RE: The Hoax Theory (was: VMs: Codex Seraphinianus...?)

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Don,

At 21:22 18/07/2003 -0600, Don Latham wrote:
> HI GC and Nick as well: I deliberately used quotes on "paranoia" for the
> very points you have raised. Certainly most, if not all, alchemical
> treatises used "insider" language/symbology as well as some enciphering (?).

Similarly, authors of magical treatises and recipes of this general period 
often write the key parts of their most powerful, occult, dangerous secrets 
in "the magical cipher" (replacing all vowels with the next consonant 
up)... probably one of the least effective ciphers ever devised. =:-o

AIUI, some alchemists also wrote (admittedly very short) parts in Greek 
letters: but the most powerful forms of cryptography they devised were 
*metaphor* and what I'd call *ellipticity* (ie, indirectness or 
obscureness). As this amounts to a kind of "hiding in plain sight", this 
could quite reasonably be classified as steganography.

Some might argue that these "codes" have yet to be broken... others 
consider that, whatever alchemical secrets might have been there in the 
first place are probably irreversibly lost. Whatever.

All of this you know: all I'm saying is that alchemy - as practised - 
wasn't really in significant need of encryption. When the plaintext is hard 
enough to understand, why bother encoding it? :-9

Note that I'm not saying that (at least a few parts of) the VMS aren't 
alchemy-related in some way: once you get past the first few quires, I 
wouldn't be surprised if much (if not all) of the herbal section was 
entirely unrelated to plants. My current evidence is only suggestive of 
(roughly) two quires being genuinely herbal/agricultural: and I'd expect 
analysis of the dialects to back this up.

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


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