Lloigor" and The
>    Philosopher's Stone, the Voynich Manuscript's code is cracked and
>    the volume turns out to be the Necronomicon. The Voynich
>    Manuscript really does exist; however, it remains indecipherable
>    to this day.

	The Voynich Manuscript = Necronomicon is all over the
Web.  None of us in the 
Voynich mailing list (call us the Third Study Group,
TSG, for reasons I won't bore you with) 
even gives it a thought.  To the best of my current
knowledge, the Necronomicon ain't.

> 
>    Here is a description of the Voynich Manuscript from the
>    Catalogue of Yale University Library, where it currently resides:

>     A history of the numerous attempts to decipher the
>      manuscript can be found in a volume edited by R. S. Brumbaugh,
>      The Most Mysterious Manuscript: The Voynich "Roger Bacon"
>      Cipher Manuscript (Carbondale, Illinois, 1978). 

	Brumbaugh thought that the VMs was basically a hoax
created by Dr. John Dee and his friend Edward Kelley to
get 600 gold ducats out of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph
II of Prague.  He did claim that the labels for plants
and other things meant something, in Latin enciphered
by a method he never made completely plain, but which
sounds like a code based on a telephone keypad; 2 could
mean b, c, or d.  He also claimed to be drawings of a
sunflower and a pepper; thus the VMs postdates
Columbus.  

	The TSG has entirely rejected Brumbaugh's ideas.

>       Folio 117v
>      includes a 3-line presumed "key" opening with a reference to
>      Roger Bacon in anagram and cipher.

	The "key" was used by William Romaine Newbold in his
claimed 
decipherment.  Newbold's method allowed so many
variations that one could read many things into the
text and because of that it is rejected.  Newbold
believed the Roger Bacon attribution and thought Bacon
had made many scientific discoveries several centuries
ahead of his time.  

	The best book on the VMs is 

THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT, An Elegant Enigma, M. E.
D'Imperio
8-1/2" x 11", ix + 140pp, Paperback, ISBN:
0-89412-038-7 

available at
http://www.aegeanparkpress.com/books_by_author.html#D

	D'Imperio sums up all work on the VMs up to her
original publication date of 1978.  She read most of
Roger Bacon's works and decided that he was a
plain-spoken person who would not have written
something like the VMs.  Newer info about dating,
letter styles, etc. also argue for a later date for the
VMs.  No one even talks about Bacon anymore.  

>      Written in Central Europe [?] at the end of the 15th or during
>      the 16th [?] century; the origin and date of the manuscript
>      are still being debated as vigorously as its puzzling drawings
>      and undeciphered text. 

	The best thinking now is 1450-1500 in northern Italy. 
The date stems from 1) the nymph's 
hairdos, 2) the similarity of VMs script to late-1400's
cipher scripts, and 3) the similarity of VMs script to
the "humanist hand", a writing style that was the
bridge between medieval Gothic style and the Italic
style that led to modern typefaces.  The "humanist
hand" was only in use for several decades of the
1400's.


>      The identification of several of the
>      plants as New World specimens brought back to Europe by
>      Columbus indicates that the manuscript could not have been
>      written before 1493. 

	See remarks above.

>      It is very likely that Emperor Rudolph acquired the
>      manuscript from the English astrologer John Dee (1527-1608)
>      whose foliation remains in the upper right corner of each leaf
>      (we thank A. G. Watson for confirming this identification

	The sale by Dee and his pagination are still the
majority opinion but are 
hotly debated.

>      Emperor Rudolph seems to have given
>      the manuscript to Jacobus Horcicky de Tepenecz (d. 1622);
>      inscription on f. 1r "Jacobi de Tepenecz" (erased but visible
>      under ultra-violet light). 

	Tepenecz got the patent of nobility in 1608, so 1608
is the earliest firm date for
the VMs.  A lot of recent research has uncovered new
facts of the VMs' whereabouts since then, 
but I'm not up on all that, unfortunately.

>    There is a great deal of information about the Voynich Manuscript
>    on the Web; among other places:
> 
>    The European Voynich Manuscript Transcription Project Home Page.

http://web.bham.ac.uk/G.Landini/evmt/evmt.htm

>    Voynich Manuscript Page.

	Probably Jim Reeds':

http://www.research.att.com/~reeds/voynich.html


>    Voynich Manuscript Bibliography.

	Definitely Jim Reeds' :

http://www.research.att.com/~reeds/voynich/bib.html

	Also good is that of Jorge Stolfi.  Good work, and 
has pointers to almost all VMs pages on the Web:

http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/

... and of course my own; I have a mini-FAQ for a quick
intro, and
I have pointers to most VMs images on the web (about
65, of which 15 in color) :

http://www2.micro-net.com/~ixohoxi/voy/voynich.htm


>         From the Necronomicon Glossary, by Dan Clore.

	First convince us that it exists.

> or try
>         internet.voynich

	I presume you mean "use a search engine".  My favorite
is the meta-search

http://www.dogpile.com/

It searches about 20 engines.  You can search a phrase
like "Voynich Manuscript".

> 
> tyaginator

	Thanks.

> vonjunzt@hotmail.com wrote:
> > 
> > The voynich-l mailing list is also an excellent source; their
> > archives were on the web, the last time I checked.

	Still are, at 

http://www.research.att.com/~reeds/voynich/vmail.html

> > As for possible occult links - many people have examined the
> > Manuscript for links to alchemy, Rosicrucianism, Gnosticism,
> > and just about everything under the sun, with no unambiguous
> > results. 

	Yup.  

> > The Voynich Manuscript being the Necronomicon seems
> > to be the work of Colin Wilson's fertile imagination, and nothing
> > more.

	Wilson's and many others'.  

> > --
> > Yrs.,
> > 
> > Daniel Harms

	Good to see you again, Daniel!

Dennis