Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the old vault. Uh. This time
Speaker 1: we're following up the episode that played last Saturday, so
Speaker 1: we're bringing you The Voyage Manuscript, Part two. This was
Speaker 1: originally published on September nineteen. We hope you enjoy Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Work. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and we are back with part two
Speaker 1: of our exploration of the Voyage Manuscript or the Vantage Manuscript.
Speaker 1: We've been saying both this medieval manuscript that his fascinated
Speaker 1: UH scholars cryptographers for for decades now, or actually not
Speaker 1: just decades, for centuries, but especially since it was reintroduced
Speaker 1: to the world around nineteen twelve and has become the
Speaker 1: subject of intense interest because it is full of this
Speaker 1: text that has not been successfully decoded if it is
Speaker 1: in fact a code, or has not been translated, if
Speaker 1: it is in fact a language, accompanied with these amazing,
Speaker 1: strange illustrations of alien plants and and women bathing in
Speaker 1: these strange horns with crocodile ten drils. Is this absolutely
Speaker 1: captivating document that is in a library at Yale now
Speaker 1: and today we wanted to go further by exploring the
Speaker 1: history of people trying to understand this document, to come
Speaker 1: up with a theory of its origin, or to explain
Speaker 1: what it says, if it says anything. Yeah, So again,
Speaker 1: definitely listen to part one if you have not. Absolutely
Speaker 1: this is definitely a part one part two scenario. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you'll probably be very confused if you try
Speaker 1: to jump in in the middle here, So go back
Speaker 1: to part one first. But so I thought we should
Speaker 1: start off today by separating the different theories of of
Speaker 1: this manuscript into two basic camps, and then within these
Speaker 1: camps there will be different theories. But the two main camps,
Speaker 1: I think we should look at our signal theory and
Speaker 1: noise theory. And so signal theory looks at the Voyage
Speaker 1: manuscript and proposes that there is some underlying meaning to
Speaker 1: the text that it could, at least in theory, actually
Speaker 1: be translated to yield a signal signal or a message.
Speaker 1: And of course it's not necessarily saying that we have
Speaker 1: understood what the messages, or that we ever will understand
Speaker 1: what the messages. But at least in theory it could
Speaker 1: be understood. It says something that's signal theory. Noise theory,
Speaker 1: we would say, proposes that there is no underlying message.
Speaker 1: It's just gibberish, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: and indeed that does cut to the chase. Either this
Speaker 1: is a document that means something or it means nothing,
Speaker 1: and and both are are kind of enthralling possibilities and
Speaker 1: is filled with wonder and old and and gives way
Speaker 1: to all sorts of you know, conspiracy theories if you
Speaker 1: gaze into it long enough. And the other is is
Speaker 1: kind of equally terrifying that this thing that has captivated
Speaker 1: and just in overwhelmed so many you know, intensely intelligent
Speaker 1: and in many cases that you know, very well educated individuals.
Speaker 1: They could old, but they could ultimately be a work
Speaker 1: of nonsense. That it's just you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like just pure chaos. And there could be multiple reasons
Speaker 1: why it could be a work of nonsense, or at
Speaker 1: least nonsense to us. And I think we'll explore these individually.
Speaker 1: But first I think we should look at some of
Speaker 1: the possibilities for understanding this document under the signal theory,
Speaker 1: the theory that it actually does say something. So what
Speaker 1: would some of these explanations be. Well, one of the
Speaker 1: big theories is that the cipher theory, the idea that
Speaker 1: the text is protected by a letter based cipher. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's a very popular approach to trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what's going on with a vantage manuscript. Right, So the
Speaker 1: idea could be that it's something like a letter substitution system. Right.
Speaker 1: So these characters that we don't recognize, that you know,
Speaker 1: roughly maybe fifteen to twenty five or up to thirty
Speaker 1: characters that are used to make the words in this
Speaker 1: book somehow correspond to letters in a known language, or
Speaker 1: letters in some coded language or or something like that.
Speaker 1: That that that there's a way of breaking the code
Speaker 1: and it de tran and it can be retranslated into
Speaker 1: a an actual language. Getting into the idea here that
Speaker 1: it could be in a code and it requires a codebook.
Speaker 1: And since we don't have the codebook, it's the cryptographers, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a goal to try and figure out what
Speaker 1: the code might be. Oh, Okay, So a codebook could
Speaker 1: mean that it wouldn't even necessarily have to be a
Speaker 1: straight like letter substitution type cipher. It could just be
Speaker 1: that there are you know, like known translations of certain
Speaker 1: word forms or something like that to other known words.
Speaker 1: Another possibility is that it's written in some form of
Speaker 1: shorthand that that we have you know, lost understanding of.
Speaker 1: There's also, uh, the the idea of steganography. This is
Speaker 1: the idea that the text itself is meaningless, but key
Speaker 1: signs would indicate hidden useful information, like little details on
Speaker 1: the illustrations or the text itself or some combination. Um.
Speaker 1: This would be kind of like, I guess, kind of
Speaker 1: like a you know, a cheap spy novel. Version of
Speaker 1: this is like counting the dotted eyes on a page
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and that tells you something. Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another variation that is brought up is that you could
Speaker 1: obtain the necessary info info by placing a plate um
Speaker 1: over the page with spaces in that plate to reveal
Speaker 1: the important characters. Oh yeah, okay, so this would be
Speaker 1: you know, like one of those uh uh, you know,
Speaker 1: decode or ring kinds of things. Oh no, that that
Speaker 1: actually I think it has letter substitution. There are there
Speaker 1: are codes like this like this, and toys and stuff
Speaker 1: that you can buy that like you put a plate
Speaker 1: over it's got certain holes on any read the letters
Speaker 1: that appear in the holes, right, And it's my understanding
Speaker 1: that if if those plates were random enough, that in
Speaker 1: and of itself could make it extremely difficult, if not impossible,
Speaker 1: to crack the code. Uh you know the Vantage manuscript. Sure,
Speaker 1: But then there are other theories that are less about
Speaker 1: code and that might still present to us as codes,
Speaker 1: but maybe it wasn't intended as a code. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: a big one is that it is some form of
Speaker 1: natural language that has been forgotten in various possibilities from
Speaker 1: Eurasia have been presented. Yeah, So the idea here would
Speaker 1: just be we've got no other documents written in this
Speaker 1: language or written in this uh, in this transliteration of
Speaker 1: the language. Right. And then another idea, to come back
Speaker 1: to something we discussed in the last episode, is that
Speaker 1: it could be a constructed language, so like a language
Speaker 1: that somebody made up on purpose, like Klingon or doth Rocky,
Speaker 1: but the fifteenth century version of that right now, and
Speaker 1: now another intriguing idea and This was apparently presented by
Speaker 1: Jerry Kennedy and Rob Churchill that it could be a
Speaker 1: what is what is called a gloss a alia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this would have been essentially like a work that
Speaker 1: is a stream of consciousness work that is created via
Speaker 1: speaking in tongues, similar to the work of Christianistic Hildegard
Speaker 1: of Bingen. Yeah, this would be uh. I mean you
Speaker 1: could look at it as a form of automatic writing,
Speaker 1: you know that. That's so there. There could be a
Speaker 1: this could be a weird transcription of spoken gloss a
Speaker 1: alia like speaking in tongues, or it could be a
Speaker 1: written version of it. Directly, it would be kind of
Speaker 1: weird if it was a transliteration of sounds made orally
Speaker 1: by gloss a alia into a script that didn't exist anyway.
Speaker 1: But you can imagine it's certainly being like automatic writing
Speaker 1: of some kind. People that the spirits are writing through
Speaker 1: my hand. And I think that would mean in this
Speaker 1: case that while it might not be meaningless to the
Speaker 1: person writing it, it would be meaningless to any re eater.
Speaker 1: So I think this would fall under the noise category right,
Speaker 1: that there would be there is no way to understand
Speaker 1: what this says because there is no underlying signal because
Speaker 1: in this case, presumably the context for the piece would
Speaker 1: be very personal and then also would probably deal a
Speaker 1: lot with personal reevaluation of the text. You know, it's
Speaker 1: almost like look less than a dream journal in a way,
Speaker 1: you know, where the dream is not even even taken
Speaker 1: and put into the into the form of language, but
Speaker 1: like the dream is is in language. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: be like if if you had a dream journal, yeah,
Speaker 1: where you never translated it into any real language, You
Speaker 1: just made notes about your dreams in random other symbols
Speaker 1: that don't mean anything to anybody else. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: another big idea is that it's simply a hoax, right,
Speaker 1: that it doesn't mean anything. There's no encoded signals, just
Speaker 1: noise because somebody was intentionally trying to create an object
Speaker 1: that would maybe confuse people or trick them, or maybe
Speaker 1: just trick them into thinking that it did say something. Right,
Speaker 1: And if and if that is indeed the reason for
Speaker 1: the origin story of this document, then it is still succeeding.
Speaker 1: It's it has probably succeeded remarkably well, because if it
Speaker 1: is a hoax, it is still tricking people to this day.
Speaker 1: Another idea is that if it were a hoax, if
Speaker 1: it were a completely fraudulent document, you could also make
Speaker 1: a case that it was a you know, a way
Speaker 1: to try and make a quick buck off of you know,
Speaker 1: a cult fanboys with a lot of money, such as
Speaker 1: the Holy Roman Emperor who who purchased it. So we
Speaker 1: know it was sold to Rudolph the Second, we think
Speaker 1: around fifteen eighty six, that's when the historical records indicate.
Speaker 1: But the carbon dating of the vellum says that this
Speaker 1: this this parchment at least was probably produced in like
Speaker 1: the early fourteen hundreds. Now maybe maybe we think like
Speaker 1: it's possible to parchment the vellums sat around for a
Speaker 1: long time before it was made into this document. But
Speaker 1: if you think that the creation of the pages on
Speaker 1: which it was written was sometime close to when the
Speaker 1: document was written, then it would have been written long
Speaker 1: before there was a chance to sell it to Rudolph
Speaker 1: the Second, So it would be hard to imagine that
Speaker 1: it was created specifically for that purpose. Now, one of
Speaker 1: the things is that people have tried to do various
Speaker 1: kinds of statistical analysis of the text to say, okay,
Speaker 1: does even though we can't translate it yet does this
Speaker 1: look like a natural language? Does it look like it
Speaker 1: could somehow be decoded to or translated to a natural language?
Speaker 1: And I would say that the answer there is inconclusive.
Speaker 1: There are pieces of evidence pointing both ways, right, Like
Speaker 1: one commonly cited weird feature of the text that really
Speaker 1: makes it look like not a natural language is the
Speaker 1: fact that in some cases words are repeated in line
Speaker 1: up to three times in a row. Is that normal
Speaker 1: for a language? Is that normal? Normal? Normal? Not really
Speaker 1: really really, I mean, I don't know poetically uh recally
Speaker 1: uh shanti shan shan. I mean, we can all think
Speaker 1: of examples from songs and poetry and writing where that's interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, there's something maybe said three times to uh,
Speaker 1: to add emphasis. But I mean, I I am not
Speaker 1: I'm not the expert comment commenting on this from It's
Speaker 1: saying Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. This does remind me though, when
Speaker 1: I was a kid sometimes I would like try and
Speaker 1: create like documents that looked like they were, you know,
Speaker 1: magical documents in another language, you know, with weird rooms. Um.
Speaker 1: And actually I do that still, sometimes, like doodling, you know,
Speaker 1: in the corners of a page. If I'm supposed to
Speaker 1: be taking notes on something. Uh but I even even
Speaker 1: as a kid, I would I would look back at
Speaker 1: what I had done and I would realize, what this
Speaker 1: This doesn't look like language like, it doesn't like there's
Speaker 1: not enough variety in the these the signal, the little
Speaker 1: signals that I've I've concocted or something I just essentially
Speaker 1: pulled out of my head. They're like, it's not matching
Speaker 1: up with what one would expect from any kind of
Speaker 1: writing or coded writing system. Yeah. So I mentioned in
Speaker 1: the last episode there was a good article about this
Speaker 1: from two thousand eleven and skeptical inquirer by the German
Speaker 1: computer scientist Klaus schmi who who I think he looked
Speaker 1: at a lot of the statistical qualities of the text
Speaker 1: from a cryptography point of view, and it seemed like
Speaker 1: he said, yeah, there there's evidence both ways, and we
Speaker 1: can continue to talk about some of that evidence as
Speaker 1: we go on in the episodes. One interesting claim I
Speaker 1: came across. I'm sorry that I feel like I can't
Speaker 1: evaluate whether this is a correct claim or not, but
Speaker 1: at least it's a claim that's made against the noise
Speaker 1: theory or any theory recommending an interpretation of nonsense is
Speaker 1: that the document uh at least appears to follow something
Speaker 1: called Ziff's law, which concerns the statistical distribution of words
Speaker 1: and natural languages. So basically, Ziff's law claims that in
Speaker 1: any natural language, the frequency with which a word is
Speaker 1: used will be directly proportional to how how high it
Speaker 1: ranks in the ranking of most common words. So the
Speaker 1: first most common word will be used twice as often
Speaker 1: as the second most common word, three times as often
Speaker 1: as the third most common word, and so forth. Now
Speaker 1: this isn't exactly law in like the physical or mathematical sense,
Speaker 1: but if for some reason it does appear to hold
Speaker 1: true for all or almost all natural languages, and so
Speaker 1: if and and, the document appears to match this So
Speaker 1: like if you look at it from a Zif's law distribution,
Speaker 1: it lines up pretty close. So if the frequency count
Speaker 1: of words in this document follows this law, if that is,
Speaker 1: if that claim is correct, meaning it has a similar
Speaker 1: distribution of words to real documents in real languages. That
Speaker 1: seems to make it a little harder to believe it's
Speaker 1: just total nonsense generated but out of somebody's head. Another
Speaker 1: thing is that different words appear with different frequencies in
Speaker 1: different sections. So remember we've got these different sections of
Speaker 1: the document, like the astrological stuff versus the herbal stuff,
Speaker 1: and so you have some words that might appear in
Speaker 1: the supposed astrological section but not in the plants section,
Speaker 1: and vice versa. This would I think be expected if
Speaker 1: these were written in a real language with a real message,
Speaker 1: like you would image, you would probably expect the words
Speaker 1: star to appear in the astrological section but not in
Speaker 1: the plants section. So just looking at the symbols, the
Speaker 1: frequency distribution of symbols and how they break out, and
Speaker 1: how well they resemble a real language, it seems like
Speaker 1: it can push us kind of in both directions that
Speaker 1: we don't get a clear reading from either way. From that,
Speaker 1: and and again this just comes back to the what
Speaker 1: makes this document so mysterious, It's so resistant to unraveling.
Speaker 1: So and a number of theories have been put forth
Speaker 1: for the origins and the true nature of the text. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, so much so that in when an American
Speaker 1: cryptologist and computer programmer married, the Imperio composed the Vontage
Speaker 1: Manuscript and Elegant Enigma for the U. S Military, because
Speaker 1: by the US military cryptography, I mean, that's a of
Speaker 1: massive state importance, it is. Yeah, so this is not
Speaker 1: like some sort of weird, you know, Area fifty one
Speaker 1: type of Shenanigan going on here. But in this, uh,
Speaker 1: this paper, which is readily available online you can find
Speaker 1: a PDF of the full thing, she admits that she
Speaker 1: quote unwittingly retraced the steps of all my predecessors, rediscovering
Speaker 1: their sources, repeating their experiments, growing excited over the same
Speaker 1: promising leads that excited them, and learning only later that
Speaker 1: all these things had already been tried and had failed,
Speaker 1: often several times. And I found that to just be very,
Speaker 1: very fitting, because this does seem to be a theme,
Speaker 1: uh is that you know, certainly in the last century.
Speaker 1: Well it's not hard to see why. Again, this is
Speaker 1: like it's sort of the holy grail of of of decoding, right, Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: it's the mount everest of code breaking. If you could
Speaker 1: crack it, you'd be you'd be like the hottest, you know,
Speaker 1: code cracker in the world. Yeah, And so crackers have
Speaker 1: have tried to have taken a shot at it. Linguists
Speaker 1: have have have taken a shot at it, various scholar
Speaker 1: all manner of scholars, amateurs, and of course outright quacks
Speaker 1: that have taken taking their hand to the Vantage manuscript.
Speaker 1: I think we alluded to this in the last episode,
Speaker 1: but the internet is full of people who claim to
Speaker 1: have decoded the Voytage manuscript to the point where when
Speaker 1: we were preparing for the episode, I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of these were just like, you know, somebody in the
Speaker 1: last year or two has published a you know, a
Speaker 1: YouTube video or or an article somewhere where they're like,
Speaker 1: I did it. I cracked it. Here's the answer. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know. Maybe one of these people
Speaker 1: actually did and it just hasn't really been analyzed or
Speaker 1: reported on yet. I have no way of knowing because
Speaker 1: I don't have an expertise obviously in the relevant fields,
Speaker 1: so I can't like evaluate it on my own. But
Speaker 1: it's funny, like there's so many people trying and claiming
Speaker 1: to have done it that you somebody could have done
Speaker 1: it and we might not even know for a while
Speaker 1: because it would just get lost in the sea of
Speaker 1: of of all these claims. Yeah, all right, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break when we come back.
Speaker 1: We're going to discuss the possibility, um pretty much discredited
Speaker 1: possibility that Roger Bacon actually had a hand in creating this.
Speaker 1: Than all right, we're back. Time to talk about Mr Bacon. Now,
Speaker 1: you remember from the last episode the it came with
Speaker 1: a certificate of authenticity. Originally when Rudolph the Second, the
Speaker 1: Holy Roman Emperor bought this, uh bought the Voytage manuscript
Speaker 1: for six hundred ducats or Ducket's he it came along
Speaker 1: with a letter that said, well, by the way, Roger
Speaker 1: Bacon made this. Yeah. And according to Josephine Livingstone, who
Speaker 1: wrote a really nice piece in The New Yorker about this,
Speaker 1: actually a couple of pieces. One was kind of the
Speaker 1: follow up where she talked about just internet fascination of
Speaker 1: the Voytage manuscript. She points out, yeah, that this does
Speaker 1: not seem to be the case though, uh, though it
Speaker 1: was kind of a popular idea for a while or
Speaker 1: its like repopularized and you know, well before the carbon
Speaker 1: dating actually took play. But one William Romaine Newbold, a
Speaker 1: professor of intellectual and moral philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: He argued in favor of the Bacon origin, believing it
Speaker 1: to be an anagrammed micrographic shorthand required transposition, abbreviation, and
Speaker 1: microscopic notation. Yeah. His method, from what I've read, was
Speaker 1: a little over the end. I mean, it's like he
Speaker 1: was like looking inside the characters to see little micro
Speaker 1: like strokes of ink that may have indicated actual letters
Speaker 1: or abbreviations of word phonemes. And so his his method
Speaker 1: of decoding it, which he claimed was successful, was incredibly complicated. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But he claimed that he had translated, and he provided
Speaker 1: all these details like drawing it into various you know,
Speaker 1: other writings and ideas of Bacon. Uh. And he was
Speaker 1: apparently a brilliant individual. But but no one could take
Speaker 1: his solution and reproduce the same results using these methods, right,
Speaker 1: it required so many subjective judgment calls about what he
Speaker 1: was seeing on the page in these micro notation marks
Speaker 1: and what that was supposed to correlate to. Yeah. Medieval
Speaker 1: medievalist John Matthews Manly, one of the Army's chief cryptologists
Speaker 1: during World War One, concluded that the quote decipherments were
Speaker 1: not discoveries of secret hidden of secrets hidden by Roger Bacon,
Speaker 1: but the products of new Bold's own intense enthusiasm and
Speaker 1: his learned and ingenious subconscious. According to Schmay's article and
Speaker 1: Skeptical Inquire, new Bold's translation had revealed that Roger Bacon
Speaker 1: already had a telescope in the thirteenth century, predating the
Speaker 1: known invention of the telescope in the first decade of
Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds by like centuries, and that Bacon had
Speaker 1: used this telescope to discover the spiral structure of the
Speaker 1: Andromeda galaxy. It's just hard to believe though, that like
Speaker 1: you could generate generate text that complex, you know, just
Speaker 1: by subjective interpretations of tiny things. And then of course,
Speaker 1: as we're saying, like nobody else could could come up
Speaker 1: with the same translations based on what he had. So
Speaker 1: I don't know, it just seems like he was he
Speaker 1: was looking for the text he wanted to find, almost
Speaker 1: like like it spells like new Bold is great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. Another great, interesting, insightful description of of this, uh,
Speaker 1: this incident with new Bold comes from Terence mckinna oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: who wrote about the manuscript for Noses magazine in Night
Speaker 1: and what he is, by the way, a purely historical
Speaker 1: linguistic article that has nothing to do with any of
Speaker 1: his writings on psychedelics. Although I can absolutely see why
Speaker 1: McKenna would be interested in this subject because it's this.
Speaker 1: It's this manuscript that seems to sit at the intersection
Speaker 1: of primitive science and magic and plants. Yeah. Uh, this,
Speaker 1: this particular article is that you can find it online
Speaker 1: and PDF form. It's also collected in the Art Kick Revival.
Speaker 1: It is, you know, dated, It's so he was written
Speaker 1: prior to carbon dating. But he sums up the new
Speaker 1: Bold case by saying, quote, the problem with all of
Speaker 1: this was no one else could extract the same plain
Speaker 1: text using Professor Newbold's method. It involves so many choices
Speaker 1: from pools of letters at every given point along the
Speaker 1: way that one could demonstrate that hundreds of different messages
Speaker 1: could be extracted from the same passages. New Bold died
Speaker 1: a broken man, disgraced, his career shattered. He had gone
Speaker 1: too far in the vantage manuscript had claimed its first victim.
Speaker 1: Now McKenna is not actually arguing that there's a curse
Speaker 1: on the document or anything here, but I think he
Speaker 1: does get a little magic here with it. Later on,
Speaker 1: I mean a kind will of his talks in this
Speaker 1: particular paper, he doesn't really tie it into any of
Speaker 1: his more um you know, spiritual shamanistic ideas. It's it's
Speaker 1: ultimately pretty straightforward, though again a dated because when it
Speaker 1: was written. Um but but but but he does touch
Speaker 1: in this on this idea of that claiming its first
Speaker 1: victim on a pattern that one sees to this very
Speaker 1: day in vantage research. It draws so many people in
Speaker 1: and certainly, while there are quacks and conspiracy theory makers
Speaker 1: in the mix, you also see a lot of very intelligent,
Speaker 1: educated and disciplined people diving into the text and initially
Speaker 1: claiming victory, only to realize that they two have failed
Speaker 1: to see through its mysteries and and in some cases
Speaker 1: are kind of broken on the manuscript. Again, Yeah, mckenn
Speaker 1: I also tell I wish I could remember the name
Speaker 1: of this, but he tells an anecdote. I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is one of the commonly circulated stories about
Speaker 1: the translation attempts, but he tells an anecdote about this
Speaker 1: one aging scholar who was in his nineties who claimed
Speaker 1: to some colleagues to have cracked the code to you know,
Speaker 1: to understand what it says and then when somebody was
Speaker 1: trying to follow up with him about that, they were like, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll fly down to meet you. But by the time
Speaker 1: they got there, he had died of a heart attempt. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that's something here. It's in the noses piece as well.
Speaker 1: So whatever information that UH expert may have had, it
Speaker 1: was lost with them when they died. Well, I think
Speaker 1: the the implication is that the expert had not actually
Speaker 1: solved it and just happened to die right in time
Speaker 1: to not get found out. Certainly the more likely scenario
Speaker 1: given everything that we've discussed here. Now I mentioned John
Speaker 1: Matthews Manly earlier, the War One Army cryptologist. Well, he
Speaker 1: ends up turning Army cryptographer William F. Friedman onto the manuscript.
Speaker 1: In William and his wife Elizabeth worked on the project
Speaker 1: for forty years. Freedman was considered one of the greatest
Speaker 1: cryptographers of his day. He and his team cracked Japan's
Speaker 1: Code Purple during World War Two, but they were never
Speaker 1: able to figure out that the manuscript either um though
Speaker 1: Freedman did seem to believe that it might have been
Speaker 1: an attempt to construct an artificial or universal language. Robert S. Brumbach,
Speaker 1: also of Yale University, took a crack at it as
Speaker 1: well and produced some confusing decipherings that ultimately lead nowhere um.
Speaker 1: But also Alan Turing apparently took a crack at it
Speaker 1: as well, the King of code Breakers, and even Turing
Speaker 1: couldn't make any sense of it. Now another interesting case here.
Speaker 1: In seven one, Dr Leo levit Levitov presented the idea
Speaker 1: that the book was a liturgical manual for the the
Speaker 1: Catherine religion of the Middle Ages, basically the only surviving
Speaker 1: document of the Cather heresy, a sort of Gnostic revival
Speaker 1: movement was effectively decimated by the Alba, Genzi and Crusade
Speaker 1: of the early thirteenth century, and much of our understanding
Speaker 1: of this religion is lost. But Levitov makes the argument
Speaker 1: that it's a book of Catherine sacraments, including a youth
Speaker 1: and asia practice or perhaps in a ritualized act of
Speaker 1: suicide known as endura um, with which of the illustrations
Speaker 1: is supposed to show that the bathtubs so yeah. He
Speaker 1: Levitav argues that we're seeing a discussion of the vantage
Speaker 1: in the vantage of Endeira as a right of ritual
Speaker 1: opening of the veins and a hot bath as a
Speaker 1: means of consentually ending one's life in a sacred fashion.
Speaker 1: And this ties into like ideas of the Catholis believing
Speaker 1: like that the physical body was inherently you know, debased
Speaker 1: and therefore like the it's part of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the of ensuring that a refined soul, you know, travels
Speaker 1: beyond this plane of being, that sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: then he also connects uh Catholism to the worship of
Speaker 1: the goddess Isis and he uh, you know, he believed
Speaker 1: that that it was not encrypted at all the manuscript,
Speaker 1: but it was written in this uh this you know,
Speaker 1: this this mixture of medieval Flemish and old Fringe and
Speaker 1: old High German Loan words, all kind of you know,
Speaker 1: formed into this amalgamation of language. Um. But while some
Speaker 1: saw promise in Levitov's argument, there were plenty of people
Speaker 1: who had numerous problems with it. A big one is
Speaker 1: that the induro was definitely a thing. According to Coasta Siamus,
Speaker 1: in writing for the journal Religion in Health in twos sixteen, quote,
Speaker 1: the enduro was the prerequisite act of repentance that allowed
Speaker 1: the fallen soul to return to heaven. But pretty much
Speaker 1: everybody agrees that it was. It was basically a fast.
Speaker 1: It was not a ritual suicide or Euthanasiah. So another
Speaker 1: one is this whole isis connection. This doesn't pop up
Speaker 1: anywhere else. And years later, you know, when we'd finally
Speaker 1: get some carbon dating that dismissed. Uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: idea that a bacon a bacon origin was possible, and
Speaker 1: certainly a pre bacon origin of the text was equally
Speaker 1: unlikely or impossible. Yeah, I'd say that's fairly impossible, given
Speaker 1: that the vellum was not from before the early fifteenth century,
Speaker 1: unless again we're dealing with like a copy of an
Speaker 1: earlier text, which again it doesn't necessarily look like. Now,
Speaker 1: when we look at other theories as to you know,
Speaker 1: where it came from, um, you know they're there, have
Speaker 1: been various and most of them haven't really endured. There
Speaker 1: is the interesting notion that sixteenth century occultist mathematician and
Speaker 1: cryptographer John d along with Edward Kelly, may have been
Speaker 1: involved with the manuscript in some some form or another. Now,
Speaker 1: this is mckinnis theory. He's got a complicated argument that
Speaker 1: that like, yes, it probably was John D and Edward
Speaker 1: Kelly who wrote this document. Yeah, yeah, Mickey McKenna did
Speaker 1: present that idea that he though he also readily admitted
Speaker 1: that it was just more, you know more basically a
Speaker 1: conjecture on his part, and he he had he had
Speaker 1: not done a rigorous work to back it up, and
Speaker 1: there were numerous potential holes in the situation. But but
Speaker 1: Kelly and and D did dabble in not dabble. They
Speaker 1: had more than dabble than occult practices. So I mean,
Speaker 1: it's again, it's speculative, but it's not hard to see
Speaker 1: somebody like John D coming up with a with a
Speaker 1: strange constructed document that's got kind of magical suggestions in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have two older episodes of stuff to bule your
Speaker 1: mind about John D that will probably be running his
Speaker 1: vault episodes here in the immediate future. But yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: He was one of the most brilliant minds of his day.
Speaker 1: He was involved in cryptography, spycraft, occultism, and mathematics. Edward
Speaker 1: Kelly has accomplished here with an It was an occultist
Speaker 1: and and most agree a con man or a scoundrel
Speaker 1: of some fashion. Um it is it's generally described that
Speaker 1: Edward Kelly's ears were both missing, uh you know, his
Speaker 1: punishment for some deed in his past. But yeah, but
Speaker 1: between the two of them, I I often have sort
Speaker 1: of tried to figure out, like what what is the energy?
Speaker 1: What is the nature of of their collaboration? You know,
Speaker 1: they're in a way they're they're a perfect duo, but
Speaker 1: they're also kind of the strange duo where uh, you
Speaker 1: know d there's nobody else like him. And then you wondered, like,
Speaker 1: to what extent is uh is Kelly like taking advantage
Speaker 1: of the situation um? Or is he able to to
Speaker 1: actually an a d and in some of his various
Speaker 1: operations here? But again, like the interest in cryptography, was
Speaker 1: there the interest in occultism? They also both wrote of
Speaker 1: communication with angels in the Enochian tongue um, which which
Speaker 1: we have an alph of that for by the way,
Speaker 1: and it is not the Enochian language that we see
Speaker 1: in the Vonage manuscript. But certainly if you're looking for
Speaker 1: people at that time period, people who you know would
Speaker 1: have been traveling in this area and have had contact
Speaker 1: with with the Holy Roman emperor um, you know, these
Speaker 1: are these are two prime suspects. Yeah, and I do think, um,
Speaker 1: maybe you were going to get to the s in
Speaker 1: a minute, But I do think it's a decent hypothesis
Speaker 1: that even if John D didn't write this, that John
Speaker 1: D was the source who brought the Voytage manuscript to
Speaker 1: the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph the Second. Yes. In in
Speaker 1: the book by Benjamin Woolley, The Queen's Conjuror, which is
Speaker 1: biography of D that I I read a few years
Speaker 1: back for the Stuff of your Mind episode, the author
Speaker 1: does mention that Rudolph may well have acquired the manuscript
Speaker 1: from D, but he does not entertain or dismissed the
Speaker 1: idea that D was involved in his production. But but
Speaker 1: he at least acknowledges that it's it's possible that D
Speaker 1: is the individual who sold it to the emperor. And
Speaker 1: if that is the case, like well then we can
Speaker 1: we can add one more step, you know, to the
Speaker 1: beginning of the history of the book. But we still
Speaker 1: don't know where D acquired it, so the mystery remains.
Speaker 1: But John D is a fascinating individual. I mean, he
Speaker 1: is is essentially not only is he the Merlin of
Speaker 1: the day, but a lot of our ideas that we
Speaker 1: associate with the mythical and fictional wizard uh Merlin kind
Speaker 1: of stem from d I think it's believed that he
Speaker 1: was the inspiration for Shakespeare's Prospero in the Tempest, Right,
Speaker 1: I've read that as well. Uh So, yeah, an astounding figure,
Speaker 1: you know, to whatever degree he was involved with a
Speaker 1: vantage manuscript. Um, there's still plenty of mysterious and wonderful
Speaker 1: things about about the himself. For instance, to what extent
Speaker 1: he was involved, uh in in statecraft and and and
Speaker 1: worked as a spy. Like. There's some that argue that
Speaker 1: he was like totally a spy and that many of
Speaker 1: these occult manuscripts that he was uh, you know, peddling
Speaker 1: around and discussing in occult ideas, they were essentially codes
Speaker 1: for things um and others say that, no, he was
Speaker 1: more purely on the the occultist end of the spectrum.
Speaker 1: I My read, and I think this has been the
Speaker 1: read of other commentators, is that it's probably somewhere in between,
Speaker 1: you know, one of these situations where you know, he
Speaker 1: was definitely fascinating with with the occult. He was definitely
Speaker 1: and he was a poly math, but being a poly
Speaker 1: math of the day and the one that that traveled
Speaker 1: throughout Europe he ended up, you know, and and also
Speaker 1: being a devout servant to Elizabeth the first you know
Speaker 1: he was, he was more than happy to engage in
Speaker 1: a little spycraft from time to time. Another weird connection.
Speaker 1: I believe John d is also supposed to be the
Speaker 1: inspiration for Christopher Marlowe's incarnation of Dr faust Us from
Speaker 1: from of course Dr you know, who makes a deal
Speaker 1: with the devil to get all knowledge and you know,
Speaker 1: all earthly scientific power. And then Christopher Marlowe, who wrote
Speaker 1: the English play Dr faust Us, was also I believe
Speaker 1: involved in state craft and being a spy. Fascinating, all right,
Speaker 1: So there are various other um origin stories that we're
Speaker 1: not going to get into, but but just to really
Speaker 1: drive home how this is still a thing, How how
Speaker 1: people are still not, you know, not only attempting to
Speaker 1: crack but claiming that they did, we should discuss two
Speaker 1: recent attempts, one extremely recent attempts to crack it that
Speaker 1: have also fallen short. Yeah, it seems like there's at
Speaker 1: least one claim every couple of years that gets picked
Speaker 1: up by real like news sites and then it always
Speaker 1: kind of like, oh no, never mind. Well, in two
Speaker 1: thousands seven, team we saw just such a case. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a history researcher and television writer by the
Speaker 1: name of Nicholas Gibbs, and he published it was published
Speaker 1: in The Times Literary Supplement. Uh. He believed he'd identified
Speaker 1: quote a common form of medieval Latin abbreviations often used
Speaker 1: in medical treatises about herbs, and this led him to
Speaker 1: illustrations in other texts, and he believed resemble those in
Speaker 1: the Vonage manuscript. And so this guy. This was widely covered,
Speaker 1: in large part, of course, because it was initially published
Speaker 1: in The Times Literary Supplement, was picked out by picked
Speaker 1: up by numerous media outlets, including UH, Ours Technica SO
Speaker 1: and initially at Ours Technica editor Annalie Knewitz wrote quote
Speaker 1: this is again before it became discredited. Quote. Gibbs concluded
Speaker 1: that it's likely the Vontage Manuscript was a customized book,
Speaker 1: possibly created for one person, devoted mostly to women's medicine.
Speaker 1: Other medieval Latin scholars will certainly want to weigh in,
Speaker 1: but the sheer uh mondanity of gibbs discovery makes it
Speaker 1: sound plausible. Okay, so it's always like it helps you
Speaker 1: with the claim to have decoded something. If the message
Speaker 1: you decoded is not delicious, I think it does help
Speaker 1: the other believability because I think that's that's ultimately part
Speaker 1: of the mystery, right, And the allure and danger of
Speaker 1: the mystery is that if that it is solved, is
Speaker 1: it is, it's not going to be ground baking anymore
Speaker 1: like the groundbreaking. And the amazing thing about the Vontage
Speaker 1: manuscript is not that it contains something definite, but that
Speaker 1: we just have no ability to grasp what it contains. Right,
Speaker 1: You'd have to be more suspicious if it says, like
Speaker 1: I know the location of the Holy Grail or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but okay. But after this piece came out then experts
Speaker 1: began to weigh in and knew it also wrote an
Speaker 1: excellent retraction piece, UH which you know, citing the various
Speaker 1: experts who responded to that initial Uh Times Literary Supplement paper,
Speaker 1: and the various experts concluded that while they think the
Speaker 1: text might actually turn out to be a medical treatise
Speaker 1: on women's health, like that's not impossible, but they think
Speaker 1: that his translations were not grammatically correct and it according
Speaker 1: to Medical Academy of America director Lisa Fagan Davis in
Speaker 1: the Atlantic quote, if they had simply sent it to
Speaker 1: the Banecki Library, they would have rebutted it in a heartbeat.
Speaker 1: And this is the library Yale that actually has the
Speaker 1: Vontagey script. I think they do WANTAGE scholarship there right, So,
Speaker 1: um so, just I guess that's a little bit of
Speaker 1: advice out there. If you were an editor potential of
Speaker 1: any kind of publication and you're potentially um publishing something
Speaker 1: about someone cracking the Vonage manuscript, Um, make a phone call,
Speaker 1: send an email to the Bnecki Library and see if
Speaker 1: you can get somebody to to to weigh in on
Speaker 1: it before you publish. Yeah. I think that would be
Speaker 1: a smart move. Now, have there been any cases this year? Yes,
Speaker 1: into in twenty nineteen, um, this one prop popped up.
Speaker 1: You might have seen this headline Bristol academic cracks Vontage code,
Speaker 1: solving century old mystery of a midie of medieval text.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I remember seeing this one. I want to
Speaker 1: say that it even popped up on a fairly notable
Speaker 1: like Science Release website that I use and was but
Speaker 1: then was later removed. Dr Gerard Cheshire, research assistant at
Speaker 1: Bristol University, claimed that it was a therapeutic reference book
Speaker 1: written in a lost language called proto Romance, and this
Speaker 1: article appeared on the university's website, but then was later
Speaker 1: taken down after experts chimed in and question the validity
Speaker 1: of the research and uh another there had I looked.
Speaker 1: There hasn't been like an additional follow up on that,
Speaker 1: but it would it would seem to be the case
Speaker 1: that it is another situation where, um, you know, someone
Speaker 1: thought they'd cracked it and they had not that they
Speaker 1: had perhaps, in the words of Mary the Imperio, you know,
Speaker 1: recreated the same steps and missteps of those that came
Speaker 1: before trying to crack the Vantage manuscript. And of course,
Speaker 1: in addition to this, like we said, there's just a
Speaker 1: lot of baseless speculation surrounding the manuscript. Online. It features
Speaker 1: into historical conspiracy theory. Yeah, you'll find it on the YouTube,
Speaker 1: you'll find it on various Reddit words. Um. According to
Speaker 1: Raymond Clemens, a curator of early books and manuscripts at
Speaker 1: the Banecky Library, one of the most fun examples that
Speaker 1: they've run across is that the Vontage manuscript is an
Speaker 1: alien is the work of an alien visitor to Earth
Speaker 1: from the Andromeda galaxy who was making notes about our
Speaker 1: planet and then dropped their notebook before they return. But wait,
Speaker 1: why would it be notes about our planet if none
Speaker 1: of the plants can be identified? Maybe the alien vision
Speaker 1: I vision, you know, it's weird. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they were. There are a lot of holes in
Speaker 1: this theory, Joe's what I'm saying. Yeah, all right, we
Speaker 1: need to take one more break, but we will be
Speaker 1: right back with more where we're back now, We've talked
Speaker 1: about evidence going in both directions of people who just
Speaker 1: try to look at the text statistically or mathematically as
Speaker 1: a text and say, does it look like a text
Speaker 1: in a real language, even coded in a real language,
Speaker 1: and the answer there is some indications kind of point
Speaker 1: to yes, and some indications kind of point to know.
Speaker 1: I think one thing I wanted to look at now
Speaker 1: is something that was pointed out in that in that
Speaker 1: Skeptical Inquirer article by Klaus Schmay who was who he
Speaker 1: pointed out some interesting research from the early two thousands
Speaker 1: by the British linguist Gordon Rugg. So I'm just going
Speaker 1: to read this section from MS article, smy writes quote
Speaker 1: the British linguist Gordon Rugg is among the most reputable
Speaker 1: voytage researchers. He conducted a most interesting cryptological experiment. For
Speaker 1: his experiment, Rugg generated a table with random combinations of
Speaker 1: characters that he used as prefixes, roots, or suffixes of
Speaker 1: new words. He positioned a quadratic stencil, like the one
Speaker 1: used for encryption in the sixteenth century over the table.
Speaker 1: In this manner, he obtained a sequence of letters that
Speaker 1: bore great resemblance to the text of the Voyage manuscript.
Speaker 1: Rugg's experiment supports the hypothesis that the manuscript is nothing
Speaker 1: but a compilation of meaningless line and letters, which is
Speaker 1: of course the hoax hypothesis. And then Schmidt also points
Speaker 1: out a study by the Austrian physicist Andreas Shinner that
Speaker 1: also supports the idea that even though there are some
Speaker 1: things about this that do look like a text, it's possible,
Speaker 1: like a real text and a real natural language, it's
Speaker 1: possible to generate a text like this without it being
Speaker 1: based on a real language. And and Shinner's analysis, I
Speaker 1: think was primarily based on the fact that there are
Speaker 1: unnatural regularities in the order of words appearing in the
Speaker 1: manuscript that don't mirror sequences of words that appear in
Speaker 1: real languages. So I don't think that completely settles it.
Speaker 1: But that's more fuel back on the on the fire
Speaker 1: of the side that says, Okay, this is just a
Speaker 1: hoax document or glossal alia or something something that somebody
Speaker 1: made up and doesn't correlate to real words. That makes sense.
Speaker 1: But and then ultimately this, yeah, this gives credence to
Speaker 1: just the its power to break those that that desperately
Speaker 1: to find meaning in it. Like it just kind of
Speaker 1: it almost seems like it does point people to the
Speaker 1: you know, near the threshold of madness where they they
Speaker 1: make that leap and they say I've done it, I
Speaker 1: figured it out, and and believe that they have you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, uh, none of the none of the individuals
Speaker 1: that we've we've named here, um you know, from from
Speaker 1: the Avontage manuscripts, uh, you know, recent history. You know.
Speaker 1: I don't think any of them have, you know, have
Speaker 1: been trying to pull anything over on anyone. I think
Speaker 1: they have. They've reached a point where they genuinely think
Speaker 1: they found the clue they found, you know, the missing
Speaker 1: piece that has enabled us to understand this document. Well.
Speaker 1: As satisfying as it is to solve a puzzle, it
Speaker 1: is equally maddening to work on a puzzle without solving it.
Speaker 1: And I think that can kind of drive people like
Speaker 1: it creates unreasonable incentives in the mind to toil over
Speaker 1: a puzzle or a code for so long without breaking it.
Speaker 1: Like you, the desire to have broken it becomes incredibly strong.
Speaker 1: I will say this one lesson I've taken home from
Speaker 1: all of this is friends. Don't let friends claim they've
Speaker 1: cracked the Vontage manuscript. That's right if you if you
Speaker 1: know somebody and they're like, hey, you know, I think
Speaker 1: I've I've translated the Vontage manuscript. I'm going public with
Speaker 1: this tomorrow, you know, talk him down from that. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe you know, to ask him just to settle down
Speaker 1: a little and uh and rethink before you go public
Speaker 1: with this this new translation. I just want to say,
Speaker 1: though this is not conclusive, from that interesting article by
Speaker 1: by Schmi about his conclusion, just his opinion is that
Speaker 1: it's very likely, it's it's possible that it's a hoax.
Speaker 1: Of course, he thinks the author was probably an anonymous
Speaker 1: artist living in the first half of the fourteen hundreds. Uh,
Speaker 1: and if it is actually encrypted. One thing he points
Speaker 1: to that I think is interesting is he says it's
Speaker 1: easier to encrypt a text if the encrypted text generates
Speaker 1: far more characters than the original text. So if a
Speaker 1: fifty thousand character original document was in ripted in a
Speaker 1: way that generates a hundred and seventy thousand characters, then
Speaker 1: it's easier to see how it could still be hiding
Speaker 1: its meaning, right if there's there's tons of if there
Speaker 1: are tons of characters in there that don't code out
Speaker 1: to anything, like, how do you separate the coding letters
Speaker 1: from the filler letters. So that's a possible explanation for
Speaker 1: if there is a code in there, why it hasn't
Speaker 1: been cracked. Yet, another thing that he does find plausible
Speaker 1: is he finds it plausible that this is an artificial
Speaker 1: created language. Somebody just made up a language of their own,
Speaker 1: and that's why it doesn't translate to anything else based
Speaker 1: on whatever. That also seems plausible to me. I can
Speaker 1: imagine this being I don't know, a language unique to
Speaker 1: one person who was you know, toiling away in their
Speaker 1: turret or something in a monastery, or maybe shared by
Speaker 1: a small number of people for some kind of esoteric
Speaker 1: purpose or some kind of a cult purpose maybe, But
Speaker 1: the key being if it's an invented language rather than
Speaker 1: a code for an existing language, that would explain why
Speaker 1: it doesn't code out whatever it's origins, whatever it's meaning
Speaker 1: or lack of meaning, it continues to enthrall us and
Speaker 1: perplexus and uh and I'd likely will continue to do so.
Speaker 1: I don't I do not expect that we will reach
Speaker 1: the point where we need to you know, add there
Speaker 1: may be additional you know, arguments, there's some new ideas
Speaker 1: that are brought up. But I am not expecting to
Speaker 1: see anybody cracked this uh in in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I will say, as much as I would like to
Speaker 1: see it cracked, my the walls of my skeptical fortress
Speaker 1: here have been fortified. And I now when I see
Speaker 1: an article, as they do tend to pop up once
Speaker 1: every year or two, an article about how somebody has
Speaker 1: cracked the Voyage manuscript, I think now I will probably conclude, Okay,
Speaker 1: I bet that's not right, right, and then then I'll
Speaker 1: go another thing about it too, is like if it
Speaker 1: was cracked, the magic would be gone, like the part
Speaker 1: of the man that the whole reason we're enthralled by
Speaker 1: this document is that we don't know what it's meaning
Speaker 1: or meaninglessness really consists of. Well, it's about it's It's
Speaker 1: like how you know, the best part of a mystery
Speaker 1: is always the middle. It's almost never the end. When
Speaker 1: you get to the end and you find out who
Speaker 1: done it, it's almost always disappointing. Yeah, because there're only
Speaker 1: so many ways it can go right, I'd say. Actually, though,
Speaker 1: to tie it back to the subject, one of the
Speaker 1: only example counter examples I can think of is the
Speaker 1: Name of the Rose, where the solution of the mystery
Speaker 1: is supremely satisfying. Yeah. Yeah, I think that there's a
Speaker 1: strong case to be made there. Yeah. Um. Interesting to
Speaker 1: the other mystery book that I mentioned, um, The Club
Speaker 1: Dumb by Perez Roverta, also a mystery. That's the book
Speaker 1: that The Ninth Gate was based on. Uh. And It's
Speaker 1: been a while since I've seen The Ninth Gate, but
Speaker 1: I definitely remember enjoying the book. It's a fun little uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a cult themed filler, a thriller, I've never
Speaker 1: read it. I actually check that out. How's the ending
Speaker 1: um pretty good as I recall, Yeah, it's different from
Speaker 1: the movie again based on my my fading memory of it.
Speaker 1: But I'd love to clo Is out here with the one.
Speaker 1: One more quote from that Terence mckinnipie's from from Moses Magazine,
Speaker 1: which I think he sums up a lot of the
Speaker 1: like the power and the you know, our fascination with
Speaker 1: this document, he said, quote it is a kind of
Speaker 1: Borhesian concept that there must be somewhere an unreadable book,
Speaker 1: and perhaps this is it. The unreadable book hints at
Speaker 1: an idea, at the idea that the world is in information.
Speaker 1: We have cognizance of the world by ordering all of
Speaker 1: the information we can't we come upon in relation to
Speaker 1: information that we have already accumulated through patterns. An unreadable
Speaker 1: book in a non English script with no dictionary attached
Speaker 1: is very puzzling. We become like linguistic oysters. We secrete
Speaker 1: around it, we insisted into our metaphysics, but we don't
Speaker 1: know what it says, which always carries with it the
Speaker 1: possibility that it says something that would unhinge our conceptions
Speaker 1: of things. Or that it's real message is its unreadability.
Speaker 1: It points to the otherness of the nature of information,
Speaker 1: and it's what is called in structuralism, a limit text.
Speaker 1: Certainly the Vontage Manuscript is the limit text of Western occultism.
Speaker 1: It is truly an occult book, one that no one
Speaker 1: can read the literal meaning of a cult. Yeah's it's
Speaker 1: a mystery in the dark. Absolutely, all right, So there
Speaker 1: you have it, the Vontage Manuscript. Obviously we would love
Speaker 1: to hear from everybody out there because if you have
Speaker 1: you cracked it. I there's it's very possible we will
Speaker 1: hear from someone who believes that they have or at
Speaker 1: the very least, perhaps you can turn us on to
Speaker 1: some other wild theories. Uh, some of the crazier theories
Speaker 1: that we didn't get into, uh you know, involving it's
Speaker 1: its origin. Uh yeah, there's there are some other ones
Speaker 1: we didn't discuss. And what involving like the uh you
Speaker 1: know what, the various other like a cult, conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: the Rosicrucians and stuff. McKenna talks about that. So certainly,
Speaker 1: if you have I do you have any of those
Speaker 1: ideas who want to chat with us about you can
Speaker 1: reach out to us in the meantime. Check out more
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind at stuff to
Speaker 1: bow your Mind dot com and make sure that you
Speaker 1: have subscribed to the podcast. Make sure you've subscribed to
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Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, to show us your code,
Speaker 1: your your method of decoding the Voytage manuscript, you can
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