The Voynich Ninja

On the top-right of folio 17, I see the number 17 and I see a mostly erased flower head.

I don't see a macron.

(17-08-2019, 04:11 AM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....




As you can see, the first line accurately describes the poet's flower, and observe that there's a macron in the last line. Another macron cannot be found elsewhere in that lengthy poem and, as a general rule, macrons are not normally employed in the English language.



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Sure they were. Not quite as often as Latin, but they certainly used them.

That's a printed book. Macrons were gradually dropped in printed books, which were for a wider audience. But they existed in manuscripts.

(17-08-2019, 04:54 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.On the top-right of folio 17, I see the number 17 and I see a mostly erased flower head.

I don't see a macron.

JP, I said the flower was to the right of the macron, not the other way around.

Quote:In the VMS, on the top of f17r, we find a mysterious macron and over to the right of it there is an image in the shape of a fleur de lys . . .

I think page 17 was chosen for that line of marginalia so as to allude to the Sigillum Dei on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. where one of the wheels is comprised of an alphabet of 17 glyphs repeated four times around the wheel.

(17-08-2019, 04:58 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(17-08-2019, 04:11 AM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As you can see, the first line accurately describes the poet's flower, and observe that there's a macron in the last line. Another macron cannot be found elsewhere in that lengthy poem and, as a general rule, macrons are not normally employed in the English language.

Sure they were. Not quite as often as Latin, but they certainly used them.

That's a printed book. Macrons were gradually dropped in printed books, which were for a wider audience. But they existed in manuscripts.

Sorry, JP, I was referring to modern English, not Old English. As stated, the poem in question dates to 1593.

While on the theme of macrons, I see that you never responded to my suggestion that your infamous "y" macron could be a Lamed macron. We find it in quire-number position at the bottom right-hand corner of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (the Sigillum Dei page):



I argued that Lamed was more likely than "y" based on numerical considerations, but Hebrew characters also act as letters and now I see that the Sigillum Doornenburgensis may have provided us with a clue on how to expand that single-letter macron.

To make a long story short, there could be a connection between the 72 Latin divine names of the Sigillum Dei and the 72 Hebrew divine names which are derived from three consecutive verses of Exodus each containing 72 letters. Essentially, this could mean that we may have to decode making use of three wheels of Sigillum Dei (each with the first letter of the 72 Latin names dispersed around the edge) rather than just one wheel. Thus, for example, following the directional logic of the three sets of 24 Hebrew names, we take a VMS paragraph and rap it around the first wheel in counterclockwise direction, then continue (with the remainder of the paragraph) on the second wheel in a clockwise direction, and finally, we move on to the third wheel in a counterclockwise direction.



As you can see, the rupture for four blank spaces (to bring the 68 {17 x 4} up to 72) has two starting lines within (a double bar), apparently to signal that we can begin by running the VMS glyphs around the wheel in either direction, counterclockwise or clockwise.

One can imagine, of course, that the 12 sets of 17 VMS glyphs (four per wheel) serve as the mechanism for converting the paragraph glyphs into letters of the Latin alphabet. Wishful thinking? Perhaps. We'll find out: my plans call for continued research until the end of September with decoding efforts to begin in October.

In the meantime, if I get the chance, I'll try to post a few comments on how the second macron leads to some fascinating possibilities for the history and implementation of VMS encryption.

I'm pretty sure I did respond about this letter Morten.



I believe there's about a 70% chance that it is a "g". I know it looks strange to us, but that form of "g" that was used at the time. I have examples and I have also posted some on another thread.

For this style of "g", the scribe writes a "y" with a line over the top to create a "g". It's not a "y" with a macron. The letter "y" rarely has a macron, especially if it is standing alone. You have to read a lot of manuscripts to know this.

In fact, the letter "y" wasn't even that common (many scribes didn't use it, they used "i" instead or they used a symbol to replace the "y" if it was at the end).

The English used "y" quite frequently but they didn't write it like that. They had a preference for a curved tail going in the contrary direction (this is common in Anglicana script, which is a cousin to Gothic that was popular in England).


I'm not 100% certain it is "g" but  I do think it is the most likely interpretation.

I think also that this letter is similar to a latin-g

In the following image, you can read a latin-y at the first letter of the first sentence
On the second sentence, you can read "noz subgez" ( = nos sujets in modern french. = our subjects in modern english).

The letter at the bottom of folio 57v is quite similar to the "g" of the word "subgez".

This excerpt is from Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, written in august 1441, Brussels.
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Here are the examples I posted on the other thread. Look at the letters "g" in the second row. The first one in the second row is from the VMS, the others are from a variety of manuscripts.

The ones in the first row are more common, but the ones in the second row are not uncommon. They are sometimes written with a different stroke order, but usually the "y" shape is written first and then the crossbar is added on the top. If the crossbar is not attached perfectly, it looks like a y with a macron, but it's not. We know from the context that they are the letter "g":

(17-08-2019, 02:48 PM)Paris Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think also that this letter is similar to a latin-g

In the following image, you can read a latin-y at the first letter of the first sentence
On the second sentence, you can read "noz subgez" ( = nos sujets in modern french. = our subjects in modern english).

The letter at the bottom of folio 57v is quite similar to the "g" of the word "subgez".

This excerpt is from Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, written in august 1441, Brussels.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Hi Paris. I recently became familiar with the medieval "g". In fact, not long ago I posted here two of them from the Sigillum Doornenburgensis:



They look a little different from your "g" dated 1441. Are you able to give us a better date for either of these sigil g's?

The first "g" vaguely reminds me of the letter "D" found at the bottom of the penultimate page of their German publication:



It has no horizontal bar but I guess the hyphen at the end of the line can compensate for that. Recall the we found a helpful "H" at the bottom of the penultimate page of one of their many English publications; for some strange reason, they seemed to like the bottom of penultimate pages!

Curiously, in a subsequent 17th-century edition of their German publication, they changed the "D" to a "G" on the penultimate page:



And, as expected, there is no longer any need for a hyphen at the end of the line!

But in all seriousness, Paris, please let us know if you are able to find another medieval "g" that looks like the first sigil "g". Thanks, Morten

The g is a bit regional. Sometimes it has a long upper stem, sometimes a long tail, sometimes a looped tail. It varies more than a lot of letters.

(17-08-2019, 03:12 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Here are the examples I posted on the other thread. Look at the letters "g" in the second row. The first one in the second row is from the VMS, the others are from a variety of manuscripts.

The ones in the first row are more common, but the ones in the second row are not uncommon. They are sometimes written with a different stroke order, but usually the "y" shape is written first and then the crossbar is added on the top. If the crossbar is not attached perfectly, it looks like a y with a macron, but it's not. We know from the context that they are the letter "g":

JP, I think I was mainly complaining about your "y" macron. I'm OK with the letter "g" but only because it can seen as alluding to the g's of the Sigillum Doornenburgensis. Everything they did had meaning and purpose. If you can't find meaning or purpose to any of your determinations, there can be no guarantee that you have deciphered it correctly.

I've seen the letter Lamed slanted to the left (like what we see on f57v) in right to left handwriting. I've also seen an instance where the upward shaft of Lamed was cut in half, with the top half laid out horizontally above the rest (now resembling our You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. figure), presumably to bring the height of the extra tall Lamed down to the level of the other letters. In that case, it would be a Lamed without a macron.

The letter Lamed also stands for the number 30 and that is the main reason I think it is Lamed. Note that a distance of 30 letters separates the 42-letter name from the 72-letter name. Both names were frequently referred to in medieval Hebrew literature.



In the VMS, folio 42 is marked by the singular overwrite of an image and folio 72 (flip side) is marked by a double bar (from the alphabet line) pretending to be the number 11 and this is followed by the initials of michel nostradamus. That page also has a macron, octēbre, where October happens to be the only month directly named in the VMS prophecies.

Note the 30 splits into two 15's, and that folio 42 plus 15 equals 57 (our macron folio) plus another 15 takes us to folio 72.

In conclusion, I think the figure on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is deliberately ambiguous, intending to simultaneously represent the letter "g" and a ל with macron.