I also suspect it's indecipherable. I think it's someone's sample piece: meant to showcase the creator's talent for producing such books without giving away real or false alchemical or botanical knowledge. Lorem Ipsum wasn't popular yet, and the author was kind of quirky, so we get... this. It has statistical properties consistent with natural language because humans suck at randomness, not because there's anything there.
Linguistic analysis performed on the Voynich Manuscript seems to be consistent with it having some meaning. See e.g. <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0066344" rel="nofollow">https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...</a>
The example of the schizophrenic writer devolves into nonsense. It looks as though the writer took to repeating the cursive letter "M" over and over. The Voynich Manuscript is clearly different. That it follows the statistical patterns of language suggests to me that it is not the product of madness.<p>The painter examples don't seem compelling to me either. The Voynich Manuscript is illustrated in a style that is reminiscent (to me) of old texts. There are lots of naked women, but not so many that I'd describe it as pathological.<p>I suspect it is a clever cipher, a constructed language, or a forgotten language.
It's an interesting idea. There is a museum in Switzerland collecting outsider art, much of it produced by people diagnosed with mental illnesses, and some of the artists exhibited there did create rather elaborate works, e.g. Adolf Wölfli: <a href="https://www.artbrut.ch/en_GB/authors/the-collection-de-l-art-brut/woelfli-adolf" rel="nofollow">https://www.artbrut.ch/en_GB/authors/the-collection-de-l-art...</a>
I think I found it. It was made by spa owner to lure in rich clients. Spa owner would say they have ancient secret book, written by alchemist monk, of how to treat any disease. They may even show the book to them, saying only their workers know how to read it.
I favour the hoax hypothesis... except that the letters and syllable distribution bear a strong similarity to natural languages. A XVth century forger could not possibly have known about this.<p>Recently a Turkish scholar has found indications that it is old Turkish.<p><a href="https://www.openculture.com/2019/02/has-the-voynich-manuscript-finally-been-decoded.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.openculture.com/2019/02/has-the-voynich-manuscri...</a>
If it is indecipherable, I've always subscribed to the theory that it was a scam.<p>Someone crafted the book to make it seem mystical, which they could then use to influence someone somehow.<p>Probably not for money. It seems like it was created by a wealthy educated individual who didn't need money. More likely for political reasons; to manipulate and gain power.
Also interesting, yet much less enigmatic, is the Codex Seraphinianus [0][1], an illustrated manuscript with a known author (Luigi Serafini) and a known purpose (art). Maybe the Voynich Manuscript was something similar.<p>I'm also partial to xkcd's explaination: <a href="https://xkcd.com/593/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/593/</a><p>0: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus</a><p>1: <a href="https://blog.kolesnik.info/pictures/files/Codex_Seraphinianus.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://blog.kolesnik.info/pictures/files/Codex_Seraphinianu...</a>