(Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University)
Written in "alien" characters, illustrated with sketches, and dating back hundreds of years, the Voynich Manuscript has puzzled cryptographers, historians and bibliophiles for centuries.
And now the mystery has finally come to an end, according to a businessman from Finland named Viekko Latvala, a self described "prophet of god," who says he has decoded the book and unlocked the secrets of the world's most mysterious manuscript.
Latvala's business associate, Ari Ketola told FoxNews.com the meaning of the crazy characters he described as "sonic waves and vocal syllables."
"The book is a life work and scientific publication of medicine that would be still useful today," Ketola said. "The writer was a scientist of plants, pharmacy, astrology and astronomy. It contains ... prophesy for some decades and hundreds of years ahead from the time it was created."
In other words, the Voynich Manuscript -- which is currently held by Yale University's Beincke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in New Haven, Conn. -- is an herbological tome, something the writer used to keep track of plants and their uses for either scientific or medical purposes. And a prophecy.
Latvala provided the following translation of plant 16152, which he said can be found today in Ethiopia:
"The name of the flower is Heart of Fire.
It makes the skin beautiful when made as an ointment.
The oil is pressed from the buds.
This ointment is used for the wrinkles.
Is suitable for the kidneys and the head,
as the flower prevents inflammations, is antibiotic.
Plant is 10 centimeters by its height.
It grows on hot and dry slants.
The plant is bright green by its color."
So how could Latvala decode a manuscript that still dumbfounds the world's top cryptographers? It's simple. You just have to have a direct line to God.
"Mr. Latvala said that no one 'normal human' can decode it, because there is no code or method to read this text, it's a channel language of prophecy," Ketola told FoxNews.com. "This type of persons are most rare to exist, yet they have always been on face of the Earth through millenniums up to today ... and Mr Veikko Latvala has had this gift of mercy last 20 years."
Several top cryptographers contacted by FoxNews.com declined to comment on Latvala's claim, willing neither to validate his interpretation nor offer a counter explanation for the strange book. Ketola would not explained his methodology, but offered some insight into the weird characters.
"The language of this book is quite twisted," Ketola said. "The sound syllables are a mixture of Spanish and Italian, also mixed with the language this man used to speak himself. His own language was a rare Babylonian dialect that was spoken in a small area in Asia."
The author of the Voynich Manuscript did not know how to write in any extant language, Ketola said, so he had to create his own alphabet and vocabulary. "This man could not write any language so he had to invent a writing he can read / pronounce himself," he said.
Ketola suggested that the language may have also been some sort of shorthand writing the author used to jot down notes for himself.
Another mysterious, "alien" book that no one can read was unraveled last month by Kevin Knight, a computer scientist with the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering.
The Copiale Cipher -- a mysterious cryptogram bound in gold and green brocade paper -- is a 250-year-old coded document. By decrypting it, Knight and his colleagues uncovered the inner workings of an 18th-century secret society.
Knight declined to comment on Ketola's discovery.