[Movie] Is the Voynich Manuscript an Elaborate Medieval Hoax?

[Hermes777]

Justin makes well researched videos. He's especially hot on Qabbalah and Jewish esoterica. A good series. He's perfected his trademark dry humour.

As somebody who's interested in mysticism and personal spirituality as practices for self-transformation, rather than merely as historical and anthropological curiosities best left in the past, Prof Sledge's vlogs always left me feeling like the joke was on me, and I'd been baited and switched. So I have a love-hate relationship with him. I can't not respect his chops as a historian. He's done his homework. I'm just glad to see, in this video, he's appropriately upfront about his biases as a skeptic.

I was surprised to see Justin Sledge make a video about the VMs — it seems a little outside of his area of expertise. Others in this thread have already pointed out how much undue credibility he gives to the poorly substantiated history of the VMs. Hermes777, I'm midway through your blog about your Nicholas of Cusa theory. I was especially intrigued to read your conjectures about an alchemical and astrological system that was imported from a more Eastern tradition, but applied, both secularly and spiritually, to a local herb-gathering tradition in Alpine Europe. I would have hoped that Prof Sledge would have had something to say about the alchemical and astrological symbolism in the imagery, as a trained historian of such things. It surprised and disappointed me that he seemed to show no interest in the imagery and its provenance.

At least we can say for sure now that the VMs has nothing directly Kabbalah-related in it. If it did, Prof Sledge would certainly have picked up on it and commented on it.

I certainly see the manuscript as an anomalous mixture of a rustic European folk herbalism (and accompanying nymph mythology) and a cosmopolitan astrology with distinctly Graeco-Arabic features. I went searching for an historical context that can explain that. Nicholas of Cusa's close encounter with the Ladin tradition is the best fit I can find. 

It's the same anomaly of very folkish and often crude illustrations yet the text - whether a cipher or whatever else, even an elaborate hoax - is very sophisticated (showing a deep knowledge of Latin manuscript conventions.) Where do those two things come together? Nicholas was on a civilising mission during his time as bishop over the Ladin people. 

There's not a whiff of Qabbalah in the Voynich. I am sure Justin's engagement with the language included trawling it for hints of Hebrew and Hebrew solutions. It just doesn't seem to participate in that stream of esotericism. The dominant stream of Western occultism draws on Judaism: Aleister Crowley complained that when he was initiated at sword-point into the secrets of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn he was entrusted with a copy of the Hebrew alphabet. The Voynich is a different stream altogether, and leads to modern expressions like Rudolf Steiner (Paracelsus, Goethe etc.) - not Justin Sledge's preferred esoterica.