Voynich Manuscript and comics / graphic novels...

Note: this article has now moved to voynich-manuscript-and-comics-graphic-novels on Cipher Mysteries

I try to pick up on everything VMs-related out there, and I liked comics as a kid (Marvel not DC, if you're askin'): so it came as a nice surprise to find the Voynich Manuscript popping up on the edges of the comics world.

According to this page on his own website, satirical graphics novel author Steve Aylett placed the VMs "in the Juice Museum" (a location in "The Velocity Gospel", #2 in his Accomplice series), as well as "in Eddie Gamete's library in Slaughtermatic". Sadly, thanks to H.G.Wells, David Bowie, Peter Frampton, Topper Headon, and Aleister Crowley, Steve's unlikely to ever make it into the list of Five Most Famous People From Bromley: but I'm sure he'll do OK for himself all the same. :-o

Another comics blogger has the VMs on the brain, mentioning it in a nice little article on the rediscovery of a full-length print of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (it mentions the funky Superman's Metropolis story, too), as well as in an article on its own.

But then again, I suppose the Codex Seraphinianus is very much like a graphic novel in its own odd way, and that's arguably not so very far from the VMs: if you can't read the text, all you have left is the pictures, right? John C commented that the Codex Seraphinianus "most closely resembles European fantasy works like those one sees from Roland Topor and various bande desinée artists": but to be honest, I'm pretty sure that Serafini was simply trying to appropriate (and undermine) the visual tropes of instruction manuals, rather than align himself with any art movement or style.

Finally (and apropos of nothing, I just thought you might like it), here - courtesy of yesbutnobutyes.com - is a classic Captain America frame, that got terribly, terribly lost in the translation to, erm, English. Enjoy!

Dee, Lovecraft, Voynich - An Eternal Triangle?

I've just started reading Colin Wilson's "The Philosopher's Stone", so I thought it might be a good idea to blog about an article from the Metromagick blog where he also plays a role.

The piece is called "Dr. John Dee, the Necronomicon & the Cleansing of the World", and was written by Colin Low in 1996-2000. It's basically an extended riff on H.P.Lovecraft, John Dee, the Voynich Manuscript, Aleister Crowley and the Necronomicon, and how much they do (or don't) relate to each other.

The problem with Lovecraft fans is that they often enjoy emulating what their gloomy hero liked to do: mix fantasy with history until they both blur together into one great big glob of either historicised fiction or fictionalised history (whichever you prefer, it doesn't matter much).

And so it was that in 1978, a book called "Necronomicon" appeared edited by George Hay (reprinted in 1995), containing a claim by David Langford and Robert Turner that Lovecraft's fabled Necronomicon was not only real but "had been preserved by Alkindi in his treatise The Book of the Essence of the Soul", parts of which had in turn been enciphered by John Dee in his Liber Loagaeth. With an introduction by Colin Wilson, it looked convincingly like real historical research... but (as you've probably guessed by now) it was merely faux Lovecraftian nonsense.

Colin Low's article then goes on to collect together various strands apparently connecting Dee (via Enochian and Choronzon) to Crowley and his well-documented adventures with demon summoning. It's all entertaining stuff, but the possible presence at the ball of a Lovecraftian mischief-making poltergeist tends to rather reduce its reliability for the reader. So in the end, does Low's account amount to something special or to something of nothing? Basically, I think you'll have to make your own call.

However, I do find Low's summing-up of the Necronomicon fiercely attuned to much that has been said about the Voynich Manuscript: "The Necronomicon is a hollow vessel - it booms resoundingly, but has nothing in it but the projections of our own fantasies." Which is a shame.