This is Faustin Bray for Sound Photosynthesis.
Brian Wallace is recording, and today we have the good fortune to talk with Terrence McKenna.
He has chosen a subject that has been interesting to him for quite a while,
and the title of this tape is The Vonage Manuscript.
What I'd like to talk about today and what's brought me to the edge of my chair recently
is the Vonage Manuscript, which is something that,
though I had read in occultism fairly deeply and in alchemical literature and that kind of thing,
I had never heard of this until about a year and a half ago,
and a friend of mine, Ralph Abraham, who's a mathematician at Santa Cruz,
began pushing this at me, mentioning this encoded manuscript
that people were interested in trying to figure out what it said,
and since I had never heard of it, I dismissed it.
I assumed that he was misinformed or that if this thing existed, I surely would have heard of it,
but eventually I tracked down the references that he gave me,
and I discovered a very curious cul-de-sac in the history of ideas.
First of all, it is a manuscript.
That means it's written in longhand.
It's not a printed book.
Only one copy is known to exist.
It's at the Benecke Rare Book Room at Yale,
and it was deposited there by the estate of Mr. Alfred Vonage when his wife died.
The Vonage Manuscript, here are the known facts.
It first appears in 1586 at the court of Rudolf II of Bohemia,
which, if you know that court in that period,
this was the mad Rudolf of Bohemia,
this guy who was surrounded by astrologers, alchemists, cryptographers,
all the intellectual foment of occult Protestant Europe was centered at this court,
and into this situation comes an unknown person,
a courier, who sells this manuscript to Rudolf for the equivalent of $14,000,
300 gold ducats, which is an enormous amount of money to pay for something like this.
And it was in his possession.
It's encoded.
It is not written in any known alphabet.
It is written in what scholars call Vonage Script,
of which this manuscript is the only known example in existence.
And part of the problem of the Vonage Manuscript
has to do with locating instances of Vonage Script somewhere else.
It's over 275 pages long.
It has over 150 color illustrations of plants in one category,
what appear to be astrological diagrams in another category,
and then a completely unclassifiable set of images,
which seem to be basically little naked ladies bathing in strange fountains,
or perhaps dissected flowers,
or it isn't clear what it is.
The emperor would not have paid so much money for it
if he hadn't been convinced that there was something going on with it.
He had cryptographers at his court
who were very adept at decoding manuscripts.
None of them were ever able to make any progress with it.
When his court collapsed in the incident of the Winter King and Queen of 1619,
the manuscript passed to his botanist, a man named Marcy,
and at his death, it passed to an unknown party who owned it for 20 years.
And the next place where it's picked up is in the library of Athanasius Kirscher,
who was one of the great polymaths of the 17th century,
and a man who himself worked on artificial languages and synthetic languages.
And letters exist of his inquiring after this manuscript,
and eventually it came into his possession.
But there's no mention of it in any of his known work on artificial languages.
At around 1635, he decided to join the Jesuit order
and gave all his books to a Jesuit college south of Rome,
where this book apparently sat on the shelf for the next, what is it, 230 years,
until 1906, when Mr. Alfred Vonich bought the entire library,
a rare book dealer, shipped it back to Brooklyn,
and in going through this stuff, came upon this manuscript.
Now, what's so great about a book which nobody can read?
Well, first of all, it's very unusual, books which no one can read.
Codes, immensely powerful methods exist for breaking codes,
because this is a matter of military intelligence and defense concerns,
and very sophisticated computer techniques exist to analyze any supposed piece of code
and extract meaning from it,
determine whether it is, in fact, encoded language or not,
whether you can tell what it says or not.
And the Vonich manuscript has become a kind of conundrum of the intelligence community.
Retired intelligence officers take it on and attempt to crack it.
In fact, one of the best books written about the Vonich manuscript
is called The Vonich Manuscript, An Elegant Enigma, by Mary D'Imperio,
and it is only available from the National Security Agency,
Central Security Office, Fort Meade, Maryland.
This is what your tax dollars are being spent for,
it's to decode this 400-year-old manuscript.
Okay, Vonich script, the most sophisticated computer analysis
shows that the manuscript definitely is a language.
There is meaning, the occurrence of prefixes and suffixes,
certain internal rules of grammar have been identified,
but the meaning has eluded all comers.
And several people, if there were more time,
we could go into people whose whole careers have rested
on their supposed decoding of it.
A man named William Newbery in the 1920s
claimed a complete decipherment,
and it was later exposed to be a sincere but misguided mental derangement
that contributed to his belief that he had decoded.
Other people have made attempts,
but all of them, none, are convincing.
And so this is where the matter rests.
One edition of this manuscript exists,
it's never been decoded.
My idea about it is that
to understand the Vonich manuscript,
you have to understand the career of John Dee,
who was the greatest magus of the Elizabethan age,
the court astrologer of Elizabeth I of England,
the man who had more,
he had the largest library in England,
Elizabeth and Sir Walter Riley and Sir William Sidney
visited him to see his collection of books.
He wrote on the elements of Euclid,
he wrote books on navigation and astronomy,
but he also was an occultist and into secret codes.
He was also an intelligence agent.
He had been at the court of Rudolf
the year before the sale is alleged to have taken place.
He and his friend, Edward Kelly.
And they had brooded it about
that Roger Bacon, the 13th century English monk,
was the greatest alchemist of all time.
And they had really made a flap about Bacon
in Prague at the court of Rudolf.
Then a series of alchemical experiments
where they had promised the emperor
to make gold and had failed,
caused them to be exiled to Treblona.
So they were in Treblona
when this alleged sale of this manuscript
took place in Prague.
Now, all occult codes in Europe
are based, or at that time,
were based on the work of one man,
the bishop of Johannes Trithemius of Sponheim,
who wrote a book called the Stenographica,
which was published in 1535.
And in it, he explained numerous methods
drawn from Roman sources in his own imagination
for composing codes and encrypting messages.
And all of the occult codes which follow
are based on this.
Dee hand-copied a manuscript of the Stenographica
when he encountered it in Paris.
He was involved with a series of angel contacts
where he elaborated a language called Enochian,
which, like Volnitsch,
is not written in characters of the English alphabet,
but has a peculiar set of characters unique to itself.
Over 3,000 words have been defined in Enochian,
first through Dee's spirit contacts,
and later the Golden Dawn took it up
and further expanded it.
But in Dee's diaries,
which are deposited in the British Museum,
there are 93 pages of encrypted material,
which are columns of numbers.
And I believe that
to eliminate the possibility
that Dee was the author of the Vonage manuscript,
the encoding methods of this material in his diary
need to be computer-analyzed
and then compared to the Vonage material.
The other possibility,
which still involves Dee,
is this person I mentioned,
Edward Kelly,
his companion of many years.
Kelly's entree...
Kelly was a man of the lower classes,
a much younger man,
a scoundrel by all accounts.
And his entree to Dee
was he came to him with a book
which was in code,
which he had claimed to have found
in a crypt of a looted Catholic monastery
in Wales.
This was during the period
just after Henry VIII's break with Rome.
And he called this book
The Gospel of St. Dunstable.
And Dee worked on the decoding of it.
But we lose sight of that book
and no known copy of it,
no copy of it exists
so far as we know.
But Arthur Dee,
John Dee's son,
in his diary
talks about how
in the period
before Dee and Kelly
went to Europe,
his father spent a great deal of time
studying a book
which was covered all over
with hieroglyphics.
And I believe
one of two things,
I mean,
this is what seems reasonable to me,
that either Dee and Kelly
ponied up
a phony manuscript
which they sold
into the court of Ruth
because they were poor.
There's no question about it.
I mean,
these guys had come
to the end of their ropes.
I believe only John Dee
is the only man
who could have produced
the Vonage manuscript
if it's contemporaneous
with him.
Either that
or there is actually
some truth
to this strange story
about Kelly
bringing a book
to Dee
that he had found in Wales.
And in that case,
Welch
and computer analysis
of Welch
and looking at Welch
as the possible
basic text
of the Vonage manuscript
should be done.
And this has never been done.
So I'm seeing
a further advance
in Vonage studies
logically demands
an analysis
of the codes
in John Dee's diaries
in a true
and faithful relation
and analysis
of Welch
in relationship
to the known
internal grammar
of the Vonage manuscript.
And there are
other angles
on it.
Let me think.
What would you like
to do with it?
Well, I would like
to know
what it says.
At first,
it sounds
very mysterious
and you actually
reach out
toward the idea
that the reason
the Vonage manuscript
can't be read
is because
it is not
in code
at all.
It simply
is in a
non-human language.
It's like
an object
from another dimension
which just,
you know,
here it is.
it cannot
be decoded
because
the bridge
is too great.
But another
possible problem
is perhaps
modern people,
modern cryptographers
who deal with codes
are overconfident
of their ability
to break
any code.
Perhaps
there is just
some weird
quirky way
in which
this code
is composed
that it would
forever elude
your effort
to decoding.
I mean,
for instance,
what if
somewhere there
exists a set
of grids
which if
laid over
the pages
in a certain
way
caused
the part
of the Vonage
script
which could
then be
subjected
to normal
methods
of decoding
and would
quickly reveal
its grammar.
What does
it look like?
What does
the Vonage
manuscript
look like?
It's a small
book,
ten by seven
inches
and probably
about two
and a half
inches thick.
These
watercolor
drawings
are
extraordinarily
peculiar.
I mean,
especially
for that
period
because
all herbals
of which
there were
only about
50 or so
in existence
at that
time
drew from
a common
pool of
imagery
which went
back to
the herbals
of
Dioscorides
and that
kind of
thing.
point
in time
and yet
the Vonage
manuscript
is utterly
unique.
It's
completely
peculiar.
What are
the ingredients
of the
inks?
Well,
none of
this has
been looked
at and
should be
looked at.
This is
another thing.
A chemical
attack on
the manuscript
itself should
be mounted.
See,
Newbery,
the guy
who advanced
a decipherment
in the
20s,
he believed
because a
letter
accompanied
it that
said it
was a
Bacon
manuscript,
a Roger
Bacon,
and this
also points
at D
because D
was under
the patronage
of the
Earl of
Northumberland
and he
looted a
number of
monasteries
where there
were large
Baconian
libraries
and in
fact D
had 53
Baconian
manuscripts
in his
possession
catalogued
in his
library
at
Mortlake
only 41
of those
texts are
known to
exist in
any form
at all
today.
His
library
was
burned
while he
was
in
Europe.
It
was
burned
by a
mob
incited
against
this
wizard
and
so
it
may
but
so
Newbery
believed
then that
it
was
a
Baconian
manuscript
But when
you
look at
it
13th century
everything
about it
marks it
and Bacon
of course
was 13th
century
so it's
clearly
there are
many other
angles
I mean
like D
is
implicated
in the
Rosicrucian
conspiracy
he
was definitely
involved at
the very
beginning
his book
the hieroglyphic
monad
served as
a model
for the
two primary
Rosicrucian
documents
the Fama
and the
Confessio
which were
released
secretly
in the
early
17th
century
and
it all
was coming
from
central
Europe
from
Bohemia
and
Prague
the
court
of
Frederick
the
Elector
Palatine
of
Bohemia
and
this
guy
Rudolf
II
of
Bohemia
this
court
these
were
the
alchemical
courts
these
were
where
the
alchemical
presses
were
operating
and
this
Protestant
alchemical
enlightenment
was
taking
place
that
the
coming
of
the
Thirty
Years
War
and
the
collapse
of
the
Winter
King
and
Queen
obliterated
this
hope
this
is a
very
complicated
moment
in
European
history
collapse
of the
Winter
King
and
Queen
yes
this
was
an
incident
you
see
Frederick
the
Elector
Palatine
of
Bohemia
who
was
the
patron
of
all
these
alchemical
presses
and
alchemists
wedded
the
daughter
of
James
the
First
of
England
whose
name
was
Elizabeth
and
he
this
was
around
and
he
thought
that
by
wedding
the
daughter
of
the
King
of
England
he
was
getting
the
nod
from
the
King
of
sons
to
a
Habsburg
Spanish
Catholic
Empress
to
balance
it
out
and
he
was
appalled
when
Frederick
the
Elector
began
to
move
on
this
alchemical
revolution
well then
when
Rudolf
of
Bohemia
the
guy
who
bought
the
Vonich
manuscript
when
he
died
there
was
actually
a
set
of
German
princes
who
by
election
would
choose
his
successor
and
they
chose
Frederick
and
his
queen
Elizabeth
the
daughter
of
James
and
they
moved
from
Heidelberg
to
Prague
and
ruled
in
the
winter
of
and
but
by
May
of
the
Habsburgs
had
mounted
an
army
and
they
killed
she
fled
it
was
actually
an
amazing
moment
in
European
history
Michael
Meyer
who
was
one
of
the
great
alchemists
of
that
period
died
in
the
streets
of
Prague
in
that
siege
and
one
of
the
young
French
soldiers
in
this
Habsburg
army
was
the
year
old
René
Descartes
off
soldiering
and
sowing
his
wild
oats
this
is
the
period
out
of
which
this
manuscript
emerges
a
throne
of
England
and
at
the
same
time
pursuing
his
own
peculiar
interest
in
angel
communication
and
astrology
and
Kabbalah
and
all
these
things
and
the
Vonich
manuscript
is indicative
of this
paradoxical
state
of
people
had
and
it
would
be
very
interesting
to
know
what
it
says
I
mean
it
looks
very
promising
after all
John
D
was
definitely
the
preeminent
intellect
of his
time
and
the
fact
that
he
may
have
faked
this
to
pay
the
bills
I
would
bet
that
even
at
that
there
is
sense
embedded
in
it
somewhere
but
the
key
is
D
and
D
and
the
lines
of
research
which
study
of
his
life
would
suggest
the
well
changel
the
diary
codes
all
this
are
you
pursuing
it
I'm
advising
a group
of
people
in
Santa
Cruz
computer
people
and
just
interested
people
and
my
voice
is
one
of
several
but
definitely
it's
one of
the
great
oddities
of
human
thought
and
not
much
heard
of
because
it
simply
is
an
elegant
enigma
and
so
concludes
the
interview
with
Terrence
McKenna
in
since
that
time
a
book
composed
of
interviews
by
Terrence
and
various
other
people
including
this
one
called
The
Archaic
Revival
has
been
put
about
the
Vonage
manuscript
and
he
writes
on
page
of
that
book
The
Archaic
Revival
and
there
the
matter
rested
until
and
might
have
rested
forever
but
for
the
questing
curiosity
of
one
man
enter
Dr.
Leo
Levitov
author
of
Solution
of
the
Vonage
manuscript
a
manual
for
the
Endura
Rite
of
the
Cathari
heresy
the
cult
of
Isis
Levitov
thesis
is
that
the
Vonage
is
nothing
less
than
the
only
surviving
primary
document
of
the
great
heresy
that
arose
in
Italy
and
flourished
in
the
Languedoc
until
ruthlessly
exterminated
by
the
Albigensian
crusade
in the
1230s
very
catharite
faith
and
all
the
knowledge
we
do
have
of
it
is
second
hand
obtained
from
the
records
of
the
inquisition
whose
task
was
the
destruction
of
the
cathar
society
Levitov's
translation
if
substantiated
would
throw
new
light
on
the
puzzling
rise
and
the
extermination
of
the
greatest
heretical
challenge
that
the
Roman
church
ever
in
the
bath
who
puzzled
so
many
are
for
levator
a
cathar
sacrament
the
endura
or
death
by
venisection
cutting
a vein
in
order
to
bleed
to
death
in
a
warm
bath
the
plant
drawings
that
refuse
to
resolve
themselves
into
botanically
identifiable
species
are no
problem
for
Levitov
actually
there
is
not
a
the
astrological
drawings
are
likewise
easy
to
deal
with
the
innumerable
stars
are
representative
of
the
stars
in
Isis's
mantle
Levitov's
strong
hand
is
translation
he
asserts
that
the
reason
it
has
been
so
difficult
to
decipher
the
Vonish
manuscript
is
that
it
is
not
encrypted
at
all
but
merely
written
in
a
special
script
and
is
an
adaptation
of
a
polyglot
oral
tongue
into
a
to
whom
this
language
could
be
read
that
is
a
quote
specifically
a
highly
polyglot
form
of
the
medieval
Flemish
with
a
large
number
of
old
French
and
old
high
German
loan
words
good
so
now
we
know
where
there
is
a
danger
for
Levitov
is
relief
although
A.E.
Waite
says
in his
discussion
of the
Cathars
and the
Holy
Grail
the
Grail
mythos
is
like
the
veil
of
Isis
which
no
man
can
rise
rather
than
tolerate
the
suggestion
that
this
nightmare
of
faith
are
behind
it
save
for
the
Waite
lucky
turn
of
phrase
no
commenter
ancient
or
modern
has
ever
breathed
a
word
concerning
Isis
in
connection
with
the
Cathars
at
one
point
became
a
focus
of
latter
day
occultists
but
not
even
their
literature
mentioned
Isis
Levitoff
is
almost
casual
in
his
presentation
of
his
work
questioning
at
one
point
whether
now
that
he
has
figured
out
how
to
translate
the
manuscript
it
is
raised
is
to
be
seen
as
a
primary
source
showing
the
Cathars
to
be
not
at
all
what
we
have
come
to
think
of
them
students
of
Gnosticism
paganism
and the
goddess
will
have
to
digest
this
new
slant
on
the
role
of
the
Cathars
as
for
what
the
manuscript
actually
says
it
is
a
gloomy
and
repetitive
work
made
partly
so
by
Levito's
decision
to
at
its
most
lyrical
the
translation
is
quite
interesting
so
here
it
is
presented
in
this
book
by
Terence
the
person
who
is
knowledgeable
about
aid
knows
there
is
only
one
way
to
treat
agonizing
pain
he
treats
each
one
by
putting
them
through
the
endura
it
is
the
one
way
that
helps
death
not
everyone
knows
how
to
assist
the
one
with
pain
the
one
who
is
with
death
and
does
not
die
will
have
pain
but
those
who
have
such
pain
of
death
need
his
help
he
understands
the
need
he
is
also
aware
that
the
person
who
needs
help
does
not
know
that
he
says
he
says
he
is
the
he
was
aware
of
H.J.
Werner's
the
Albigensian
heresy
or
W.L.
Wakefield's
heresy
crusade
and the
inquisition
in southern
France
he states
that the
Vonage
manuscript
is
the only
primary
catharite
document
in
existence
however
A.E.
Wake
his
holy
grail
mentions
quote
there
is
fortunately
one
fragmentary
record
of
Albigensian
belief
which
has
survived
I
refer
to
the
cathar
ritual
of
lions
which
is
now
well
known
having
been
published
in
by
Mr.
F.C.
Coinbear
end of
quote
Wake
goes on
to mention
that part
of the
lion's
codex
contains
quote
certain
prayers
for the
dying
unquote
the
codex
is
in
language
docked
does
it
resemble
the
Vonage
material
we
are
not
told
if
Levitoff
is
right
we
modern
simply
overrate
the
sophistication
of our
code
breaking
machinery
and
overlook
the
possibility
that
the
manuscript
was
not
in
code
at
all
Levitoff
fails
to
mention
the
physical
manuscript
yet
it
seems
obvious
that
attempt
to
confirm
the
13th
century
origin
date
for
the
manuscript
if
the
manuscript
was
written
before
then it
is
older
than
was
claimed
by
even
the
adherence
of
the
Roger
Bacon
theory
of
its
authorship
surely
it
would
be
possible
to
determine
whether
the
manuscript
was
written
in
the
that
D
was
involved
in
the
manuscript
finding
its
way
to
Rudolf's
court
until
Levitoff
most
scholars
have
been
confident
in
placing
the
origin
of
the
manuscript
in
the
early
15th
century
therefore
Leo
Levitoff
is to
be
congratulated
he
has
made
a
persuasive
case
and
remain
modest
doing
it
now
we
need
to
hear
from
the
experts
the
medievalists
the
linguists
and
scholars
of
heresy
for
it
will
be
through
the
consensus
and
judgment
of
the
community
of
scholars
that
Levitoff
claimed
to
have
translated
the
world's
most
mysterious
manuscript
will
stand
or
fall
so
ends
this
piece
on
the
Vonage
manuscript
page
of
Terence's
book
The
Archaic
Revival
put out
by Harper
Collins
this
is
Faustin
Bray
for
Sound
Photosynthesis
finishing
the
We
have
the
information
to
this
day
of
September
Thank
you
for
listening
If
you
want
to
have
a
copy
of
this
tape
contact
Sound
Photosynthesis
P.O.
Box
Mill Valley
in California
or the
phone number
is
415-383-6712
Thank
you very
much