Re: VMs: Can one "prove" a hoax? - and a request.

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

I've just had a reply back from Sergio Toresella: I asked him specifically 
how the texts in alchemical herbals (note that he calls them "alchemistic 
herbals") was produced - for example, whether nonsense (like baby talk), 
glossolalia, purely for visual impressiveness, or algorithmic.

His reply (edited very slightly), started by listing the parts of a such 
herbals in order:-

	(1) the name of the plant quite frequently in vulgar (Italian or dialect) and
	its synonyms. These names are quite curious and their sound is clearly
	charlatanesque: Herba corborelis, herba tofanas, herba istanuties, herba
	testatoris, herba centum capita, herba teodorites, herba palma christi. You
	will notice the terminations: -s that is typically Latin.
	
	(2) a short description of the herb, of the place where to collect it,
	of the illness to use for. These texts are quite standard and repetitive.

	(3) Then there could be some personal observations of the owner of the herbal
	typically: probatum est. This does not means that the herb works! It means
	that it is usually in use.

	(4) Some of the herbs (very few) have a specific alchemical interest i.e used
	for congelating mercury or producing silver or gold. The most important is
	herba lunaria. This plant has quite a geometrical aspect: a stem and 9-14
	round leaves. She drops a leaf every night and is completely bare during
	the new moon. Many herbs are used for the typical alchemical process of
	distillation because there is a correlation between the purification of
	metals and the purification of bodies (this means health) But in general the
	cultural level of these herbals is very low: nothing to do with the
	sophisticated texts of alchemy such as Preciosa Margarita Novella or
	Tabula Smaragdina and the like.

	To come to your question:

	I would not use the term nonsense, although there are many preaching formulae
	of the type abracadabra (not this one that belongs to the late antiquity)

	Nor glossolalia that is speaking words in foreign or alien languages
	although there are very rare cases (1-2) of this use see abracadabra

	Nor visually impressive: Except for Voynich all the herbals are written in
	quite a clear way and rather in a poor manner. I am not sure but in the
	Vatican Library there is an alchemistic herbal written in very fanciful way.
	But there is an editor from Israel who painted in gold the figures and the
	letters of a well known herbal and transformed it in something absolutely
	new and sold the postcards in Munchen (Germany).

	Nor algorithmic. There are a lot of repetitions and stereotyped formulas but
	I would not refer to that as a mathematical or mechanical process.

	You should imagine that the charlatan (i.e. the medician) that wandered
	around selling his wares used these fancy books to draw the attention of
	the public (books with figures were quite rare, expensive, and attractive
	objects) and to give authority to his speech.

	If you take into consideration this specific aspect of the alchemistic
	herbal, you can describe it (today) in the fashion you prefer in order to
	make it work: visually impressive (magic) algorithmic, nonsense. You can
	produce your own herbal: it will work!

AIUI, the alchemical herbal "tradition" or "family of manuscripts" are 
clear cases roughly contemporary to the VMS, where you would have a 
reasonable expectation of finding nonsense of one sort or another.

But the structure of their texts appears to nothing much in common with the 
structure of the VMS' text.

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....

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