The Voynich Ninja

(30-03-2019, 06:49 AM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....


While I am fairly happy classifying the large plants as fantasy, I'm not so sure about the small plants in the pharma section. From what I hear, native Americans were quite big on herbal medicine, so I'd say there's a far greater chance that the small plants are real plants. What's your opinion on that?

Just from looking at them, they look like real plants to me. Some are recognizable and the root forms are all valid forms.

Just my opinion, but I think they are probably real plants.


In the Middle Ages, everyone was big on herbal medicine. There were no synthetic drugs. Plants were drugs. Plants were medicine. This was true in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. All medicine was plant-based at the time (with a few minerals and some honey thrown in for good measure).

I think for sunflowers the point is that people believed they follow the sun, hence the name. Also French tournesol etc.

All of which is irrelevant for the VM 

(29-03-2019, 04:21 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Reasons why i dont think the vms was made in America? Basically the timing aspects. I think it is possible for people to have gone there before 1492, but to write up this entire manuscript, keeping it in relatively good shape, and still have it show up in Prague centuries later seems a stretch to me. But you know what, i just realized that if someone did that, they might well write a book about the history they could remember of the old world, for others in future to know of its existence. And the dated events i outlined precede the commonly quoted 1438 carbon dating by 20 years. So i concede to the possibility. But i would say the probability is still very low. 

The girasols have my head spinning, so I think it's time to try to get back on topic.

From 1244 (the demise of the Cathars) to 1438 (end of carbon range) I count the passing of nearly two hundred years, which probably isn't all that long of time for the Middle Ages when changes came far more slowly than in modern times. Note, for example, that some of the zodiac symbols seen in the VMS had already remained unchanged for thousands of years.

Depictions of the Black Death (which wiped out something like half the population of Europe in the middle of the 14th century) is a glaring absence in a manuscript that includes a section on herbal medicine.

Likewise nowhere to be found in the manuscript are depictions of smoking guns like the gunpowder cannon which exploded on the scene during the 14th century. Indeed, there appears to be no drawing in the VMS whereby we can definitively claim that the respective drawing was originally created after the year 1244.

Our inability to firmly establish the time and place of the creation of VMS internal content is a clear sign that precedent material is not available to us. And that alone points to the Cathars as authors of the VMS. During the early 13th century, the infamous Inquisition was created with the objective of destroying Catharism and that included Cathar books and Cathar libraries. In other words, the material that we would need to establish precedence for the VMS is precisely the material that was destroyed by the Inquisition.

Catharism did not survive in Europe, so for Cathars to have authored the VMS, we must assume that some of them went elsewhere.

(30-03-2019, 07:09 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Just from looking at them, they look like real plants to me. Some are recognizable and the root forms are all valid forms.

Just my opinion, but I think they are probably real plants.

I don't know. It certainly would make sense for them to be real plants. Indeed, some of them do look real, but others look just as crazy as the large plants.

The website rain-tree.com has depictions (including many with multiple photographs) of more than a hundred plants that were used by native Americans for herbal medicine. When I get the chance, I will check it out to see if any of them match something depicted in the VMS.

(30-03-2019, 02:08 PM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(30-03-2019, 07:09 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Just from looking at them, they look like real plants to me. Some are recognizable and the root forms are all valid forms.

Just my opinion, but I think they are probably real plants.

I don't know. It certainly would make sense for them to be real plants. Indeed, some of them do look real, but others look just as crazy as the large plants.

The website rain-tree.com has depictions (including many with multiple photographs) of more than a hundred plants that were used by native Americans for herbal medicine. When I get the chance, I will check it out to see if any of them match something depicted in the VMS.

Many of the plants used by native Americans are the same plants used in Europe. They grow worldwide.

Even those that are different are often simply a different species in the same plant family (in drawings, they look the same).

Agreed ....most of them just a "picture" or illustration a way how to get healthy and how it was.
For example somebody shared his thoughts about page 33v yesthurday....i did translate .....there is no such a word about a plants.
There just a drawling which shows the way to get cured....suddenly from syphilis ,one of the partners died.
Full translating will be in my FB page Alex BC The vojnichmanuscript .... If you have interest about a plants just ask...
Thanks!

(31-03-2019, 12:28 AM)Aldis Mengelsons Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Agreed ....most of them just a "picture" or illustration a way how to get healthy and how it was.
For example somebody shared his thoughts about page 33v yesthurday....i did translate .....there is no such a word about a plants.
There just a drawling which shows the way to get cured....suddenly from syphilis ,one of the partners died.
Full translating will be in my FB page Alex BC The vojnichmanuscript .... If you have interest about a plants just ask...
Thanks!

Good luck with your FB page but, regrettably, I avoid FB like the plague.

(30-03-2019, 03:18 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Many of the plants used by native Americans are the same plants used in Europe. They grow worldwide.

Even those that are different are often simply a different species in the same plant family (in drawings, they look the same).

Today that would be true as plants have been widely transported around the globe by humans during the past 500 years. But six or seven hundred years ago I'm sure there were many plants, e.g., corn, tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco, and diverse herbs, that could be found only the Americas and if depicted anywhere, were depicted only in the VMS.

I'm confident it's possible to find a match: surely they would have tossed in at least one or two real plants as a teaser, to con the Inquisition into thinking all of them were real plants and thereby send them off on a wild goose chase to find the others. I've decided to opt out.

(30-03-2019, 12:10 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The supposed sunflower is most likely a cereal crop like millet. 

I completely agree with you on that, but rather than millet, it would almost certainly have to be corn, the staple crop of Mexico back then. I think the VMS artists simply decided to replace a head of corn with the interior head of sunflower.

Let's check it out. The drawing of the left is our VMS sunflower and the drawing on the right comes from a 16th-century herbal:



Notice that on the left side there are seven curved leaves in each, modest roots in both, essentially only the head is replaced. To confirm that the herbal does in fact depict corn, let's look at the complete page:



Confirmed: you see the heads of corn just below the plant.

And finally, from the title page of that herbal, let's look at what the author of the VMS marginalia is holding in his left hand:



That's right: a head of corn!

(31-03-2019, 02:20 AM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(30-03-2019, 03:18 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Many of the plants used by native Americans are the same plants used in Europe. They grow worldwide.

Even those that are different are often simply a different species in the same plant family (in drawings, they look the same).

Today that would be true as plants have been widely transported around the globe by humans during the past 500 years. But six or seven hundred years ago I'm sure there were many plants, e.g., corn, tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco, and diverse herbs, that could be found only the Americas and if depicted anywhere, were depicted only in the VMS.

There are plants in Europe similar to corn. Around the time you claim the Cathars went to the New World, corn had smaller cobs, not big ones, they bred them bigger. I don't know how much the Spanish had to do with breeding it bigger or if it was done entirely by the natives, but it looked more like grain in the earlier days.

Tomatoes and potatoes are from the nightshade family and tomatoes were smaller than they are now. There were nightshade-family plants in Europe as well. In drawings, many look the same.

There were plants that resemble tobacco in Europe.