27-02-2021, 10:42 AM
I'm not sure.
Sometimes I get the feeling that someone started out doing a book of plants (or a section of a book that included plants) and somewhere along the timeline the illustrator (or mastermind) saw an "alchemical" herbal and was told (or became aware of) how symbols and mnemonics had been used in certain plant books. The person with the proclivity to create a script like Voynichese said, "Oh! That's a cool idea. I can do that too." and ran with it, in a way that had never been done before. Sort of a Mozart of cryptic manuscript design. Not a great artist, not a great scribe (or group of scribes), but imaginative and detail-oriented and somewhat analytical (the VMS script is not haphazard).
Sometimes I get the feeling that someone started out doing a book of plants (or a section of a book that included plants) and somewhere along the timeline the illustrator (or mastermind) saw an "alchemical" herbal and was told (or became aware of) how symbols and mnemonics had been used in certain plant books. The person with the proclivity to create a script like Voynichese said, "Oh! That's a cool idea. I can do that too." and ran with it, in a way that had never been done before. Sort of a Mozart of cryptic manuscript design. Not a great artist, not a great scribe (or group of scribes), but imaginative and detail-oriented and somewhat analytical (the VMS script is not haphazard).