Mysterious Artifacts

Tadeusz Oszubski

All material contained herein is Copyright

Copyright © Tadeusz Oszubski, 2020

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Originally published in Polish as Tajemnicze Artefakty

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Translated and published in English with permission.

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ePub ISBN: 978-1-3936515-1-2

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Written by Tadeusz Oszubski

Published by Royal Hawaiian Press

Cover art by Tyrone Roshantha

Translated by Dorota Reszke

Publishing Assistance by Dorota Reszke

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The following is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental, or used in the form of parody.

Scientists analyze the history of mankind, determine their course and meanders. They supplement our knowledge of the past by discovering and describing further artifacts, that is, objects that are the work of human hands. Texts written on parchment and carved in stone, works of art, everyday objects, machines, buildings – all monuments make up the image of civilizational development of our species. However, there are finds that do not match the findings of the researchers. Objects that either hide secrets or are puzzles themselves that science cannot solve.

These mysterious artifacts are a challenge and for the academic order, and for our imagination.

Voynich Manuscript

The history of the book, known as the Voynich manuscript, is mixed with a rowdy legend. Who else, then, as not a man like Michal Wojnicz, could reveal to the world the existence of this mysterious work?

Michał Wojnicz of Habdank coat of arms was a Polish nobleman and a child of his era. Born on October 31, 1865 in Telsa, Lithuania, he grew up in a patriotic and highly political environment.

Poland was enslaved at the time. Militarily and economically weakened Poland was invaded and occupied by three border states, Prussia (today's Germany), Austria and Russia. This process lasted from 1772 to 1795 and is called the three partitions of Poland, which regained statehood only after 125 years, when World War I ended.

Wojnicz lived in an area of Poland annexed by Russia, which fought against all manifestations of patriotism and attempts to regain freedom by Poles. In 1863, the Polish so-called January Uprising broke out in the lands under Russian rule, bloodily suppressed by the Tsarist authorities. Michał Wojnicz, growing up among the memories of patriots, heroes of the uprising, joined as a young man in the ranks of the secret revolutionary organization Proletaryat founded by Ludwik Waryński. Hovewer, before Wojnicz's career as a conspirator and dynamitard could develop, in 1885 he was arrested by Ochrana, the tsarist political police. At that time, Russia did not caress its enemies. The process didn't take long. A Pole was sentenced to exile for his political activities. Like many young people of his generation, he ended up in Siberia. Except that Habdank did not intend to submit to the will of power. It is difficult to say today what weighed on his decision. Whether it was patriotic motives, hostility towards the possessor, aversion to difficult living conditions, or, above all, a desire for adventure. In 1890, 25-year-old Michael escaped from the exile and then crossed Asia from the freezing north to its tropical south.

After an adventurous journey, he made his way to London. There he adapted the record of a difficult Polish surname to English pronunciation. His name was Wilfrid Michael Voynich. It may have been one of his treatments to hide from Ochrana's agents. In London, he took up a new profession and found love. He ran an antique shop, and his wife was English woman Ethel Lilian from the Boole house, with whom he spent the rest of his life. It can be said that from now on the former conspirator, then a brawler and a traveler, led a banal life in the family circle, trading dusty books. All this, however, changed in 1912, when during one of Voynich's commercial trips to Europe he found himself eye to eye with a mysterious manuscript. He bought it along with other old books from the Jesuits from Villa Mondragone in Frascati, Italy.

At first glance, the mysterious book resembles the almanacs written by alchemists in the 16th and 17th centuries: it is framed in leather, measures 15 by 22.5 centimeters, and is written on veneer parchment. To date, 120 cards from the original 136 have survived. The manuscript is divided into parts, and these into chapters. From the illustrations with which the book is richly bearing, it can be concluded that it is devoted to astronomy or astrology, besides herbalism, hydrofoil and other fields of natural medicine. However, the similarities to any known astronomical or medical work end.

First, the text was fixed on parchment by an unknown letter. Secondly, it is not known what the illustrations represent, the interpretation of which has become a challenge – first for Voynich himself, and then for the multitude of scholars and lovers of esoteric knowledge. To this day, it is not easy to reveal the mysteries of the book, which is not even known who wrote it and what title it bears. For these reasons, the manuscript is referred to as the Voynich manuscript.

In 1914, Wilfrid Michael Voynich moved with his wife to the United States, where he began to run an antique shop in New York. He died on March 19, 1930. Until recent days, he tried to decipher the contents of the most enigmatic book he had to deal with.

In 1960, the antiquarian's widow donated the manuscript to the library of Yale University, where it is still stored today, spending a dream with generations of mystery enthusiasts, bibliophiles and scientists – historians and cryptologists.

They all ask the same questions: who wrote Voynich's manuscript, when and for what purpose?

When was this work created? The first mention of it dates back to 1585, when John Dee sold it to Emperor Rudolf II (ruler of Germany from 1575 to 1612) for 600 ducats. Rudolf Reided in Prague, Czech Republic, and was interested in arcane knowledge. He supported the work of alchemists and astrologers, and collected unusual objects such as this unreadable manuscript. After Rudolf's death, the book was placed in the Jesuit library in Frascati under unclear circumstances, from where Voynich bought it.

What does the manuscript contain? According to some mystery researchers, it is a book of Templars, containing descriptions of their esoteric practices and the location of hidden treasures. Another concept is that it is the sacred text of the Qataris that survived the Catholic Church's crackdown on these medieval heretics. Another hypothesis is that Voynich's manuscript is an encrypted compendium of knowledge written by one of the great thinkers of the old centuries, such as Roger Bacon or Leonardo da Vinci.

However, the two exchanged various handwritten notes, the analysis of which indicates that the manuscript is not their work.

It is true that da Vinci betrayed a weakness for ciphers and encoded some of his texts in mirror writing, but none of the documents he produced showed signs that were written Voynich's manuscript. So are these characters an extremely hard-to-crack cipher, or are they rather letters of a forgotten alphabet used to write some extinct language? Physicist at Yale University, Dr. William Ralph Bennett, stated in 1976 that the text was related to the languages of Polynesia, and according to Brazilian researcher J. Stolfle, it could be a phonetic record of the message in Chinese.

The history of the book was marked by another Polish accent. Zbigniew Banasik, an amateur linguist from Wroclaw, announced in the autumn of 2003 that he had broken the code of Voynich's manuscript. According to Banasik, the manuscript is a kind of vademecum – a collection of knowledge gathered by a more unspecified shaman, written earlier than evidenced by radiocarbon analyses of the monument, because between the 13th century BC and the 3rd century BC. Banasik bet on the 4th century BC.

Comparing the different alphabets and languages, I found that there was a great similarity between the word used in the book and the Manchu language, Banasik said in a statement to the media. "I was able to read 45 characters of the alphabet, one of which I did not find in the text, and the compatibility of more than 50 words with The Manchu language.

This, however, ended the Polish contribution to unraveling the puzzle, because Banasik's bumous announcements did not go into concrete. The manuscript language researcher fell silent and never revealed whether he had read the entire text.

Another who claims to have broken the Voynich Manuscript code is Canadian researcher Amet Ardic. As October 18, 2018, he handed over the service Ancient Origins, according to Ardic, who is of Turk origin, the book was written with signs reminiscent of the old Turkish script, but by phonetic spelling. Even the design of the words resembles the Turkish language used 500 years ago. The researcher claims to have discovered the meaning of about 300 words in manuscript and plans long-term research to read the full text of the book based on his assumptions.

There is also no shortage of critical opinions about Voynich's manuscript. In April 2007, Dr. Andreas Schinner, an Austrian theoretical physicist and programming expert at the University of Johannes Kepler, presented the results of a computer analysis of the text of the book. According to Schinner, statistical analyses show that the characters with which the book is written do not convey any content.

It's gibberish, said the Austrian. – The statistical characteristics of the text indicate that we are dealing with a joke or a scam.

Earlier, in 2004, Dr Gordon Rugg of Keele University in the UK came to a similar conclusion. According to him, Voynich's manuscript is the work of a fraudster.

Just because there are subtle regularities in the text of the structure and distribution of words, no one has ever considered the possibility that this work is an ordinary hoax, the Briton said in an interview.

It is worth mentioning that Rugg's last proposal is not true, as it was already in the 1970s. In the 20th century, Dr. Robert S. Brumbaugh of Yale University decided that the manuscript was not authentic. According to this researcher, the book was made only to extort as much as possible from Emperor Rudolf, who was widely known to be a collector of mysterious artifacts. If the manuscript is actually the work of a madman, who is responsible for its creation?

The first suspect, of course, is the man who sold the manuscript to the German ruler, John Dee. This is a special character, because even the rowdy fate of Michał Wojnicz-Voynich falls pale in confrontation with the history of John Dee.

The life of this Englishman born in 1527 and who died in 1608 or 1609 is the material for a fantastic-adventure novel. In his biography, historical facts mingle with a legend that over time grew around the figure of an astrologer, alchemist, magician and spy of the English Queen Elizabeth I, reigning from 1558 to 1603. Apparently, in his studio near London, Dee evoked the angels and ghosts of dead people. In his actions he was to use the help of a crystal mirror and a crystal ball. John Dee, and therefore indirectly and with Voynich's manuscript, is associated with another Polish accent. Before the astrologer went to Prague to Rudolf's court to sell him the manuscript, he ended up in our country.

Together with the Polish magnate Olbracht Łaski and the English alchemist and medium Edward Kelley, he came to the court of Stefan Batory (reigned from 1576 to 1586), where he gave shows of magical skills and collected information for his queen. The Polish stage of Dee and Kelley's sorcery-espionage adventure lasted several months, after which they both went to Prague.

According to sources from the era, John Dee was able to talk to angels. He and Kelley were also to write the language of angels, otherwise known as Enochian scripture (after Enoch, one of the prophets of Israel who reportedly spoke face-to-face with Jehovah). Here you have to go back to the aforementioned analyses of Dr. Gordon Rugg.

The most unusual feature of the Voynich manuscript is the mirror image of the most distinctive features of the Enochian language, said the British scientist. – The text of the manuscript accurately reflects what one would expect from an Enochian language creator if he wanted to verify the shortcomings of his original creation and create an even better illusion of natural language.

How did the Enochian language work? From 1582 to 1589, Dee worked with Kelley, who was considered a medium for contacting angelic beings. Dee recorded everything he heard from his accomplice's mouth while he was in a trance during the screenings.

When the alchemies systematized the notes, they received plaques with signs of Enochian script, still stored in the British Museum in London. Apparently, during one of the screenings, an angelic being named Galvah appeared, who announced that Dee would create a special work: a book written in a new world language to replace the Bible and give humanity a new law coming from heaven. Was it a Voynich manuscript?

Researchers say that Enochian words do not resemble words from any human language. So what is this supposed language of angels? Just a gibberish used to deceive gullible sponsors, or perhaps proof of the existence of metaphysical beings living in another dimension?

One can also ask whether the language of intangible beings must be governed by the same laws as human speech.

On this, however, angelological considerations must be concluded, because the existence of angels is based on faith, and there is therefore no empirical evidence of their existence.

Historians determined that Dee sold Voynich's manuscript to Emperor Rudolf for 600 ducats. A lot or not enough? Books in that era cost a lot, for example, in England, for the important legal work A Grand Abridgment of the Common and Statute Law of England had to be paid – in terms of the currency used in continental Europe at the time – roughly 2 ducats. The new ambulance cost around 40 ducats in London and a good quality gentleman's outfit cost 20 ducats. If Voynich's manuscript is a hoax, it could take John Dee just three months to write and decorate it with illustrations, meaning it could be said that the Queen's spy did the business of life. On the other hand, it is necessary to remember the findings of Gordon Rugg, associating the manuscript with the Enochian language, whose creators were Dee and Kelley. So maybe the book is not so much a forgery as a mystical work actually written in the revealed speech of angels and depicting another world?

The Enochian writing should have been mentioned here, because it was not forgotten even four centuries after Dee's death.

The alchemist's journal records were based on some of his research by the creators of the esoteric currents of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries – Wynn Westcott and S. L. MacGregor Mathers, founders of the Hermetic Order of golden dawn. He also studied the language of angels in the 1920s. In the 20th century, another well-known esoteric, Aleister Crowley.

To this day, Voynich's manuscript is handled by both scientists and enthusiasts approaching the manuscript by paranormal methods. The latter group belongs to a certain Veikko Latvala, a businessman and visionary from Finland, who in March 2012 assured the world that he had unraveled the mystery of the manuscript.

Latvala describes himself as God's prophet and, he claims, it was through divine help that he managed to decode one of the world's most mysterious books. The words of the Finnish prophet are written down and communicated to the world by Ari Kepol, previously his partner in business ventures.

The characters in Voynich's manuscript describe sound waves and vocal syllables, explained the mystery of Ari Kepol's manuscript. – The language used in this book is complex. The sound syllables are written in a mixture of Spanish and Italian. Other passages are equally patchy. The complication of writing is due to the language used by the author of the manuscript. He spoke in the Babylonian dialect used in a small area of the Middle East. He didn't know how to perpetuate his knowledge, so he had to create his own alphabet and vocabulary. At the same time, the record takes the form of abbreviations, like those used in shorthand.

But what does the enigmatic book say, according to Latvala?

It is the work of a life forgotten today, said Ketola, passing on the findings of the Finnish visionary. "This is a scientific medical publication, and the knowledge contained in it will be useful today. The writer was a scientist: botanist, apothecary, astrologer and astronomer. They know he's been ahead of his time by decades, or even hundreds of years. This book also contains prophecies.

In other words, Voynich's manuscript is primarily intended to be a work concerning the use of plants in medicine and other branches of science. According to Latvala, the book describes 16,152 plants. An example is to be growing to this day in Ethiopia – as the visionary assured – the heart of fire, which makes the skin beautiful, from the oil squeezed from the buds of the Heart of Fire is made ointment that eliminates wrinkles, and the infusion of its flowers prevents inflammation, that is, it is an antibiotic. This plant is to be dry and heat-like and 10 centimeters high and light green. So far, scientists have not discovered such an herb, but according to Latvali, there will come a time when this will happen.

For almost a hundred years, a legion of cryptologists tried to decipher the manuscript. To no avail. So how did Finn do it? The answer is simple: Latvala has direct contact with God.

An ordinary person would not be able to decode this book because there is no code or method to read the text contained in it, he explained for his accomplice Ketola. –This is due to the fact that the manuscript is written in the language of the metaphysical channel of prophecies. People with the gift of receiving this channel are rarely born, but for millennia one of them has always lived on Earth. Now this role is played by Mr. Veikko Latvala, who obtained this gift 20 years ago.

Cryptologists approach Fina's findings with great caution and refuse to comment on his conclusions, as he has not used any scientific method and draws his knowledge from metaphysical visions. Moreover, Latvala is not the first to use this approach to uncover the mystery of the manuscript.

As you can see, scientists and amateurs of mysteries struggled with Voynich's manuscript.

Some of them hypothesized about the form of the record and the content, but no one presented a reliable translation of the book. This has led to the belief in academia that the manuscript is a forgery and not worth bothering with. Nevertheless, several scholars over the past decades have conducted computer analyses of characters from the book cards. Most of them stated that the manuscript does not have the correctness typical of existing languages or forms of encryption. Thus, they confirmed what scientific circles have taken for granted before: we are dealing with a hoax.

What's different about the credibility of Voynich's manuscript is believed by two experts who analyzed this artifact using modern technology. In June 2013, the scientific service Live Science reported on the results of the work of Doctors Marcelo Montemurro and Damian Zanette, physicist at the University of Manchester. They found that the letter used on the pages of the book was not forgery, because the characters making it up were statistically organized in a way that was characteristic of the real languages.

"Although the mysteries of the origin and meaning of the text are still unresolved, the evidence