alternately called the most mysterious book in existence and the most elaborate use of gibberish as hoax, the 16th century book has continued to interest code breakers, linguists, and crackpots since it’s rediscovery in 1912, and it’s no wonder. to quote, “it is hand-written in a unique alphabet, about 250 pages long, and contains pictures of unrecognizable flowers, naked nymphs and astrological symbols.” sound interesting? it is.

first off, before i go on, let me just offer some images from the manuscript so you can get a sense of what the hubbub is about.
some images here with thumbnails, concentrated mainly on the illustrations. more of the same here. a larger group, with examples of the text can be found here. alright…

a recent article in nature has a computer scientist named gordon rugg demonstrating that what was always seen as a dizzying complexity, namely the unknown language used, could in fact be created very simply. he says,” i’ve shown that a hoax is a feasible explanation, now it’s up to believers in a code to produce evidence to support their ideas.” and what are their ideas? well, among the many there is predictably the “end times” prophetic message idea, encapsulated pretty well by this guy, who places this particular image from the manuscript over an image of our spiral arm galaxy to help illustrate his reasoning. there are other ideas, all explaining the text is encoded, some incorporating alien intelligence, some taking a more spiritual angle. in any case this is all beside the point to me, it being a “hoax” included.

if the manuscript is in fact written in a real, though lost language, cool. if it is of some outlandish origin, cool. if it is an elaborate hoax, as gordon rugg believes, explaining “english adventurer edward kelley produced the voynich to con rudolph II, holy roman emperor and collector of antiquities, out of a fortune in gold”, that’s cool too, maybe even better. the idea that some guy took it upon himself to create such a complex, wildly imaginative manuscript, complete with fake language in gibberish script, and has managed to keep it’s authenticity a question for five hundred years, is amazing to me. creating faux language and fake artifacts is an endeavor close to my heart. from an artistic standpoint, if this is indeed a bunch of hooey, it’s the coolest most bad ass hooey i’ve seen yet. bravo to whatever crackpot con-man artist came up with it.

for more historical info, as well as some more of the ideas put forth about it’s origin and purpose, check out this site. enjoy.