Mutus liber

An obvious strategy invited by a work such as the Voynich, where we cannot read the text, is to treat it as a Mutus liber - a silent book. In fact, I would think this is an essential point of study. Since the text is closed to us, we must turn to the illustrations and examine the work as a picture book.

There is such a tradition in European alchemy. Indeed, there is a school of European alchemy, an alchemical lineage of laboratory practice, extracted from a Mutus liber. The work has no text. The whole teaching is contained in the illustrations and hence in a visual language.

It is worth asking whether this is what we have in the Voynich manuscript. Perhaps the text is, after all, merely for appearances - text-like gibberish - and the work is actually a Mutus liber that is made to be read entirely from its pictures?

I don't actually think that is the case, but it is useful to consider the work from that viewpoint. Indeed, it was one of the first things I did: put the text aside and just consider the work as a book of illustrations. Learn to read it as a picture book. It is all that we can do, in the first instance.

Developing a coherent and plausible reading of it as a book of pictures will assuredly take some time, and in fact is an on-going process. In my own case it was months before I felt I had a good grasp on the illustrations over-all - not in their details, but in their general narrative.

A hazard is the urge to take out the microscope. The work is so visually rich and so odd in places that one wants to stop and look closer, or very close. But that is not what is required at first. Instead, treating it as a Mutus liber, we need to understand it as a whole, in general, not in detail. There is plenty of time for detailed analysis, but it is first of all important to form a cogent natural reading of it from the illustrations.

I also consider this a prerequisite to the study of the script, text and language in the work. First understand it as a picture book. The pictures alone can answer such basic questions as: what is the book about? What sort of book is it? What was it for? How are the sections related?

I recommend this to any new student of the Voynich. Stay away from the text at first. Treat it as a Mutus liber. Learn its visual language.

Note: I don't think the Voynich is related to the alchemical text known as the Mutus liber. It is notably outside the main alchemical traditions in Europe.

R. B.