 Since the beginning of time, man has written messages in coded language. The value of secrecy is very important in times of war or turmoil. And in fact, there are people who decode messages for a living, the cryptographers of the world. But there's one manuscript in particular that has crossed through the desk of multiple scholars in cryptographers for centuries. Only none of these people have been able to decode this manuscript. Its origins still a mystery, and its author also still a mystery. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Hit that subscribe button and give us a like. We also have a link to our Patreon page below and we have received more Patreons this week. Thank you guys so much. There will be a list of names at the end of this video. We do also have a new producer at Esoterica Atlanta. This is Tiffany Monroe. Tiffany is a dear friend of mine and she runs nonprofit for Reiki and spiritual healing. I will place a link to her website as well as all of her social media accounts down below. If you're looking for an alternative means to heal and if you live in the Atlanta area, Tiffany is having an event on October 31st on Halloween. I'm going to place more information about this event on our community tab in the next week. But please reach out to her if that's something you're interested in doing. Even if you live elsewhere, she could still work with you from your location. Welcome to Esoterica Atlanta. My name is Bryce and today on Mystery Monday, we're going to be talking about the Voynich manuscript. You know, which which part of this story is more alluring? The manuscript itself and what it potentially says or its origins in history. The Voynich manuscript got its name from a book dealer named Wilford Voynich. Now, in all honesty, we could probably do a whole video just on Voynich's life. But I'm just going to give you the cliff notes for now because the whole point of the story is about this mysterious manuscript that ended up in his possession. You see again, Voynich purchased the manuscript in 1912. He himself was a part of the Russian Revolution. He was part of the Polish exiled community in London and then ended up changing his first name to Wilfred from his Russian name and opened up an antique in book store in Soho. Now, Wilfred Voynich purchased this manuscript from Italy. It seems that there was a transition happening and the Jesuits were selling a bunch of stuff to the Vatican library and he kind of stepped in and bought all this stuff, which is pretty amazing because if he had not gotten the manuscript from the Jesuits, it would be sitting in the Vatican library probably never to have been seen again by the public. It seems that immediately Voynich became obsessed with this manuscript. He thought for sure that he would be able to decode it. Because of carbon dating with the papyruses used to create the book, we know that the book was probably made in the early 15th century. The first third of the book appears to be about plants and herbs. The second portion of the book is about the zodiac from the pictures that we see. And the third part of the book is pretty mysterious. It's a bunch of pictures of naked women in some green water swimming around. Now, of course, the language in the book is not from this planet. It's not recognizable by anyone. It's obviously written in code, either that or it's from a parallel universe where they speak a different language. But most scholars tend to believe that this book was written in some sort of code. Now, Voynich said, and I quote, When the time comes, I will prove to the world that the black magic of the middle ages consisted in discoveries far in advance of the 20th century sciences. Being so determined to crack this case, Voynich had people cryptologists from World War II and World War I help him. And not even these skilled men could figure out what the hell this book was saying. Now, Voynich and his wife Ethel eventually ended up moving to New York City, where they opened up another shop for antiques and book dealing. This is where Wilfred eventually passed away and left his possessions, including the Voynich manuscript in the possession of his wife Ethel. Now, his wife Ethel ended up living until 1960. When she passed away, she left everything to the Voynich's secretary. They had no children. Now, the manuscript had been placed in a safety deposit box in the bank, and the only person who was allowed to retrieve the manuscript was their secretary. So on August the 9th of 1960, the manuscript was pulled back out of the safety deposit box and was eventually purchased by another book dealer. This was a man by the name of Hans P. Krause. He thought that he would be able to, again, decode this book like Voynich thought he would be able to decode the book and then sell it for a very high price. Well, of course, that didn't happen. Again, the mysteries of this book have been kept a mystery for many centuries. So Krause ended up in 1969 handing the manuscript over to Yale, where it still sits today. It's in Yale's library and people still dedicate their lives and their careers to studying the Voynich manuscript to try to figure out what it says, still with no conclusive answers. But as I said in the beginning, I don't know which one is more alluring. The mystery of what the manuscript says or its origins and its personal history. You see, because of letters written between very important people back in the Renaissance, we can track where the Voynich manuscript came from. Not where it originated from, but where it started its mysterious journey. Most scholars start the journey for the Voynich manuscript with Rudolf II. Rudolf II was the Holy Roman Emperor and he was part of the Habsburg dynasty. Rudolf was born on the 18th of July in 1552. Now, for those that are watching this channel, you probably are already slightly familiar with Habsburgs. The Habsburgs are one of our bloodline families that are a part of the Illuminati. They have made a lot of waves in our history. They were a huge dynasty that had their claws all over Europe for a very long time. They're also very famous for inbreeding and that's where we get the Habsburg chin. The Habsburgs are also the family that produced Marie Antoinette, who very famously got her head chopped off during the French Revolution. We also know that Marie Antoinette is the matriarch of what we now know to be the Paysor family. Now, Rudolf II was a very quiet child. You see, his mother sent him to live with his uncle in Spain. His uncle, Philip, was the ruler of Spain. Rudolf II was exposed to a lot of brutality. He had to watch his uncle as he burned people alive at the stake during the Spanish Inquisition. In my opinion, looking at the situation with modern eyes, it seems pretty clear that old Rudolf II probably had some PTSD from his batshit crazy family. When Rudolf II returned back to his family's court, he started to show signs of what they called melancholy. Now, we know this to be clinical depression. Of course, as I said, he was traumatized as a child. Rudolf preferred to spend his days alone in his own wing of his castle, studying such things as the occult and astrology. He also was a patron of the arts as well as a supporter of science. And around the time that Rudolf returned to his family's court, his father Maximilian decided to co-crown Rudolf so that they would kind of like co-rule their empire. I guess it would be kind of like his dad wanted Rudolf to apprentice with him to make sure that his melancholy son, who preferred to study stars, would be ready to take on the Holy Roman Empire when it was time. He officially succeeded his father Maximilian II on the 12th of October in 1576. At this point, Rudolf II decided to move the court to Prague, which is now in the Czech Republic. At this point, this was considered to be Bohemia. We've also talked a lot about the Czech Republic on this channel. I personally would love to visit the Czech Republic and see all these incredible sites. Well, we do know that within Rudolf's collection of occult stuff was the Voynich manuscript. Now, we know that Rudolf is not responsible for the creation of the Voynich manuscript because of a letter that was written by the very famous Dr. Marci in 1665, where he claimed Rudolf had purchased the Voynich manuscript from somebody else. Who that person is, though, we have no idea. Some people believe that the mysterious creator of this manuscript that Rudolf purchased was indeed Rudolf's own doctor. Rudolf's doctor was a man by the name of Tepinich. And when Voynich himself was looking through the paper, he discovered that Tepinich had signed the bottom of the first page. Now, many people believe that this is a possibility or a clue to a possibility because back in these times, sometimes medical doctors were persecuted by the church. It seems that a lot of scientists would go on to be tried in the Inquisition for being demonic, for playing with herbs and trying to find cures for diseases. So a lot of the doctors in this time and in times before this had to write down things in code so that they would not risk their life in their exploration of finding ways of healing their patients. We do know that upon Rudolf's death, Tepinich compensated the Voynich manuscript. Now after Tepinich had the manuscript, the manuscript was passed down through a long line of scholars. Again, trying to figure out what the hell this book was actually saying. Now, from 1662 to 1680, the manuscript ended up in the possession of the scholar Kircher. It is Kircher who ended up donating the manuscript to the Jesuit Library in Rome, which is where Wilfred Voynich purchased the manuscript in 1912. So we have a few hundred years here where the manuscript was just sitting on a shelf. So for a lot of our modern-day cryptologists who are studying the Voynich manuscript, they have to rely on the letters written between Rudolf and Kircher. Again, they've already come to the conclusion that this was possibly a medical book, if not written by Rudolf's doctor, then by who. We know from carbon dating that this book was again created in the early 15th century, so the 1400s. However, oddly enough, many people believe that this is the work of Roger Bacon. Now, Roger Bacon lives in the 13th century in England, and if Roger Bacon was the author of the Voynich manuscript, that would mean that the Voynich manuscript we have today is possibly a replica of the original manuscript. So who was Roger Bacon? Now, funnily enough, the motivation between Roger Bacon and Rudolf's doctor would have been the same because they were both considered to be medical. Now, Roger Bacon was a clergyman again in the 13th century in England. He was considered the miracle doctor. He knew how to cure people. Roger Bacon was also always in conflict with the church. Understandably so. Now, the interesting thing about Roger Bacon is that he liked to work with magnifying glass to be able to see particles and roofs up close. Now, this could be the gateway to what we now know as the microscope. And this also could explain some of the illustrations in the manuscript of the roots that look a little off from what we see as roots. It could be that Roger Bacon was drawing the roots from his perspective through a magnifying glass. But there is also a third theory of this manuscript's origins. And it has absolutely nothing to do with medicine. The third theory was that the Voynich manuscript was a journal or a diary, a diary of fantasy that was most likely created by a child. This theory is developed because of the artwork. It seems pretty amateur. But you see, it wasn't just any child that they thought this journal might have belonged to, but the child, Leonardo da Vinci. You see, Leonardo da Vinci was born on the 15th of April 1452. He was an Aries. And there is a particular painting in the Voynich manuscript that leads people to believe he was painting his own birthday. The thing about the manuscript as well is that all the materials that were used to create the manuscript in the 15th century were fairly expensive. Well, Leonardo da Vinci was from a very wealthy family. Leonardo da Vinci was also one of the most brilliant minds that humanity has ever produced. And it's been noted that if you take all the illustrations of the Voynich manuscript and move them really fast, you get a cartoon. And wouldn't it be just like a child to make up his own language in his own personal journal? So what do you think? Do you think the Voynich manuscript was some hidden secrets about medicine and mysticism from the Middle Ages that were passed through the noble hands of Germany down to Italy and ended up with Wilford Voynich? Do you believe that the messages are super encoded that not even our most talented cryptologists can figure it out? Do you believe this manuscript was potentially brought here from another planet or another parallel universe? Or do you believe that this was the childhood journal of Leonardo da Vinci? Childhood scribble-scrabbles and doodles and a language that was created through the mind of a child. One thing we do know for sure, though, is that the Voynich manuscript is not a hoax. You see, at one point, somebody thought maybe, just maybe, Wilford Voynich had created this to try to sell it at a high price as some secret manual that no one could decode. But further investigation has proved that no, this material, the ink used, everything used, was from the 15th century, long before Wilford Voynich's time. So let me know down in the comments below. I hope you all enjoyed that mystery Monday. This is a very interesting mystery for me. And this week, we're going to actually focus more on Rudolph II and another work that he had in his collection as well as one of his children. All right, guys, I hope that you all have a wonderful, wonderful day. Please check out Tiffany's website in the description box below for all the new Patreons. If you have not sent me a request for a story, please send me an email with that request. I do have some of your requests and I have them in the process of research right now and figuring out when to schedule those stories. So when you do send a request in, just understand it might take a few weeks to a month to get the story out depending on how much research and study needs to be done in order to produce the video. And again, thank you to Josh McKay for doing our music. A link to Josh's song to our opening song is in the description box below. You can purchase the full song or listen to the full song or even purchase his full album. And thank you to Todd Roderick for helping me produce this video yet again and again and a link to his band, The Flying Mystics is also in our description box below. All right, I hope you guys are having a wonderful day and I will talk to you soon. Bye.