The time-wave, La Chorrera, the stoned-ape-theory and DMT flash descriptions are the normal fare if you’ve heard more than a few McKenna talks. I don’t really mind his propensity to repeat himself, as it’s a quality I fear I share. Plus, as his brother Dennis says, “Terence could read the phone book and you’d hang on every word.” However, in the interest not doing the same thing over and over in this incarnation I’ve begun to find lectures where he explores topics outside his norm. Terence has covered Marshall McLuhan, Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and the one above which is about the Voynich Manuscript. Each has spurred me to add more books to my ever-growing reading list.

The Voynich manuscript is a book full of weird pictures of fantastical plants, pipes and naked pregnant ladies. Why? No one knows because no one can read the gosh-darned thing. The script itself is one-of-a-kind and countless efforts to decipher it have ended in scholarly tears. Check out these pictures. If you don’t wish you could get into the author’s head, you may have unknowingly had the curiosity receptors removed from your brain.

Terence spends a good chunk of this lecture pontificating on the possible histories of the manuscript. We get into some of his typical talk on alchemists and bits about the Rosicrucian conspiracy. The theory that resonates with me is that the person who wrote the manuscript intended it to never be understood. The alchemical mind places value on mystery and the irrational. Writing a book that mystifies the mind embodies these values. It’s not uncommon for artists to go into an unconscious mode when creating art, and perhaps this is the case for author the Voynich Manuscript. The script could be a kind of written glossolalia.

What draws Terence to the manuscript is the idea of an unreadable book. His comparison of the manuscript to H.P. Lovecraft’s Necronomicon tickles me especially (I’ve often thought that Lovecraft’s brand of ‘cosmic horror’ was akin to a bad trip, but that’s for another day). The mere existence of a truly occult book that baffles every scholar, undoing those who claim to have unraveled it’s mysteries excites the Faustian in me.