[wormwoodiana.blogspot.com]

Some ED folk will have read a Colin Wilson story, "The Return of the Lloigor," that makes use of this genuine manuscript (or genuine fake manuscript?).

I have been familiar with "The Voynich Manuscript" for a long time, it is a fascinating piece of work and it does not matter if it is genuine or not. Definitely I have to look up the story the existence of which I had no idea of at all. It sounds really intriguing.

Wilson's "Return of the Lloigor" is in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos.

[en.wikipedia.org]

It was also published in a "revised edition" in 1974, as a small book, by Village Press. That edition is held by a number of libraries. You might check worldcat.org if you're interested. Honestly, though, it's not like it's a Story You Must Read Before You Die.

You probably know that anyone with the $$ can buy a facsimile of the Voynich manuscript. I got my university library to buy one.

[yalebooks.yale.edu]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 22 Feb 21 | 11:03AM by Dale Nelson.

I was reading about it in Wikipeida, for an overview, since I'd never heard of it before. The manuscript itself, and especially some of the drawings, can induce a case of the heebie-jeebies.

This is a bit like the Kensington Rune Stone debate on sci.archaeology maybe 25-30 years ago. I mostly lurked, but it was fascinating, especially the ancillary facts that came up in attempts to prove/disprove its veracity.

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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My friend Lars Walker wrote a near-future novel called Wolf Time that Baen published about 20 years ago. It assumes (as Walker emphatically does not, in real life) that the Runestone is genuine.

I've seen the Runestone. It was impressive. But I don't seem to possess a psychometric gift, so I couldn't authenticate it (or not). (wink, wink)

Entertaining novel, though. Those allergic to any suggestion of Christianity might get a moment or two of sniffles. But that's balanced by some of the bad guys being Christian nuts.

Dale

Looks to me like a codex of early medicine. Women from the courts taking herbal baths, of varying mixtures, to promote health and fertility. With an element of astrological planning present as well, for optimizing the procedures.

Could be.

I found this comment in the wiki article intriguing:

"In the culminating chapter of their work, Kennedy states his belief that it is a hoax or forgery. Churchill acknowledges the possibility that the manuscript is either a synthetic forgotten language (as advanced by Friedman), or else a forgery, as the preeminent theory. However, he concludes that, if the manuscript is a genuine creation, mental illness or delusion seems to have affected the author."

Blowing up some of the botanical drawings reveals a sort of involuted attention to detail, and while this would be appropriate when rendering an example from life, according to the article, most/many of the plant drawings are of no known species, implying that these may be purely imaginary, but again, the level of detail is all the more striking.

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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