Episode 314 - The Book No One Can Read: The Voynich Manuscript Mystery

Episode 314 - The Book No One Can Read: The Voynich Manuscript Mystery A 600-year-old book written in an unknown language, bizarre botanical illustrations that don’t exist on Earth, and a possible wizard on the run—this episode dives into the biggest literary mystery of all time. This is the unreadable book, the Voynich Manuscript. We explore its enigmatic origins, the life of rare book collector Wilfred Voynich, and the theories surrounding its possible author, Roger Bacon—a medieval friar with a suspiciously wizard-like reputation. But this isn’t just a history lesson—things get personal. Has Corinne been hexed? Could crystals be the answer? And how exactly does the Squonk, the world’s saddest cryptid, fit into all of this? From CIA codebreakers and AI decryption attempts to extraterrestrial connections and secret societies, we explore the theories, hoaxes, and paranormal possibilities. Is this a centuries old prank? A journal dropped by an alien (obviously it's this one)? Tune in to find out what is going on with the Voynich Manuscript. Watch the Video Version Here Have ghost stories of your own? E-mail them to us at [email protected] New Episodes are released every Sunday at 12am PST/3am EST (the witching hour, of course). Corinne and Sabrina hand select a couple of paranormal encounters from our inbox to read in each episode, from demons, to cryptids, to aliens, to creepy kids... the list goes on and on. If you have a story of your own that you'd like us to share on an upcoming episode, we invite you to email them to us! This episode is sponsored by Thrive Causemetics and Boll & Branch. Celebrate the women in your life with Thrive Causemetics. Luxury beauty that gives back. Right now, you can get an exclusive 20% off your first order at thrivecausemetics.com/TGOG. Now’s your chance to change the way you sleep with Boll & Branch. Get 15% off, plus free shipping on your first set of sheets at Bollandbranch.com/tgog. If you enjoy our show, please consider joining our Patreon, rating and reviewing on iTunes & Spotify and following us on social media! Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Discord. Edited and produced by Jaimi Ryan, original music by Arms Akimbo! Disclaimer: the use of white sage and smudging is a closed practice. If you’re looking to cleanse your space, here are some great alternatives! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

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• 1:13Speaker 01

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• 2:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hi.

• 2:05Corinne Vien?

  Hey.

• 2:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 2:07Corinne Vien?

  Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 2:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We are your ghostesses.

• 2:11Corinne Vien?

  That's Corinne.

• 2:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hello.

• 2:12Corinne Vien?

  I was like, oh, my God, am I supposed to introduce myself today?

• 2:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No, and I'm Sabrina. We have a spooky episode for you. We did research. We find weird, cool things on the internet, in books, on TV shows. We research them and then surprise each other and tell each other.

• 2:29Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, but I have a question for everyone first.

• 2:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  OK.

• 2:32Corinne Vien?

  Did anyone hex me?

• 2:35Corinne Vien?

  Just a quick polite, I'm not mad. I just want to know because I think what has happened to me in the past two weeks.

• 2:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You've got a lot going on.

• 2:43Corinne Vien?

  There's something, someone has something.

• 2:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I would say it extends beyond the last two weeks. You've been going through it.

• 2:49Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, but the last two weeks is like.

• 2:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Way worse.

• 2:52Corinne Vien?

  Way worse.

• 2:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, I'm curious.

• 2:55Corinne Vien?

  Two car accidents, urgent care, 911 ambulance, emergency room visit, Noah having allergic reaction, basically being pulled out of daycare. There's like five more things. I like broke my toe. There's a million more things.

• 3:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I'm curious to re-watch the episode with Eliza Kelly, what she said about this period of time.

• 3:13Corinne Vien?

  I don't remember there being any blaring, like, oh, watch your back, Corinne.

• 3:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No, but I think there was a lot of like transformation in your life of like the type of person you want to be, like the type of like person you want to be seen like publicly as.

• 3:25Corinne Vien?

  OK, well, maybe someone who's not injured. Someone whose child is OK.

• 3:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I do remember it was like May was supposed to be like the time where things pivoted into like a really good outlook for you.

• 3:39Corinne Vien?

  Hmm, OK.

• 3:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We're close.

• 3:41Corinne Vien?

  We're close. I mean, I just didn't know that everything would crumble right before we got to that period.

• 3:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I thought I was already down.

• 3:48Corinne Vien?

  Down, down, down. So if you hexed me.

• 3:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Please stop.

• 3:52Corinne Vien?

  Just a polite request to knock it off.

• 3:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  To unhex.

• 3:56Corinne Vien?

  Unhex, yeah. And then if you have the power of unhexing, I'll take it. I'll take the energy.

• 4:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, yeah. Everyone who's listening, let's all manifest good energy towards Corinne and me while you're at it. You can give it to me too. I could always use it. I feel like I'm permanently down here for the last like four years. But yeah, just send some good energy, some unhexing, healing waves this way.

• 4:17Corinne Vien?

  Clearly, we should move the crystal jar down here because I feel like we're missing out on the positive vibrations of all the crystals people have sent us.

• 4:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I actually, when I was at my witchy class two weeks ago, I like had this buzzing in my hand like for so long. And I was like, what is this? Like, why am I, it was specifically my right hand. And it was just like so energetic that I was like, am I like trying to feel something? I don't know. So I went around the store because it's like a kind of like cool witchy apothecary store as well as where you take classes. And I just went around and I held a bunch of crystals to like, see if anything like matched the vibration or kind of like calmed it. And I ended up getting like three or four crystals.

• 4:59Corinne Vien?

  Oh, really?

• 4:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 5:00Corinne Vien?

  Interesting.

• 5:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, they, I have them with me.

• 5:02Corinne Vien?

  Do you know what? There are four.

• 5:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, I have all four. Well, I mean, I couldn't, not off the top of my mind, but.

• 5:07Corinne Vien?

  But was there like anything, like any clear message coming from these crystals?

• 5:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  A lot of them were about like centering energy and finding like peace in like a chaos. And then a lot of them were also really creativity because I was like writing. So I want to, you know, feed my creative bug.

• 5:26Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, nice. Oh, I love that.

• 5:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But I felt like you. I had the like Corinne buzz.

• 5:30Corinne Vien?

  Isn't it weird when it happens?

• 5:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So weird.

• 5:32Corinne Vien?

  It's kind of cool, though.

• 5:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's intense and it wasn't stopping.

• 5:35Corinne Vien?

  It makes me feel kind of like a superhero where I'm like, I could, if I can harness this energy, I could like, like throw an energy blast at someone.

• 5:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The power.

• 5:43Corinne Vien?

  Or like create a bubble, you know, like.

• 5:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That's what you need to do.

• 5:48Corinne Vien?

  Well, you texted me and you're like, we need to put you in a bubble. I said, I'd find a way to suffocate on it apparently because of everything that's going on.

• 5:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I feel like significantly higher up.

• 5:56Corinne Vien?

  I know you do.

• 5:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is the new chair.

• 5:59Corinne Vien?

  That is the new chair. Which is odd.

• 6:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I feel like I'm wearing a booster seat. Remember when we went and saw Beetlejuice?

• 6:07Corinne Vien?

  Yes.

• 6:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And we've got the booster seats.

• 6:10Corinne Vien?

  Oh.

• 6:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  On Broadway.

• 6:11Corinne Vien?

  Okay, in my mind, I was like, wait a second, I couldn't go to the, the new Beetlejuice movie.

• 6:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  When we went on.

• 6:16Corinne Vien?

  We got drinks and booster seats.

• 6:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And we got drinks and booster seats. We saw it on Broadway.

• 6:21Corinne Vien?

  Because we're adult children.

• 6:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We were in the last row of the orchestra. And we were like, well, we're not gonna be blocking anyone. And everyone's blocking us, so let's.

• 6:30Corinne Vien?

  We got booster seats.

• 6:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, and it was great.

• 6:32Corinne Vien?

  And we cried at intermission. The first act was so good, so emotional. My gosh. Well, I have a story.

• 6:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 6:41Corinne Vien?

  For today. It is about a book. A book that nobody can read. It is one of the greatest literary enigmas of maybe the entire existence of humanity. The book is written in a language no one knows. It's seemingly impossible to decipher if it's some sort of code. And it has all of these strange illustrations in it that depict basically like flora and fauna that don't match anything that exists on Earth today.

• 7:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  What?

• 7:09Corinne Vien?

  It has constellations that don't match anything in our galaxy. And it has these humanoid figures that aren't quite perfectly human.

• 7:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  An alien manuscript?

• 7:20Corinne Vien?

  Potentially. Okay. Like, some alien came here and was journaling and dropped their journal.

• 7:25Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Or that it was their journal from their other planet and they left it behind.

• 7:29Corinne Vien?

  Right, exactly.

• 7:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Because is there anything Earth-like on it?

• 7:33Corinne Vien?

  It kind of feels like Avatar. Like, it feels like if you were shown something, you'd be like, that's a plant.

• 7:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But you.

• 7:39Corinne Vien?

  Or that's a flower.

• 7:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But that doesn't exist here.

• 7:41Corinne Vien?

  It doesn't exist here.

• 7:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is so cool.

• 7:44Corinne Vien?

  From World War II codebreakers to cutting-edge AI specialists, no one has been able to make a clear translation. Really, no one's been able to translate anything at all. Some believe it to be a long-lost alchemical manuscript. Some people think it's hiding these forgotten remedies and secret knowledge. Uh, reserved for the elite few, so very conspiracy theory.

• 8:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 8:06Corinne Vien?

  Others suspect it's an elaborate. Hoax crafted centuries ago to mystify and mislead.

• 8:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Which I'm on board for that theory, just because I respect whoever did that and put that much effort into it. If that is the case, mad respect.

• 8:20Corinne Vien?

  Mad respect, but also like how confusing for us now. And then there are a few who question whether its origins are entirely of this world. Could this be a journal left behind from another planet?

• 8:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hmm.

• 8:33Corinne Vien?

  This is the mystery of the Voynich manuscript.

• 8:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Voynich sounds very Russian. Is it Russian?

• 8:41Corinne Vien?

  The guy who found it was more recently is from the Ukraine.

• 8:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 8:45Corinne Vien?

  So that region, the story starts in the 17th century, but for us it starts in 1912. Because Mika Habdank Voynich had intended to become a pharmacist when he was younger. But then when he was 20, he joined the first proletariat, which was this revolutionary organization run by a Ukrainian philosopher and activist. This is like, literally feels like it's out of a movie. So he joined this essentially revolution.

• 9:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Uh huh.

• 9:09Corinne Vien?

  And he was part of a team that was set to break into the Warsaw Citadel, which was this giant prison in Poland. That had been holding a lot of the people from this like revolutionary group. So he was like trying to break out his friends.

• 9:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 9:22Corinne Vien?

  He didn't succeed.

• 9:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh no.

• 9:24Corinne Vien?

  In fact, he was caught. He was sentenced to hard labor in Serbia until he escaped in 1890.

• 9:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay. So he didn't succeed at freeing all of his friends, but he escaped.

• 9:33Corinne Vien?

  He escaped. Like this whole thing. I'm like, what am I watching?

• 9:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's like a movie.

• 9:37Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 9:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 9:38Corinne Vien?

  And then he relocated to London, which is where he made a career pivot. He was no longer this revolutionary activist and protester.

• 9:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hmm.

• 9:46Corinne Vien?

  He was now moving into the world of antique books and becoming a rare book collector.

• 9:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I would love to follow suit.

• 9:53Corinne Vien?

  Right? So he got his citizenship in England and he chose to Angloize his name. So he was now going by Wilfred Michael Voynich. Wilfred Voynich operated a rare bookstore in Soho Square in London. And he would spend a lot of his time outside of the store and basically traveling the world, trying to like track down rare books and antiquities.

• 10:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's like the perfect combination between archaeologists and. Professional antiquer.

• 10:20Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, right. And like, I feel like he kind of had the skill set already for someone to kind of go into like the weirdest, darkest corners of the world.

• 10:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  He's basically Nicolas Cage in all of Nicolas Cage movies.

• 10:31Corinne Vien?

  I wrote that later on. I was like, this is national treasure. You can't tell me this is not a national treasure plot. It's so wild. Okay, so his pursuits in finding these forgotten texts in these rare books led him to Italy, to a 350 year old estate called Villa Mangegonji?

• 10:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mangere pasta.

• 10:53Corinne Vien?

  Which is not even Italian. But this village was just outside of Rome. And this village has existed for quite a few centuries, but it's always essentially been owned by the Vatican. So the Vatican ran this village in 1620, basically opened it a few centuries later as this university. So it was a college. It was a Jesuit college. Kind of like if we took our college LMU and made it its own little bubble and its own little village and everyone there was basically, it was college town.

• 11:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, okay.

• 11:22Corinne Vien?

  Run by the Vatican. For a few decades, it functioned as this Jesuit college. But then the Jesuits basically fell on some hard times and the college closed and they had to sell off a bunch of their historical artifacts from the school. And that is when Wilfred went to purchase some of these rare books and sift through all of like the vintage finds that they were selling. It is thought that this is how he came into possession of what is now known as the Voynich manuscript. Although he kind of did go back on his story a few times. So at first he was like, this is where I went to find the book. But then he contradicted his story later on and said that he actually found it in a castle in Southern Europe. And people were like, okay, this doesn't discredit the story because he was a rare book collector. And if he has some like

• 12:05Corinne Vien?

  hookups and some places that he likes to sift through, you don't want to basically tell everyone where you're finding the coolest shit.

• 12:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sure, that, but also like, did he go on one big trip and collect a bunch of books along this trip? And it's not until he's back home that he's really looking through them.

• 12:23Corinne Vien?

  No, because he did say that this really stuck out.

• 12:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 12:26Corinne Vien?

  So it, like, his eyes went to this book.

• 12:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That does seem a little sus to me, because I'm like, if it sticks out that, that much, you know where you got it.

• 12:34Corinne Vien?

  But he doesn't want other people to go. It's like, when you're an antiquer and you have like this one golden antique store and you're like, well, if I tell everyone, I'm never gonna find any of like the good furniture, it's all gonna be sifted through.

• 12:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I guess, but if you got it from like an old mansion, then hypothetically, it's been cleared out, like it was an estate sale of sorts.

• 12:52Corinne Vien?

  Well, I don't know where he got it. That's the thing. We don't know if this is like this unended.

• 12:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Did he create it? Because that would also be awesome.

• 12:58Corinne Vien?

  Well, some people have theorized that, but it's like kind of impossible too, based on carbon dating, which they did later on.

• 13:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay, okay.

• 13:05Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. And also, like, he had so much wealth. So he was spending like millions and millions of dollars collecting these items. And then what he was worth for these items was just, it was huge. So also, it's not like, you know, me going to like a Goodwill and be like, this is a great coffee table. I'm not gonna tell anyone about this Goodwill location. There's a lot of money and a lot of competition. It is national treasure. There's a lot of bad people.

• 13:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I feel like when you have more money, you become more greedy.

• 13:31Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, more secretive. Either way, Wilford found himself in possession of this text that would rock the world of scholars, of linguists, of historians, and code breakers for over a century.

• 13:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Damn.

• 13:44Corinne Vien?

  The Voynich manuscript is a two hundred and forty page vellum, which I looked up vellum because I was like, what is this again? It's a medieval paper made from calfskin or animal membrane. So basically, like, they would just dry animal skin to write on. So it's a two hundred and forty page vellum book containing hundreds of hand drawn pictures of plants, animals, astrological symbols. Only the drawings are all slightly off. We know what they're depicting, but we do not know what they match, because they don't match anything physically here on earth.

• 14:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That's so wild.

• 14:16Corinne Vien?

  The botanical species are not from this planet. The astrological symbols do not align with what we know of our sky. The script is fanciful. It only contains eleven letters in total. Each word contains two to ten characters. There's no punctuation at all. It's like run on sentences the whole time. It's also written from left to right, which would make you think that it's like from the Western world.

• 14:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 14:40Corinne Vien?

  Because in the Eastern, they write right to left. But obviously, maybe also not from this planet. And because there's no punctuation, it's also made it basically impossible for people to understand where something starts and where it ends. Because there's no sentence structure, which makes it harder to break a code if it is written in code.

• 14:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hmm.

• 14:58Corinne Vien?

  Also, all of the letters, since there are only eleven letters in total, it has made people wonder if these eleven letters are spelling an alphabet, like spelling out a word. Or if we take like Mandarin, for example, a lot of the symbols act as their own word. So it's so difficult.

• 15:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And we're not language experts. And so like, and the fact that language experts have studied this and it's not.

• 15:21Corinne Vien?

  No, no one can.

• 15:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It makes no sense. I'm looking at pictures of this.

• 15:24Corinne Vien?

  The text was written next to the hand drawn pictures. So it does look like someone is journaling and documenting all of the species that they're seeing, looking up at the sky. It's like, it kind of reminds me of like explorers journals.

• 15:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right, right.

• 15:36Corinne Vien?

  Where, you know, like perhaps they were talking about what they were doing today, but then there's a drawing of like a buffalo and a cotton plant and the Milky Way galaxy.

• 15:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 15:45Corinne Vien?

  Across the sky. You know, like we're, we're seeing all that in journals and this is very, very similar. It just makes no sense.

• 15:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  These are wild, looking at these photos.

• 15:55Corinne Vien?

  Also, there are numerous pages missing and there's no way to know how many pages are missing. But like, I don't think that would help.

• 16:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, also, it probably was because that was like detailing his love life, like, and he was just like, I can't. I gotta rip these out before I leave this behind.

• 16:11Corinne Vien?

  All of the dear diary he, yeah. He got into journaling first. It was like all about his adventures with plants and whatnot. And then it was like, oh, I met this special someone.

• 16:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 16:19Corinne Vien?

  And then they ripped him out because that's, sometimes it's embarrassing.

• 16:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Maybe they broke up and, you know.

• 16:23Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, you gotta rip it from your journal.

• 16:25Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 16:26Corinne Vien?

  So the question remained, who the hell wrote this journal? Right. So Wilfred, he had a bookshop in London, but then he decided to open a second rare bookshop location in the United States in New York City. And then a year after that, in October of 1915, he oversaw this exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he displayed many of his rare books. And this was the first time the Voynich manuscript basically was put on display and publicly spoken about. Whoa. And he declared, like in his description of what it was, he essentially said, this is an unsolved cipher manuscript authored by Roger Bacon in the 13th century. Who's that? Right. For over 10 years, Thrive Cosmetics has celebrated the strength and beauty of women,

• 17:10Corinne Vien?

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• 18:39Corinne Vien?

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• 19:22Corinne Vien?

  And also they have a 30 night worry free guarantee. So if you're like, oh, this sounds very intriguing, I'd like to try it. You can try Bowlin Branch's sheets for an entire month. And if they don't change the way you sleep, you can send them back for a full refund. Now's your chance to change the way you sleep with Bowlin Branch. Get 15% off plus free shipping on your first set of sheets at bowlinbranch.com/tgog. That's bowl and branch, B O L L A N D, branch.com/tgog to save 15%. Exclusions apply. See site for details. Okay, so Roger Bacon is a 13th century friar and philosopher, known for his contributions to the field of mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, alchemy, and his many writings on universal grammar.

• 20:06Corinne Vien?

  He apparently is the prime suspect for authorship of the Voynas manuscript.

• 20:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Prime suspect. This is a criminal.

• 20:12Corinne Vien?

  I'm treating it as such. Who is making us confused in the current century? You're under arrest. He could read, write and speak many, many languages. He published texts on alchemy and the origins of the uses of metals. And he was basically like one of the most brilliant minds of his time. And people are like, well, it would make sense that it would be him because this journal is essentially like everything he's studied. And if he is studying grammar and language and stuff, it's like, did he just make one up himself?

• 20:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But if he was such a well-known person, scientist, mind back then, presumably they have a lot of his records, documents, and there would be some, something that resembles this.

• 20:54Corinne Vien?

  Right. This is such a one-off. It doesn't really make sense.

• 20:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 20:58Corinne Vien?

  So he was ahead of his time. He was a bit of a controversial figure when he was alive. The church actually viewed his work as black magic and sorcery. So they were like, you're a wizard and we hate you and we might try to kill you. And he was clearly brilliant because he was like, guess what? I'm gonna gaslight and manipulate you, Mr. Church. And so he joined the Catholic Church as a friar and said, oh, wait, no, I'm actually helping you because this is God's green earth and I'm helping you get closer to God by learning about his creations. And they were like, whoa, you're right, Mr. Wizard. And then they made him serve friar bacon.

• 21:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Related to Kevin Bacon.

• 21:36Corinne Vien?

  Everyone is. By what, six degrees?

• 21:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Six degrees, yeah. Seven degrees of Kevin Bacon?

• 21:41Corinne Vien?

  Something like that. So it's thought that maybe perhaps Roger Bacon did author this text, either using some code that we've not been able to solve or via his own language, made up and spoken by only one person, which is him. But why would he do that? What is his motivation when he was trying to contribute so much already in the form of text and kind of like dodging people who were trying to stop him? Why would he go to such great lengths?

• 22:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, who's to say? I mean, I feel like I refer to this all the time, but Project Lannalos or Planet Lannalos.

• 22:12Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 22:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And...

• 22:13Corinne Vien?

  I like how you said project, though. It does make, it's gonna be a project in that future.

• 22:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It is a project, right?

• 22:18Corinne Vien?

  And then move to the planet.

• 22:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like, what if Indrid Cole was abducting people back then? And sharing knowledge and giving information? And it makes me think of our listener, Ken, who sent us the email where she was like on an alien spacecraft. They were walking her around these rooms that held different creatures and animals, some that she recognized, some that were so foreign and mysterious.

• 22:43Corinne Vien?

  Right.

• 22:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But belonged to other planets.

• 22:45Corinne Vien?

  Yes. It reminded me too of the book Down a Dark Hall, where it's kind of like you're getting this download, you're getting this information from the astral plane. And then in a way, it also kind of reminded me of mental illness, where people can...

• 22:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sure.

• 22:58Corinne Vien?

  You know, someone might be thinking that they're solving this like insane math equation and then they come out of their state and it's, they look and it doesn't make any sense to them anymore. I don't know, but it does kind of seem more like Kin's experience.

• 23:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 23:11Corinne Vien?

  Could be right, because if he was abducted and he was seeing, or like somehow went to some other world.

• 23:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 23:17Corinne Vien?

  It would make sense that he was chronicling things like this. Although I will say, I don't think he has any other journals that match this sort of like vibe. You know, it has a lot of bright.

• 23:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Maybe he was very organized.

• 23:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right, so he kept everything about this in this manuscript.

• 23:33Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, but if he was studying these things on earth, don't you think he would have similar paintings? Okay.

• 23:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 23:39Corinne Vien?

  So anyway, why would he do it? What is his motivation? People don't really know.

• 23:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Is there a handwriting analysis? Can you match? Granted, I know it's not the same letters, but like, is there a way for them to analyze his other documents and like stroke of the pen?

• 23:52Corinne Vien?

  Oh, maybe. I don't think that anyone has done that, or at least in the research that he did, I didn't see that anyone has done that.

• 23:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I'm gonna solve it.

• 24:00Corinne Vien?

  The letters do, people have said that they resemble like Arabic.

• 24:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 24:04Corinne Vien?

  Letters. And one of the podcasts, I did a two-part series on this conspiracy theories on Spotify. They compared it to Lord of the Rings, like Elfish.

• 24:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay, writing.

• 24:15Corinne Vien?

  Some people have thought maybe this also because he was being declared as a wizard and practicing black magic, that this could have been essentially like a attempt at a big old F you. I'm gonna make myself weirder and you fear me even more. But I don't think that that makes that much sense.

• 24:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 24:31Corinne Vien?

  Or maybe it does, because Roger Bacon was also associated with something else, a bit otherworldly. A brazen head or a necromantic head, which was this automated mechanical structure or sculpture made of brass and bronze and said to be possessed by dark evil spirits that could answer yes or no questions. So it's basically like our modern day Zoltar, where you go and you like put your.

• 24:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hell, yeah.

• 24:54Corinne Vien?

  Fifty cents in and get a fortune.

• 24:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I think he was on to something.

• 24:57Corinne Vien?

  Right? Because how do you make stone speak and answer yes or no?

• 25:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's like a form of divination.

• 25:02Corinne Vien?

  Right?

• 25:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 25:03Corinne Vien?

  Well, some people say that Roger Bacon certainly created this, but others say, no, this is just a part of his lore. This thing didn't actually exist. It's just like more reporting and rumors about this guy who like knows too much and has to be practicing the dark arts in order to do that.

• 25:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  He's a mystery, yeah.

• 25:18Corinne Vien?

  He is a mystery. So it is a thought that perhaps he did experiment with some necromancy. And maybe he did have powers and abilities and knowledge beyond our comprehension. But apparently, the reason why Roger Bacon is credited with creating the Voynich manuscript is because Wilfred, when he purchased the manuscript, he found a letter written in Latin tucked between the pages, which Roger definitely knew Latin. And it was written to a reverend declaring the book to have been purchased by the Emperor Rudolph the Second, who was the Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary and Croatia, King of Bohemia, and Arch Duke of Austria. That's way too many titles.

• 25:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So many, yeah.

• 25:58Corinne Vien?

  And he believed that it had been authored by Roger Bacon. So it's basically like this person said that they got it from this king who's their emperor. And the emperor said that he thought it was from Roger Bacon. So it's like hearsay.

• 26:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So the emperor bought it from Roger Bacon?

• 26:13Corinne Vien?

  Or the emperor just said he thought it was authored by Roger Bacon.

• 26:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Gotcha.

• 26:16Corinne Vien?

  Anyway, that's what the note said. So Wilfred Voynich was like, oh, my gosh, this was authored by Roger Bacon. I'm putting that up in the Art Institute of Chicago and declaring this done and permanent. So the manuscript then gained a ton of attention after this exhibition was publicized. And the intrigue of others fueled Wilfred Voynich to crack the code and unveil the mystery of his now most famous and most prized possession.

• 26:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  To attempt. To crack the code?

• 26:43Corinne Vien?

  Attempt.

• 26:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 26:44Corinne Vien?

  Attempt. It's still unsolved.

• 26:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 26:46Corinne Vien?

  For the next 18 years, he enlisted book dealers, historians, linguists, and philosophers to work on deciphering this text with him. So he wasn't being selfish, being like, this is my own thing, like blah, blah, blah. He was, he was like, we got to figure this out.

• 26:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Figure it out, yeah.

• 26:59Corinne Vien?

  Yes. One philosopher, William Romaine Newbold, passed away before completing his research, but he declared an equation for solving the cipher before his passing. So he basically was like, oh, I've already decoded a bunch of Passages, here's what you have to do. You define the spot that seems to be the beginning. Then you log the shorthand characters, transcribe the order, translate into ordinary letters, double everyone but the first and last number, then divide into pairs, then change every letter which is in a pair to one of the letters in Latin and so on. And so it's like, yeah, it's like a cipher for a cipher, right? It's so freaking confusing. And a lot of people were like, wait, I don't understand.

• 27:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 27:36Corinne Vien?

  But basically, he was saying that this entire manuscript was written in shorthand. Which I was like, okay, I kind of actually get that because you know, in courts, they use one of those, uh, the steno machine.

• 27:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:47Corinne Vien?

  To transcribe anything. Have you seen those machines and what they look like?

• 27:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:51Corinne Vien?

  There's like, I don't know, like 10 keys. So you can't, you don't even have the full alphabet. And you basically have to memorize this code if you're a transcriber. And that's how they keep up with all the words. So like, it'll look like this. They'll punch in a bunch of letters and stuff and it will equal in the end, words. Which I don't understand how anyone can memorize. It's like another language. So I was like, okay, well, that makes sense. Maybe this was the OG like steno machine coding whoever wrote this was doing. But apparently Newbold, despite saying he had, uh, translated a bunch of it. After he passed away, people were examining his equation, trying to do the cipher. And they declared it basically gibberish. They said, no, he made this up. He made huge leaps in logic. This was not actually a.

• 28:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No success here.

• 28:35Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, this wasn't working out. Okay. So still unsolved. Wilfred Voynich passed away. It's 1930. He has died. His wife inherits all of his estate and belongings.

• 28:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 28:46Corinne Vien?

  Ethel Voynich takes the manuscript and is like, I'm gonna keep up with people studying it. Like this is, this cannot just die with Wilfred.

• 28:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 28:56Corinne Vien?

  And so she invites a bunch of code breakers to come and crack the cipher. But still, nothing. Copies are made of the manuscript, so everyone can study it. It doesn't just have to be people who can visit where.

• 29:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 29:08Corinne Vien?

  Ethel's located. The more eyes, the better. And in 1944, cryptographer William Friedman, a US government intelligence worker and code breaker, dove into the manuscript and he had cracked the Japanese code machine. During World War Two, so like this guy could do things. And then his wife Elizabeth was a cryptanalyst who decoded thousands of messages for the US government. And has a movie made about her. So they were like this intense code breaking duo. The Codebreaker.

• 29:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I wonder if I've seen it.

• 29:36Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, there's like a few movies that have that sort of vibe because there's different historical figures like who have done those sort of things, but hers is The Codebreaker. Clearly, like, I'm sure his wife also looked at this with him. But he created a team who transcribed every line of the Voynich manuscript. Onto the IBM punch card to feed into the machine. So that the computer could work out any math problems and basically lead to it being solved if it was a cipher.

• 30:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Gotcha. This is nineteen thirties.

• 30:05Corinne Vien?

  Which is what they did in the in the wars.

• 30:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But this is also like nineteen thirty code breaking is very different than like AI and you know, stuff that could be happening today.

• 30:16Corinne Vien?

  AI still can't do it. There's a spoiler alert. So yeah, the IBM machine didn't get it, nothing. The machine did identify some repeated patterns, but no one could understand really still what it meant. No one could read the Voynich manuscript. So now it's nineteen sixty. Ethel Voynich has now passed away. And her close friend and an employee of the Voynich's bookstore, Anne Nill, she inherited the book and the rest of the Voynich collection. She actually, like, in order to keep the bookstore going and basically keep herself out of poverty, she did have to sell off the majority of the collection. So that included the Voynich manuscript, which I'm sure was like the prized item.

• 30:55Corinne Vien?

  So Peter Kraus is the guy who bought it. He tried to sell it for way too much money. No one wanted to buy it for how much he wanted to sell it for. So then he ended up taking it to the Vatican and going through their library. Looking for any sort of clues that match, which this is where I was like, this is national treasure. This is like all of these people going on these adventures. He couldn't find anything within the Vatican. Despite it supposedly being in possession of like originally from the Jesuits in the Vatican. He eventually donated it to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. And then in nineteen seventy two, Prescott Courier, a Navy captain who'd previously worked with Friedman, declared the Voynich manuscript unsolvable.

• 31:37Corinne Vien?

  Why? Because he said it's written in a language that has been long gone. It has to be some dead language that is impossible to discover at this point. But that doesn't make sense to me because if it was a language like, there wouldn't be like a code to break.

• 31:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 31:51Corinne Vien?

  Be able to understand patterns.

• 31:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is reminding me so much of when I was in Amsterdam. I went to Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, which is like the largest collection of texts around.

• 32:05Corinne Vien?

  Was it exorcisms or something?

• 32:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No, like alchemy, hermetica, mysticism, like religion and like grimars and

• 32:12Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 32:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  magical texts. It's called the, or also the Rittman Library. I remember walking through it and there are so many visuals that kind of remind me of this. And I'm like, I'm curious. Cause it's not of religious texts. It's not, it's clearly not of anything we are aware of.

• 32:30Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, it's earth and space.

• 32:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. Then I am curious if you compare to some of these manuscripts, if there's any similarities, like look at, look to astrology and look to space first.

• 32:43Corinne Vien?

  Well, because there's all these like geometric patterns and constellations and whatnot in this book. And they don't match anything that we can see in our sky.

• 32:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I don't know.

• 32:52Corinne Vien?

  It's all weird.

• 32:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It is weird.

• 32:53Corinne Vien?

  Okay. So then a few years later, National Security Agent James R. Child said that it had to be written by two different people in some sort of unknown North Germanic dialect. So people are just throwing any idea out there. So then a few years after that, cryptographer Mary Dempero raised the question of the manuscript being a hoax. She said, is this intentionally unsolvable? British professor Gordon Rugg also noted that this could be actually a hoax because not anywhere in the manuscript is there any area that would indicate that there was an error. So basically it's like, how many times do you journal in ink, no less? And you don't make any errors that you have to scratch out and rewrite a word

• 33:37Corinne Vien?

  or like change what something looks like.

• 33:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I understand that, but there are perfectionists and like there are pages clearly ripped out.

• 33:45Corinne Vien?

  That's true.

• 33:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Maybe that does indicate error.

• 33:48Corinne Vien?

  Every mistake could have been ripped out.

• 33:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 33:49Corinne Vien?

  That's a good point. That's actually what triggered my mom to send me to therapy for OCD in high school because I couldn't take notes because every time I made an error, I'd rip the page out and restart. So I would get like four sentences in and I was screwing up in class.

• 34:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 34:04Corinne Vien?

  Anywho, mental illness, admit. Okay, so Roger Bacon, he lived in the 1200s, the 13th century. Yale University, 2009, decided to have this manuscript carbon dated.

• 34:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Love that.

• 34:19Corinne Vien?

  So they sent it to the University of Arizona and it came back as being 571 to 605 years old, which means that it was likely written between year 1404 and 1438, which would be impossible for Roger Bacon to have been the scribe.

• 34:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  He lived before that.

• 34:37Corinne Vien?

  He died in 1292.

• 34:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 34:40Corinne Vien?

  So 150 years before.

• 34:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 34:42Corinne Vien?

  So while some people think that this could be a hoax, others question if it was written in an ancient language, lost to time, and as years pass, we become further and further from ever being able to decipher it because it would make sense if it was written in code or a cipher in a language that is now dead. But it still doesn't answer what are these things that are in the book?

• 35:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, and also that totally just like writes off Roger Bacon, like he didn't write it. It's impossible for him to.

• 35:08Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 35:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But then I'm like, they can carbon date when these pages were written and whatnot, but can they do more analysis of like what animal this came from? Is there any like sediments or like different qualities held within the skin? That could maybe prove whether it's from earth or not?

• 35:31Corinne Vien?

  That's a good point. Because you should be able to also know what the dye from the ink was made from.

• 35:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right, what was that made from?

• 35:37Corinne Vien?

  And then that will tell you where in the world the ink was obtained.

• 35:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There's also color and like what was used for that. I'm no scientist, but

• 35:45Corinne Vien?

  Yale, you have more

• 35:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Scientists.

• 35:47Corinne Vien?

  To offer us.

• 35:48Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I'm here to workshop some ideas. To help you find other scientists to do the actual work.

• 35:53Corinne Vien?

  Well, a lot of people, because science has not solved it yet,

• 35:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 35:56Corinne Vien?

  have believed that this could be a result of autonomic writing. So basically, when people are in this sort of meditative state, it's sort of the Down of Dark Hall version, where they essentially become possessed. And it doesn't have to be just from a ghost that lived on Earth. It could be some sort of alien species or something. But basically, like, whoever wrote this was a channel for someone else to write and draw.

• 36:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Aliens.

• 36:19Corinne Vien?

  Aliens, right? It all comes back to aliens, and it always does.

• 36:23Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Which could be us from the past, from the future.

• 36:26Corinne Vien?

  We don't know.

• 36:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We have no idea.

• 36:28Corinne Vien?

  Others suggest that this was the lost work of the Cathars or another persecuted sect hiding their knowledge in code to prevent their wisdom from being destroyed by religious authorities. Which just also kind of reminds me of ancient Egypt and like some of the pictures and stuff that do kind of seem to be depicting an energy source and like harnessing energy. But like, we don't get it.

• 36:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 36:51Corinne Vien?

  Or we do, and we're refusing to accept it.

• 36:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's like, almost like the more advanced we become, the dumber we've become.

• 36:58Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. This is so conspiracy theorist of me, but like, I do kind of believe in the sort of like resets, you know?

• 37:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  100%. And I also think about like, it goes back to the Mandela Effect. Like, how does that come into play? If we can forget or completely like, misremember? And generations of people can misremember the name of a book. Like, what else could be erased or changed and altered in our memories?

• 37:24Corinne Vien?

  Well, and you're making me think of time slips now. Because what if someone was in the 1400s, actually journeying somewhere, went through some sort of like little wormhole accidentally, and was in some other version of Earth chronicling this?

• 37:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 37:37Corinne Vien?

  And found their way back, but was like in this weird time slip.

• 37:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Left their journal behind.

• 37:41Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, I don't know. This is I don't know!

• 37:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is the most conspiracy episode. I mean, because there's so much work that has been done to try to analyze and do a code break of this. But there are no answers.

• 37:54Corinne Vien?

  For over a century.

• 37:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. So maybe the answers are not logic. Maybe the answers are Paranormal or supernatural or beyond us.

• 38:02Corinne Vien?

  Right. And it is a while too, because it's not like it's just historians or just code breakers. Like it's people from.

• 38:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  All over.

• 38:08Corinne Vien?

  All over.

• 38:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 38:09Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. Anyone who has like the slightest bit of ability to potentially answer this is looking at it and no one can figure it out.

• 38:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Damn.

• 38:19Corinne Vien?

  Some people wonder if the Voynich manuscript was never meant to be read in a traditional sense, but rather is some type of encoded map, perhaps leading to an undiscovered relic or knowledge hidden somewhere on earth.

• 38:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Maybe I need to take my buzzing hand and go put it on top of the manuscript and just absorb all the energy.

• 38:37Corinne Vien?

  And we take a journey to the center of the earth.

• 38:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yes.

• 38:40Corinne Vien?

  This is inner earth. Now we're talking about inner earth conspiracies.

• 38:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Earth is hollow.

• 38:45Corinne Vien?

  Maybe, I don't know, probably not.

• 38:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Definitely not.

• 38:49Corinne Vien?

  And then, of course, there are the extraterrestrial theories. Some claim that the unknown plants and cosmic diagrams are evidence of knowledge brought to earth from another world. And that this book is basically alien botany that we're being exposed to.

• 39:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 39:03Corinne Vien?

  And record of some forgotten contact that happened in the 1400s.

• 39:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Could it not also be like the version of James Cameron's Avatar? Like, is this not some like creative piece that someone just wrote back then?

• 39:15Corinne Vien?

  Right. Well, because also in Avatar, they made their own language.

• 39:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. Same with like Game of Thrones.

• 39:21Corinne Vien?

  Was this?

• 39:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And Lord of the Rings.

• 39:23Corinne Vien?

  Was Cameron and Tolkien, where they just like living in the 1400s, doing this sort of shit and then they were reincarnated in.

• 39:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And now down to Dark Hall. Yeah.

• 39:32Corinne Vien?

  Huh. Interesting.

• 39:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I have always struggled with where to put eyeshadow, but I just discovered Thrive Cosmetics new Focus Eyeshadow Palette. And it has changed the game because it has four essential shades and then it's each labeled with where they go, like the lid, the crease, the fine or highlight. And now I have the perfect eyeshadow routine every single day.

• 39:54Corinne Vien?

  It's so great. It's such a good cheat sheet. And then even if you don't want to do the full routine, I love their brilliant eye brightener because I just slap that right on. Like I wore one of the shades of that to a little seance we did the other day.

• 40:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Spooky. So their liquid lash extension mascara, I'm wearing it right now. It's so good. And all their products are 100% vegan, cruelty free, and made with clean, skin-loving ingredients that work with your skin, not against it. Every time I use it and I'm around my mom, she's like, ooh, will you do my makeup for me?

• 40:23Corinne Vien?

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• 41:14Corinne Vien?

  So the Voynich manuscript remains one of history's most fascinating mysteries, an unreadable book waiting for someone to unlock its secrets. Could it be an ancient code waiting for the right mind to break it? An elaborate hoax stretching centuries? Or is it something for a stranger, a message not meant for us at all?

• 41:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Or meant for us, but not yet.

• 41:36Corinne Vien?

  Not yet.

• 41:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  One day someone will come along and they'll be like, I can decode it.

• 41:40Corinne Vien?

  When you get taken to Lanulus.

• 41:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 41:43Corinne Vien?

  You'll come back and you'll be like, oh, I know exactly what these plans are. Oh, I can read this.

• 41:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And don't worry.

• 41:48Corinne Vien?

  It's personal time.

• 41:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Crazy.

• 41:51Corinne Vien?

  Well, that's the thing is like, if it was like this paranormal thing, where let's say that you suddenly were struck with the ability to read this.

• 41:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 41:58Corinne Vien?

  But you couldn't understand why you could read it or what these things were. It's another thing where I feel like people just be like, that makes no sense. Like, you're not to be believed.

• 42:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Toss her in the looney bin.

• 42:07Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. It's impossible. This text is impossible. The Voynich manuscript mystery.

• 42:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Wow, that is wild.

• 42:13Corinne Vien?

  Right?

• 42:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I also feel like there's so many things like this in the world that exist that are confounding to us. Like even, like you brought up Egyptians and like hieroglyphs and some of their renderings and drawings of things that we Don't know how to decipher.

• 42:28Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. Well, and it's also interesting because I feel like a lot of those things, there's, there's a small sample. But with the Voynich manuscript, it's 240 pages.

• 42:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's a massive book. Yeah.

• 42:38Corinne Vien?

  Right. So it's not like there's something etched off of a piece of stone and you're trying to figure out like the, the missing piece.

• 42:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So this reminds me of House of Leaves, I want to say it's called. And I showed you this book. So someone, one of our listeners recommended it. And I'll have to bring it one time and I'll show everyone on YouTube the like visual of it, but it is, I think there's like lore with it where it was like passed around and never was like fully finished. But like, there are some pages where like the book is written like spiraling around. And there are other pages where it looks like Morse code. Someone recently was like, thanks for the recommendation. I love this book. I'm like, how are you reading it? Because I need to know.

• 43:19Corinne Vien?

  I don't know if it was recommended as much as it was just talked about.

• 43:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And I have it because I was like, I want to buy this and I'm curious and it just, I'm confused. I have a movie recommendation, then I have a listener email.

• 43:30Corinne Vien?

  Okay.

• 43:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This movie is so good. It's called Presence. It just came out. It's so good. It's paranormal.

• 43:37Corinne Vien?

  What is it about?

• 43:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But it's like a family drama and a paranormal thing, kind of haunting of Hill House-y. It's this family that moves into um, a new house. And immediately like the young, the daughter like starts to feel a presence. And she had recently lost a friend or to drugs, or she died in her sleep, something like that. And that's all I'll say. It's a family drama.

• 44:00Corinne Vien?

  Presence.

• 44:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's so good.

• 44:01Corinne Vien?

  Presence or the presence?

• 44:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Just presence. P R E S E N C E. Well, there was nothing about the manuscript in our inbox. Surprising.

• 44:12Corinne Vien?

  No one solved it? None of our listeners solved it?

• 44:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But I do have an email from our listener, Millie, and it is called Religious Texts and Ghosts. Hi, girls. This email is a response to your query in Encounters 103. I'm very far behind, but I'm catching up. In this episode, Corinne pondered whether it's just a Bible or if it's any religious text that can be attacked or tampered with by spirits. And I am here to answer you from the eclectic witch point of view with my experiences with my ghost and my grimoire.

• 44:44Corinne Vien?

  Oh, so cool.

• 44:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  2019. It was a normal night in the north of England, stormy, rainy, cold. Us Northerners are very used to this, and us Northerners who are open to spirits like myself are especially used to the cold. This was around Sawen, which is Halloween, for the benefit of non-witches. And the veil between the worlds is thinest. This is a normal transition that witches and or sensitives prepare for, myself included. I was ready. My granddad had recently passed away from old age in his sleep, and this would be the first Sawen since his passing. I was ready to say goodbye, as I didn't get to in real life. And I was hoping that he'd be strong enough to cross over. I knew that my nanny had been waiting for him and had been waiting for him since 1998, when she passed away.

• 45:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So I wasn't sure if he would come through, or if he had already passed on and was with her. Anyway, I had my rite all set up. The salt circle, the white candles, the offerings to the dead. I had blueberry muffins, as these were my granddad's favorite. And I had my Book of Shadows, a book I write my own rites and spells in, and my grimoire, which is a book of spells passed to me by my mom as a Wiccan tradition.

• 45:52Corinne Vien?

  So cool. Cool.

• 45:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Both were open in front of me on the collective rite communicating with spirits Sawen. There was a short spell written in the grimoire that I was prepared to say at midnight, when the veil dropped entirely. I was ready. My candles lit, the gods I wanted present had been called, my black cat familiar slept not too far away. Midnight came, and I prepared to call my granddad forth. I said the incantation and waited for his familiar tobacco smell. The candles blew out. I didn't panic. This was not out of the ordinary for necrotic rites, so I found my matches in the moonlight shining through the skylight, ready to light them again. But before I could, the grimoire in front of me started making a shuffling noise, as if someone was turning the pages. This was not part of the rite, but I didn't panic.

• 46:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I wondered if someone wanting my clairaudient help was trying to communicate. So I lit the candle again and made to light the other four, when that spirit candle blew out. Granddad, I asked. No response. My heart started pounding at this point. This was not normal, but I was still prepared. As a witch doing a spiritual right on Salwen, you can't not be. So again, I lit the spirit candle and again, it blew out. "Okay," I said out loud, "who are you? Can I help you move on so I can get back to what I want to be doing?" To be honest, I was a little annoyed in this situation. And at once, three things happened. One, the spirit candle sparked a light again and the grimoire page was now open to that of exorcism. The light from the candle was now lighting my familiar's bright green eyes.

• 47:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  He was staring at the grimoire from outside the salt circle and started yowling. Now, my cat Jinx is not a vocal cat. The only time we hear him is when we take him to the vet. And she spelled out V E T because she can't say it out loud to the cat. But now he was hissing and yowling with anger. And three, my clear audience ears heard loud and clear a laugh that seemed to say, "You think you can get rid of me?" I've always been stubborn, so I was like, well, yeah, I'm gonna damn try because now I'm really pissed at this intrusion. And like every good witch, I had my colored candles next to me in the salt circle just in case. I struck a black candle, the one used for exorcism, and used all of my will to keep it lit. This spirit was not going to tamper with this.

• 48:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Jinx is now pacing outside the salt circle as if giving me backup. I love having such a loyal familiar. And I started to recite the spell that the entity had chosen in my grimoire. Really, they seemed their own doom and they messed with the wrong witch. I recited the words three times, as is lore in the wicca I was raised in. And I said the final, "So mote it be." Jinx stopped prowling, the black candle snuffed itself out, and the white candles relit themselves. And I felt the entity leave. "You messed with the wrong witch, bitch." Unfortunately, this little event meant that I didn't get to speak with my granddad. The veil in 2020 was too congested after the pandemic and he couldn't get through.

• 48:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So I couldn't then either, but my fingers are crossed for Sawen 2021. I've moved back in with my parents and my mom and I are planning a dumb supper to invite granddad and nanny. A dumb supper?

• 49:03Corinne Vien?

  What is that?

• 49:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  What is that? I don't know. Jinx will be there too, the third witch to our coven. Thank you for reading. Basically, yes, other religious and belief texts can channel spirits like my grimoire did in this experience. I love you both and your podcast so much. Millie from the UK.

• 49:20Corinne Vien?

  Wow. Okay. Well, honestly, thank God for her history of being a witch and her family and being the most prepared you could possibly be in this situation.

• 49:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 49:30Corinne Vien?

  Because that is really frightening. And to hear the voice, that's like, huh. Right. The challenge. Because in case you, you thought maybe you were just reading into the situation, you now have basically confirmation that no, there's something that's, that's trying to stop you.

• 49:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, I think that this also just proves that you can be a seasoned witch or spiritual practitioner, whatever you want to call it. And there are times where dark things are going to still come through and they're still going to tempt you and they're still going to try to taunt you, whatever it is. And I think that's why we have had such hesitance around Ouija boards and open in communication in certain ways, because you could be the most well-practiced witch and still, you never know what's going to come through.

• 50:15Corinne Vien?

  I know. Spooky scary.

• 50:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Spooky scary.

• 50:19Corinne Vien?

  Spooky scary skeletons.

• 50:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I want to do a Sawen ritual.

• 50:22Corinne Vien?

  I was thinking about it when you were talking about it and I was like, I don't think I ever could because you're, you have to stay up till midnight.

• 50:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 50:29Corinne Vien?

  You've done it. I've stayed up till midnight.

• 50:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You've stayed up past midnight for investigations.

• 50:34Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, but that's, that was pre-baby.

• 50:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That's true. You're gonna have to do it again sometime soon because I'm taking you somewhere scary. We have to go to Waverly Hills.

• 50:44Corinne Vien?

  I know, but not right now.

• 50:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We gotta get the hex burned.

• 50:49Corinne Vien?

  The hex has got a list.

• 50:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 50:51Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 50:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, actually, this makes me think. I was about to conclude, but what if someone took the Voynich manuscript into a witch salt circle ritual? What would happen? Is it a grimoire?

• 51:05Corinne Vien?

  Like, would all the letters start to and suddenly it unveils what it's trying to say?

• 51:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Or would it flip open to a page and like a spirit would come for it? I don't know.

• 51:13Corinne Vien?

  I'm sure they haven't tried that.

• 51:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 51:15Corinne Vien?

  And they've tried a lot of things.

• 51:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I'm here for hire.

• 51:18Corinne Vien?

  So much focus on the text and I'm like, what about the images?

• 51:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. Cause there was one image with like, almost like human-like bodies.

• 51:25Corinne Vien?

  Like coming out of what kind of looks like a

• 51:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  A portal.

• 51:29Corinne Vien?

  Venus eye trap.

• 51:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's a portal. It's gonna teach us how to teleport.

• 51:33Corinne Vien?

  Done. CIA?

• 51:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hire us.

• 51:36Corinne Vien?

  You're fired.

• 51:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We are hired.

• 51:39Corinne Vien?

  We're hired.

• 51:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You're gonna feel extra safe with us watching your back. Anyway, yes, if you have emails, anything spooky, paranormal, if you have grimoires that you've passed down through generations, can you send us pictures? Email us at [email protected].

• 51:54Corinne Vien?

  You can follow us on social media. You can watch us on YouTube. And if you want all of the episodes ad-free, one week early and additional episodes, you can check out our Patreon.

• 52:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The March Patreon bonus episode? All I'll say is cloudy with a chance of meatballs.

• 52:12Corinne Vien?

  Thank you to Jamie, who edits and produces our podcast.

• 52:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And thank you to all of you. We love you.

• 52:16Corinne Vien?

  And we will. See you on the other side.