The Voynich Ninja

(03-10-2018, 07:28 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Logically, your argument can be extended anytime all the way up to the modern day. Anyone at any point after 1597 could have learnt old handwriting, decided to create the marginalia around the Nostradamus quartet, sourced ancient vellum, etc.
If we extend the logic (including the motive for why based upon the provenance and history of the manuscript as established by Rene Z.), then we end up with Rich SantaColuma's "Voynich faked it for cash in the modern era" theory.

David,

Since you apparently have no wish to read my essays, I will respond to your comment by citing a few paragraphs:

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There is, however, very little likelihood that the French heretics of the 13th century migrated to Peru which lies on the opposite side of the Americas from France. Moreover, protein analysis of the VMS parchment reveals that its underlying source was the subfamily Bovinae (cow) of which there were none in Peru. But in North America, including parts of Mexico, there were bison, a very close relative of domestic cattle even to the point of interbreeding.

This leads us to a logical conclusion: the VMS (the conduit of Solomon's Prophecies) was compiled in Mexico by converts to the heresy. We say "converts" rather than "descendants" because those heretics did not believe in procreation and hence they would have had no descendants. But they certainly strove to make converts and, like they did for converts back in Europe, would have taught them how to read and write and how to make parchment (a skilled task). Thus, native Americans wrote the VMS. They conserved the writings of the European heretics, diligently copying the prophecies onto fresh parchment along with the writings and drawings depicting the European history of the heresy, plus those pages depicting life in the Louisiana swamps after first arrival in the Americas. And the native Americans, known to have a deep interest in herbal medicine going back many centuries, would have conducted the herbal research reflected in the VMS.

Note that the American botanist Arthur O. Tucker has associated the VMS plants with Mexico. Beyond plants like jalapeño peppers and dozens more, the vast correlations with Mexico include VMS depictions of animals such as the armadillo, vials whose pattern of alternating colors remind us of what we see, to this day, on Mexican textiles, and, last but not least, found throughout much of Mexico: volcanoes, and even a smoking one! As crazy as Mexico may seem to some, it was the likely home of Solomon's Prophecies in the late Middle Ages.



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Up to this point, there is nothing more I can do with you people as you seem incapable of objectively evaluating evidence that runs contrary to your beliefs and superstitions.

My essay goes on to explain how the VMS got from Mexico to Peru, and then from Peru to London where the stars section was decoded and published (with French imprints) in the late 1580s.

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Voynich wanted to attribute the VMS to Roger Bacon. Why then would he fill up his forgery with Mexican plants rather than British plants? Did he think no one would ever notice? Your forgery theory is ridiculous.

I'm not going to bother with this any more. It's just one poorly supported theory that uses other poorly supported theories to justify itself.

(08-10-2018, 02:59 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm not going to bother with this any more. It's just one poorly supported theory that uses other poorly supported theories to justify itself.

That's fine, JKP. I'd like to thank you and your colleagues for all the help you've rendered. When I joined voynich.ninja some months ago, I was convinced that the VMS was written in Venezuela. You guys disproved that theory, but then you led me to other evidence and now the theory has moved hundreds of miles up the coast to Mexico.

Unfortunately, the New Atlantis was written under the disguise of a novel, so it becomes difficult for a scholar to cite it as evidence. But after having studied Rosicrucian writings for many years, I think it likely that the VMS was really compiled in a place called Tyrambel, located somewhere in Mexico.

To keep you guys updated on decoding progress, know that I made an attempt to convert the Spanish side of the Rosetta Stone from modern Spanish to Old Spanish. If interested, please see revised essay for details. Since I am claiming that the Cathar survivors fled to the Americas, no Old World language in the VMS can postdate the middle of the 13th century.

Also, I have tagged on the following paragraphs at the end of my essay:

***

VMS DECODING INFORMATION

The objective of this essay was only to present evidence that parts of the VMS were decoded in the 16th century and evidence that the marginalia provides clues on how to undertake another decoding. It is up to cryptologists, if any of them be interested in this topic, to determine whether or not that is the case.

Nonetheless, we can make a few summarizing remarks some of which might be accurate and helpful:

1. The VMS decoding alphabet comprises 17 symbols and the VMS marginalia informs us on how to convert the VMS symbols into letters of the Latin alphabet.



It is assumed that the VMS wishes to use, for example, "cuando" for "quando", otherwise it will be necessary to modify the alphabet to bring in a "q", possibly by making use of one of three variants that appears in one of the four sequences. Another possibility (seen in the literature of Old Spanish) would be the use of the letter "v" for the letter "b" as well as the letter "u".

2. On folio 57v, the VMS decoding alphabet is repeated 4 times around the second wheel, making 68 symbols in total, which is slightly larger than the total number symbols including spaces found in a typical complete line of stars text.

3. A typical complete line of stars text contains around 14 different symbols, of which around 7 symbols are found in the VMS decoding alphabet and around 7 symbols are not found in the VMS decoding alphabet.

4. The VMS gives every appearance of being written in a left to right direction but the letter reversals seen in the marginalia oblige us to consider that it may decode in right to left direction. Thus, for example, sihpmēē can transcribe into either Memphis or Nemphis, where small letter repetition capitalizes the letter.

5. The encoding (and therefore the decoding) of multiple Old World languages applies only to the sections of the VMS written in what the experts refer to as "Currier's Language B," which includes the stars section and f57v. The bulk of the VMS, however, is written in Currier's Language A, which is believed to be a language that became extinct in the 15th century (shortly after the VMS was written). Except for some words that may have been absorbed into Nahuatl, that extinct language is unlikely to be recoverable.

SUGGESTED VMS DECODING STRATEGY

Insert a stars line of symbols from the Rosetta Stone into a blank wheel adjacent to the alphabet wheel on folio 57v, rotate it around, and when symbols in the stars line match symbols on the alphabet wheel, exchange one or more of the symbols (in the stars line) that have no counterpart in the decoding alphabet with symbols from the decoding alphabet. Use the chart to convert the alphabet symbols into Latin letters. Use the Spanish side of the Rosetta Stone for guidance on how to manipulate the wheels. Another step (to reverse or rearrange the order of the Latin letters) may or may not be necessary.

***

I remain convinced that you guys are very mistaken in thinking that the VMS was written in a monastery somewhere in northern Italy. Among other things, there is evidence that the VMS inspired the creation of Rosicrucianism and, as such, would be a document of major importance from the point of view of world history in general. Please consider renewing your efforts to decode the thing. Programming skills (which I am unable to relearn) are required to test diverse possibilities on how the 17 symbols of the decoding alphabet convert into Latin letters. But these possibilities are far from limitless. It can be done.

The letter "a" is one of the most common letters in all languages and very common in Romance languages.

The sound "a" is one of the first sounds a baby makes and thus words like mama baba/papa are common to hundreds of languages and yet you have paired up the letter "a" with one of the rarest VMS characters.

(04-11-2018, 04:42 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The letter "a" is one of the most common letters in all languages and very common in Romance languages.

The sound "a" is one of the first sounds a baby makes and thus words like mama baba/papa are common to hundreds of languages and yet you have paired up the letter "a" with one of the rarest VMS characters.

I fully agree with you that the letter "a" should be seen frequently but I am not so sure that is not the case. About half the symbols in the decoding alphabet on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are rare, very rare. But the decoding alphabet appears to be only a mechanism for converting symbols into Latin letters and, as such, would be unrelated to letter frequencies.

In the marginalia, the symbol that looks like the letter "c" is merged into a backward slanted "i" to stand for the letter "a". Both the "c" and the backward "i" appear frequently in the VMS script but neither appears in the decoding alphabet. In a way, that makes sense: the high frequency of those letters in the script increases the chances that, when a line of script is rotated around a wheel adjacent to the alphabet wheel, one of those letters (or the union of the two) will land at a spot corresponding to the rare symbol you mentioned, thereby increasing the output of the letter "a".

Note a new observation: all four lines of Rosetta Stone script from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (each corresponding to where star-tail marginalia come to an end) begin with a symbol that looks like the letter "o" followed by a symbol that looks like the number "8" without its bottom. These two symbols are the same two symbols with which decoding alphabet begins. I doubt that it's just a coincidence, but I don't know what conclusions to draw from it.

JP,

Back in September I asked you if the fourth word of marginalia at the top You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. could be the English word "how" and I can't seem to find your response. This is the word here:



Looking at it from a certain angle, I can envision a "w" after the "ho", maybe even the swirl of an "e" after the "w", but it's all very faint, so there can be no assurances about anything, which is why I would welcome your opinion on it.

The reason I am bringing up the issue again is that I have found a way for the letter sequence "how" to be meaningful and yet not be the English word "how". As you know, it has been suggested that Voynichese script could be consonants only, in which case the 17 glyphs (repeated four times around one of the wheels on f57v) might be, instead of or in addition to a transliteration alphabet, a mechanism used to insert vowels into and around the consonants. 

Looking for clues, I've been reading literature written in southern France around the year 1200 (the time and place of the people who I'm quite sure created the VMS encryption system) and I did in fact find a vocalization. And guess what? Ignoring spaces (the sequences are merged without spaces on the wheels), it has exactly 17 letters! : Yahawa Yahowe Yihwo, said to allude to past, present and future existence which seems quite appropriate for the 'divine revelation' encoded into the VMS recipes.

But here's the point: look at that middle word and you'll see the letter sequence "how". 

What I like most about this idea is that the "yi" of "Yihwo" opens the possibility of inserting both a "y" and an "i" into the output. For a long time I have been trying to find an explanation for "bruine" in prophecy V-35 versus "bruyne" in prophecy VI-37, consistently written as such in all the early publications, which is quite surprising as the y's and i's were freely interchangeable everywhere else. It has to be that VMS decoding can distinguish y's and i's, and the "yi" could be the answer.

In the English-language writings of the marginalia's author we read: "...my last Will & Testament (written every sillable with myne owne hand, and with long ' and mature deliberacon digested, contayning foure sheetes of paper, the First of eight and Iwenty lynes the second of nyne & Iwenty the third of nine & Iwenty and the Fourth of six lines,..."

Note the "nyne" of the first 29 versus the "nine" of the second 29. Add the following "six" to the second 29 and we get 35 for the "bruine", as indeed found in V-35. Before you write this off as a coincidence, let's look at what this guy wrote in the third line of f116v, here capitalizing the letters that correspond to Roman numerals from the first I to the second I (the I's of Iwenty):

sIX + maurX + mourX +VIx

IX (9) + X (10) + X (10) = 29 + VI (6) = 35

Arriving at 35 by adding "six" (the first word of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. citation and the last number of the English citation) to 29 is convincing when combined with a mountain of other evidence linking this guy to the VMS and its marginalia.

I hope I didn't lose with this obscure logic. Anyway, your comments on the mysterious "how" would be much appreciated.

I can't tell what the third letter is, but I don't think it's "w". The slant and the shapes are wrong.

Here's how "w" was usually written in scripts similar to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. handwriting:

[attachment=2509]

(24-11-2018, 07:43 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can't tell what the third letter is, but I don't think it's "w". The slant and the shapes are wrong.

Here's how "w" was usually written in scripts similar to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. handwriting:

Thanks JP. I see your point. Since the third letter is too faint to be distinguished, I'm thinking that it could be the first letter of the word that follows, which is much darker:



With a lot of imagination, I can read that second word as saying "will" as in "last Will and Testament". How do you interpret that second word?

It doesn't look like "will" to me. The first letter looks like medieval "v" and the third and fourth ascenders are too short compared to the others and there's a crossbar.

Shouldn't you be trying to read it in the language it's written rather than trying to wrestle it into English?