The Birth of (yet another) New Mythology

Back in 2019 I outlined the process by which evidence supporting a genuine, and old, Voynich was created from whole cloth. This was the unfounded “evidence” that the Voynich was referenced in 1903.

But there have been many smaller cases of this being done to one degree or another, in the hundred plus years since the claimed discovery of the Voynich. As a result, the overwhelming portion of what people think they know about the manuscript is actually either provably false, to at best, merely opinions backed up by slim to no evidence. As a result, the present image of the Voynich is an almost wholly imaginative creation, with little to no bearing on any reality.

The first step in myth creation is to tentatively suggest that some small reference to some item of the past might be related to the Voynich Manuscript. This is done with disclaimers, which act as insulation for the discoverer. Terms such as that this item is “perhaps”, or “possibly” the Voynich, maybe even with “we can’t know for certain” it is the Voynich, or “we can’t say” it is, but that it “might be”. These disclaimers are then referred to if anyone challenges the claim in the future, in order to show that they were being cautious, scholarly and scientific.

The first instance of this process is probably found in the 1921 lecture by Wilfrid Voynich before the College of Philadelphia Physicians, when he suggested “his” Bacon Cipher might be the “Book of Hieroglyphiks” that John Dee sold to Rudolf II, according to his son, Arthur. Never mind that it is provable that Wilfrid himself knew this to be… ahem… “incorrect”, and that he would have known the book referred to was the Book of Dunston. The seed was planted, and for decades we have been saddled with the Dee myth. The bare and even contraindicating references in the Letters to and from Kircher would probably be another prime example, but there are many cases of this effect.

Step two is to reference the original vague claim, but refer to it in stronger terms… such as casually referencing it as a bit of factual evidence, one that “we all know” to be true. This transition is seen in the case of the 1903 myth. It is honestly claimed, at first, that, “… but unfortunately this is so unspecific that it would not have been possible to identify the MS by this description alone.”, but then in step two, the other external references later, that,

“In 1903 the Jesuits decided to sell a collection of around 380 manuscripts to the Vatican library. Mainly fifteenth-century classical and humanist works, the group also included two items from Kircher’s library, one of which was the Voynich manuscript. The entries in the catalogue prepared for this sale are very brief, and Beinecke MS 408 is describe as a miscellaneous fifteenth-century vellum manuscript: ‘Miscellanea / c[odex] m[embranacaeus] s[aeculae] XV”

You see what happened there? Now it is stated as fact that this entry is the Voynich. And this is by the same author as the original!

Step three is when “The Genie is out of the Bottle”, as the now claimed reality is picked up by the media and the general public. There are at least a couple of further references to the “1903 Myth” as factual proof of the pre-1912 existence of the Voynich. And there is no putting the Genie back in once it gets to this stage. Anything or anyone who rebuts this supposed “evidence” is considered as distasteful; while anything which supports it, no matter how improbable or demonstrably incorrect, it is latched onto, and promoted.

Well not to be disappointed, here is yet another, and recent, prime example of this effect, one which I watched unfold in real time in the recent November/December 2021 online Malta Voynich Conference. The presentation was titled Book Transactions of Emperor Rudolf II, 1576–1612: New Findings on the Earliest Ownership of the Voynich Manuscript, by Stefan Guzy (University of the Arts Bremen, Am Speicher XI 8, 28217 Bremen, Germany).

In his presentation, Mr. Guzy describes how he used references of the cost of various books and collections on record, in an attempt to match up the supposed 600 ducats “paid to the bearer” of the Voynich by Rudolf II to some historic citation of some real book. The “600 ducat” reference is from the 1665/66 Marci to Kircher letter.

Assuming this Marci letter is genuine (which I doubt), this is of course a clever idea. But it has its pitfalls, which heartily manifested themselves, especially when the investigator is intent on finding what they are looking for, whether or not they actually do find it. The obvious one is that price alone cannot identify any book, even if the time it existed is the same as another book, and the cost exact. Not at all. Many books cost the same, it is only in the description of them, if adequate, that we can claim it probably they are the same. If a matching cost was found, then the description of the book must be compared.

But the Guzy search was fruitless: not only did he not find a work of the same cost as the Voynich, he squeezes his square peg in the desired round hole by second guessing… and correcting!… he chosen sources to make it seem that he did (italics mine):

“The Widemann acquisition is worth taking a closer look at, since 500 thaler is the equivalent of 600 fl.: the sum mentioned in the Marci letter. It is unlikely that the manuscript was bought with gold ducats as the letter literally says, however, since
the imperial account books show that nearly everything was paid for in gold florin, using mostly Rhenisch guilders (Rheinischer Goldgulden, fl.) or Thaler (thl).”

Yes, forget what the letter “literally says”, and substitute one’s own version, to fit ones own desired narrative.

So through a very speculative path through various collections (far too convoluted to relate here, one must read the above linked paper and read it), and making many adjustments for what Guzy claims the sources “really” meant, what the amounts “really” were, he still can only “suggest” that there is any possibility that he has “found the Voynich”, and concludes that much more digging must be done, and suggests where.

In short, he did NOT find the Voynich. He did not even find “a book” which cost the same as the Voynich. And he certainly didn’t find any book with the same description that fits the Voynich. In clear terms, this search, this premise… hopeful and clever and well-meant as it was, failed. Well I wouldn’t say it failed, it just did not succeed in the way Guzy intended, or implied he did.

In any case, after hearing this interesting lecture, the conclusion of which is that nothing was found, I still realized… predicted, through experience… that reality was not going to stand in the way of a good story. But at least, by questioning the presenter, I could get that reality on record. Or so I thought. Below is a screenshot of my questions and answers, which were not shared with any of the Conference attendees. And the answers were not even by Guzy, but rather by Lisa Fagin Davis. She was not a co-presenter of the paper, to my knowledge, nor the moderator for this segment of the Conference.

So you can see from my “teeth pulling session” that it was finally admitted (“Sure…”) that no provenance was found by Guzy, only being told it does not matter that it was not found. Which is of course not correct, because provenance always matters, and not finding it matters, too. And, in fact, I would say the “not finding” part increases in importance as the search intensifies. This search has not only been intense, and decades-long, involving hundreds of participants from around the world, in an ever increasingly complete record on the internet, but more importantly it focuses in one, distinct, vein of interest: The world of the Jesuits, the writers of the Letters, and of Rudolf II, Prague, and Kircher. That is, I think there is a huge difference between looking all over the world, which Davis’s answers would be understandable in; and on the contrary, the actual case here, of looking in a specific area which they claim the Voynich must exist. A negative result in the first could be barely forgiven and explained; in the latter, it is damning.

But they don’t let that reality stand in the way of a good myth, and stage one was set in Guzy’s lecture and paper: The bare but apologetic suggestion that the Voynich HAS been found, albeit with disclaimers. Then, Step two is treating this as factual, that the Voynich had actually been found by Guzy. Not remotely possible from reading this paper, but it was done. This firming of the myth appeared in the comments of an article on Nick Pelling’s blog:

The comment is still slightly ambiguous, with a bit of “wiggle room”. But still, it logically implies that the Guzy reference was, indeed, the Voynich. And it serves that purpose, however worded, because it is done in a way that most who read this will believe that the Voynich was found by Guzy.

The logic of the comment connects from “the seller” (of the Voynich?), through a “probable” (is it?) equivalent of 600 florins to 500 taler, which is then claimed to be the “600 ducats” from the Marci letter (probably the amount). Clearly the implication is that Guzy did find the Voynich, that this is the same book. And then, the comment is capped with the non sequitur “… a portrait of Geizkofler survives, but none of Widemann”. This of course has no bearing on the preceding rationalization, which was meant to firm up a non-existent “finding”. Well tailored, but while all carefully worded to insulate from any claim this is what was being done here, it is obviously the point of the comment. It is also, in my opinion, quite a self-conscious attempt.

Of course I made another attempt to counter this this new myth, although by now I suspected it was not a single genie writhing from a bottle, but that they were now swarming like locusts from horizon to horizon, and over all Voynich scholarship. I respectfully and politely asked Rene, in a new comment, if he was suggesting that Guzy actually found the actual Voynich. But my question was censored by Nick, and never appeared in the thread. A good deal of other comments on this post followed, with a wide range of questions about the Conference, the Guzy paper, and so on. None, however, like mine, questioning the validity of this new claim.

But lest the reader think I am stretching the meaning of the comment by Zandbergen, we can see I am not, as he states on his own update to his history page (italics mine),

“[Guzy’s] first step was to visit the family archives of the Geizkoflers in Ludwigsburg, where he was able to find the transaction related to Widemann’s books from Augsburg. Here, the price was listed as 600 Rheinische Gulden, that is: 600 gold pieces!! Apart from the florin / ducat confusion, this matches the price quoted in the Marci letter, so we can now be reasonably confident that this is indeed the sale of the Voynich MS, with probably some additional books, to Rudolf.”

Zandbergen later somewhat couches the “reasonably confident” of the first part with,

“If this is indeed the event of the sale of the MS to Rudolf…”.

But “is indeed”, or “IF this is indeed”, we are told he is “reasonably confident” it is the Voynich, which alone is, in my opinion, totally unsupported by the Guzy paper. Also note the “gold pieces are gold pieces” contention, with no mention of the Ducats in the Marci letter.

This endorsement of the Guzy paper matters, and it matters a lot. For those not familiar, the pages of voynich.nu are the “go to” cited reliable source of all things Voynich. It is no doubt a magnificent website, but rife with unfounded claims, many of which are demonstrably incorrect. And the mass of the information is about those people, organizations and practices, which while complete, detailed and unassailable, can not be reliably shown to have a thing to do with the actual Voynich. Nonetheless, much of modern Voynich research is based on the “opinion stated as fact” from this website.

Well it was not long before “part three” of myth concoction reared its ugly head: The entering of this new myth into the mainstream of Popular Voynich Beliefs and Understandings, in the form of an online article in THE ART NEWSPAPER, titled, “Unknown history of 600-year-old, coded Voynich Manuscript revealed by researcher”.

Stephan Guzy is quoted in the article, “Almost all of the emperor’s money transactions were made in guilders (florin), usually Rhenisch guilders, with only very few in thaler or ducats; so I believe that the information in the [Marci] letter was just meant to be ‘gold coins,’ which both florin and ducats are,” Guzy says. “Even if a deal was made with ducats or thaler, florins were usually used for the final transaction.”

… thus once again, but even further, and with more resolve, Guzy has decided what was “meant” in Marci’s letter, therefore firming up this new mythology. Hey, “gold is gold”, never mind the value, the weight, the source, or how anyone described it in the past. They were, apparently, wrong. Never mind, even, what was bought with that adjustable gold-of-any-kind. If it is gold, in any type or amount, it must have been the Voynich which was purchased, right?

So there you go. It would already be impossible to correct this.  It is the fault of those, who, either innocently and inadvertently, or possibly knowingly and creatively, actually create these wholly undeserving images of the Voynich as an undeniably genuine, early 15th century, northern European cipher herbal. And the many thousands of good people, who are understandably excited about the Voynich, and would love to learn its true secrets, are all let down in the process. I think of them, and the time and effort they put into this, sometimes a lifetime’s worth. Many have died while trying, some of them friends of mine.

And worst of all, the path to the Voynich’s truths is increasingly clouded, ever lessening the possibility that whatever it really is, will ever be known.