The Voynich Ninja

Quote:Morten St George:I never said Florida. The trees here don't look high enough and it's also doubtful that the medieval reach of the spotted jaguar came this far east. I was thinking closer to Louisiana on the north side of the Gulf of Mexico.

Then again, we don't know what some of these places looked like seven hundred years ago. I saw a medieval weather map indicating that the temperature around the Gulf was hotter back then than it is today. The fact that the gals are running around naked implies a warmer climate than what it normally found in Europe.

Women running around naked, especially if they are associated with water, is a very pagan theme. If these are nymphs, rather than women, then it doesn't have to be hot because nymphs are impervious to weather. If some of these images are depictions of older myths, then naked women would be entirely appropriate. Greek pottery and Roman mosaics are full of them and those mosaics stretch all over Europe into England.

Sorry, shouldn't have said Florida. I meant that general area and didn't know what to call it. Usually I call it the Gulf area.

There are many areas of Europe that are hot. And there are plenty of swamps in the Old World. Plus it doesn't have to be northern or central Europe, it could be the Middle East, Turkey, Spain, etc.

Quote:Morten St George: It seems Diebold Lauber postdates the VMS, so what point are you trying to make?

Lauber inherited the studio from a father or uncle or someone like that. It was a family business. Unfortunately, there's not much history before Diepoldt got involved. Sometimes similarity in drawing style is passed down through families, both genetically and by example. Diepoldt was good at advertising and his name survived historically partly because he gave writing lessons in addition to running the scriptorium. A number of the manuscripts from his studio have pictures of green water with critters in them and at least one also includes a mermaid (not a fish with a woman in its mouth, unfortunately... the VMS version is very uncommon).

When I first started researching him (in 2008) because of the similarity of a few of the drawings and of the Gothic handwriting, there was almost zero information about him on the Web, but there's quite a bit more now, and many more of his studio's manuscripts are now available online.


By the way, I'm not opposed to New World arguments. I'm opposed to New World arguments that apply equally well to the Old World. If it doesn't SPECIFICALLY distinguish New from Old, then it's not a strong enough argument.

(17-02-2018, 08:18 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There's actually very few figures who are "clearly bathing". I'd describe most of them as standing in shallow water. Almost none of the women do things that would be expected of bathers, like scrubbing part of the body, washing hair, filling vessels for rincing, using a towel....

There is, however, a similarity of composition with the Balneis tradition, as has been observed early on. Marco posted good examples here You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and here You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

The Balneis does not offer a clear-cut solution for the VM, but it does enough to obliterate your theory. I suggest you check it out.

The Free Dictionary defines "bathe" (from where we get "bathing") as 1. To take a bath 2.To go into the water for swimming or other recreation 3. To become immersed in or as if in liquid 4. To sunbathe.

That should cover all depictions of gals in green water in the VMS.

Everywhere we see that the gals liked to compare and contrast their new life in the New World with their old life in the Old World. For example, look at the first ABIRIL page where we see the gals fully clothed in the Old World and the second ABIRIL page where they are naked reflecting their new life in the swamps.

The De Balneis Puteolanis dates back to 1197 (47 years prior to the Fall of Montségur) and the arched baths themselves probably date back to Roman times AND they probably existed in different places, not just in southern Italy. In fact, I think I heard that one of the Roman baths is still in use today.

So, in effect, all you are saying is that one of the gals participated in one of the Old World baths (or saw a depiction of one) and in the VMS decided to depict it for comparison with their new baths: the pools of swamp water.

The main reason I theorize that the VMS (copied in the 15th century) was originally authored in the 13th century rather than in the 14th century is that the gals' memory of the Old World appears to be fresh. In other words, it seems more likely that the VMS was written by the original migrants to the New World rather than by their descendants.

Sorry, but your baths do not obliterate my theory. If anything, they help to support one aspect of it.

PS. The arches supported the heavy weight of the water and were needed because the Romans heated their bath water from underneath.

(17-02-2018, 08:59 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:Morten St George:I never said Florida. The trees here don't look high enough and it's also doubtful that the medieval reach of the spotted jaguar came this far east. I was thinking closer to Louisiana on the north side of the Gulf of Mexico.

Then again, we don't know what some of these places looked like seven hundred years ago. I saw a medieval weather map indicating that the temperature around the Gulf was hotter back then than it is today. The fact that the gals are running around naked implies a warmer climate than what it normally found in Europe.

Women running around naked, especially if they are associated with water, is a very pagan theme. If these are nymphs, rather than women, then it doesn't have to be hot because nymphs are impervious to weather. If some of these images are depictions of older myths, then naked women would be entirely appropriate. Greek pottery and Roman mosaics are full of them and those mosaics stretch all over Europe into England.

Sorry, shouldn't have said Florida. I meant that general area and didn't know what to call it. Usually I call it the Gulf area.

There are many areas of Europe that are hot. And there are plenty of swamps in the Old World. Plus it doesn't have to be northern or central Europe, it could be the Middle East, Turkey, Spain, etc.

Quote:Morten St George: It seems Diebold Lauber postdates the VMS, so what point are you trying to make?

Lauber inherited the studio from a father or uncle or someone like that. It was a family business. Unfortunately, there's not much history before Diepoldt got involved. Sometimes similarity in drawing style is passed down through families, both genetically and by example. Diepoldt was good at advertising and his name survived historically partly because he gave writing lessons in addition to running the scriptorium. A number of the manuscripts from his studio have pictures of green water with critters in them and at least one also includes a mermaid (not a fish with a woman in its mouth, unfortunately... the VMS version is very uncommon).

When I first started researching him (in 2008) because of the similarity of a few of the drawings and of the Gothic handwriting, there was almost zero information about him on the Web, but there's quite a bit more now, and many more of his studio's manuscripts are now available online.


By the way, I'm not opposed to New World arguments. I'm opposed to New World arguments that apply equally well to the Old World. If it doesn't SPECIFICALLY distinguish New from Old, then it's not a strong enough argument.

There's clearly a lot of fantasy depicted in the swamp scenes (including imaging themselves in a Roman bath) but there's a lot of reality as well, such as the gal sleeping under the stars while wrapped in a blanket. Do you see anything like that in the ancient nymph drawings?

Moreover, I think the plant depictions and the herbal medicine pages go hand in hand with the swamp scenes but not so much with ancient nymphs.

The cathar.info website describes one part of their consolation ceremony as follows:

"Then followed the act of consoling. The Perfect took the Gospel and placed it on the postulant's head. Other Perfects present placed their right hands on the postulant's head."



Evidently, there were no Gospels in the swamps but we do seem to see a right hand on the postulant's head.

Consoling was a death-bed ceremony. The gals in the swamps were probably dead or nearly all dead by the late 13th or early 14th century. Even if there were a male among them, they did not believe in procreation. Such a male, if he existed, would have had to find a mate elsewhere in the Americas, or return to the Old World, in order for the gals' botanical research to have survived into the 15th century.

From a practical point of view, I'll mention recently reading that, to help gain converts in Europe, the Cathar perfectae establishing workshops for teaching paper-making among other skills. I don't know precisely what is meant by paper-making but I suspect that they could have had the skills needed to make something to write on in the swamps.

Also, recently, I added a new paragraph to my website:

"According to the ex-Cathar Rainier Sacconi, the Cathars had a sacred text that was written in heaven and brought down to Earth by the Christ. In the same region and in the same epoch, the Cabalists had a text that was written in heaven by the archangel Metatron and brought down to Earth by Elijah the prophet. There is reason to believe that they are both referring to the same text, and that the Voynich manuscript recipes are a transcription of that text."

To protect such a text, there could be enough motive for certain Old Worlders in the Old World to create the plants, the astrology, the swamps, and the herbs just to con you into thinking that the recipes were cooking instructions. Thus, I am not ruling out creation in the Old World but we would still be left with some explaining to do regarding the pointers to the New World.

Recently, I read something else of interest:

"Arab merchants and doctors had long found their way to Occitania across the Pyrenees from those parts of Spain then under Muslim control, or by sea from the East. They had been welcomed by the Cathars..."

So, maybe the Cathari went to Egypt instead of America. I see that our three-tower chateau looks a lot like Nile River chateaus. Were there marshes in the Nile River valley? I imagine there could have been.

I dunno, Morten. I don't see much consoling going on there. The look on her face makes it look like her hair is being pulled.

(20-02-2018, 06:30 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I dunno, Morten. I don't see much consoling going on there. The look on her face makes it look like her hair is being pulled.

Here's a similar drawing to consider:



OBSERVATIONS

1. The perfecta on the left could be the author of the VMS as she is wearing unusual braids or headband like the gal on page 116v.

2. This is not the ceremony of consolamentum as the perfecta's right hand is placed behind her back.

3. The perfecta's left arm is misplaced, too far down from the shoulder.

4. The perfecta is not poking at the credente's eye but rather pointing to her brain. Knowledge is being passed from the perfecta to the credente.

What is being taught to the credente?

5. In her right hand, the credente is holding a curved blade with handles on each end. This was the standard tool of medieval parchment makers. They used this implement to scrape away animal fur from the furry side of the hide. Medieval accounts of the Cathars indicate that they were skilled in parchment making and had set up workshops for teaching it.

6. The credente is dreaming about making a belt and short skirt from scraped animal hide.

7. The credente is standing in blue, not green, water. An important step in making parchment was the frequent washing of the hide, requiring clean rain water, not the dirty green water of the swamps.



This gal is holding a bloodied animal hide in her left hand. Note that she is standing in a barrel of blue, not green, water. Presumably, she will wash the hide in that water.

Conclusion: These gals knew how to make parchment.

COW PROTEIN

In an email to me, the bioarchaeology gal told me that the source of the VMS parchment was determined to be bovidae, so my cervidae theory was not too likely.

But this does not necessarily mean that the VMS was produced in the Old World because bovidae can also be found in the New World, and during medieval times, probably not too far from the swamps.

Wikipedia writes: "American bison are known for living in the Great Plains, but formerly had a much larger range including much of the eastern United States and parts of Mexico."

It seems cows and bison are so close that they can easily interbreed: "While all bison species are classified in their own genus, they are sometimes bred with domestic cattle (genus Bos) and produce fertile offspring called beefalo or zubron."

So that could be the answer: the fading deerskin VMS was copied onto buffalo parchment between 1404 and 1438.

PEDRO SARMIENTO DE GAMBOA

My esoteric sources make a pretty strong case that this guy brought the VMS from Peru to London in 1584. This is why I have been arguing so hard for a South American origin for the VMS. But there is another New World possibility.

As I recall the life story of Sarmiento (keep in mind that memory these days is often faulty and possibly exaggerated as well), he grew up in Spain but as a young man he got into trouble with the Inquisition, so he fled to Mexico to save his life. In Mexico, he once again got into trouble with the Inquisition, and to save his life, he fled to Peru. In Peru, again the Inquisition haunted him, and to save his life, he joined an expedition to explore the South Seas. That expedition made a stopover in Mexico on the way back to Peru. Back in Peru, more of the usual: locked up and tortured by the Inquisition, but now he had had enough with the Inquisition, so he fled to England, a place where there was no Inquisition, and taking his prize possession, the VMS, with him. And there in London he found help to decode the VMS.

The point is that Sarmiento could have acquired the VMS in either of his two trips to Mexico and then brought it to Peru. The VMS did not have to originate in South America.

In the very least, I have a coherent theory about the origins and early history of the VMS, which is a lot more than I can say for you guys.

Quote:Morten St George: "In the very least, I have a coherent theory about the origins and early history of the VMS, which is a lot more than I can say for you guys. "

Novels are coherent.

(22-02-2018, 07:27 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:Morten St George: "In the very least, I have a coherent theory about the origins and early history of the VMS, which is a lot more than I can say for you guys. "

Novels are coherent.

If you do not like my theory, you should propose an alternative theory, so that we can judge how well each of them fits the available evidence.

I believe the bison roamed around in large herds. It might not have been too difficult to find enough baby or fetal bison to make the VMS.

I read something interesting in Wikipedia: "The emergence of metallurgy in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica occurred relatively late in the region's history, with distinctive works of metal apparent in West Mexico by roughly AD 800, and perhaps as early as AD 600. Metallurgical techniques likely diffused northward from regions in Central or South America via maritime trade routes."

Consequently, it may be possible to bring the Inca Prophecy back into my theory. Having compiled the VMS in Mexico around 1420, a Cathar missionary, traveling down the Pacific coast by raft and then by foot, could have reached Cuzco prior to 1438, which was the end of the reign of Viracocha Inca, i.e. the book-carrying white man.

The great pre-Columbian god of the Incas was called Inti, the Sun god. This is a depiction of Inti:



And this is the VMS depiction of Inti:



Do you notice any resemblance? How else do you wish to explain the appearance of Western astrology in pre-Columbian Peru?

Quote:Morten St George: If you do not like my theory, you should propose an alternative theory, so that we can judge how well each of them fits the available evidence.

I'm not really interested in theories, and even though I've been studying this beast for over 10 years now, I still don't feel I know enough about it to propose theories. I'm still exploring it.

The problem with theorizing too soon is that it tends to channel our perceptions too narrowly.


The only opinions I have that could be considered theories (or hypotheses) so far are:

• that some of the marginalia MIGHT be from someone who lived or grew up in the borderlands of Alsace/Lombardy/Provençal (a very multicultural region)
  
• that whoever drew the zodiac symbols either had traveled in northeast France or had seen some manuscripts from that general area (and probably consulted more than one source) and had probably had access to a library (which may have included books from the previous centuries), and who possibly traveled
  
• that most of the VMS glyphs are based on medieval Latin letters/numbers/abbreviations/ligatures (this is closer to fact than theory)
  
• that the radio-carbon dating is pretty consistent with other aspects of the manuscript
  
• that a few of the plants are naturalistic and do not appear to include mnemonic devices, while others tend to be stylized or fanciful and some do appear to include mnemonic devices
  
• that the illustrator had trouble visualizing in 3d
  
• that there is more than one set of handwriting
  
• that there is more than one person who painted the drawings
  

Other than that, I'm not sure about anything (and even the above is subject to revision if I find evidence to the contrary), so it would be very premature to narrow my searches based on theories.


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As for not liking your theory, it's not the theory I'm concerned about, it's your arguments. As I've already pointed out, they don't specifically support your theory—the same arguments work just as well for other theories.

(22-02-2018, 07:53 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:Morten St George: If you do not like my theory, you should propose an alternative theory, so that we can judge how well each of them fits the available evidence.

I'm not really interested in theories, and even though I've been studying this beast for over 10 years now, I still don't feel I know enough about it to propose theories. I'm still exploring it.

The problem with theorizing too soon is that it tends to channel our perceptions too narrowly.


The only opinions I have that could be considered theories (or hypotheses) so far are:

• that some of the marginalia MIGHT be from someone who lived or grew up in the borderlands of Alsace/Lombardy/Provençal (a very multicultural region)
  
• that whoever drew the zodiac symbols either had traveled in northeast France or had seen some manuscripts from that general area (and probably consulted more than one source) and had probably had access to a library (which may have included books from the previous centuries), and who possibly traveled
  
• that most of the VMS glyphs are based on medieval Latin letters/numbers/abbreviations/ligatures (this is closer to fact than theory)
  
• that the radio-carbon dating is pretty consistent with other aspects of the manuscript
  
• that a few of the plants are naturalistic and do not appear to include mnemonic devices, while others tend to be stylized or fanciful and some do appear to include mnemonic devices
  
• that the illustrator had trouble visualizing in 3d
  
• that there is more than one set of handwriting
  
• that there is more than one person who painted the drawings
  

Other than that, I'm not sure about anything (and even the above is subject to revision if I find evidence to the contrary), so it would be very premature to narrow my searches based on theories.


----------------------------
As for not liking your theory, it's not the theory I'm concerned about, it's your arguments. As I've already pointed out, they don't specifically support your theory—the same arguments work just as well for other theories.

I tend to agree with you that the VMS is a premeditated fabrication. This implies that the Voynich text is not a language, either natural or unnatural. It's simply code.

I read that the VMS month names, same spellings, have been found on an astrolabe from northern France dating back to the 13th century. This does no harm to my theories as Catharism prospered in that region. 

One of the decoders spent early childhood in Grisons, so you might not be too far off with Lombardy.

Note that I have no rigid theories. They change with the evidence and have changed frequently in the past.

At present, my investigations lead me to believe that

1. The VMS recipes include the sacred text of the Cathari (their "great treasure" that escaped the siege of Montségur on 14 March 1244). Since the VMS shows no signs of having been written in heaven (like emitting light), it is clearly not the original text (which, according to reports, was destroyed) but merely a transcription of its words.

2. The VMS recipes were decoded by the Rosicrucians during the 1580s, then translated into French and published under the name of Nostradamus. The sacred text of 39 quatrains was masked by 902 similar quatrains written by the Rosicrucians themselves.

While encryption could keep the Inquisition from reading the sacred text of the Cathari, it was useless for ensuring the long-term survival of that text. When it came to the Cathars, the Inquisition simply burned everything, whether they could read it or not. But by openly publishing it as the work of a devout Catholic and under a heavy mask (the ingenious idea of the RC for conserving the sacred text), the Inquisition was unable to recognize any of it as Cathari. Not until the discovery of the planet Uranus nearly two centuries later do we find a Papal Bull condemning that publication and promising the galleys to anyone who dared to read it.

By legend, Christian Rosenkreutz was educated by the Cathars and, presumably, had himself become a Cathar at least in spirit.

3. The VMS was brought to London either 1) by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa who acquired it in Mexico or Peru, or 2) by Isaac Luria who acquired it in Egypt, the Holy Land, or Provence.

What surprises me is that this dilemma should be easy to resolve but apparently it's not. There are good arguments for and against both possibilities. Also, I have not ruled out the possibility that the VMS came from the New World whereas Luria had sight of or knowledge of the heavenly original.

4. Regardless of whether the VMS was compiled in the New World or in the Old, it likely employs cabalistic encryption.

The published output arranged the passages of the sacred text into three great spheres (Kether, Hohkmah, Binah) each having a superior and inferior world component.

The first publication (a partial edition of 1588 with "Trente neuf articles" on the title page) deleted 39 quatrains and replaced them with quatrains from elsewhere in the text. Many years ago I noted down the 39 distances (between deletion and replacement source) and placed them around a circle with a rotating pentagon (eight places on each side for a total of 40 to move one spot to the right on each turn) in the middle. By rotating the pentagon, I got consistent up-down movements (lower to higher to lower to higher numbers) but could never figure out the next step.

The concentric circles with glyph sequences on page 57v reminds me of the cabalistic spheres. I plan to try viewing the 161 red-star passages as strings around a circle, and see if a rotating pentagon (with the size of its sides based on string size) can produce a meaningful re-ordering of the glyphs. This means that prefixes like 4o and suffices like 89 might be nothing but fillers playing no role in the decoding. Only the glyphs picked up by running the pentagon in reverse would be relevant.

Well, wishful thinking. What's certain is that we need to decode the VMS to resolve its many mysteries.

Hello owners of the Voynich Ninja forum!

Please ban this nonsense. You do a great disservice to Voynich research by hosting it. You already made the wrong choice with Stellar, and now you're repeating it.