The Voynich Ninja

I wouldn't say it was the same person who foliated the VMS and the SSM, even though they are very similar.

The handwriting in the SSM has consistently longer tails on the 9 and the 7, and the 2 is somewhat consistently flatter on the top. Not a big difference but enough to be fairly sure it's two different people.

(02-06-2019, 02:17 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I wouldn't say it was the same person who foliated the VMS and the SSM, even though they are very similar.

The handwriting in the SSM has consistently longer tails on the 9 and the 7, and the 2 is somewhat consistently flatter on the top. Not a big difference but enough to be fairly sure it's two different people.

Thanks JP. I've noticed the 9 tail myself, also the top of the SSM 5's tends to be more horizontal than those of the VMS. I will not spend excessive time on the SSM looking for answers that are probably not to be found there.

Essentially, the "gates" of the SY  constitute the pairing together of two letters, perhaps a consonant with a vowel or maybe two consonants. Info on how to do this is available and I will give some priority to that. The VMS may decode two letters at a time. That could explain why everything is pointing to the opposite side.

If you are talking about the pair combinations (e.g., Albth and the others), I'm familiar with it.

(02-06-2019, 03:20 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If you are talking about the pair combinations (e.g., Albth and the others), I'm familiar with it.

During the past week, I downloaded a massive amount of potentially helpful material to read. When plowing through that, I may come up with some fresh ideas.

Up to this point, the Morten St. George Theory maintains that we need to use the wheels on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to decode, that an additional wheel of seventy-two Latin letters is needed to convert the glyphs to letters or sounds that we can understand, and that quire 20 comprises an encoding of thirty-nine prophecies recorded in multiple languages and for which we have a French translation. All of these conclusions derive from VMS marginalia which was written by someone who is trying to be helpful.

I have a feeling that more clues are provided somewhere but maybe not from material in my possession. For example, like the VMS, the SSM is missing many pages but, so they say, most of the missing pages are available in a very old German translation that apparently is nowhere to be found on the Internet.

On the pairing of letters, I'm assuming no more than an original interpretation of the SY's words.

Hi Morten,

I have also examples of page 42.
The first one is from the VMS, the two other ones are from manuscripts circa 1550.

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(02-06-2019, 10:23 AM)Paris Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi Morten,

I have also examples of page 42.
The first one is from the VMS, the two other ones are from manuscripts circa 1550.

Hi Paris,

John Dee was my gateway to the VMS. Around six or so years ago, I investigated him as a candidate for co-authorship of several astrological almanacs that were forged in the French language and backdated some thirty to forty years to the 1550s and 1560s. Dee was already an astrologer back in the 1550s and hence one of the few people in England who could have assisted on such a project. In the course of this research, I discovered that Dee was accused a selling a mysterious manuscript to an emperor in Prague, so I decided to check it out. Prior to that, I have no recollection of ever having heard of the VMS.

A single number, like 42, is hardly sufficient to draw conclusions. Let's have a brief look at a nearby number:



So, Paris, please tell us which one is a) a classic symbol of medieval alchemy, b) a VMS page number, c) a SSM page number, and d) standard VMS text of the 15th century?

Let me remind you that JP has already determined that the author of the VMS marginalia had to have been a master forger. To my way of thinking, if he was able to forge 15th-century handwriting, why couldn't he also forge someone else's numbers? This whole thing could turn out to be a fool's game not worth playing.

There appears to be ample historical evidence that the SSM was in John Dee's vast library and there is also lots of evidence that the VMS decoders had access to that library. Thus, there is every reason to suspect that the SSM could prove helpful for our decoding efforts. Indeed, the SSM seems to be the only manuscript that spells out the complete names, apparently critical, for example, for distinguishing an "i" from a "y".

I think it is pretty unlikely that John Dee was a forger.

He was an extremely pious man, so honest that he was constantly taken advantage of by other people. He simply couldn't "see" deceit because it wasn't on his radar. He entrusted his entire beloved library to a relative while he traveled to the continent and it was immediately plundered, something Dee probably didn't expect to happen.

He naively believed all of Kelley's "channeling" were messages from God (or from God's angels) which is why he was taken in by him for so long.


Edward Kelley, on the other hand, was an opportunistic rogue and probably capable of anything, if he could benefit in some way. Two intelligent men with VERY different personalities and ethical stances. I have no doubt that Kelley would forge if he thought he could get away with it.

(02-06-2019, 10:35 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think it is pretty unlikely that John Dee was a forger.

He was an extremely pious man, so honest that he was constantly taken advantage of by other people. He simply couldn't "see" deceit because it wasn't on his radar. He entrusted his entire beloved library to a relative while he traveled to the continent and it was immediately plundered, something Dee probably didn't expect to happen.

He naively believed all of Kelley's "channeling" were messages from God (or from God's angels) which is why he was taken in by him for so long.

Edward Kelley, on the other hand, was an opportunistic rogue and probably capable of anything, if he could benefit in some way. Two intelligent men with VERY different personalities and ethical stances. I have no doubt that Kelley would forge if he thought he could get away with it.

For most of world history, it is perfectly OK to believe a lot of what you read. An exception to the rule occurs in the late 16th and early 17th centuries when a secret society found motive to create false narratives.

In other words, in the real world, Michel Nostradamus never wrote a single prophecy, William Shakespeare never wrote a single play (assuming he could write at all), and John Dee didn't speak with angels nor was he conned into allowing his wife to sleep with someone called Kelley.

These false narratives were created to protect the identity of members of that secret society as well as to maintain the secrecy of their projects, the most important of which was the publication of the VMS prophecies. It seems they believed that the long-term survival of those prophecies would ultimately result in a resounding military victory of Protestants over Catholics and thus the prophecies had to be protected at all costs. Possibly for the same reason, the VMS was encrypted.

I don't expect you to believe any of this so it seems best to await a fresh decoding of the VMS (whereupon what I said may make more sense to you) before continuing this discussion. As for Dee, I'm pretty sure he was highly educated and quite sane, and that he would have done whatever was required of him for the benefit of his queen and country.

I really don't care if Will Shakespeare is a pen name, someone brilliant wrote the Shakespeare plays, just as someone brilliant wrote Beethoven's symphonies.

Somebody with wide-ranging knowledge and a searching intellect also wrote John Dee's books and the dispersion of his personal collection of other people's books seems to follow the historical record quite well also.


These "stories" do not exist in a vacuum. There is historical evidence to support them and I doubt if someone else forged John Dee's ex libris in his handwriting in tomes from his book collection.

I also doubt that a fake Edward Kelley was put in prison in Prague because there is historical evidence from numerous people that he was there.

(03-06-2019, 06:40 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I really don't care if Will Shakespeare is a pen name, someone brilliant wrote the Shakespeare plays, just as someone brilliant wrote Beethoven's symphonies.

Somebody with wide-ranging knowledge and a searching intellect also wrote John Dee's books and the dispersion of his personal collection of other people's books seems to follow the historical record quite well also.

These "stories" do not exist in a vacuum. There is historical evidence to support them and I doubt if someone else forged John Dee's ex libris in his handwriting in tomes from his book collection.

I also doubt that a fake Edward Kelley was put in prison in Prague because there is historical evidence from numerous people that he was there.

JP, I indicated that I'd prefer not to continue the conversation at this time, but neither do I want you or others to think that I was overtly wrong in what I said. I only questioned the veracity of the story that Dee let his wife sleep with Kelley (it doesn't matter that Dee himself was the source). I did not question Kelley's existence. Dee clearly needed an alibi to explain his prolonged absence from England during a time of crisis, and his decision was simply to feign madness along with feeble-mindedness and ties to the unscrupulous Kelley.

Another person who needed an alibi to explain a prolonged absence from England during a time of crisis was William Stanley, the fourth ranking Shakespearean candidate. Wikipedia explains 1585 to 1588 as follows: "During his travels, William Stanley is said to have led an adventurous existence, being involved in duels and love affairs and travelling in disguise as a friar while in Italy. He is supposed to have also visited Egypt, where he fought and killed a tiger, then going on to Anatolia, where it is claimed he narrowly escaped being executed for insulting the prophet Mohammed; he was supposedly released because a Muslim noblewoman wanted to marry him. According to the story, he turned her down, travelling on to Moscow and then to Greenland, from where he returned to Europe in a whaling ship."

The crisis was Spain's ongoing creation of an invincible armada to invade England. Do you really believe that in such a crisis, Dee (the queen's astrologer) would want to waste years of his time having seances with evil spirits? Or that Stanley (a potential heir to the throne of England) would want to go off tiger hunting?

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (whose Inca History book heavily influenced the second prose introduction to the Nostradamus prophecies) came up with a different type of alibi. Supposedly carrying a "Letter of Peace" from Queen Elizabeth to the Spanish King in 1585, Sarmiento imagines himself captured by French protestants and tossed into a dark prison (where, naturally, he can't be seen!) for nearly four years: "...he was put under lock and key, his guards were doubled, and he was threatened with death at every moment. But God watched over him in the cruel prison, where the damp crippled him, where his hair turned grey, and he lost his teeth. For a change and alleviation they took him to a castle, and immured him in infernal darkness, deprived of all human communication, and accompanied by the music of toads and rats in the castle ditch. The place where he was thus imprisoned was so fetid that those who brought him food were unable to endure it..."

I could go on and on with this BS but by now you should be getting the idea. Dee, Stanley, and Sarmiento were three of the eight scholars who got together on a secret project called Book M., with the objective of publishing a heavily-masked French translation of the VMS prophecies.