The Voynich Ninja

(20-08-2025, 02:08 AM)asteckley Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Friend:

Oh -- no, nix that. Look at these drawings of... um.... well, these look more like they were drawn by my teenage son.

Well that was a riot, thanks! And we always tend to think of medical/medicinal/anatomical women's issues to explain the nudes, but it might just be by someone who "liked the ladies" a lot.

And medicinal, of course.

Could be a medieval Pirelli calendar from your friendly herb supplier.

(20-08-2025, 02:08 AM)asteckley Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hmm. What would such signs actually be – particularly in the 15th-17th centuries? After all, just about anything a potential buyer would find appealing can be produced by a would-be forger, including age.

I’m trying to imagine what any signs of intentionally making the manuscript look older would possibly be …

You can make parchment and paper visually old in a variety of ways, but the most common would be to introduce it to the elements. Liquids, urea, 'tea' in the sense of extract from plant matter into water. Physical wear. The manuscript would probably not survive if that had been done to it when it was new.

(20-08-2025, 02:08 AM)asteckley Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As for ruling out a fraudulent manuscript just because we expect a forger would produce a higher quality product, how can we possibly judge their available talent and resources? Perhaps the reason the manuscript is so ‘ugly’ is because someone happened to hear a  wealthy person express a willingness to purchase something like it, and so they urgently and sloppily produced the manuscript with the meager talent they could get together, before the opportunity to make a scam sale waned.

To preface: you have a good point, in that whatever the circumstances of the production of the Voynich are, they must be unique - just because of how it is.

However, fakes for sale done by conmen in the modern era are typically one of two things: either they are of the absolute highest quality (for a fake art sale, when you have a buyer already lined up or the potential for a buyer is very high); or they are quite slipshod (when you intentionally target gullible people; these would be fake rolex watches you buy by the dozen to resell to marks).

The Voynich is in the anti-goldilocks zone where it's not really that quality and wouldn't fetch a price worth the upfront effort, but it also has some care, time, resources and knowledge put into it. To my mind, it makes the for sale hypothesis extremely unlikely; it would have to be an amateur conman delusional about the price they can fetch, which is at odds with the obvious knowledge the creator(s) of the manuscript have; and they would have to make the book quickly but also completely accidentally manage to immediately create a passable conlang ex nihilo.

With the 'prop' theory, the balance changes a bit. For one, we have sources like Toresella giving good indication that there existed a cottage industry of quacks with quack herbals, which happens to be the most well crafted portion of the Voynich that seems to be what the author(s) knew the best. For another, a reusable prop can have more care put into it, and can be made iteratively. There is also room for the scam to develop: perhaps it started with a primitive prop and the author(s) got caught by it being intuitively recognised as gibberish, making them put the effort into constructing a language. This explains the motive for why the language itself is so well crafted, and even why it might evolve during the manuscript creation. The foldouts are a fantastic addition to a prop: they take not that much time to make, but they are a 'wow' factor when showing off the manuscript. They also mimic a folded almanac: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , entirely in keeping with the quack doctor scheme. And the 'books' cover a variety of topics, almost as if someone was looking at everything 'popular' in manuscripts at the time - manuscripts which typically were much more delineated in topic.

This is why I find the prop theory much more plausible - but I still want to underline that I think the manuscript carries meaning and was meant to be used non-fraudulently by the creators or their community. 

If it's a prop, I think there would be some unique imprint of this fact on how its structured, which may be worth checking.

(20-08-2025, 09:23 AM)dexdex Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The Voynich is in the anti-goldilocks zone where it's not really that quality and wouldn't fetch a price worth the upfront effort, but it also has some care, time, resources and knowledge put into it.

Indeed, but there may be a third hypothesis: it may have been made to order from a Patron, and fully or partially made up because the Author could not otherwise provide what was expected.

If I can bore you again with my Chinese theory, here is what I think could have happened.  

The general premise of the theory is that the Author was a merchant or explorer who lived for several years in some East Asian land; long enough to learn the local language, but not enough to learn the local script.  He wanted to take back home some of the books he saw there, which were supposedly full of stuff unknown in Europe.  But copies in the local script would be useless, and he could not translate them into Latin or other European language because of many technical words that he could not understand or translate.  So he paid a local to read the books aloud while he took dictation in a script which he had invented for the purpose. He hoped that, back home, he could use his knowledge of the language to figure out the words he did not know.

He also made quick sketches of some illustrations from those books, having that same local helper read the labels aloud. In particular, he copied the main details of the Cosmo diagrams, the organs of Bio, the plant parts of Pharma; but he could not copy the full drawings of the Herbal, only the texts.

Back home he hired one or more Scribes to copy his notes to vel parchment and flesh out the illustrations, resulting in the VMS as we know it.

One problem with this theory is why would he want to make a vel parchment copy of his notes in the first place, and why would he go to the trouble of making up the plant drawings in the Herbal.  One possible explanation is that he had hoped to monetize his copying effort by selling the VMS to some scholar.  He may have thought that it would be easier to find a buyer if the book looked more like the herbals and Zodiac maps that Europeans were used to.  

Another possibility is that the Author, before or after returning to Europe, had promised to some Patron scholar that he would bring back books from that distant land -- and had described by mail the books, like  "a Herbal with 120 plants, mostly unknown in Europe; an Astronomical and Astrological treatise, a Pharmacological treatise with over 300 recipes, and a Medical treatise with internal organs etc.".  But his rough sketches and scribbled dictation notes would not satisfy the Patron, so he had to make a clean copy on vel parchment, flesh out the diagrams, and make up drawings for those "more than 120" herbal plants...

All the best, --jorge

Here's my take on the fraud situation:

- created in the early 15th century for sale at a profit: quite unlikely
- created around 1600 for sale at a profit: entirely unlikely
- created in modern times for sale at a profit (or indeed any other purpose): entirely unlikely

- created in the early 15th century as a prop for benefits: interesting idea, but has difficulties
  (This was the point of the opening post in this thread)

- created significantly after the early 15th century: entirely unlikely

(19-08-2025, 01:54 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I do not find this a bad idea at all, and in fact it has also been discussed before.

This is close to a hypothesis from a reputable expert on ancient herbals: Sergio Toresella, described in this publication: Toresella, Sergio: Gli erbari degli alchmisti, in: L. Saginati, Arte farmaceutica e piante medicinali; erbari, vasi, strumenti e testi dalle raccolte liguri, 1995.

...

This was also the main premise of Robert Brumbaugh's 1978 theory, explained in a book and an article in Speculum.  A curious gimmick of his theory was that the VMS was supposed to look like an easily decodable cipher,  to make it more attractive to prospective buyers.

(20-08-2025, 11:49 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Here's my take on the fraud situation:

- created in the early 15th century for sale at a profit: quite unlikely
- created around 1600 for sale at a profit: entirely unlikely
- created in modern times for sale at a profit (or indeed any other purpose): entirely unlikely

- created in the early 15th century as a prop for benefits: interesting idea, but has difficulties
  (This was the point of the opening post in this thread)

- created significantly after the early 15th century: entirely unlikely

Agreed, though of course I would find my own idea interesting  

(20-08-2025, 12:14 PM)Jim Reeds Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This was also the main premise of Robert Brumbaugh's 1978 theory, explained in a book and an article in Speculum.  A curious gimmick of his theory was that the VMS was supposed to look like an easily decodable cipher,  to make it more attractive to prospective buyers.

While the theory itself isn't all that similar (unless I have the wrong article), it does touch on a very big problem with a traditional 'hoax for sale' hypothesis: why would you buy a book you can't read? Certainly, you would if you thought it contained knowledge to be deciphered, but there is no occult symbolism to suggest this to a prospective buyer. And the manuscript would be entirely unremarkable at the time of its creation, with no appearance of being ancient or interesting - except for the unreadable script, of course.

However, as a prop, what you're selling is not the book, but the assurance that you are the sole person who can read from it. Then, it's not necessary for you to insert any occult imagery - you can just claim you got this knowledge and the manuscript from some far away tribe, but it's not heretical, honest! Perhaps you would want it to stand up to cursory inspection as recognisably a language, and this is why it has the properties we see. The idea still has difficulties, but to me appears the most credible of the hoax hypotheses.

Another interesting variation of the con artist theory: perhaps, someone produced this book as a prop for a herbalist 'job interview' for a royal or another noble. You then need it to pass inspection by his other herbalists, but also be undecipherable so you can claim to be the sole person who can read from it, landing you a long-term, stable, lucrative employment (and therefore, a return on the initial investment). Such a person would have already been a quack healer in the first place to even land the interview. Thus, they would be naturally familiar with herbals of the time (as explained by Toresella) and this explains the relative competency of the herbal section. Then they could add extra sections for some extra esoteric punch. And they look crappy because they weren't very familiar with those genres of manuscript.

It might be the VMS started as a book version of a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (think You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), then someone tried to also profit from it.

In this case what mattered most to the creator was probably not the content (illustration & text), nor the use he could make of the manuscript, but rather the artistic quality he perceived in his opus and the sense of accomplishment he gained from doing it.

(19-08-2025, 02:55 AM)asteckley Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Lisa Fagin-Davis also said, in her recent UPenn seminar, that the idea of it being produced as a con to sell to a wealthy gullible buyer was non-credible.

Reading and writing in those times were at the foundation of scientific and social advancement. Manuscripts were prized possessions. For instance King Charles V of France was an avid collector, had acquired a huge library, supposedly over a thousand books, including many books on the secret sciences, astrology, prognostication, necromancy, and two copies of the notorious manuscript Ars Notoria.

Such books where at the heart of the new 'information age' of that time.

There was probably a healthy market for such works. It is conceivable that the possibility of fabricating some sort of bogus manuscript to sell on for a profit must surely have occurred to people. And this must surely be a possibility for the VMS.

So I must disagree with the manuscriptologist and say that it in fact is credible.

(21-08-2025, 01:31 PM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There was probably a healthy market for such works. It is conceivable that the possibility of fabricating some sort of bogus manuscript to sell on for a profit must surely have occurred to people. And this must surely be a possibility for the VMS.

So I must disagree with the manuscriptologist and say that it in fact is credible.

Exactly. The history of forged/fake/hoax/fraud books goes back practically to the invention of the book, and it was done for every motivation one can conceive of, and probably many that would elude us today: Recognition, politics, money, an expression of artistic skill, personal satisfaction... and really any combination of those. And, at every cost, and every skill level imaginable, on any material, old and new, and at every level of time and effort, for all the reasons we can imagine, and not.
 
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My point is that any discussion about the motivations of a forger... trying to guess "was it worth it?", or "was it too risky or not?", or "would it take too much time, or not?" and so on, are all entirely moot. We all ready know what I related: Every type of fake book and document was made for every single reason at every level of cost and time and every level of expected return from zero to a great fortune. This means... and I can write this with perfect assurance, as we know this, as we have every example... we cannot know if an item is fake based on anyone's individual opinion on whether it would be worth it or not, as all cases are covered, and even, we can extrapolate that humans are humans always, and will do really anything under the Sun for any reason whatsoever.

Here is my "Forgery Bibliography" which I compiled years ago, which describe hundreds of forgers throughout history, and many of their thousands of books and documents they created:

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It is incomplete, there are several more great books I've come across since, and would like to add.

Here is one of my own examples of an "homage" book, made at great expense of materials, time and effort, simply for personal satisfaction. By the imagined "rules of return" I've read, this would never happen. But it did... and I've found many such examples over the last couple of decades. This guy, Chittenden, was a very busy man, and a friend of Lincoln's... yet, he found the time to make this "homage" book, a translation of an existing, ancient book, meant to mimic the older style. On blank vellum. And with no expectation of monetary return, or credit or fame or anything:

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[attachment=11295]
So when I read these discussions, saying that it was too hard, too expensive, would have had not incentive of return, and so on, to create the Voynich as a fake or forgery or hoax or homage or prop or just for jollies... and at any chosen time from 1420-ish to 1910... I not only strongly disagree, I point to my reasons why: We know it was done, and was done fairly often, because the records exist which tell us so.
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[attachment=11294]

Above: "Derek the Bard's" Faux Grimore

Now all the above being said, and if one wanted to yet contend that in the case of the Voynich it "would not have been worth it", just take a look at the massive level of admiration and interest this book generates, and has (if one believes the men of the Letters of the Carteggio were discussing "our" book), the high prestige and value placed on it by Yale, and the great many people who have dedicated years of their lives, and even, their lives, to studying it... along with the actual monetary value Wilfrid and Ethel and Nill and Kraus and others have placed on it, and the books written about it, and the pricey replicas offered for sale OF it... And it becomes immediately clear that the book certainly has had, and does have, a very high value, almost incomparable in literature... except, maybe, some of the better copies of the First Folio, or the Gutenberg Bible and such... it has such a tremendously high value, and always has... so even THAT criteria, value, has always been easily met, and still is.

But, as I wrote above, monetary value is not an issue in the creation of frauds/fakes/replicas/art/forgeries... never was, never will be.