M.J. Rose

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From Nerdist,
Calling All Witches: Museum Needs Ancient Spells Translated
by Rosie Knight

“Do you love libraries? Have a penchant for casting spells? Particularly well versed in 17th century archaic Latin and English? Well the Chicago Newberry Library might have the perfect job for you!

Crowdsourcing for spells is probably one of the coolest techno-magic surprises that 2017 has bestowed upon us, and Christopher Fletcher, the project lead, says you don’t even have to be an expert to get involved. “[The initiative] is a great way to allow the general public to engage with these materials in a way that they probably wouldn’t have otherwise,” Fletcher told Smithsonian.com.

The three magical manuscripts are called The Book of Magical Charms, The Commonplace Book, and Cases of Conscience Concerning Witchcraft. You can explore them at the research library’s online  “Transcribing Faith” portal.

Thought to be composed by two anonymous witches in England in the 1600s, The Book of Magical Charms has spells for every occasion, whether it’s to cheat your friends out of some quick cash at a dice game, fix your painful period cramps or speak to your local spirit bud, this book has it all…”

For the rest, click here.

“What could be so scandalous, so dangerous, or so important to be written in such an uncrackable cipher?”

Perhaps NOTHING? Perhaps it is just a bunch of nonsensical drivel? Or, perhaps, according to this new take on the manuscript, it is something relatively mundane (and even rather disappointing) written in a sort of homemade shorthand?

We like to think that the mystery remains unsolved and that this little book is still alive with the possibility of being remarkable. Many critics of this new research agree with us…

Voynich Manuscript Public Domain

From The Atlantic,

Has a Mysterious Medieval Code Really Been Solved?
Experts say no.

by Sarah Zhang

“The Voynich manuscript is not an especially glamorous physical object. It is slightly larger than a modern paperback, bound in “limp vellum” as is the technical term. But its pages are full of astrological charts, strange plants, naked ladies bathing in green liquid, and, most famously, an indecipherable script that has eluded cryptographers to this day.

What could be so scandalous, so dangerous, or so important to be written in such an uncrackable cipher?

This week, the venerable Times Literary Supplement published as its cover story a “solution” for the Voynich manuscript. The article by Nicholas Gibbs suggests the manuscript is a medieval women’s-health manual copied from several older sources. And the cipher is no cipher at all, but simply abbreviations that, once decoded, turn out to be medicinal recipes.

The solution should be seismic news in the Voynich world…”

For the rest, click here.

Let us hope that all such cruel injustices are revealed in the light of the truth…

Emmett Till was 14 when he was killed in 1955. Credit Associated Press

From the NYT,

Woman Linked to 1955 Emmett Till Murder Tells Historian Her Claims Were False
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

“For six decades, she has been the silent woman linked to one of the most notorious crimes in the nation’s history, the lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy, keeping her thoughts and memories to herself as millions of strangers idealized or vilified her.

But all these years later, a historian says that the woman has broken her silence, and acknowledged that the most incendiary parts of the story she and others told about Emmett — claims that seem tame today but were more than enough to get a black person killed in Jim Crow-era Mississippi — were false.

The woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, spoke to Timothy B. Tyson, a Duke University professor — possibly the only interview she has given to a historian or journalist since shortly after the episode — who has written a book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” to be published next week.

In it, he wrote that she said of her long-ago allegations that Emmett grabbed her and was menacing and sexually crude toward her, “that part is not true.”…”

For the rest, click here.