VMs: some thoughts/observations [forwarded for William Edmondson]

[Jim Gillogly <jim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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	Jim Gillogly

==================  From William Edmondson  ==================

Reflections on two days sampling BL and Wellcome holdings of Voynichiana,
herbals, alchemicals, Dee and Kelly?.

Voynich.
BL has in Facs 439 and 461 some stuff pertaining to Voynich. 461 is a
collection of rotographs (cf photographs) of the first 56 folios of the
VMS.

439 is more intriguing.  It begins with some more rotographs of VMS pages,
and on the back of one in blue pencil is the note:  Please return to W.M
Voynich, 175 Piccadilly, W1.  A company at 245 Kennington Road seems to
have done the repros?as this address is embossed on several pages.

439 also has correspondence between V and Robert Steele, and between
Newbold and Robert Steele on Newbold's 1921 attempts to decipher the VMS.
Both letters are dated late April 1921.  Newbold's attempts appear to be
recognised as unsuccessful by A.W.Pollard of the British Museum, who
writes to Steele (20/9/1921):

"?.Gayley's two objections, that the shorthand marks may be caused
haphazard by the ink spreading and that the extreme flexibility of
Newbold's method leaves a possibility that his interpretation may be the
product of his subconscious knowledge, are pretty damaging.  I hope we may
both live to see the mystery cleared up!"

However, for those curious about Newbold's thinking there is copious
detail of his complex working out of a scheme for decoding VMS, on the
assumption that the VMS is in Roger bacon's cypher (or type of cypher),
not necessarily by Roger Bacon.  There are detailed notes, perhaps for a
lecture, and pages of pencilled code workings (I assume Newbold's; could
be Steele's?).  The scheme does indeed appear to be very flexible (it is
difficult to understand in detail without lots of time - if you have
access to the BL and are cryptanalytically inclined then spend a day or so
working it through).  Equally interesting, in relation to some recent
emails on the VMS-list, is the observation that some characters may be
hidden in other characters (there are illustrations and explanations).
Newbold appears to consider four possibilities.  Letters can be concealed
by hiding fragments in other unrelated letters.  The concealment can be
by: i) adaptation to contour; ii) juxtaposition; iii) superposition; iv)
extrusion.  Think of this as character abbreviations hidden in other
characters.  Cf.  John Groves' emails about bits of characters. [However,
this too is a source of great flexibility, with every character being some
sort of Rorschach test for discovery of other characters!]

In short - Newbold was there - check out his schemes before re-inventing
them!

[I didn't do that in detail because it seems generally recognized that N
failed.]

There is also an article by Manly on the Newbold translation of VMS.
Manly is uncritically wondrous of Bacon and the link to Bacon as somehow
lending weight/plausibility to N's work.

It's not clear when the material was presented to the BM/BL.

Further thoughts on VMS after looking at other materials (see below):

a) The botanical drawings are astonishingly crude.  In particular, the
disjunction between roots and stems suggests a degree of schematicity
which can only come from not having handled the plants (or any plants?).
It is all somehow second or third -hand.

b) The drawings are oddly placed on the pages.  They are big enough to
have been drawn first, and then the writing fitted in (this seems obvious
in many cases).  But such off-centre placement is curious - unless the
pages have been cut down from elsewhere.  Also, some of the 'plants' just
look odd - and unlike real plants or others I found in herbals.  Also, of
course, the 'sunflower', if a sunflower, would date the manuscript to 16th
C (It doesn't figure in mid 16th C herbals, but is in Gerard's from 1636
(1927 distillation of Th.  Johnson's edition by Marcus Woodward - on the
open shelves at W).  Cf.  Leonhart Fuch's The New Herbal of 1543, Taschen
edition, 2001.  ISBN 3-8228-1298-6.  Cf. the page about sunflowers and
VMS: http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/98-01-17-sunflower/

c) Alchemical symbols seem (mostly? totally?) absent from VMS.
(Astrological also?) On the other hand aspects of the imagery suggest
alchemical motifs.  Alchemical imagery is present, but oddly reconfigured,
e.g. lots of water and naked ladies (not unusual alchemically) but in
oddly freeform settings as opposed to baths.  Cf.:

Alchemical Imagery in Bosch's Garden of Delights.  UMI Research Press,
ISBN 0-8357-1247-8.  Especially interesting in relation to the naked
ladies in VMS is the one shown in Figure 110, Murderous mermaid, St
Gallen, Kantonsbibliothek, Vadiana, MS428 fol6v. [Bosch is in the right
period.]

In C.A.Burland's The Arts of the Alchemists, Weidenfeld and Nicholson
1967, are some illustrations from Flamel:  Alchemie de Flamel.  MSFrancais
14765, Bibliotheque Nationale.  One of these shows planets around the
pillar of life, as people, one of which sits on a box [cf.  VMS-list
emails].

Relevant images in Gareth Roberts, 1994, The Mirror of Alchemy, British
Library, ISBN 7123-0309-X and 7123-0386-3.

See also for general info:
A dictionary of Alchemical Images, by Lyndy Abraham.  CUP 1998, ISBN
0-521-63185-8.  Alchemy, an illustrated A-Z, by Diana Fernando.  Blandford
1998, ISBN 0-7137-2668-7

And for amusement:  Raising Spirits, Making Gold and Swapping Wives:  The
true adventures of Dr John Dee and Sir Edward Kelly.  By Michael Wilding
(dedicated to Lyndy Abraham). 1999.  Shoestring Press/Abbot Bentley ISBN
1-899549-31-5 & 0-9586091-2-8



Other Materials - images/layout

I looked at several MS from 14th, 15th and 16th C.

Notably, three from 14th C - transcriptions of Roger Bacon, Galen and a
collection of alchemical receipts?..  These are BL:Add8786, Add22668,
W:MS22/Alchemy.

These show very tight script (and small) using every available space
(margins or columns notwithstanding) with lines closely packed.  There are
some excellent drawings of flasks in MS22 (complete with cross-hatched
shading to give clear indication of roundness), and the Bacon ms is on
optics with some drawings.  The Bacon ms marginalia are sometimes copious,
in tiny writing (catalogue information notes several hands/scribes at work
here).

I seriously doubt that VMS is 14th C.  But that is intuition/impression -
14thC vellum didn't appear to be used the way we see in VMS.  I'd like to
know more about exceptions to this impressionistic observation.

Turning to 15th and 16th C?.

There is much more variation of form and use of materials/space?.  The
most expansive item I handled was by James Standysh, 16th C on vellum, a
roll 14'6" long, by 1'7" wide.  This depicts at large scale the pillar of
life, with various columns, vessels, baths, clothed (interesting hats) and
naked men and women?. creatures, feathers, plants, drawings of the sun and
moon, and cautions : "The Mouth of the Collericke - Beware".  Generously
coloured, but in poor condition.  The columns are reminiscent of the
'hubble-bubbles' on VMS 88/89, which also look like the small furnaces
illustrated in alchemical MS (but VMS has no flasks/retorts?).

W:MS337/Herbals.  This is a 16th C Italian herbal with 56 illustrations in
colour.  From the catalogue: "Drawings of medicinal plants of crude type"
typical of printed herbals (but actually this is drawn).  Colours are
mostly greens/reds/browns.  And there are sometimes faces in the roots.
16v umbellifer is crudely drawn.  The seedhead looks schematic. 20v has an
oddly abstract looking plant.  More botanically accurate than VMS, but
somewhat crudely done.

W:MS336 Italian Herbal c1500.  Handwriting is generously spaced (pages are
large).  Illustrations are good and the plants are recognizable.  There is
some fanciful stuff. f33v has a dark brown wolf as the root, with growth
coming out of the mouth. f54 has an odd dragon-like creature as root
(yellow) with growth out of the back.  There is no sunflower (probably
unsurprisingly).

W:MS49 The Apocalypse.  C1420.  Quite the most amazing (large - maybe 15"
high and 10" wide) vellum book in good condition and with 292
emblematic/symbolic/ anatomical tinted and outlined drawings.  Incredible
quality.  Catalogue notes "illustrations are of great interest and
importance for history of design, costume, architecture etc., of early
15th C".  Figures of "Vices" on 49v are astonishing.  But nothing is
reminiscent of VMS.

W:MS26/Alchemy. 16th C miscellaneous German receipts with some crude
coloured drawings in the margins.

[NB the catalogue at Wellcome is very useful.  Moorat's catalogue has a
section at the back where the holdings are described by language, use of
illustrations, subjects, etc.  No listing for anything in cypher.] [I was
told that a librarian at W had been asked about VMS before; they don't
know of materials in their holdings similar to VMS - apparently the
librarian thinks it is a V forgery, not an early forgery.]


Other materials - texts

I looked at several texts to get a feel for handwriting of the 15/16th C
and specifically to look at manuscripts by/related to Dee and
Kelley/Kelly. [Strangely, I could find no mention of cypher in either BM
or W catalogues - if anyone can help out with how to locate samples of
such material from that period in those libraries, I'd be grateful.]


W:MS239 is Dee's "Practica et accurtaciones Georgii Riplay et Raimundi",
in Dee's hand.  This is fascinating (not that I can read the Latin).  The
writing is scrappy (and in three styles - formal italic, secretary script,
and a more informal handwriting we'd say is handwriting).  There are many
underlinings and extensive crosslinks to underlined words across the pages
(diagonal lines linking words).  Dee might well have liked the modern
'non-linear' text technology.  There are very few very poor drawings
(childish profiles of faces in the margins).

BL:Sloane410 is (apparently - Sloane thinks so) Kelly's treatise on the
Philosopher's Stone, in his own hand, in English; also some receipts.  The
writing is florid, unsurprisingly.  The back pages have a few linedrawings
of flasks.  Symbols seem absent.

BL:Sloane2624 ff17-20 is in Kelly's hand.  Alchemical symbols are used in
the text. [My notes omit ref to language used - I must have felt pressed
for time because the next pages of notes are copiously devoted to the roll
which was delivered last on Saturday afternoon!]

Absence of punctuation in VMS is puzzling - it is freely used in all MS I
looked at.



All in all an interesting two days.

My over-riding concerns at this juncture are the following:

1/ Why do the big libraries not have entries for things in cypher, or show
stuff if 'cypher' and 'cipher' are used as search terms?  I must have got
something wrong here, although notably the Moorat catalogue in W doesn't
have an entry for cypher in the copious listing of languages used in its
documents.  I'd like to see examples of cyphers used in documents in
15th/16th C.  Sure, they may simply be transcriptions, but here is my
thinking:  If one is working from/with a cypher of any complexity at all
one has to work from a draft (even if possible at all the mental load of
running the transcription algorithm will be too high to permit good
flowing handwriting at the same time).  This could account for the neatly
"written out" appearance of the VMS, but that causes a problem with the
images (which really should be central on the pages).  MS from 15/16th C
have few errors, even in handwriting, although underlining can be common
in some hands.  The Bacon optical treatise has errors/corrections with
carefully marked insertions linked to marginalia.  I'd like to see actual
final MS using cyphers to check the lack of corrections (mistakes in the
drafts would be common, one suspects).  Additionally, manuscripts seem to
be used by their authors quite commonly, unless like the Apocalypse MS
they are telling a story.  So marginalia carry comments, corrections,
after-thoughts, little drawings of pointing hands to indicate something
noteworthy, etc.  Not in VMS?


2/ I could be convinced that the VMS is not a modern forgery (I'd have to
handle it, I suppose; but I can take that on trust, failing tests).  So V
himself may not be responsible.  But I'm not yet convinced it is not a
16th C forgery/creation, as opposed to a genuine MS with something to say
when decoded.  The document's appearance (from web page image printouts -
I have yet to get a full copy set of pages from Yale) suggests 16th C to
me rather than 15th although the crudeness of the botanical drawings might
point to an earlier date.  I'd suspect Kelley not Dee.  It is odd how
little material is in the BL from Kelley.  I'd like to track down as much
Kelly manuscript material as possible. [Michael Wilding's book has details
of some sources, as does the Alchemy website.] Why is Kelley as forger so
unconvincing to the Voynich community?

The apparent absence of alchemical details such as symbols and detailed
drawings gives me the impression that the VMS is 'about alchemy' in some
sense.  The botanical drawings are so bad that this has to be explained
somehow, and one explanation is that the creator was working from memory,
or schematically, to tell a story rather than to record alchemical
knowledge.  That it is not intended to be thought to be related to alchemy
I'd find difficult to believe.  I'd probably, at this juncture, opt for a
Kelley forgery to impress Rudolph.  Kelley is reputed to have been
involved in inventing languages, including scripts, and the impression one
gets from, for example, discussions of Enochian
(http://www.geocities.com/peripsol/Enoch/5EnochianLanguage.htm) is that
the VMS could have been created by Kelley.

I remain neutral as to whether it is some sort of cypher or just complete
gibberish.  The possibility of gibberish carries with it certain
statistically testable ideas (randomness is difficult to sustain, so
patterns if found will probably be language like, with some large scale
fluctuations in occurrence rates; easier to construct, but still difficult
to avoid clumping of tokens (wordshapes)).  Statistical analysis of
systems like Enochian should be checked against VMS.  The possibility that
it is actually written in cypher (for whatever purpose - forgery or
genuine) remains to be fully assessed.  And, as we know, the character set
remains a matter of some uncertainty.


William Edmondson 19/2/04


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