*Please note that posters in the comments provide links to pages that no longer exist — sadly! Yale at one point removed the archive of images from public view.
I am sitting at my desk transported by the digital images of the Voynich Manuscript, created sometime between the late 15th century and early 16th century. It is a most magical text, written in an unknown language or perhaps a cipher. It is illustrated with botanical drawings of unknown plants, strange designs and patterns that suggest spiral and circular gardens. And most wonderfully it is filled with the alchemical activities of women who seem to be the life force of this strange and fecund world. The women often appear nude with rounded bellies, sometimes in bathtubs, other times connecting roots, seeds, and pods through tubes and rivers.
Not much is known about its origin and what is known is as mysterious as the manuscript itself. It has been carbon tested and found to have been produced in late 1400’s; it gets it’s name from the Polish-American antiquarian bookseller, Wilfrid M. Voynich who purchased it in the 1920s; it was owned by the Emperor Rudolph II of Germany (1576-1612) who believed it to be the work of Roger Bacon (it wasn’t –he’s 13th century). There is Jesuit involvement — the correspondence of 17th c. Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher who wrote references to it after receiving it from a Prague physician Johannes Marcus Marci. And much later in 1912, Voynich purchased the manuscript from Joseph Strickland S. J. at the Jesuit College at Frascati, near Rome. (Why does this all remind me of Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose?). And then there are about 150 years where no one knows who had it or where it was hiding.
And as far as the language goes — no one has been able to translate it into any language. Some scholars thought it might be the work of an insane author — but other linguists suggest there are two authors and the language appears too “organized” to be the work of a crazy person. Potential authors range from Leonardo da Vinci, Antonio Averlino, a 15th century Italian architect, English occultist John Dee, and an underground sect of Cathar heretics. Strangely, at least to me– no one has suggested it might have been written and created by women.
Enjoy these few pages I pulled from the online collection — and marvel at all that beautiful, mysterious work and give thanks to the internet. You can also read more about the Voynich manuscript here.
I want these to be plans for a garden — circular, spiral, filled with female fertility connected to the moon, the stars, and the zodiac calendar.
wow. That’s really cool! Thanks for sharing this.
Isn’t it? I am just gobsmacked by it.
there are so many languages lost – can’t it be one of them? Thanks for posting these Midori -I do hope someone figures it out in my lifetime.
Hey Karen, I am inclined to think it is a secret coded language — created for the express purpose of writing about alchemy and magic. Athanasius Kircher, the Jesuit scholar of the 1600s wrote in his comments that there was something a bit dicey about the whole text. Yet…it was never destroyed. So someone believed in its importance. I am more intrigued by the idea that it is the work of female artists and writers — not male because the diagrams have no phallic symbols any where — but rather all these wonderful slightly pregnant looking women holding together water, roots, veins, pods — all the sort of visual imagery that suggests the centrality of the female principle in creation. Aristotle be damned!
So so soooo gorgeous! Thanks so much for sharing!
The Voynich is one of my many part-time obsessions.
Many very good cryptographers have spent quite a lot of time on it, to no avail, and it has also spawned some highly creative and slightly (or more) insane “solutions” – all in all a fascinating object.
At least one of the naked “women” appears to have male genitalia, by the way, and there are castles and towers, which could be phallic symbols, plus the male archer on the Sagittarius page.
Phiala — haha…your eyes are better than mine! I did not notice the male genitalia…now I shall have to go back and scrutinize! Still…I am fascinated by the images of the women combined with those sort of artery looking tubes and the various pools of water — it all feels like a visual statement of blood and amniotic fluid being moved around the universe through a feminine principal. The zodiac images probably align up to some celestial coordinates perhaps. There are pages missing from the manuscript too.
But look at this awesome page. All these round-bellied ladies in their tubes coming out upright and around. The center appears to have the symbol for Pisces. Or this page too — where they are dressed, then undressed, and the second one seems to have dressed males and nude females — and they all look so happy. It’s crazy and charming. I don’t think I have ever seen so many naked women moving in stately circles and even though they are simple drawn, there is a good deal of energy and determination in the figures. I love the way they carry stars, walk with their hand on their hips or swinging. I do think one of the peculiar pages (hahaha…that sounds funny!) is this one where the ladies look packed inside of two gigantic blue sperm.
Honestly, I just love this manuscript and part of me wants its mysteries solved and another part of me wants it to remain enigmatic so as to keep on firing my imagination. And I adore the “click larger” feature on the images that allows one to zoom in on all the details. It’s a really great site.
And then there are the plants — we think of them as beautiful designs — but there are so many of them and taken as a whole they must have a language of their own — what was the purpose of the plants? What are they saying? What are they supposed to suggest about nature? or health? or principles of the universe? Everyone of them is different and so thoughtfully drawn and painted. And does the order of the plants matter? I almost wish I could put them all up on my wall and see how they relate to each other.
Oh how intriguing!
Ahem. 😉 https://xkcd.com/593/
Andrea: Oh I love this! Thank you so much! I keep running across this site in odd quirky moments which means I must add it to my feed and blog role.
The link “then go and browse through all” appeared not to work when I used it at first. Once I had found the page through other means, it started working again. I have no idea what this means. One possibility would be that you need to go through this page?
http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/voynich.html
Hi Alex — hey thanks for the heads up — not sure what happened with that link! I have corrected it using the one you have posted here. I remember getting that error message occasionally when I was looking at the site and think you are right — you have to enter from the main page, and then click through. The error message seems to pop up if you try to link an index page of image thumbnails…in any case thanks for letting me know!
Hi all, here’s a Voynich paper re diagrams in the Bathing Section on tour.
Hi Linda , Thank you for this link — I am endlessly interested in this tome — I had heard rumors that they think they have cracked the language?
Wonderful and mysterious but clear
Only the relationship between women and plants shows meaning
For anyone looking for this page, it sadly no longer exists. Not sure why Yale decided to remove it….