Sunday, June 7, 2009

Thoughts on the Voynich Manuscript

An ancient document etched onto vellum, containing a language that no man on earth can read. Believed to be an elaborate code of some kind, but the document, running between 240-280 pages, also contains numerous drawings of a fantastical nature, mainly involving nude women bathing, herbs, and astronomical charts. Some aspects of the document may have been altered since it’s first inception, especially in regards to the drawings themselves, and the arrangement of pages. Exact age of the document is unknown. Rumoured to be either 400, or 100 years of age.
Personal thoughts: While the document is assumingly coded, most documents of this nature are discrete works kept mainly to hide secret thoughts. The drawings in this work draw undue attention to it. It is meant to be read, but has been written in it’s own language. The populous theory is that the work is a forgery, but to what purpose? A work of this length would take quite some effort. While forge a work so that no one could read it? The appeal would be limited. If it was a forgery, it would have to be tailored to a specific buyer.
What if the author had created a work to express certain thoughts and feelings that otherwise could not be expressed? Such as those in a dream?
My theory is only given credence by the fact that in a dream, written words can not be properly read, as this is a function of the left brain, and dreaming is of the right. The author could be copying something he read inside a dream. In other words: gibberish, which can only be understood in the context of the dream itself. The drawings of non-existent things further evoke upon this theorem.
It’s a dream journal, written in dream-speak.
What interest me the most is the elaborate star charts. These could be a virtual map of the dream-world itself. A whorlgog.

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