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[Antonio García Jiménez]

I'll say something I've said several times: The Voynich is an authentic 15th-century document, and it has a meaning. If we don't understand its meaning, it's probably because we approach this book like any other, without realizing that it belongs to a distinct and specific sphere. I'll try to explain this as clearly as I can. There are medieval books that we could call normal; we understand them because their way of reasoning and seeing the world is similar to ours. But there are other medieval books, few in number, that are far removed from our way of thinking.

  For example, I'll talk about something we're all familiar with: the so-called chemical herbs. They're herbs with both normal medicinal properties and magical ones. You can place the root of one of them around your neck and become invisible. You may think they were popular superstitions, but educated people believed in these kinds of things too.

  In his book, Confessio Amantis, John Gower alludes to the Liber de quindecim stellis attributed to Hermes, the magical relationship of fifteen stars with fifteen stones and fifteen herbs. Gower was a poet friend of Chaucer, and like Chaucer, he wrote things that are very ordinary to us, but also things like these, in which he surely believed.

    Voynichrose, I have answered you like this so as not to repeat my theory again. What I mean is that I, like many of us, call charlatans anyone who believes in the power of astrology these days, but that in Voynich research we must take it seriously because it was commonplace in people's minds.