The VM as Outsider Art

[zosima]

Funny you should mention Da Vinci as one of my current theories is that the VM was originally the loose vellum sheets of notes of the original author written over many years, possibly decades, possibly including additional loose notes by others who inherited it from the original author. Much the same as Da Vinci's journals. The way the text flows and the rough nature of the botanical drawings suggest this. Further, I think it likely the original author had some higher education and exposure to other existing texts but that this education was probably incomplete. It is unlikely the author was anyone who would be remembered today, else someone would likely have identified the person by now. And I think it likely he or she practiced herbalism, alchemy, pharmacology and or medicine in a fairly remote area, possibly in some secrecy. Call it a working theory. Like you, I have a long, long way to go before I would classify it as anything more than that.


If we consider the VM to be simply a fantasy, especially if we believe it was created by an isolated individual, we have to consider the time, the effort and the money it took to create it. You might want to check out this thread I started: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. It is estimated it took 14-15 entire calfskins to create the VM. Even if it was average quality, that much vellum would have been costly, probably too costly for creating merely a fantasy, a fraud/hoax, or a parody.

Yes, I wonder if the "Voynich A" and "Voynich B" might be the result of the author having produced these pages over a period of several or many years.

 I have a sort of vision of the author as the semi-cloistered, misfit scion of some aristocratic family, too eccentric to inheirit power, but indulged enough to be granted a stock of vellum and art supplies.