Re: VMs: Personal Guess

[Gordon Rugg <g.rugg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Another guess:

When?
1551-1586

Where?
Possibly England

Who?
Probably Kell(e)y, possibly with the active help of Dee

Language?
Probably meaningless gibberish, though a code is also possible, in which case English or Latin

Contents?
If code, then either a contentful hoax (i.e. a meaningful plaintext, rather than gibberish, but a plaintext whose role was purely as a source of "padding", like the alphabetic strings in the Beale ciphers) or something which Kelley claimed that the angels had told him

Decipherable/hoax?
Probably recoverable, as opposed to decipherable - I think it would be possible to reconstruct the precise methods and materials used, though I'm far from certain about this.

Procedure?
Probably used a (now lost) north Italian and a (now lost) west mid German manuscript as templates for the illustrations, to ensure fashions, etc, would be consistent with a late c15th alchemical herbal; perhaps supplied by Puccius. Used characters from a variety of scripts and shorthands, which make it harder for decoders (since we can't be sure which characters are random variants of each other and which are different) and also has the advantage of concealing
the originator's own handwriting. Botanical section originally prepared in parallel by originator and accomplice; when they realised the divergence between the two sets of output (A and B), then they changed procedure, with one drafting and the other doing the fair copy.


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