The Voynich Ninja

(10-12-2018, 07:47 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Such nonsense that green ponds only appear in America.

Yes, but what about Pocahontas floating on her back ? Girls don't float, that's a well known fact, unless they're witches.

(10-12-2018, 03:54 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes, but what about Pocahontas floating on her back ? Girls don't float, that's a well known fact, unless they're witches.

(10-12-2018, 05:26 PM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Hi VViews,

Nice to see you posting in this thread that you started. I was getting a little frustrated with JP and Koen both of whom are giving me a hard time, so I'm pleased to see a new face here.

Gals with stars would be dead perfecta whereas gals without stars are presumably still living at the time of redaction. We can see in the depiction of the field of Montségur that they used stars to mark those who were burned alive, that is, dead people, martyrs whose souls achieved eternal life in the heavens.

Over the weekend I accidentally (poor eyesight again) encountered another of your threads under Voynich Talk, the one about big red weirdos where you wrote:

Quote:I'm curious to hear what views the forum members may have about what the weirdos are or look like, and whether perhaps we might gather any new insight into them.

Any thoughts?

I have lots of thoughts about them. First of all, I see nothing too weird about them because they appear in my handbook of medieval symbols:




The first weirdo is a variation of the middle symbol, the second weirdo is the top part of the last symbol rotated 90 degrees to the left, and the third weirdo is the penultimate symbol.

I consider it doubtful that these symbols were ever intended to represent the letter 'V' as others have suggested.

Page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. apparently comes from the same quire where we find You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f66r. Like f1r, both of those folios have text on one side and a plant drawing on the other. It goes to show that they wrote one theme on one side of a pre-folded sheet and then turned it over to finish that theme and move on to another theme. Thus, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was removed from that quire and brought to the front of the manuscript for a specific purpose.

I'm pretty sure that they didn't decide to insert the weirdos into the VMS because of any meaning those symbols might have but rather because, best among all the symbols, they remind us of birds.

The weirdos, of course, are not the only thing on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that reminds us of birds. Page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. depicts a plant whose bright green leaves flow through the page onto You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. upon where we see the weirdos. The point is that these leaves resemble the leaves of the goose tree, a mythical plant that grew along the coast of northern Scotland. As the name implies, the goose tree gave birth to geese, a type of bird.

A drawing of the goose tree along with geese can be found on page 1391 of The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes, dated 1597, where it is the final drawing in said book. This book can be found online as a free download.

As I have previously explained, the shield marginalia of the top of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (among other things) links the VMS to Herball. It is therefore possible to conclude that this entire episode of plant history begins with the first drawing in the VMS and ends the last drawing in Historie. That is why You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was moved to the front.

On top of its front page, Herball depicts two botanists who worked for William Cecil, himself depicted on the bottom left as sponsor of the project. Cecil had tremendous interest in botanical gardens and he was one of the foremost collectors of books in Europe. There is reason to believe that the VMS came into his possession around a dozen years prior to the publication of Herball.

Opposite Cecil on the front page, there's a depiction of a poet laureate who the historian Mark Griffiths has identified as William Shakespeare. Indeed, as shown in one of my essays, a transliteration of the glyphs under the bar on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. can be found in one of Shakespeare's poems, which leads us to suspect that Shakespeare himself might have been the author of the weirdos and other marginalia found in the VMS.

It would not be surprising if Yale University took an interest in this as it could potentially add millions of dollars to the value of the VMS. That would be the case if the VMS does in fact contain the only extant examples of Shakespeare's handwriting beyond a few dubious signatures that currently exist.

Well, VViews, you asked for our thoughts about the weirdos so I was happy to give you a few. Hope you find them helpful.

(10-12-2018, 11:30 PM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[quote="VViews" pid='24012' dateline='1544459198']





I consider it doubtful that these symbols were ever intended to represent the letter 'V' as others have suggested.

I have not suggested it represents the letter "V". I have suggested (among other things) that the SHAPE is based on the letter V (embellished V) and it is only one of several possible origins on my list. This shape is also used as a pilcrow, and as a symbol.

It's very important to distinguish the SHAPE and the ORIGIN of the shape from the MEANING of the glyph in Voynichese.

This is the "goose tree". The "leaves/flowers" are "barnakles" as they call them (clam-shaped rather than the volcano-shaped barnacles). Note the little critters crawling out of the lower left "flower" that turn into geese:



Another goose tree pic:



I don't think it looks like this drawing in the VMS:

(11-12-2018, 12:11 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't think it looks like this drawing in the VMS:

JP, 

First, I do not know who brought up the V (I glanced through that thread rather quickly) nor do I consider it important enough to go back to find out.

Second, it is more useful to view the goose tree together with the geese:



I would welcome your opinion on something. I imagine the weirdos replace script, tower glyphs, or stars. Do you have any idea what was there first? The top of the tower glyph below the last weirdo is very faint. Is it possible to erase iron gall ink on parchment so well that it is hard to detect the erasure?

Iron gall ink could be erased well enough with scrapers or with solvents/acids that it could be overwritten but there were usually faint traces of the lines underneath.

An extensively overwritten text is called a palimpsest.

The Tepenecz signature (or name) at the bottom has been removed with chemicals, but scrapers were more common (they look like exacto-knives, like a pen with a blade in it).

(11-12-2018, 03:19 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Iron gall ink could be erased well enough with scrapers or with solvents/acids that it could be overwritten but there were usually faint traces of the lines underneath.

An extensively overwritten text is called a palimpsest.

The Tepenecz signature (or name) at the bottom has been removed with chemicals, but scrapers were more common (they look like exacto-knives, like a pen with a blade in it).

Thanks JP. The area to the right of the two lower weirdos looks cleaner and slightly lighter in color than the area to the left. It also looks like part of a tower glyph was erased and I think I see fragments of an erased token just above that tower glyph. Obviously, I'm claiming that the birds are marginalia drawn contemporaneously with the other marginalia.

I'm withholding judgment on Tepenecz for the time being: the RC had money so they didn't need to sell the VMS; they decoded it themselves so they didn't need to seek the help of Prague cryptographers, and the last people on Earth they would want to get possession of the VMS would be the Jesuits. From 1584 to 1912, I would be surprised if the VMS ever left England.

Hi all! What are you talking about lads? There is no secrets or some magic, just read that or ask. If somebody has some questions about a particular page, e-mail me.

(11-12-2018, 11:41 AM)Aldis Mengelsons Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi all! What are you talking about lads? There is no secrets or some magic, just read that or ask. If somebody has some questions about a particular page, e-mail me.

Hi Aldis. I'm not surprised you are confused. In the Morten St. George Theory thread we debate the official history of the VMS as told by Wikipedia versus my fringe theories which are largely derived from esoteric texts of the 16th and 17th centuries.

In my last post I insinuated that a signature found on page f1r, of a famed supporter of the Catholic faith, was likely a forgery because my esoteric texts reveal that the owners of the VMS were strong opponents of the Counter Reformation. Similarly, letters that would place the VMS in the hands of Kircher, a famous Jesuit, are likely forgeries as well. 

For protection, they employed the same tactic with Nostradamus, making him pretend to be a fanatical supporter of Catholicism. Needless to say, the VMS signature and letters cannot be corroborated by the appearance of the VMS in any library or book catalog or inventory, nor is it mentioned in any of numerous extant letters of Kircher, et cetera. Are we to believe that a manuscript as mysterious as the VMS was able to circulate publicly or privately among the Catholics for three hundred years without a historical record?