The Voynich Manuscript: Decoding the World’s Most Mysterious Book

What if the most important book ever written was one no one could read?

Found in 1912, carbon dated to the early 1400s, and filled with uncrackable text, strange star charts, alien plants, and diagrams of naked women in interconnected tubs—the Voynich Manuscript has stumped historians, codebreakers, linguists, AI researchers, and probably a few cult leaders. No one knows what it says. No one knows who wrote it. And some people think it was never meant to be understood at all.

In this episode of This Podcast is a Secret, we break down the history, theories, and high strangeness of the Voynich Manuscript—and why some believe it might be an alien field manual, a time traveler’s lost guide, or even a survival book for the apocalypse.

So... What Is the Voynich Manuscript?

• A 240-page, handwritten manuscript filled with text in a completely unknown script (called “Voynichese”).

• Loaded with bizarre botanical drawings, impossible star maps, and scenes that seem part alchemy, part dream journal.

• Discovered by rare book dealer Wilfrid Voynich in an Italian Jesuit college in 1912—but the vellum dates it back to 1404–1438.

• Thought to have passed through the hands of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, who allegedly paid a small fortune believing it was written by Roger Bacon.

• Features sections believed to cover herbal medicine, astronomy, biology, balneology (healing baths), and possibly magic or ritual work.

• None of the plants depicted match real-life flora—at least, not exactly.

  
  

Theories About What It Is

🧪 Alchemical Manual or Medieval Herbarium Some believe it’s a medical guide, filled with herbal treatments and healing rituals. But the drawings? Way off from anything we actually grow.

🔐 Secret Cipher or Encoded Text Is it a code only a select few were meant to read? Or a hoax meant to fool scholars and royalty? Some think it’s glossolalia—stream-of-consciousness nonsense that mimics meaning without ever delivering it.

🧙 Occult Grimoire A magical manual, full of hidden knowledge? Maybe. The astrological symbols and ritualistic diagrams definitely point in that direction.

🃏 Just an Elaborate Hoax? Could it be a 15th-century prank? A beautiful, complex fake made to deceive or confuse? Some theorists believe the writing and imagery are pure invention, and the whole thing is meaningless—but convincing enough to fool collectors for centuries.

Wild Theories & High Strangeness

👽 Alien Field Manual Strange language, unknown plants, impossible logic—maybe it wasn’t meant for humans. Some believe the manuscript is extraterrestrial: a biology book, a map, or a communication device left behind by non-human intelligence.

⌛ Time Traveler Artifact Another theory? It’s from the future. A forgotten manual written after a cataclysm. Or something that slipped through time, encoded in a language we haven't invented yet.

🕵️‍♂️ Secret Society Survival Guide Others think it came from an ancient order—meant to preserve forbidden knowledge after the fall of civilization. A guidebook for those who’d survive what came next.

The World Has Tried to Crack It

For 100+ years, cryptologists, codebreakers (including WWII-era NSA teams), linguists, and computer scientists have tried and failed to translate the Voynich Manuscript.

• World War II codebreakers like William Friedman and John Tiltman gave up after years of study.

• Modern linguists can’t find any verbs, nouns, or even repeating grammatical structures.

• AI has been used to analyze the text. Some claim connections to Hebrew, others to proto-Romance languages. No theory has stuck.

• A few claimed to solve it—Nicholas Gibbs, Gerard Cheshire—but experts weren’t convinced.

  
  

The deeper people go, the more untranslatable it becomes.

Who Wrote It?

📜 Roger Bacon? Maybe. Dates don’t quite line up.

🔮 John Dee and Edward Kelley? Total mystic chaos agents—makes sense.

📚 Wilfrid Voynich? The guy who “discovered” it may have created it.

🧠 A Time-Traveling AI? Fringe—but hey, it might explain the logic we can’t crack.

🎨 Leonardo da Vinci? That’s just the internet being the internet.

Final Thoughts

It’s one of the strangest, most persistent mysteries on Earth. A book that might be sacred, alien, coded, completely fake—or all of the above.

The Voynich Manuscript doesn’t just refuse to be understood… it fights back.

Thanks for reading—and remember, don’t tell anyone about what you just learned… because this podcast is a secret.