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GUEST POST BY BARBARA CASEY


One of the major themes in The Cadence of Gypsies involves the Voynich Manuscript, considered to be the most mysterious document in the world. Dara, Mackenzie, and Jennifer, the three teenage orphans who call themselves the FIGs (Females of Intellectual Genius), travel to Italy to help their teacher, Carolina find out what the connection is between a letter she received supposedly from her biological parents on her 18th birthday and the Voynich Manuscript. That was also when she learned that she was adopted.
In reality, the Voynich Manuscript is believed to date to the early 15th century, possibly from northern Italy. It is named after the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who purchased it in 1912.
The original manuscript is composed of 240 vellum pages, most with illustrations which seem to present information about aliens, and plants and their possible uses for medical purposes. However, most of the plants do not resemble any known species. And even though the Voynich Manuscript has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including American and British codebreakers from both World War I and World War II, the manuscript's script and language has remained unknown and unreadable.
Now, once again the Voynich Manuscript is in the news as scientists have attempted to use the power of artificial intelligence to unlock its ancient secrets. The first stage of the research was working out the manuscript’s language. The experts used 400 different language translations from the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” to identify the language used in the text. Initially, it seemed like the text was written in Arabic, but the researchers’ algorithms revealed that the manuscript is written in Hebrew. The next step will be to decipher it using ‘alphagrams’ that use one phrase to define another in order to build an algorithm to unscramble the text.

Interestingly, while this is taking place, Viekko Latvala, a businessman from Finland who professes to be a “profit of god,” says he has decoded the manuscript, describing the written characters as “sonic waves and vocal syllables.” He believes the creator of the Voynich Manuscript was a scientist of plants, pharmacy, astrology, and astronomy, and that the Voynich Manuscript contains prophesy hundreds of years ahead of the time it was created.
And so, the mystery continues…

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