The Voynich Ninja

(31-01-2018, 06:08 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Note that I'm not scoffing at the length of your system (the number of words to encode a letter) as I know of several Renaissance encoding systems that used even longer cipher text, amongst them one of Kircher's universal language attempts.

However, unless you can find a flag indicating the 'ratio' all you're doing is introducing noise; and changing the rules of the game on the fly to meet objections.

Since Latin verses contain just six words, the ratio for characters would be the number of Voynich words as the closest multiple of six. But I am basing that on a very limited sample. I will try to find time during the coming week to check out the word count and character count of more Voynich red star passages to see if I can confirm that this could apply on a wider scale. I will post my findings here when done.

(31-01-2018, 06:08 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Note that I'm not scoffing at the length of your system (the number of words to encode a letter) as I know of several Renaissance encoding systems that used even longer cipher text, amongst them one of Kircher's universal language attempts.

However, unless you can find a flag indicating the 'ratio' all you're doing is introducing noise; and changing the rules of the game on the fly to meet objections.

The four lines in the 3 to 1 ratio all begin with the same glyph, but elsewhere the same glyph begins a red-star passage that would be too long for a Merlin verse in 3 to 1 ratio. No universal consistency is apparent.

In any case, since there were no cows in the Andes during the 15th century, the VMS could not have been written by Cathars (who were extinct in cow country at that time), nor can it be the source of the Inca prophecy recorded by the Spanish chroniclers, nor the general source of Merlin's prophecies (which included the Inca prophecy) that were published toward the end of the 16th century. Consequently, all aspects of the Morten St. George Theory can be considered disproved by the latest protein science.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that Italian monks would develop such a sophisticated encryption system to protect their plant descriptions and cooking instructions, but if you guys say that is the case, then so be it.

It doesn't have to be Italian monks. In fact one could think of quite some arguments against monks. For starters, the manuscript shows only two or three signs that its makers were even aware of Christianity. And its production does not conform to the standards of established scriptorium practices. But this does not mean we have to fudge the evidence and turn to the new world. There are a million other options.

(04-02-2018, 04:15 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It doesn't have to be Italian monks. In fact one could think of quite some arguments against monks. For starters, the manuscript shows only two or three signs that its makers were even aware of Christianity. And its production does not conform to the standards of established scriptorium practices. But this does not mean we have to fudge the evidence and turn to the new world. There are a million other options.

Those Italian monks appear to be very popular on Youtube and on certain VMS websites. More so than the monks, authorship in northern Italy seems to have been declared a universal truth. In northern Italy, around the year 1420, who other than the monks had strong literary skills plus the capacity to manufacture large quantities of cow parchment?

It seems the Italian location is erroneously based on a VMS depiction of a castle. By observing the vertical slopes depicted in the VMS and an independent medieval illustration that depicts a similar coned tower, I have identified this castle as a fortress in southwest France that was destroyed in the year 1244. Hence, the VMS was probably written closer to 1300 than 1400. In other words, the carbon-dating only indicates the publishing date, not the date of authorship. The VMS is almost certainly a copy of stuff written much earlier, possibly on deer-skin parchment.

For you believers of cow protein, the answer is not to deny the VMS depictions of a New World rainforest (for which the evidence is overwhelming), but to figure out how, probably in the late 1300s or very early 1400s, descendants of the original authors managed to return to the Old World and where they decided to settle.

I liked the Andean idea because the carbon-dating, 1404 to 1438, corresponded well with the reign of Viracocha Inca (who was recorded to be a white man), 1410 to 1438. But the year 1438 can be found elsewhere in Wikipedia: "The first official mellah was established in the city of Fez in 1438."

The city of Fez is directly named in Merlin's prophecies (giving them a specific destination in the Old World), and it is also referred to in the Rosicrucian manifesto and in several other works authored by the RC.  The rainforest MS may have been copied into the VMS in Fez.

At this point, I am starting to doubt that the rainforest MS was written in the script that we see in the VMS. I think it might have been written in ordinary Hebrew or in a mixture of Hebrew and Latin. In other words, in Fez, they directly copied only the drawings, but for the text, they encrypted it and then inserted the encrypted text alongside the drawings.

The left to right redaction of the VMS might, therefore, be part of the deception. Deciphering may need to go from right to left. In this case, the VMS glyphs would represent Hebrew letters. Some of them might represent punctuation marks or might signal a capital letter, and one or a pair of them might mark the end of a word (most of Merlin's prophecies have six words per line, some have five or seven words) or mark a stop count. Try adding up the glyphs in accordance with their Hebrew numeric value until you hit a stop count, then reduce the resulting number to a single Hebrew letter per standard procedure, ie. 20 + 5 + 6 + STOP = 31 (not a letter), so 3 + 1 = 4 = Dalet.

The next step would be to convert the Hebrew letters into Latin letters. For example, Aleph = A, Bet = B, Gimel = G, Dalet = D,  and we need to figure out how they improvised where there is no obvious or unambiguous match between the two alphabets.

The final step would be to reverse the string of letters, from right to left to left to right, ie. saeroB at the end of a line becomes Boreas at the beginning of a line, and, at last, we reconstruct the original Latin of Merlin.

Note that Merlin is a name from English mythology. He was called the Sun by the Incas, and the authors of the VMS would have called him Elijah.

Quote:Morten St George:
"...the answer is not to deny the VMS depictions of a New World rainforest (for which the evidence is overwhelming),"

Each ecosystem adapts itself in a specific way and when you get really good at knowing plants, you can glance at an unfamiliar group of plants and, with a fairly good degree of certainty, guess the kind of ecology (sometimes even the specific area) from where they come. Alpine and northern plants are distinct from Mediterranean plants in many ways.
This also holds true for isolated gene pools.
I spent many months studying the VMS plants before I started IDing them. The overall morphology of those plants is not New World rainforest plants.

(06-02-2018, 05:22 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:Morten St George:
"...the answer is not to deny the VMS depictions of a New World rainforest (for which the evidence is overwhelming),"

Each ecosystem adapts itself in a specific way and when you get really good at knowing plants, you can glance at an unfamiliar group of plants and, with a fairly good degree of certainty, guess the kind of ecology (sometimes even the specific area) from where they come. Alpine and northern plants are distinct from Mediterranean plants in many ways.
This also holds true for isolated gene pools.
I spent many months studying the VMS plants before I started IDing them. The overall morphology of those plants is not New World rainforest plants.

It’s nice that someone was able to verify that none of the 40,000 plant species found in the Amazon rainforest look like any of the plants depicted in the VMS. But that only confirms what I have long suspected: that the VMS plants lived in the rainforest 600 years ago and are now extinct.

Quote:Morten St George: It’s nice that someone was able to verify that none of the 40,000 plant species found in the Amazon rainforest look like any of the plants depicted in the VMS.

Now you are twisting my words.

But I will stand by my statement that the overall morphology of the VMS plants (taken as a whole) is not consistent with Amazon rainforest plants.

Nor do I think they are extinct plants (except perhaps a small minority).

The form of viola shown in the VMS is not an Amazon rainforest plant. The flower, the layout of the stalks, and the shape of the leaves is characteristic of temperate-zone violas (both New and Old World, but most of those that fit most closely are native to the Old Word).
Ricinus (which is a probable ID) is a eurasian plant.
Cannabis (which is not a definite ID, but it's a likely one) is a eurasian plant.
Tragopogon is a Eurasian plant.
The form of Menyanthes or Vallarsia in the VMS is both New World and Old World, depending on which one it is (they look almost the same, so it's almost impossible to distinguish them from a drawing). In the Old World, they are mostly in SW and W Asia and SE Europe, but in the New World, they're not native to the Amazon rainforest, they are from the Gulf region.
The plants in the VMS that might be related to the Lilium family are more similar to Old World Lilium than those in the Amazon rainforest.


Every ecosystem has plants with a certain look-and-feel because they have adapted to local moisture levels, winds, soil conditions, and altitudes. Even if the same plant can be found in different zones or at different altitudes, there are important differences in how it grows (e.g., alpine plants are rarely tall like those from rainforests or from lower elevations).


The VMS plants aren't even all from the same place (e.g., if the one that looks like Ricinus is Ricinus, it is frost-tender and can't grow in cold climates, but some of the other plants can) but they do, as a group, show more similarity to temperate-zone plants than to subtropical/tropical plants. Every medieval herbal has a few "exotics" (plants or spices that were imported).


In fact, I'll make a prediction here that not only are they NOT all (or mostly) extinct plants, but the majority I believe will be found to be common plants.

(06-02-2018, 10:20 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:Morten St George: It’s nice that someone was able to verify that none of the 40,000 plant species found in the Amazon rainforest look like any of the plants depicted in the VMS.

Now you are twisting my words.

But I will stand by my statement that the overall morphology of the VMS plants (taken as a whole) is not consistent with Amazon rainforest plants.

Nor do I think they are extinct plants (except perhaps a small minority).

The form of viola shown in the VMS is not an Amazon rainforest plant. The flower, the layout of the stalks, and the shape of the leaves is characteristic of temperate-zone violas (both New and Old World, but most of those that fit most closely are native to the Old Word).
Ricinus (which is a probable ID) is a eurasian plant.
Cannabis (which is not a definite ID, but it's a likely one) is a eurasian plant.
Tragopogon is a Eurasian plant.
The form of Menyanthes or Vallarsia in the VMS is both New World and Old World, depending on which one it is (they look almost the same, so it's almost impossible to distinguish them from a drawing). In the Old World, they are mostly in SW and W Asia and SE Europe, but in the New World, they're not native to the Amazon rainforest, they are from the Gulf region.
The plants in the VMS that might be related to the Lilium family are more similar to Old World Lilium than those in the Amazon rainforest.


Every ecosystem has plants with a certain look-and-feel because they have adapted to local moisture levels, winds, soil conditions, and altitudes. Even if the same plant can be found in different zones or at different altitudes, there are important differences in how it grows (e.g., alpine plants are rarely tall like those from rainforests or from lower elevations).


The VMS plants aren't even all from the same place (e.g., if the one that looks like Ricinus is Ricinus, it is frost-tender and can't grow in cold climates, but some of the other plants can) but they do, as a group, show more similarity to temperate-zone plants than to subtropical/tropical plants. Every medieval herbal has a few "exotics" (plants or spices that were imported).


In fact, I'll make a prediction here that not only are they NOT all (or mostly) extinct plants, but the majority I believe will be found to be common plants.

I've heard that the Italian protozoa animal on folio 2v is actually an American tropical plant called Nymphoides aquatica. It grows on the surface of swamp water and no doubt this is what gives the green color to the water in the biology section.

There seems to be little doubt that the real nymphs are plants and not Italian nuns: the nymph plant has a stem like the one depicted in the VMS and, above all, it sprouts out a white flower exactly as depicted in the VMS. It's an open and shut case on ID. This plant currently lives on the north side of the Caribbean. Whether or not it also lived on the south side of the Caribbean during medieval times remains to be determined.

The same applies to the alligator gar fish depicted on folio 70r. They currently live only on the north side of the Caribbean but their zone is known to be shrinking. I did a Google image search on "fish in Itlay" and saw nothing like it. This is definitely an American fish and not an Italian fish.

In view of possible pointers to tropical North America as opposed to tropical South America, I am not as strong on Venezuela as I was just one month ago. But note that the naked women are harder to explain for the north as it can get cold there half the year.  In all cases, however, the VMS remains on the American side of the Atlantic rather than on the Italian side.

(07-02-2018, 08:05 AM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
I've heard that the Italian protozoa animal on folio 2v is actually an American tropical plant called Nymphoides aquatica. It grows on the surface of swamp water and no doubt this is what gives the green color to the water in the biology section.

There seems to be little doubt that the real nymphs are plants and not Italian nuns: the nymph plant has a stem like the one depicted in the VMS and, above all, it sprouts out a white flower exactly as depicted in the VMS. It's an open and shut case on ID. This plant currently lives on the north side of the Caribbean. Whether or not it also lived on the south side of the Caribbean during medieval times remains to be determined.

...

Well didn't I say Menyanthes/Villarsia upthread? Nymphoides aquatica is Menyanthaceae, the New World version. Villarsia is the Old World version.

The Asian species (especially from west India) is almost identical to the New World version that grows in the Gulf (the one I previously mentioned), and there is no way to tell from a picture whether it is the New World version or the Old World version. They look the same, even in very good botanical drawings, which the VMS is not.


So it is clearly not an open-and-shut case when almost identical plants (which they used to think were the same species) grow in both the New World Gulf and Old World Asia.

(07-02-2018, 09:57 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(07-02-2018, 08:05 AM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
I've heard that the Italian protozoa animal on folio 2v is actually an American tropical plant called Nymphoides aquatica. It grows on the surface of swamp water and no doubt this is what gives the green color to the water in the biology section.

There seems to be little doubt that the real nymphs are plants and not Italian nuns: the nymph plant has a stem like the one depicted in the VMS and, above all, it sprouts out a white flower exactly as depicted in the VMS. It's an open and shut case on ID. This plant currently lives on the north side of the Caribbean. Whether or not it also lived on the south side of the Caribbean during medieval times remains to be determined.

...

Well didn't I say Menyanthes/Villarsia upthread? Nymphoides aquatica is Menyanthaceae, the New World version. Villarsia is the Old World version.

The Asian species (especially from west India) is almost identical to the New World version that grows in the Gulf (the one I previously mentioned), and there is no way to tell from a picture whether it is the New World version or the Old World version. They look the same, even in very good botanical drawings, which the VMS is not.


So it is clearly not an open-and-shut case when almost identical plants (which they used to think were the same species) grow in both the New World Gulf and Old World Asia.

Sorry about the delay in responding. I got absorbed reading some fascinating stuff about the VMS and couldn't pull away. That thing is truly a fascinating mystery. With so many scholars studying it, with the enormous knowledge that we have today, with computers and all the rest, we can't determine with certainty where it was written, by whom it was written, nor even if it says something sensible or is pure gibberish. Whatever else it might be, it is probably the most brilliant work of deception and encryption ever created.

Citing sources, Wikipedia declares: "None of the plants depicted are unambiguously identifiable." This is not surprising. With tens of thousands of plant species, with plant spores able to fly in the wind or float on water, there is bound to be another plant somewhere that resembles any particular plant.

Nonetheless, I think Nymphus Americus comes closer to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. plant than Nymphus Asiaticus because most of the Asians have yellow rather than white flowers, and the white flower of Indicus looks more frayed. Of course, other factors can be taken into account to decide the winner.

One way to determine location is to make lots of assumptions. For example, let's assume, for the biology gals, that they are in the native habitat of the Nymphus Americus. We can also assume that this habitat is also the native habitat of the alligator gar, a fish depicted on F70r. Let's also assume that I'm right about the critter on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. being a hybrid of the spotted jaguar and alligator, so real alligators and jaguars also live there. Let's now assume that the animal on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is some type of deer, so deer live there too. We can also assume that this place has tall trees as suggested on the left side of F79v. And it has to be a place that is steamy hot for at least part or the year because the gals are stark naked. Finally, this place has to have water that is solid green in color, as depicted throughout the biology pages.

Now, after assuming all those things as true and correct, where are our gals living? That's easy. They have to be living here: