#voynich manuscript
we probably lost a lot of medical knowledge during the witch hunts because of how many mid wives were persecuted, and how men took over the field of medicine. I bet a few hundred years ago a mid wife might actually have some kind of knowledge about conditions that affect women exclusively which we still haven’t bothered to research in our modern society.
ok now I’m fucking mad
how many got killed cuz of witch hunts seems like youd have to kill a lot
“It is estimated that at least 1, 000 were executed in England, and the Scottish, Welsh, and Irish were even fiercer in their purges. It is hard to arrive at a figure for the whole of the Continent and the British Isles, but the most responsible estimate would seem to be 9 million. It may well, some authorities contend, have been more. Nine million seems almost moderate when one realizes that The Blessed Reichhelm of Schongan at the end of the 13th century computed the number of the Devil-driven to be 1,758,064,176. A conservative, Jean Weir, physician to the Duke of Cleves, estimated the number to be only 7,409,127. The ratio of women to men executed has been variously estimated at 20 to 1 and 100 to 1. Witchcraft was a woman’s crime.
Men were, not surprisingly, most often the bewitched. Subject to women’s evil designs, they were terrified victims. Those men who were convicted of witchcraft were often family of convicted women witches, or were in positions of civil power, or had political ambitions which conflicted with those of the Church, a monarch, or a local dignitary. Men were protected from becoming witches not only by virtue of superior intellect and faith, but because Jesus Christ, phallic divinity, died “to preserve the male sex from so great a crime: since He was willing to be born and to die for us, therefore He has granted to men this privilege. ” Christ died literally for men and left women to fend with the Devil themselves.” (pg 129-130) Woman Hating, Andrea Dworkin
“The witches used drugs like belladonna and aconite, organic amphetamines, and hallucinogenics. They also pioneered the development of analgesics. They performed abortions, provided all medical help for births, were consulted in cases of impotence which they treated with herbs and hypnotism, and were the first practitioners of euthanasia. Since the Church enforced the curse of Eve by refusing to permit any alleviation of the pain of childbirth, it was left to the witches to lessen pain and mortality as best they could. It was especially as midwives that these learned women offended the Church, for, as Sprenger and Kramer wrote, “No one does more harm to the Catholic Faith than mid wives. ” The Catholic objection to abortion centered specifically on the biblical curse which made childbearing a painful punishment—it did not have to do with the “right to life” of the unborn fetus. It was also said that midwives were able to remove labor pains from the woman and transfer those pains to her husband—clearly in violation of divine injunction and intention both.” (pg 139-140) Woman Hating, Andrea Dworkin
“Themagic of the witches was an imposing catalogue of medical skills concerning reproductive and psychological processes, a sophisticated knowledge of telepathy, auto- and hetero-suggestion, hypnotism, and mood-controlling drugs. Women knew the medicinal nature of herbs and developed formulae for using them. The women who were faithful to the pagan cults developed the science of organic medicine, using vegetation, before there was any notion of the profession of medicine. Paracelsus, the most famous physician of the Middle Ages, claimed that everything he knew he had learned from “the good women.” (pg 140) Woman Hating, Andrea Dworkin
****************get the PDF here *********************
Bolded sections are by me. Honestly I don’t think I need to explain much. We lost some of the most important women in the world, who were the pioneers of medicine for a “curse of eve”. Basically saying if you relieve another woman’s pain we’re going to call you a witch and kill you “in the name of god” because having a child is punishment upon women and relieving their pain is illegal because this book written by men told me so.
Also check out the part where men can’t be witches because jesus and his “phallic divinity” “preserve the male sex”.
Ever heard of the Voynich manuscript? Big, huge, herbal / medical / astronomical lexicon from the 1400s, depicting lots of naked women clearly performing rituals that serve medical functions, lots of them pretty clearly related to childbirth.
You know, this book that is written in a language that nobody has been able to read for 600 years, but nobody, and I mean NO MAN has ever even thought about the simple reality of WOMEN having written it.
I found one blog post by a woman about how this text is very clearly written by women, and the knowledge within it has been completely annihilated or co-opted by men who now don’t even consider the possibility that a woman, or multiple women, could have written something like this.
Seriously, look it up. Naked women. Fat, short, in baths, all of it. And the entireacademic world is absolutely convinced this must have been written by a man. In the wikipedia article, only male linguists and historians are mentioned, because only they matter. And every single one of their theories is laughingly phallocentric and simply wrong.
They go so far as say that aliens wrote it before they consider that women actually had herbal and medicinal knowledge and passed that knowledge on, in secret, written in languages only they knew, so that no priest or holy man or inquisitor could read it and kill them.
Open your eyes. This has been going on for hundreds of years. Women had to hide in the shadows, had to invent languages, just to avoid being killed by men for trying to help themselves and other women. This is reality.
It wouldn’t be the first time womenhave had to invent their own languagebecause of the rights men withheld from us.
THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT: HISTORY’S MOST MYSTERIOUS TEXT
The year is 1912. The successful dealer in old books Wilfrid M. Voynich acquires a number of priceless mediaeval manuscripts from an undisclosed location in Europe. Among these is a parchment codex of 234 pages, written in an unknown script.
The Voynich MS is a “codex” of relatively small size, measuring 23.5 x 16.2 cm. It originally consisted of at least 116 parchment folios, of which 104 still remain. Unusually, some folios are two or three times the normal size and are folded to fit in the book. There is one large double foldout folio of six times the normal size. The MS is written in an elegant, but otherwise unknown script and almost all pages of the MS contain illustrations. The book is about 5 cm thick and has a blank limp vellum cover that does not contain any indication of age, authorship or origin.
Both the illustrations and the script of the manuscript are unique. While the script cannot be read, the illustrations are the only clue about the nature of the book. According to these illustrations, the manuscript appears to be a scientific book, mostly an illustrated herbal with some additional sections.
The manuscript is profusely illustrated, with drawings, among others, of plants and astronomical patterns. It appears to be a scientific work from the middle ages, but due to its unknown script, the contents are a complete mystery.
Many solutions to the Voynich MS have been suggested in the past, and they all come with a proposed time and place of origin. Since none of these solutions has been generally accepted, the associated hypotheses of the origin cannot be confirmed. Additionally, analyses of the illustrations, the script and the text statistics have led to suggestions for the origin of the Voynich MS. In the following, they are summarised together.
- Roger Bacon, as suggested by Voynich and Newbold. No longer believed.
- A Cathar cult of Isis followers, as part of a proposed solution by Levitov. His thesis is unbelievable both historically and linguistically.
- A copy of letters between Ukrainian rebels in a proto-slavic language, as suggested by John Stojko. This proposal has not convinced anyone.
- Anthony Askham, the lesser known brother of Roger, as suggested by L.C. Strong. The name of Askham derives from an incredible proposed decryption of the MS and cannot therefore be believed.
- A hoax by John Dee and/or Edward Kelly as suggested by many and most strongly supported by Brumbaugh and currently Rugg. This is essentially out of the question as it concerns Dee. As for Kelly, there is also nothing to support This.
- An early form of a synthetic language, as suggested by Friedman and Tiltman. This cannot be disproved, but the time frame is a problem.
- An early attempt to convert a syllabic, tonal language (such as Chinese) to an alphabetic script. This theory is based on certain peculiar text statistics and is by no means disproved, but there is difficulty with the fact that the entire MS has a Western European look. A specific connection (e.g. encoding) with any specific oriental language has also not yet been proposed.
- A modern fake by Wilfrid Voynich. Disproved by the recent discovery of earlier references to the Voynich MS.
- The Dürer expert E.Panofsky studied the MS in the 1930’s and concluded that the MS dates from about 1470 or at the latest the early years of the 16th Century. He places the origin of the MS in Germany.
- In the 1990’s, the expert in Medieval herbals S.Toresella suggests around 1460 as the time of origin of the MS, and is convinced that it originates from Italy, comparing the script to the Italian humanist script.
While the reader is of course allowed to make up his own mind about the various proposals listed above, the general feeling is that a date of origin between 1450 and the early years of the 16th Century, and a place of origin in Italy or Central Europe are most likely to be correct. There is a long list of visitors to Rudolf’s court who could have potentially brought the MS to Prague. Finding the right one could help in further narrowing down the origin of the Voynich MS.
Full scan of the MS here
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