Re: VMs: VM: The great frustration (was VM: Voynich as Divine Comedy)

[Pamela Richards <spirlhelix@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Leonard

It's not that I think your idea is a bad one, but I
feel, at least from my point of view, that pursuing it
at this time it is premature.  It seems you can
probably find "experts" to back opposing points of
view quite readily.  And if our assumption is that the
text is nonsense, there is very little probability we
will ever make sense of it.

I believe there is plenty of evidence that the VMs
author knew what he was talking (drawing?) about, and
indeed it is possible that he knew more about the
subject of astrology than most of us will ever learn
in a lifetime.

I hope my posts have not added to a sense of "list
depression"; my understanding so far is that we may
have to be ready to leave behind some cherished
notions to find out what the VMs author is actually
getting at.  For instance, we may have to be ready to
examine the possibility that his "Zodiac" drawings did
not mean quite what we assumed.

Personally, I don't think the VMs is gibberish or
glossalia, and I don't think the VMs author has lost a
grip on reality.  I do think he is sly and clever, and
that he did not intend his code ever to be broken.  So
far, I think he's doing very well.

Warmly,

Pam



--- Leonard Fox <rockandhawk@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> My apologies if this thought has already been
> discussed at some point.
> 
> Certainly I am as frustrated as anyone else on this
> list, but a thought has
> occurred to me over the years that may be confirmed
> by someone with
> psychiatric training - if there are any
> psychiatrists reading this:
> 
> In view of the fact that no other manuscript,
> document, or even fragment has
> ever come to light that uses the same script and,
> presumably, the same
> language(s) as the VMs, is it not possible that the
> work could be an example
> of some sort of mental illness - a highly developed
> schizophrenic work based
> on the dreams, visions, and hallucinations (visual
> and auditory) of a single
> educated individual who felt compelled to record
> these in a language and
> script that had been "revealed" to him? The
> phenomenon of glossolalia is
> known to be symptomatic of certain mental disorders,
> and perhaps it could
> undergo the type of organization seen in the VMs.
> This might also explain
> the arguments that have been mooted for more than
> one "language" represented
> in the work.
> 
> I would be most interested to find out whether the
> VMs has ever been seen by
> someone who has a good knowledge of psychiatric
> history. It may be that
> similar (i.e., in nature, not specific form)
> manuscripts have been produced
> over the centuries, with similar attention to detail
> in terms of
> illustrations and using unknown scripts. Perhaps
> examples can be found in
> psychiatric archives.
> 
> Not to be overly pessimistic, but if this suggestion
> were indeed the case,
> then a decipherment/translation of the VMs would
> probably never be possible.
> This, of course, would be bad news for all those who
> have labored aver this
> manuscript, but I don't think that the possibility
> should be altogether
> excluded.
> 
> Leonard
> 
> 
> on 10/12/04 13:00, Michael Winkelmann at
> DasWinkelmann@xxxxxx wrote:
> 
> > Hello to the list,
> > 
> >> _Can_ your theory be falsified? If not, it's
> worthless.*)
> > 
> > of course all the theories could be falsified, if
> we were able to read /
> > decipher / translate the "text" of the VMs. ;-)
> > 
> > But: after many years of research nobody knows
> what the VMs is about.
> > 
> > There is a "text", apparently written by a fast
> and trained hand without
> > interruptions caused by complex encipherment
> calculations - and this
> > "text" is unreadable. But the "text" obviously
> looks like written "for
> > reading", not like written "for deciphering".  We
> all can not explain
> > it, and we do not know for sure that there is a
> "meaning" of the "text".
> > 
> > There are really weird illustrations. The
> astrological / cosmological
> > drawings looks similar to other medialval
> astrological / cosmological
> > drawings at the first sight - but also different
> enough to cause lots of
> > confusion in interpreting them. So these drawings
> do not help us
> > understanding the meaning of the "text" or even
> the "meaning" of the
> > drawings.
> > 
> > The herbal / pharmaceutical illustrations looks
> familar - at the first
> > sight. But none of the plants can be identified
> for sure, which is
> > strange, and many of the plants looks a little bit
> to phantastic as
> > someone would expect in drawings of real plants,
> growing on the face of
> > the earth. They does not help us in understanding
> the "text" - and I
> > think, all these drawings are a kind of cipher
> too...
> > 
> > The biological illustrations are the strangest
> thing I'd ever seen. A
> > "biological" page was my first impression of the
> VMs, I saw it (six
> > months ago) in the august 1993 issue of "Spektrum
> der Wissenschaft",
> > which is the german Scientific American. I thought
> something like: "It
> > must be a fake. This can not be the work of a
> medieval artist." I was
> > confused, and I googled for more information. I
> saw the other folios,
> > and I thought something like "It looks authentic,
> it is a mediaval Ms,
> > and it can not be (too) hard to read..." The VMs
> has drawn me to itself
> > and I began to listen to its strange message.
> > 
> > Now I have got a transcription, some self-written
> perl programs for the
> > "text" and enough confusion for the next twenty
> years. Some of my
> > friends think I became crazy...
> > 
> > I downloaded the whole archive of the mailing list
> to avoid "reinventing
> > the wheel". Reading in the archive, I had to
> realize the huge amount of
> > analysis done so far, revealing many strange
> properties of the "text",
> > and that all the analysis does not help anyone in
> "understanding" the
> > VMs.
> > 
> > Many, perhaps most, of the "hard" or "falsifiable"
> facts are known after
> > some decades of great research, and the "meaning"
> of the VMs is still
> > unknown. That's the "great frustration" in
> analyzing the VMs.
> > 
> > So, many people in the list take a look on the
> "less hard", "softer" and
> > "more speculative" stuff at the moment, led by the
> more or less obvious
> > similarities between the illustrations and
> medieval science (in the
> > context of the medieval paradigms, astrology,
> alchemy and even occultism
> > were real science) or other medieval documents. It
> does not help us to
> > decipher a single word, it tends to be a private
> discussion of two or
> > three people following a very specific hypothesis
> in front of an
> > audience of hundreds (or thousends, I do not know)
> of list members,
> > which often can not see the relatedness to the
> list topic (the VMs)
> > after some of these postings and "feel" them as
> off-topic.
> > 
> > But these postings are not really off-topic, they
> are an expression of
> > the "great frustration". Most people which spent
> their time on
> > "understanding the VMs" do not want to say "All my
> research is a dead
> > end. I give up.", and many ways of "making sense
> from the unknown" are
> > gone. It is a sign of the discussion's quality,
> that I must not read
> > nonsense like the "UFO hypothesis" in the last few
> months - the
> > assumption of a contact with an extraterrestial
> civilisation could
> > explain everything, and so, it couldn't explain
> anything.
> > 
> > In this situation, the (from my point of view:
> very interesting) posting
> > of Ronald Lorenzo was "salt in the wounds", and
> the first (a little
> > over-) emotional reactions like "postmodern
> bubble" or "I want what he's
> > smoking" shows a lot of the "great frustration".
> Okay, it was an
> > off-topic post in the sense that it does not help
> us understanding the
> > VMs. But _this_ topic is totally lost at the
> moment.
> > 
> > At the moment it is hard for me to follow the
> discussions 
=== message truncated ===


=====
"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing, than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."


		
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