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DanaThomas posted an update 5 years, 5 months ago
Mysterious manuscripts: The Voynich MS in Prague, from Rudolf II to Johannes Marcus Marci.
https://www.academia.edu/28113654/R_Zandbergen_and_R_Prinke_The_Voynich_MS_in_Prague_from_Rudolf_II_to_Johannes_Marcus_Marci_In_Acta_Universitatis_Carolinae_Mathematica_et_Physica_Vol_46_Supplementum_2005_pp_141_152
The Giza Forum (Legacy)
Closed Archive of The Old Forum
The history/linguistics/esoterica geek in me found this MS fascinating. There are some decent documentaries about it on YT. I think this one is a good intro, for any who might be interested: “The Voynich Code – The Worlds Most Mysterious Manuscript” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awGN5NApDy4
I have come across what I think is compelling evidence that this was a women’s health manual, utilizing herbology, alchemy, astrology and both ritual and health bathing in pools. There is a lot of resemblance to the sketches of pipes and pools in the manuscript to the ritual bathing pools used by nuns and Jewish women of around the Byzantine period. I also think the final thing that throws all the scholars off is, I believe it is a document written entirely by women – nuns of an esoteric order. Think Hildegarde von Bingen style, though not her or her order.
I agree that it is health related. As an aside, in the Alexandrian descriptions of ancient Egyptian wisdom, women’s health is given as a specific separate branch.
Your sources got a theory about what language it’s written in, or what language the coded writing refers to?
this is something I came across and it stimulated my own thoughts as well. I don’t remember the linguistic part very well but the idea was the language and manuscript was made up just for this purpose and probably not even spoken. Sorry I can’t remember more. The main thing for me was the who and why. I’m going out on a limb to say there could have been unusual factors at play like recorded glossolalia captured from trance states and the like – hence the nonsensical language structure. Something that was encoded for the one purpose – purpose built encoded secret reference manual and so resistant to studies on the structure of normal language. Not pc to say – could be from a bunch of “hysterical” women in a “cult” with unique practices and lore and by and large it worked to keep their secrets very safe. Remember what they were doing, with the purpose of controlling the reproduction and birth processes, birth control and women’s menstruation including pain relief could very well have been considered witchcraft by surrounding communities. At the same time their lore based on longstanding folk medicine and oral craft could not be supressed by whatever mainstream religion they belonged to. Indeed they were “good women”, solid matrons after all and probably had wealthy pillars of the community females in their ranks. think of it as a relic from the syncretic period when the relatively new fangled Christian religion had to share space and often overlapped with the old ways. At the same time, the Pax Romana was spreading the luxuries and innovations of Roman architecture and building practices across the known world. tldr: Women using bathing as a sacred science, enfolding religion, botanic herbalism, astrology, and folk medicine into one crazy book that has had male scholars scratching their heads for a good long time.