VMs: Voynich MS Theory

["Martin Herron" <martinherron0@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello - I've become a member here purely because I would like to talk to 
someone who knows something on the subject of the Voynich MS.  I only become 
aware of it's existence a few months ago, had forgotten about the whole 
thing until a documentary on BBC2 re-awakened an interest in the subject.  
What has happened since has made me feel the need to check something out 
with someone who knows what they're talking about.

A combination of co-incidence, curiosity and an interest in evolution has 
turned an inconsequential event which occured almost immediately after 
watching the programme into a theory of the MS's origins which I haven't 
come across it in a quick trawl through pages on the Internet, although I am 
not sure of its merit.  I hope I can state a convincing case, as I do not 
have the time to research it thoroughly myself, but feel it might be worth 
sharing.  I will try to be as concise as possible, but I must explain how 
the whole thing came about.

During the documentary, I discovered that a theory of the origin of the 
manuscript was based on the fact that in the book there is a picture of a 
Sunflower, dating it to pre-1470 or something (all dates and historical 
facts I mention are based purely on my memory of the programme and may be 
way off - you will know the actual dates - they are pretty irrelevant to the 
theory anyway).  There was a lingering shot of this picture of a Sunflower, 
and I remember thinking that it didn't look much like a Sunflower to me.  I 
didn't think much else about it, as I have no interest in plants other than 
finding them pleasant to look at.

After the documentary, my flatmate showed me some of the things he'd been 
growing on his balcony (I live in a flat in London), including tomatoes, 
peppers and a passion fruit plant, which had flowered with the most unique, 
unusual and beautiful flower I've ever seen.  Having never seen one before, 
it felt strange to immediately recognise it as the flower that I had seen 
described as a Sunflower in the documentary.  He thought that it was native 
to Asia, although information on the Internet suggest at least one species 
is from Eastern America.  However, the photographs I found of the Eastern 
American species showed a completely different flower to the one we have 
here.  I found photos of similar varieties but nothing that has the same 
flat, perfectly circular shape as this one.  Which kind of brings me nicely 
to one of the points I wish to make.

I was looking at the similarities and the differences between the picture in 
the Voynich MS to different varieties of Sunflower, to see if I could find 
anything which would knock my idea off course.  I can't remember the web 
address offhand, but you may know of the site.  It describes the blue/purple 
ring of petals drawn in the MS, and how this does not relate in any way to 
any variety of Sunflower today, and the tubers which do not form a part of 
the life cycle of any Sunflower today.  It describes the unusual shape of 
the petals in the picture which curl off in two directions, and states that 
Sunflowers today have no petals displaying this characteristic.

It seems to me that through evolution alone, there is little chance that not 
one of these characteristics would have evolved in a positive direction and 
become more obvious, rather than them all being phased out of the genetic 
makeup of the Sunflower.  Assuming that the manuscript is at least 400, and 
at most 1000 years old, I do not believe successive generations of Sunflower 
have had enough time to evolve in such a way as to shed so many details of 
their appearance, especially concerning the growth of tubers and the split, 
curling petals joining back together and straightening out again.  However, 
I do believe in the potential that the petals could split further over this 
period of time, or the plant would evolve positively more readily than it 
would evolve negatively - ie grow new bits or accentuate them, rather than 
successfully hide all traces of ever having a genetic characteristic the 
species acquired many generations ago.  I would expect at least one species 
of Sunflower today to display at least one of the details shown in the MS.

Then there is the Passion Flower.  Different varieties of Passion Flower 
look very different - red with large petals; blue with a green stem in the 
centre which looks like an alien TV aerial or something, etc.  From looking 
at a few websites, it seems as though the Passion Flower has a far greater 
variety in its appearance inter-species, which gives far more scope for what 
the ancestors of the Passion Flower may have looked like many generations 
ago.  There are differences between the picture in the MS and the flower I 
see before me now, but I stand by my belief that they are one and the same 
flower.  This has lead me to an interesting conclusion, which I would like 
to know your opinion on.

The flower in front of me displays 2 circular, flat blue/purple ring of very 
thin petals (actually, I think they are some sort of pollen buds, but they 
point out like spikes), which are coloured in successively smaller rings of 
white and deep red as you move your eye towards the centre.  In the centre 
of the bud, there is a short stem which has some odd shaped sprouts growing 
out of it, which also seem to be some kind of pollen-laden sacks.  The 
overall appearance is very dramatic - and there are some unusual shapes in 
the flower which relate to other pictures in the MS.  I will come back to 
this point later.

In terms of the evolution of the Passion flower over n100 number of years, I 
must say I know nothing.  However, having read a few books on the subject of 
evolution and having an interest (although no formal qualifications) in 
evolutionary theory, I can easily envisage how the plant we see today could 
display the differences it does to the picture in the manuscript, and it is 
also far easier to explain the details which remain (the tubers, of which 
this particular plant has none, but I know what a passion fruit looks like; 
the petal shape; and the perfectly circular bud) than explain how so many 
details have disappeared without trace.

The most obvious things missing from the diagram in the MS are the ring of 
pinkish-white petals surrounding the spectacular bud, and the weird-looking 
stem in the centre of the bud.  These two features accentuate the flower's 
dramatic and unusual appearance, and yet these features are completely 
missing from the MS, and the picture looks rather dull by comparison.  I 
have had two ideas as to why this may be.

Firstly, and most simply, maybe these features had not evolved on the 
particular specimen that the artist was drawing.  Maybe the flower looked 
very much as it does in the MS, and through natural processes the Passion 
flower has just grown to become more spectacular today.  Although I have 
already tried to make a basic evolutionary argument for these physical 
changes, I think it is fairly unlikely that this makes a convincing 
arguement; then I came across another piece of information which made me 
think of something which I hadn't yet considered.

Apparently, the Passion flower was a very important symbol in early 
Christianity (I think the dates I saw mentioned the 14th/15th century) - for 
what reasons I do not know, but this occured to me:

There are reasons why people and cultures place significance on particular 
objects and symbols, and I would suggest beauty is one of the most basic, 
and consistant, iconic traits throughout history, crossing all cultural 
boundaries.  Different cultures may have different ideas of what beauty is, 
but everyone will idolise the beautiful before the plain.  Therefore, I 
believe that the Passion flower had this strange, almost alien quality about 
it many centuries ago which attracted the people in its native land (who 
happened to be Christians), to look at it as a 'special' flower.

This is where I need someone to let me know if I'm onto something or not.  
The theory I would like to put forward is that the manuscript may be a piece 
of anti-Christian propaganda, and is possibly an attempt to belittle or 
defunk important symbols of the religion whilst simultaneously 
encouraging/advertising alternative belief systems.  I don't know anything 
of the history of the spread of Christianity around the world, but maybe the 
Voynich MS was commisioned by someone who wanted to stop the spread of 
Christianity across a particular part of the world, and was written by 
someone sent to 'spy' on Christians in some part of the world, be it Asia or 
America.  There are other pictures in the MS which are reminiscent of the 
wierd shape of the central stem of the Passion flower, although they are in 
the biological section of the book and also resemble some kind of internal 
body parts.

I feel that the anti-Christian thing fits in with the subjects the book 
seems to cover, but I don't know if I have made a feasable enough argument 
to make a strong point, and I also don't know if it could help to date or 
uncover where the book came from.  When I mentioned this to my brother in a 
conversation recently, he mentioned a possible link with the Crusades, 
although this would obviously put the dates back from the 14th to the 
11th/12th centuries.

Anyway, I will leave it at that before I start to tie myself in knots, but I 
wondered if this possibility had ever been considered. I am in no way an 
expert on any of the subjects I have talked about here, but hopefully 
someone is, and can explain why I'm wrong, or maybe why I might be right.

Thanks for your time - I would love to know if you think this idea has any 
credibility.

Yours,

Martin Herron

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