Dr Kat and the Voynich Manuscript

hello and welcome back to the channel if you're new here hi you're very welcome this is reading the past and I'm dr. Kat now the idea of today's video came directly from one of your comments hello Caius Martius Coriolanus this one is for you a few weeks back you suggested that I have a look at the Voynich or Voynich manuscript now I had heard of this manuscript but until you sent me down this particular rabbit hole I had absolutely no idea of the vast web of conspiracy theories and academic interest and scientific engagement that has taken place in trying to find out just what this manuscript is and where it came from so today I'm going to be talking about that let's go [Music] [Music] first things first I want to quite clearly state that I haven't come down on the side of one particular argument through my research in fact there are so many for me that have a degree of plausibility or sufficient evidence to be plausible well I am comfortably saying is that we know how this particular manuscript gets its name it gets it from the man who claims to have found it in 1912 in the villa Mondragon II where it was part of the collection of a Jesuit library essentially that man is Wilfrid Voynich and he is for me a potentially more slippery figure than I think he is for others what we know of him is that he had grown up in Poland and he is exiled from there and finds himself in London eventually he will end up in the United States while in London he sets up an incredibly successful trade in antiquarian books he has a shop in central London now what confuses me about this is that there's nothing seemingly in his past that would give any reason as to why he had a particular aptitude to do this he doesn't seem to have studied book history or literary history so just how without any training for another antiquarian he manages to know what books are valuable and how much a sell them for is kind of mysterious to me he also apparently has an aptitude that is somewhat difficult to believe people would come to Wilfred and say they wanted a particular book and he would be able to go to the libraries and Archives of Europe in the world and locate these previously lost or hard-to-find texts this made me think of when I was watching the king in the carpark documentary about the discovery of rich the Third's bones where one of the archaeologists before they discovered him said we're doing something that we're told never to do we're going looking for something in particular now they were successful and so it follows that theoretically Wilfrid Voynich could be similarly successful but the number of times that he seems to been able to do this gives me pause for thought regardless what he claims to have found at the villa Mondragon II in 1912 is some 240 vellum pages in a manuscript there were we think more pages around 270 but 214 remain extant on these vellum sheets are images that have been colored and also a mass of text when Voynich looks at it he discovers that it is in some kind of cipher it's in a code that makes it unintelligible and he spends the remaining decades of his life doing one of two things trying to decode the manuscript and trying to find a buyer he is unsuccessful in both and after his death his wife sells this manuscript to one hands Pete Rouse who occupies himself in the same pursuit trying to find a buyer or trying to decode the manuscript he is likewise unsuccessful and so now the Voynich or Voynich manuscript can be found in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript library at Yale University and Yale University have also digitized this manuscript so if you want to go and have a look at the pages or perhaps even try to decode it yourself I will leave the link in the description box down below so that you can go and see it for yourself through the immense amount of research that has taken place on this manuscript it has been seen that it can be divided up into broadly speaking six sections which can be codified by the images that are present on the pages so we have images that are herbal in nature astronomical biological cosmological pharmaceutical and there is also seemingly a section of recipes now as I said previously this manuscript is written on vellum and some of this vellum has been carbon-dated in fact they took vellum from a number of sheets so they could get a higher accuracy and to a 95% degree of accuracy this venom has been carbon-dated to somewhere between 1404 and 1438 also tested are the pigments used to create the images and these are really high quality mineral pigments so one thing that I think I'm comfortable saying is that this manuscript would have been quite expensive to produce 240 sheets survive of what we believe would be 270 folio sheets of vellum many of which fold out this would have been an incredible expense to purchase the vellum alone then on top of that we have these colored images on virtually every page and the mineral pigments used would have been expensive to purchase but also would have required a degree of skill to use so somebody has invested money but also clearly time to produce this text with the images must have been years in the making so there has to have been a purpose for it to go to this expense of both money and time just what that is is where my confusion lies and despite the fact that these six sections have been fairly well accepted by the majority of people researching it what isn't clear is what these images actually are are these rudimentary images of real plants are kind of quite basic almost childlike attempt at drawing them or are the plants and people and situation featured in these images actually allegorical and if they are allegorical what are the allegorical of and why another thing that's worth mentioning is that throughout the so called cypher text that's present in this manuscript there doesn't seem to be any mistakes or Corrections there's no crossing outs or over writing now this could point to one or two things either this is designed to be a pristine copy by a very very talented copyist or it points somehow to a fraud or deception taking place that somebody is carefully crafting this document and copying these letter forms from somewhere with a very deliberate hand either of these things are possible of course it wasn't just Wilfrid Voynich and hand crowds that attempted to decode this manuscript after his discovery in 1912 world war two code breakers had to go both the guys from Bletchley in London but most tellingly for me those in the United States these were people who used medieval and early modern cipher texts to practice to keep themselves essentially hot on their skills when it came to decoding war messages they were also unsuccessful more recently with the advancements in digital technology AI software the cutting edge of AI software that's been used to decode ciphers and to find their route source has also been run over the Voynich texts also with no success and to my mind the own Hunt has happened recently similarly is with the last remaining zodiac cipher that also hasn't been broken by AI software now with the Zodiac cipher the reason given for this is that it perhaps isn't a breakable cipher that it's just a jumble of symbols and letters intended to confuse is it possible that the Voynich is the same that it's not a cipher or an unknown language that it's just a jumble of symbols and letters and images designed to look like a cipher intended to confuse and discombobulated but then of course we have to ask ourselves why would somebody go to the expense of buying this vellum of buying these mineral pigments and of taking the year that would have taken to produce this thing when it has no meaning except for that it looks like it's a coat if it is a real cipher text designed to be decoded and read then that would make this text one of only three pre 1500 complete text ciphers and offer three that are still extant this manuscript would be the most complicated by a rather long way at the time that Wilfrid Voynich claims that he discovers his manuscript at the villa mantra goñi he says that with it was a letter written in Latin dated 1665 and signed by Johannes Marcus masse and I apologize if I've mispronounced that but Marcy in his letter names Roger Bacon as a potential author for the manuscript Roger Bacon was a 13th century healer also known as dr. Morales or the miracle doctor but bacon is not the only suggested author Edith Sherwood suggests that the work is actually that of a very young Leonardo da Vinci she uses this as an explanation as to why the images of the people and the plants seems so rudimentary and almost childlike they were produced by a child a child who would go on to be a genius and hence have the dedication to work for this length of time using these incredibly fine materials another potential author is John Dee's accomplice or perhaps victimizer depending on how you see it Edward Kelly in the text of the Voynich known by some as Voina cheese there is a parallel that is drawn with Enochian the angelic language that seems to have been developed or certainly fabricated by Edward Kelly when he was having his angelic conversations with John Dee in attendance so is perhaps the Voynich cheese another version of Enochian a fraudulent language developed by this early modern huckster Wilfrid Voynich himself is also accused of having being the author it is thought that perhaps he did really find this letter dated 1665 in the villa Mondragon II describing this manuscript and what it looked like and decided that he would fabricate one the heater potentially sell based upon these specifications all of the other texts that Wilfrid Voynich brought back from the villa Mondragon II had a label stating that they came from the library of Pierre - Bex 1870 the Voynich does not have this label Jerry Kennedy who is a distant relation of Wilfrid Voynich who attempted to research him found the following he found that his ancestor Wilfrid Voynich had sourced a quantity of blank vellum also telling is that Wilfrid Voynich while in London was making trips the British Library with an associate and this associate was researching mineral pigments in medieval art so according to Jerry Kennedy he has the capacity to source the vellum and is also researching the kind of mineral pigments that would have been used to create the seemingly medieval images that are found in the Voynich did he find a letter about the Codex and then set to with sourcing the materials and the know-how to create something that will resemble what is described in the letter he found the more outlandish suggestions as to where this text come from include aliens and also the people of Atlantis do let me know if one of these seems most plausible to you in the comments section down below now some people have used the carbon dating of the vellum to state that well this rules out da Vinci John D and Voynich himself because the vellum is simply too early however it would be more problematic to me if the vellum was dated to too late is it possible that people might have good vellum lying around waiting for a purpose is it possible that somebody might purchase an order good vilem I don't know how old the paper stock that I write on is when it was first made into paper it could be 10 50 20 maybe even a hundred years old so for me the carbon dating would only be able to rule out a creator if it was dated to after that creator was living but do you agree what do you think let me know in the comment section down below according to the entry on the Bionic rare books and management website at Yale regarding this manuscript they have a timeline of potential ownership and they think that it starts with John Dee who in 1586 sold the manuscript to the holy roman emperor rudolf ii for six hundred ducats it is then stated by the Bayaka team that the next person to hold it is one jaqobis seen a pious who is a doctor for rudolf ii and possibly acquired the manuscript after Rudolph's death in lieu of some debts that the emperor owed him and so this is where the manuscript is in 1608 in the hands of this doctor we next see it in 1666 when Johannes Marcus mercy he who writes the letter naming Roger Baker as an author sends it to Athanasius Kircher then it next appears in 1912 in the hands of Voynich and from then it passes to Krauss and then into the Bionicle library so what are the possible motives for the creation of this document in the way it was created by whomever created it at whatever time well there are many ideas and suggestions but here are a few that I think are potentially plausible and I'm going to list them on screen so is this perhaps evidence of a scientific medical or alchemical genius who is attempting to hide their discoveries from competitors or perhaps from an inquisitorial Catholic Church who are striving to root out heretics is it perhaps a fantasy or decorative document something that is designed to not have a meaning but it's designed to delight the friend and family of the person who's knowingly bought it or is it a hoax or a forgery where a buyer thinks they're getting a real cipher but isn't is this a early modern hoax by somebody like Edward Kelly attempting to defraud emperor rudolf ii or is it a more modern forgery or hoax by Voynich himself attempting to seek a similarly do pible buyer perhaps it's not in cypher at all maybe this is an unknown language or a shorthand or perhaps it's a code based on an unknown language or shorthand form in which case we would need some kind of rosetta stone to decode it is it the result of hallucinations perhaps due to a substance taken for the aid of worship or because of a mental illness is the Voynich text essentially the written form of speaking in tongues all of these sound potentially plausible to me do let me know in the comment section down below or come and find me over on social media to let me know what you think I'd love to continue the discussion there I will leave my social media links in the description box down below as well while I was researching this something that was said by Rheneas and Bergen has really stuck in my mind he has researched the Voynich manuscript himself and when speaking of it he says the following the Voynich is quotes a Hall of Mirrors reflecting each researchers own imagination without ever allowing him a glimpse into its inner secrets his statement about the Voynich made me think of narcissus looking at his own reflection in the pool and losing his humanity and his perspective while doing so and it gave me pause thinking about the way in which we engage with academic obsession not interest obsession and I'm sure when we can obsess about many other things a similar thing happens but what does it mean to spend decades of a career perhaps the entirety of a career attempted to code a manuscript based upon the assumption that the manuscript is in code and that that code can be broken and when broken that something fundamental will be revealed a fundamental truth about ourselves about our history and about the text these are a lot of assumptions to spend a career in attempting to prove I think and I'm not saying that people who attempt to solve the Voynich and don't succeed have wasted their careers under no circumstances but I think that they show a degree of I think mental strength that I would not be able to show I have been very very careful about the way that I have approached researching the Voynich and its history and I have been very strong and clear with myself that I am NOT going to attempt to decode it or find one pure truthful answer about its origins because to me that would be the wave that madness would lie anybody who is able to keep their head and focus on decoding this is mentally stronger than I am but what do you think let me know in the comment section down below I really hope you enjoyed this video and found it interesting Caius Martius Coriolanus thank you so much for the suggestion I've really enjoyed filming it if you or any of the rest of you have any other ideas for topics you'd like me to research or cover please let me know in the comment section down below also head on over to my social media I'll leave those links in the description box please follow me when you get there and we can have a conversation about this video or any other videos you'd like me to make if you did enjoy this video please let me know by clicking the like button please also subscribe to my channel and click the bell icon so that YouTube tells you when I've next uploaded I can't wait to see you all in the next video and I hope you're gonna have a great day whatever you're doing take care bye bye for now [Music] [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 19,713

Rating: 4.9595375 out of 5

Keywords: Education, Literature, Culture, History, Early Modern, Renaissance, Medieval, Voynich Manuscript, Historial Mystery, Wilfred Voynich, Cypher Texts, Code Breaking, Hoax

Id: jj6Dgem2v_4

Length: 20min 49sec (1249 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 01 2019