Jules Janick - Unraveling the Voynich Codex

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The Voynich Codex is a mysterious, bizarre hand-written manuscript discovered by the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich in 1912. Its unique symbols and text have defied translation attempts by world-eminent cryptologists. The Codex is encyclopedic in scope and includes approximately 359 images of plants or plant parts, making it primarily an illustrated herbal, a book that combines traditional plant lore and medicinal properties. But it is much more than that. The Voynich Codex also depicts more than 500 nymphs, mostly nude, cavorting in pools with weird plumbing. There are strange magic circles, including ones with zodiac, astronomical, and cosmological depictions. The codex includes a large foldout section with kabbalah-like images that may be interpreted as a map. Many of its pages appear to be medical recipes, poetry, or incantations. The Voynich Codex has captured the imaginations of many, but all have failed to make sense of it.

This volume summarizes the collaborative attempts of a botanist and emeritus herbarium director at Delaware State University, Arthur O. Tucker, and a horticulturist at Purdue University, Jules Janick, to unravel the Codex from a new perspective. We believe that previous attempts to get to grips with the Voynich Codex have taken a wrong approach because they have erred on its origins in time and place, relying upon interpretations rather than the hard evidence. Furthermore, no one previously has been able to make sense of its many parts. No one has been successful in deciphering the codex, which holds its secrets. Although we have not fully succeeded, progress has been made.

The collaboration led to an invited seminar by Tucker at Purdue University in 2014 and a coauthored presentation by Janick at the annual meeting of the American Society for Horticultural Science in 2015. A coauthored joint paper expanding plant identifications appeared in 2016. Finally, a symposium entitled Mysteries of the Voynich Codex: A Meso-American Herbal, organized by Janick and Tucker, was held in Atlanta in 2016. The symposium abstract caught the attention of Kenneth Teng, a Springer editor, and this volume is the result of those encounters.

The origins of our collaboration are revealing. We first met in 1990. Later in 2007, Janick invited Tucker to speak at a horticultural congress in Indianapolis concerning herbs, for which Tucker is a recognized expert. Tucker became interested in the Voynich Codex in June 2012, when he located a reference to it that coincided with a long interest in Latin American herbs and sixteenth century codices from New Spain. He was amazed at the large number of New World species in the Voynich Codex and incorrect identifications by nonbotanists. He sought out collaboration with Rexford H. Talbert, another herb expert and information technologist, formerly at NASA. This resulted in a manuscript entitled A Preliminary Analysis of the Botany, Zoology, and Mineralogy of the Voynich Manuscript, based on the identification of 37 plants, seven animals, and the mineral boleite, all indigenous to the New World. The manuscript was submitted in December 2012 to HerbalGram , a refereed journal of the American Botanical Council, and was published in 2013. It confirmed a 1944 paper by botanist Hugh ONeill, which noted that the Voynich Codex contained New World plants and must have been written post-Columbus. Furthermore, the Voynichese symbols were decoded into an alphabet based on names attached to some of the plants in the Pharmaceutical section, providing the Rosetta Stone of the elusive codex.

The paper was generally treated with hostility by many members of the Voynich internet community, but received congratulations from academics. It proved a revelation to Janick, who had had minor contact with the Voynich Codex , first from a graduate student, Angela Catalina Ghionea, who was seeking advice for her doctoral thesis on magic and science, and later by Professor Lincoln Taiz, who submitted a manuscript on Voynich to Janick, who served as science editor for Chronica Horticulturae . Tuckers HerbalGram paper was immediately grasped by Janick as a breakthrough and a collaboration was formed that later included Fernando Moreira, a Canadian linguist, and Elizabeth A. Flaherty, a wildlife zoologist at Purdue University. The present book is based on this collaboration.