21-08-2025, 06:58 PM
The personal satisfaction of creating "l'art pour l'art" is antithetical to the medieval view: the highest value of a work is the purpose it serves.
Even the concept of nonsense text as "fraud" is flawed from a historical perspective. If the way you practice medicine may involve prayers, charms and unknown symbols to enhance the experience, then where does cultural practice end and fraud begin?
Prayers don't work, from my secular perspective, but I don't think of a priest offering a prayer for someone's health as a fraud. I find it bizarre, but it functions within its context.
Species may become threatened with extinction because people in some cultures believe their ground up parts will enhance virility. We all know it's nonsense and doesn't work. But when a medicine man mixes up a potion for his patient, do we see him as a fraud or a practitioner of folk medicine?
People not understanding a word of the Latin spoken at church, is that fraudulent or part of their spiritual experience?
People selling amulets engraved with abracadabra and other magical words, fraud or understandable within the culture?
People selling magically inscribed birthing girdles to pregnant women, fraud or a cultural phenomenon?
Someone writing a book in a "language" and script they believe holds spiritual or healing powers... fraud or understandable within the culture?
My point is this: thinking of the VM as a fraud instead of trying to understand it as a product of its culture is anachronistic, and a wasted opportunity. Obviously we don't understand it yet, which is why its mystery endures. But approaching it within the context of early 15th century practices is probably the best way to go...
(I guess this post doesn't apply to you, Rich, since you think Wilfrid Voynich made it himself.)
Even the concept of nonsense text as "fraud" is flawed from a historical perspective. If the way you practice medicine may involve prayers, charms and unknown symbols to enhance the experience, then where does cultural practice end and fraud begin?
Prayers don't work, from my secular perspective, but I don't think of a priest offering a prayer for someone's health as a fraud. I find it bizarre, but it functions within its context.
Species may become threatened with extinction because people in some cultures believe their ground up parts will enhance virility. We all know it's nonsense and doesn't work. But when a medicine man mixes up a potion for his patient, do we see him as a fraud or a practitioner of folk medicine?
People not understanding a word of the Latin spoken at church, is that fraudulent or part of their spiritual experience?
People selling amulets engraved with abracadabra and other magical words, fraud or understandable within the culture?
People selling magically inscribed birthing girdles to pregnant women, fraud or a cultural phenomenon?
Someone writing a book in a "language" and script they believe holds spiritual or healing powers... fraud or understandable within the culture?
My point is this: thinking of the VM as a fraud instead of trying to understand it as a product of its culture is anachronistic, and a wasted opportunity. Obviously we don't understand it yet, which is why its mystery endures. But approaching it within the context of early 15th century practices is probably the best way to go...
(I guess this post doesn't apply to you, Rich, since you think Wilfrid Voynich made it himself.)
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)