Fakery?

[Linda]

And this last comment makes me want to circle back to my original idea of fakery. If the manuscript is a collection of unobtainable plants written about in an idiosyncratic script, then nobody can do anything other than ponder the meaning of it. And that is the point! The manusript is an entertainment, a whimsy, not a working document. Its purpose is to stimulate curiosity, wonder, amusement and the promise that decipherment will reveal arcane wisdom. It is just the thing for a bored king to puzzle over, provided he buys the book.Why not, knowing the elixer of life, fertility and happiness is a strong draw and worth the price of the book.

I think it is amazing that we have so many interpretations, it is like thousands of Schrödinger's cats...they are all real and all fake at the same time, to different people, until someone can prove something one way or the other to everyone's satisfaction. The things I see in it seem to be only for me. The things others see in it seem only to be for them. It is everything. We should make a list of all the different things anyone has ever suggested about each page, in the end you would have the greatest encyclopedia ever, with the vms as its index.