This Magazine has run more than one article on the Voynich Manuscript, and in particular about the cranks who have left comments on the Internet Archive scan of the manuscript explaining how they have figured it all out. Whether the fact that Dr. Boli enjoys mocking the cranks so much means that he is a crank himself is a question he will leave the cranks to debate.
Every so often someone stumbles across one of those articles and leaves a comment explaining the Voynich Manuscript, or explaining one of the previous explanations and why it is actually on the right track. It happened just recently with our article “The Voynich Manuscript: Now Even More Figured Out.” One of the many explanations of the manuscript we had quoted was this one:
It’s a little bit religious and astronomical, but it’s main subject is biology. There are numerous ancient books in eastern world that mixing religion and biology, also they mixed religion and astronomy. So my opinion is that the book is describing plant’s biology with many exemplifications and associating them with religion and astronomy, and totalizes them with the help of woman characters to understand them.
Our commenter wrote:
I actually think the fifth interpretation here, that the VM is at least in part a coded reference to “Eastern” (a term I generally dislike but is probably somewhat appropriate for the late medieval period the VM arose from) philosophy and religion, is not totally unreasonable. Diane O’Donovan at voynichrevisionist.com has argued similar things.
The site in the link, incidentally, seems to be remarkably free from obvious crankery, and even shows a considerable respect for scientific method and evidence, both of those observations making us think that perhaps Ms. O’Donovan would not have been as kind to the explanation quoted as our commenter was.
But what arrested Dr. Boli’s attention about the comment was the commenter’s email address, and the commenter is invited to explain it here. The address is the words “Time Cube,” plus enough added characters that no one could guess the rest from the information we have just given out. It is quite clear, however, that the address is meant to refer to the Time Cube theory; and we are now going to follow that rabbit into its hole, because the mere mention of the Time Cube caused Dr. Boli to wallow in nostalgia for the good old days of the early Internet.
The empire of crankdom is a blotchy and disorganized country, like the Holy Roman Empire, with its member states constantly at war with one another as well as with the nations outside the borders. Nevertheless, even in such a mess of an empire, there has to be one emperor; and until his still-lamented death eleven years ago, the emperor of all cranks was Gene Ray, whose site first appeared in 1997, and who at various times offered a thousand or ten thousand dollars to anyone who could prove his Time Cube theory wrong.
Many cranks have done the same. There is no proving them wrong, of course, on the usual grounds that proof against the conspiracy is proof of the conspiracy. The flat-earther knows that the earth is flat; every bit of scientific evidence to the contrary merely shows that the conspiracy to keep the truth from us is all-pervading and nearly omnipotent.
But there was a fundamental difference that set the Time Cube theory apart from most of the other crankeries. When you argue with a flat-earther, you can understand his assertions: the world, he says, has this shape, not that shape. The idea of a flat earth is comprehensible. Likewise, the man who believes that the world is secretly run by a cabal of reptiles from another planet may be right or wrong, but he is making an assertion that, in itself, can be understood and affirmed or denied. And so with all the other cranks: whether they believe that they have discovered the one root vegetable that cures all known diseases or that the emperor Constantine wrote the New Testament on the back of an envelope, you can argue with them. You won’t win the argument; the crank will shake his head sadly at your naivety and pity you for being such a dupe. But when the crank makes an assertion, you can deny it, and explain why you deny it.
With Gene Ray and the Time Cube, you do not have that luxury. His theory is so incomprehensible that you cannot even deny it. You can only read or listen and say, “Huh?”
Like many cranks, Ray put everything he knew about everything on a single Web page, all centered, with long passages in all caps and many different sizes and colors of text. In time it grew to sequential pages, but all in the same non-format. The site was constantly under revision, but here is how the last version of it began when Mr. Ray died in 2015:
In 1884, meridian time personnel met in Washington to change Earth time. First words said was that only 1 day could be used on Earth to not change the 1 day bible. So they applied the 1 day and ignored the other 3 days. The bible time was wrong then and it proved wrong today. This a major lie has so much evil feed from it’s wrong. No man on Earth has no belly-button, it proves every believer on Earth a liar. Children will be blessed for Killing Of Educated Adults Who Ignore 4 Simultaneous Days Same Earth Rotation. Practicing Evil ONEness – Upon Earth Of Quadrants. Evil Adult Crime VS Youth. Supports Lie Of Integration. 1 Educated Are Most Dumb. Not 1 Human Except Dead 1. Man Is Paired, 2 Half 4 Self. 1 of God Is Only 1/4 Of God. Bible A Lie & Word Is Lies. Navel Connects 4 Corner 4s. God Is Born Of A Mother – She Left Belly B. Signature. Every Priest Has Ma Sign But Lies To Honor Queers. Belly B. Proves 4 Corners.
Well, perhaps that is not the best introduction to his theory, since it seems to assume that we already know what it is. But there are many places in the page where Ray does try to summarize the truth in terms that even stupid people like us can understand.
Hey stupid – are you too dumb to know there are 4 different simultaneous 24 hour days within a single rotation of Earth? Greenwich 1 day is a lie. 4 quadrants = 4 corners, and 4 different directions. Each Earth corner rotates own separate 24 hour day. Infinite days is stupidity.
He even gave us diagrams:
This diagram was redrawn from the fuzzy original on the Time Cube site by a heroic Wikimedia contributor with too much time on her hands.
And yet we persist in our culpable incomprehension!
The one thing that we can understand about Ray’s theory is that, whatever is evil in the world, the Jews and Blacks are behind it. The Jews began the 1-day lie; the Blacks are using it to oppress White Americans. It made Mr. Ray very angry.
And that is another thing that distinguished Ray from the ordinary run of cranks. Most cranks simply pity you for not seeing the truth. Ray hated you and told you in no uncertain terms that he was going to kill you when he got the chance.
Since I have informed you of Nature’s Harmonic Time Cube 4-Day Creation Principle, your stupidity is no longer the issue. For now, the issue is just how evil you are for ignoring Life’s Highest Order, and just how long the Time Cube will allow you to plunder Earth before inflicting hell upon you.
And one principle he taught to the young ones, over and over, for the whole time his site was on the Web (as we see from a 1998 capture of the site), was this cheering dogma:
Children are justified in killing adults “refusing” to know Nature’s 4 Day Time Cube Creation Principle.
Now, what has all this to do with the Voynich manuscript?
The only answer Dr. Boli could come up with was the principle of crank magnetism. “Crank magnetism,” says the site FlatEarth.ws, “is the tendency of ‘cranks’ to hold multiple irrational, unsupported, or ludicrous beliefs that are often unrelated.” The idea that essential knowledge is being deliberately suppressed opens one’s mind, in the same way that stepping on the foot pedal opens the rubbish bin in Dr. Boli’s office, and anything can be tossed in.
Incidentally, is it an exercise in crankery to build up a site with dozens of illustrated proofs that the earth is not flat, or is it simply a necessity to belabor the obvious in the age of social media? Here is your essay topic for the day. Meanwhile, Dr. Boli will get to work on his new pro-science site, “GRASS IS REAL,” which will refute the unfounded theory that the existence of the family Gramineae is a botanical hoax foisted upon us by members of the Bhutanese royal family as part of their centuries-long plot to deprive us of the knowledge of the carefree ground-covers used by our ancient ancestors. He was thinking of putting all the information on one page, centered, using multiple sizes and colors of text to emphasize salient points.