The Voynich Ninja

Similarities between certain Voynich glyphs and alchemical notation have been noted by many researchers. But this may be a red herring - let's consider this for a minute.

First off, we need to consider dates.

A lot of this alchemical notation was invented post 16th century - it's Renaissance stuff. It wouldn't necessarily have been around in the 15th century.

Of course, that doesn't mean there isn't an overlap. The manuscript may not be 15th century - it could have been written in the early Renaissance, for if we accept the Rudolph II provenance then we have a terminus ante quem of around 1550 (or maybe later if we look up the date that the language teacher whose name I can't spell left Rudolph's staff - actually, have we ever had a proper debate about this? No, don't post here, I put a different thread on this subject).

So any alchemical notation that we find that is post-1550 must be considered derivative of the influences of this MS, and cannot be a source. We should bear this in mind when presenting such findings.

So to argue that the VM glyphs are derivatives of alchemical symbols, we must fit two givens into our arguments:

1. The symbols presented must be pre-1550
   
2. The symbols presented must have been in general circulation (for if they are unique to a certain author, then what we are essentially arguing is that that author must have had some influence on the scribe, for how else would he have seen them?)
   

But this period of time (early Renaissance) was a hotbed of intellectual fervour with plenty of independent chains of thought. It is not until after our terminus ante quem that we start to see a consolidation of intellectual rigour. In short, we have lots of people with spare time to think about things, but who haven't yet developed the sophisticated communication channels we see in the later Republic of Letters and the like. That's one of the reasons Rudolph's court was so famous, it was a pioneer in the creation of philosophy of a free intellectual interchange of ideas.

Which means what?

Well, I'm not going to go further down this path for the minute, as I want people to think about what I've just said, and consider the question: If this is an invented alphabet, what were the influences of the scribe?

IE, where did he get his shapes from?

And the reason this question is important, is because: if he got them from alchemical manuscripts, then he was probably involved in that world with all the resulting importance for the pictures. But if he got them from astronomical manuscripts, then the pictures will have a different interpretation. And if he got them from a medical background, we have a third interpretation for the pictures. Etc. And what's more, we can narrow this down a bit, because pre-1550 we have far fewer sources than post-1600.

(02-11-2016, 08:46 PM)david Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Similarities between certain Voynich glyphs and alchemical notation have been noted by many researchers. But this may be a red herring - let's consider this for a minute.

... [deleted for brevity]...

Which means what?

Well, I'm not going to go further down this path for the minute, as I want people to think about what I've just said, and consider the question: If this is an invented alphabet, what were the influences of the scribe?

IE, where did he get his shapes from?

...

We may never know. So far, I've found VMS "4o" in three different contexts (15th century and earlier). I've found horizontal lines across letters in four different contexts. I've found the basic gallows in five different contexts. Since most of the glyphs in the VMS are Latin and Greek letters and abbreviations, and the oddballs are in the minority, there may never be a way to know where they are from (assuming they are not pure inventions) or whether they were inspired by a variety of sources.

Exactly. I too have plenty of examples. Why, gosh, the 8th century "Magic alphabet of the philosopher Colphoterios" has similar glyphs.

Personally, I think many of the shapes are simply easy forms to make with a quill and that's the end of it.

Bennett says about the characters (p.193):

Quote:However, it seems more plausible that most of the "strange" ones were merely invented by the author of the Voynich Manuscript through variations on common Greek and Latin characters.

I agree, as David and JKP say, that the uncommon glyphs in the VM will emerge with relative ease when one invents a glyph set, or even in certain normal handwriting. For example in this document you can see that some of the K-shapes get rather loopy:



source You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(It contains a paper about "Der Asteriskos als kritisches Zeichen in magischen Texten", might be interesting for those who are fluent...)

David,
You make interesting points.

I'd love to see a chart showing the when and where some of the more unusual glyphs are known; e.g. We have 'gallows-like' glyphs in the papal secretary hand in 12thC Piacenza, and again in medieval Cairo in connection with an alchemical image (illustrated in Okasha El-Daly's study of medieval Egyptology).  We owe that 'find' to Nick Pelling, I believe.



"Ornate P' forms occur in scripts from the eastern side of the Black Sea, and from older Arabia and elsewhere - all seem to derive from an  Aramaic script.

You are right, I think, in saying that the really "high style' of European alchemy comes far too late to be relevant, and in the early 2000s, Adam McLean - an expert on the history of alchemy by any measure - looked carefully through the Vms and said plainly that it had no alchemical imagery of that sort in it.  I assume he would have noticed any alchemical symbols too.  Of course since then he may have modified his views.

Not that we don't find less elaborate forms of alchemical texts. I've had reason to mention the simpler sort of "alchemy' advocated by Roger Bacon, and written about in the thirteenth century by Paul of Taranto (pseudo-Geber) - extracts from Paul's  "Book of Life' are in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
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What I'd love to know is whether physicians or pharmacists - before 1405 - had any standard abbreviations that they used in writing prescriptions or instructions.

The thing that has always intrigued me about the Voynich script is that it contains no "X" form.
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[url=http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2015/06/alchemy-and-the-quest-for-long-life-wellcome-ms-446/]

sorry about the weird link -

(03-11-2016, 12:13 AM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.... [deleted for brevity]...

You are right, I think, in saying that the really "high style' of European alchemy comes far too late to be relevant, and in the early 2000s, Adam McLean - an expert on the history of alchemy by any measure - looked carefully through the Vms and said plainly that it had no alchemical imagery of that sort in it.  I assume he would have noticed any alchemical symbols too.  Of course since then he may have modified his views.

...

I would agree that there is no overt alchemical imagery in the VMS, but it does have a significant number of male-female, flowing water, rainbow, bird, crown, and distillation-beaker shapes, all of which are part-and-parcel of alchemical documents. I don't know whether they are obtuse alchemical symbols or something else (e.g., biological or astrological or ??), but I think there is a possibility some of them might be alchemical references expressed in a novel way.