My Theory: RITE — Ritual Instrument of Textual Esoterica

[GrooveDuke]

Only about 5% of manuscripts produced in the Middle Ages/Renaissance survive. It is not at all surprising that there haven't been more examples of Voynichese found - even if they once existed, the odds are always against survival of any particular manuscript. 

As for it being the forgery, for me the issue isn't the cost, but the actual material evidence. The provenance evidence, the binding evidence, the annotations, the different styles of additions and annotations, the effaced inscriptions, etc., all speak to its authenticity. I'll be speaking about these issues in my lecture on 9/26.

It might be gibberish and nonsense, but that's different from "forgery." The word "forgery" implies a modern object presented as an authentic ancient object, which is a completely different question from whether the manuscript has semantic meaning. It's of course possible that someone in the fifteenth century created the manuscript to trick someone into buying it, but that doesn't make it a "forgery."

When I mentioned production, I also immediately mentioned survivability. Which are two different things, I realize. And when I was speaking about the handwriting, I didn't really even mean Voynichese. I meant specifically the marginalia.

The marginalia was the main reason I watched the recent Voynich day video. I really thought that an exhaustive study was going to nail down a region and I was going to see if it fit with my theory. But as pointed out in that presentation it would really only prove where the scribe may have been educated, not necessarily where it was produced.   

Also, I am still undecided about the best word to use, so I do ask a  little "indulgence" if I use a term whose technical meaning is established outside of my field of experience. When I hear people talk about medieval or ancient forgeries, they usually mean items forged in ancient times. That is my meaning when I use the term. If there is a better accepted word. I'll happily defer and use that.

So in terms of material evidence, I quite agree it is not a modern forgery. And I am convinced that it was produced within the first couple of decades of the 15th century. And your observations in no small part convinced me of that.

Again my "theory" which I see now is not mine alone, or even original to me. Is not that it was produced to be sold, but produced to be used as a prop to perform some sort of repeatable service. As far as what that service was, why there were so many different sections when one might have sufficed, even the narrative of what they claimed it was etc: There are still a lot of holes. Still, for me, absent a deciphered text, an ancient hoax is still the best guess as to what it is.

My final question for you is, I believe you were the one to notice the signs of heavy use in certain sections. Do you have any more information on that? If there is a section that shows more signs of wear, that might give a clue as to its use. I haven't seen anything or anyone else really diving deep into that particular question.