Re: VMs: Re: Voynich MS Theory

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Martin,

At 12:38 19/07/2003 +0000, Martin Herron wrote:
> Maybe very few of the people who were the potential audience for the 
> information were unable to read or write themselves, and relied on someone 
> to tell them what the book said.  As I mentioned in my first letter, the 
> beautiful will always be worshipped before the plain - and if you were in 
> a community where suddenly this incredible book appeared with these 
> bizarre pictures of things you had never seen before, and you were unable 
> to read it yourself, you would want to know what it said.

All the same, as compared to other herbals and manuscripts of the time, the 
VMS are far from beautiful: in fact, I'd say it's actually a bit of an ugly 
duckling. :-)  If you were describing the Codex Serafinianus, I'd 
wholeheartedly agree with you - but not really the Voynich.

>   And if you were the only person within that community who could read 
> it, the world would be your oyster, so to speak.  You could get away with 
> telling them anything and they'd have no reason not to believe you.  Hey 
> - maybe that is the whole point of it!  The images within could have been 
> there purely to illustrate stories which they were being told; to beef up 
> fanciful accounts of myserious places and plants, alternate realities, 
> etc.  Maybe it doesn't even say anything at all, and someone read it to 
> others without actually reading it - just making up stories themselves, 
> and showing the pictures to people who wouldn't know any different.

You're nearly describing Sergio Toresella's "alchemical herbals" here 
(beautiful meaningless herbals thought to have been used by quacks to gain 
credibility in order to sell fake remedies to the gullible, circa 
1450-1500) - though Sergio also points out that the VMS don't appear to 
match any of them (nor any mainstream herbal, for that matter).

> Just a thought...I'm getting quite into this!  I don't know why I seem to 
> be stuck on this propaganda theory of mine, though.

I guess that's how nearly all of us start - but when you find something in 
the VMS that forces you to turn your ideas right around, now *that's* when 
it begins to get very interesting... :-)

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


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