The Voynich Ninja

(24-07-2026, 09:05 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.By the way, very recently another modern work clearly inspired by Voynich manuscript appeared:

It looks interesting.
As I understand it, this is an invented writing system for recording Latin.
By the way, it's possible that Voynichese was designed in a similar way (for example, the author initially tried to distort their native language and then moved on to a different method).

Quote:As I understand it, this is an invented writing system for recording Latin.

Not Latin, it seems to be written in modern Italian but I didn't get deeper into it.

(24-07-2026, 09:42 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The word “hoax” is always hard to understand for me.

It has always my opinion that people use the words "hoax" and "forgery" too loosely when it comes to the VM. What it always comes down to is the intention of the creators, which we cannot know.

Before, I called the Oera Linda Book a clean example of a hoax. From the wiki:

An article in late 2007 by Jensma says that the three authors of the translation intended it "to be a temporary hoax to fool some nationalist Frisians and orthodox Christians and as an experiential exemplary exercise in reading the Holy Bible in a non-fundamentalist, symbolical way." Ignoring clues that it was a forgery, J. G. Ottema [prominent member of the Frisian Society for History and Culture]  took it seriously.

If it was intended as a hoax, we can identify a very specific target and goal within the object's local community: to expose members of the Frisian intellectual elite as fools.

But apparently even here, there are debates over whether or not it can be called a forgery. Some researchers have argued that the book was merely an exercise in mystification and a parody of nations inventing myths for nationalist reasons. If that is true, it was never intended to fool someone or cause harm, but rather to parody contemporary practices. The thing was so clearly fake and intended as a joke even upon its first reception, that we can call it a miracle that some people actually believed in it (mostly the Nazis, apparently).

So there you go: even the book I thought was a good example of a hoax, may just have been a parody intended to be understood as a parody. Nothing hoaxy about that. And this debate is about a relatively well-documented item produced over four centuries after the VM!

(25-07-2026, 11:37 AM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Not Latin, it seems to be written in modern Italian but I didn't get deeper into it.

Oh, I'm sorry. I don't know either of them

(25-07-2026, 11:56 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If that is true, it was never intended to fool someone or cause harm, but rather to parody contemporary practices. The thing was so clearly fake and intended as a joke

I could speculate and come to the conclusion that VMS is a kind of irony over alchemy. Voynichese, in this case, parodies alchemical texts (perhaps an allegory for their allegorical nature or incomprehensibility to ordinary people), and the illustrations are actually nonsensical, but again, they parody alchemical allegorical nature.
But all of this is one big assumption...

Quote:It has always my opinion that people use the words "hoax" and "forgery" too loosely when it comes to the VM. What it always comes down to is the intention of the creators, which we cannot know.

I believe that "hoax" is simply an attempt to make people accept and believe in something false. The similar words are "mystification", "fraud", "swindle", "deception". For me it doesn't matter if it was made for money, to spread some ideology, to make someone a fool or just as a joke.

Some people would add that hoax is something elaborate, involving substantial amount of work.

"Forgery" is a more narrow term and involves creating some fake physical object attributed to another creator. "Hoax" is a broader term, it may be just a rumour.

Now I believe we can understand "hoax" in two ways when it comes to Voynich Manuscript"

1) VM seems to be a medieval manuscript but was created much later by Edward Kelley, Athanasius Kircher or Wilfried Voynich.
 While some people hold this view, the mainstream view is that it is too good to be a forgery and it is a real, medieval object indeed

2) VM is a real, medieval object but also a medieval swindle.
 The creators made it to fool some medieval collector or just folks at the marketplace that they have some extremely precious, ancient, medicinal book with secret knowledge written in some mysterious language while in fact the text is blah, blah, blah and the book was made by them

This second option seems more probable and as you know it is close to what I personally feel but proving it is another thing.

(25-07-2026, 11:56 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So there you go: even the book I thought was a good example of a hoax, may just have been a parody intended to be understood as a parody.

I am satisfied that Edward Kelley's You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (79 pages) was a fraud that he created to dupe John Dee.  It should not be confused with the anonymous You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that Dee was obsessed with, although the description of Liber Logaeth suggests that the latter was intentionally made to resemble the former, with 49x49 tables instead of 36x36.

However it is only 1/3 the size of the VMS, and its style seems to be vastly different.

The "Alchemists' Herbal" seems to be a fraud too, created and copied to feed the demand for herbals listing rare and exotic plants.   It could perhaps be a parody, but its size and the number of extant copies makes me doubt that possibility. 

(25-07-2026, 01:31 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I understand "hoax" in two ways when it comes to Voynich Manuscript"

1) VM seems to be a medieval manuscript but was created much later by Edward Kelley, Athanasius Kircher or Wilfried Voynich.

2) VM is a real, medieval object but also a medieval swindle.

I see another possibility:

3) The VM is a real non-fraudulent medieval book, but it was doctored in later times in order to pass it off as some other, more valuable book.

Specifically, I think that there is a nonzero probability that Wilfrid attached Marci's letter,  removed some pages, and falsified Jacobus's "signature" on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in order to sell the VMS as a Bacon original (which could have added 2-3 zeros to the price.)   

But maybe Widemann did that before selling the book to Rudolf.

All the best, --stolfi

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"If it weren't for electricity, we would still be living in the Dark Ages." --high-school test blooper.

Quote:3) The VM is a real non-fraudulent medieval book, but it was doctored in later times in order to pass it off as some other, more valuable book.

I would agree it is very possible, no matter what is the origin of the book.

In my opinion the connection of Voynich Manuscript to Bacon may come from Dee and Kelley. They were English just like Bacon, right. So they could claim to Rudolf that they found it at some English monastery while they actually got it from Widemann.

And they would be very able to do it. Kelley was a very shady man and Dee is a fine example that you can be both intelligent and educated and dumb and naive at the same time. If Dee heard from Kelley that angels told him it was Bacon then he would just believe and support it.

The hoax could also happen at Kircher stage. Maybe not everyone here knows but Kircher is also accused of a hoax - fabricating a piece of music and presenting it as an ancient Greek composition. See "Pindar's Ode": You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

And then we have Willfried Voynich. He and Jesuits consciously broke the law - mhe purchased a book that legally belonged to the Italian state. Then Voynich lied several times about the book. He is another shady person in the manuscript history.

VM actually has a great history, not like some "boring" prayer book that was created in some convent 700 years ago and stayed there since then 

(25-07-2026, 01:31 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I believe that "hoax" is simply an attempt to make people accept and believe in something false.

My personal opinion is that it’s not so “simply” and I fully agree with Koen:

(25-07-2026, 11:56 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It has always my opinion that people use the words "hoax" and "forgery" too loosely when it comes to the VM. What it always comes down to is the intention of the creators, which we cannot know.

There are two huge problems:

1. As Koen said, we usually don’t know what an author was attempting to do; usually, we can only speculate about their intentions, since they rarely are explicitly stated, and if they are we don’t know if the author is being honest.
   
2. The definition of “false” is very tricky. People always believed and still believe in contradictory things. It seems to me that it’s again about the unknown feelings of the author: did they believe that what they wrote was true?
   

This is a passage from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by Tommaso da Celano, written a few years after Francis's death. Is this “an attempt to make people accept and believe in something false”? Hoax?
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Celano Wrote:While he was staying in the hermitage which, from the place where it is situated, is called La Verna, two years before he rendered his soul to heaven, he saw in a divine vision a man, like a Seraph with six wings, standing above him, with his hands outstretched and his feet joined together, fastened to a cross. Two wings were raised above his head, two were extended as though for flight, and the remaining two covered his whole body. … While he could not clearly understand the meaning of the vision, and its extraordinary nature remained deeply impressed upon his heart, the marks of the nails began to appear on his hands and feet, exactly as, a little before, he had seen the man above him crucified. His hands and feet appeared to be pierced through the very middle with nails, the heads of the nails being visible on the inner side of the hands and on the upper side of the feet, while their points projected on the opposite side. ... His right side, too, seemed to have been pierced by a lance and was covered with a scar, from which blood often flowed, so that his tunic and undergarments were many times sprinkled with the sacred blood. Alas! How few were deemed worthy, while the crucified servant of the Crucified Lord was still alive, to behold the holy wound in his side! Yet blessed was Brother Elias, who, while the saint was still living, was privileged to see it in some measure; but less blessed was Brother Rufino, who even touched it with his own hands. Indeed, once, when the aforesaid Brother Rufino slipped his hand inside the garment of the most holy man in order to scratch him, his hand, as often happens, slid down to his right side. There it happened to touch that precious scar. At its touch, the holy man of God felt no small pain, and, pushing Rufino's hand away from himself, cried out, "May the Lord forgive you!"

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From You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Is this “an attempt to make people accept and believe in something false”? Hoax?

Abolays Wrote:From the fifteenth degree of the sign of Aries comes the "stone that draws gold." By its nature it is hot and dry, and its color is yellow, tending somewhat toward brown. When a person takes it in the hand, it feels smooth and somewhat soft. This stone attracts gold and causes it to obey it, just as the magnet attracts iron. If gold is filed into shavings, and those filings are mixed with earth or with some other substance, then, if the stone touches the mixture, it will separate the gold from the other materials with which it is mixed, and all the gold will cling to the stone. … This stone also possesses another virtue: it gives great joy to the heart, so that whoever gazes upon it in the morning will remain cheerful throughout the whole day, unless some great misfortune should befall him and make him sad. The middle star of the three that lie in the bend of the River has power over this stone, and from that star it receives its virtue. When this star is in the ascendant, the stone displays its powers more clearly.

I think I can understand your point of view Marco.

There are many cases where people are not afraid to speak of hoaxes or forgeries.
But religion and medieval science are a kind of grey area indeed.

I can give my own example. There was a modern Christian mystic called Vassula Ryden ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) who claimed that she talked to Jesus, Holy Mary and angels. She wrote her personal diary where she asked questions to them and they "answered":



She claimed it was not her writing the answers but Jesus guiding her hand. As you may notice even the handwriting style changes between questions and answers. It is an example that a single person may write with different styles in a single document that can be used in discussing the number of Voynich scribes 


Hoax or not? 

(24-07-2026, 11:48 AM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quite a lot of stuff to discuss.

First I would say things like Codex Seraphinianus aren't hoaxes because the author, Luigi Serafini, from the very beginning openly claimed that the text is meaningless. So it is an artistic project, not supposed to deceive anyone.

On the other hand we had a lot of hoax manuscripts, documents and books in the history. Most forgeries are contemporary like forging someone's last will but some of them are forgeries of supposed ancient sources made much later like:

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Such works have to be be written in a language that nobody speaks anymore so the forger in practice "invents" his own language, his own version of Old Frisian or medieval Czech. Such texts are still understood to the people, however. And the forger usually has limited historical and linguistic knowledge so the experts who know real medieval Czech and Old Frisian are able to recognize that the text is fake.

Please notice that if VM is a hoax then we don't know if it was supposed to be a modern hoax or ancient hoax.
It was done in the 1400s and the image style and content is typical for the 1400s. But it may be the result of limited knowledge of the creator. They could claim for example that it was written by King Solomon in 1000 BC. The people whom they were tricking had even smaller knowledge so they could believe any crazy story.

Notice also that all these hoaxes aren't gibberish, they have a meaning and were created so people could read them and get the meaning.

If Voynich Manuscript is a meaningless hoax then it is indeed rare and we don't have similar examples from medieval ages. The closest thing seems to be Liber Loageth from Dee and Kelley which is 200 years later, is written in normal Latin script but seems to have meaningless, nonsense text:
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But in all other cases Voynich Manuscript will still remain very strange and rare like:
- mega cipher that 21st century experts cannot broke
- book in European style but containing exotic language written with invented script
- nomenclator of 8000 entries
- schoolboy writing excercise on 200 pages of parchment
- creation of angels/aliens/fairies

So yes, VM is rare and unique, not fitting to how we imagine things.

But rare, strage, unique things which change our understanding of history do happen, like:
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The Voynich Manuscript is a modern day hoax, you probably wont believe me but I know that the ink and material written on was actual historic in age, but the author is still alive!