The Voynich Ninja

Those are good parallels. Together with the stomping dude, it reminds me of the Paris Nicander: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

The main problem in interpreting the Voynich iconography is that there are no good contemporary parallels, that is, similar images that allow us to make confident statements. However, there are certain iconographic elements about which I have no doubts, such as the Rosettes page, which for me is a representation of the medieval universe.

  In previous posts I've already given some reasons why I hold this interpretation. Now I want to highlight a very important detail for this identification. It concerns the small slabs with a dot that we can see on the Rosettes, especially in the central circle.

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  These slabs most likely allude to the sphere of the fixed stars, the last sphere of the medieval universe, completely closed and studded with stars.

   The closest image to this one that I have found is in the astrology treatise attributed to Enrique de Villena, a contemporary work of the Voynich.

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  This codex contains illustrated pages with astronomical information about eclipses, the movements of the sun, moon, and planets, Earth's latitudes, etc. In the margins of these pages, one can see those dotted slabs that represent the sphere of fixed stars, which serves as a boundary for the other spheres.

I highly recommend consulting this treatise on astrology to see this detail and other very inspiring aspects of the medieval universe. It is digitized and available at the National Library of Spain.

(18-11-2025, 12:52 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The main problem in interpreting the Voynich iconography is that there are no good contemporary parallels, that is, similar images that allow us to make confident statements.

Indeed. And you know my explanation: the VMS images are chimeras, based on a core of meaningful sketches of non-European things and concepts by the Author, augmented by an European Scribe with decorative elements taken from his imagination or cribbed from other European books.  And sometimes further "enhanced" by later Restorers.

Thus, while many details have parallels in contemporary European manuscripts, the images as a whole, and their meaning, have none.

For example, on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I would say that the meaningful elements are the shapes of the root and of the leaves, which are from a plant not known in Europe (and both details apparently were misunderstood and mangled by the Scribe).  The branching pattern, the leaf stalks, the arrangement of leaves along the stems, and the flowers are all random fill by the Scribe.

Also, in the Zodiac pages I believe that the meaningful elements are only the division of the year into 24 sections of 15 degrees (rather than 12 months of 28/29/30/31 days) and the labels assigned to each degree.  And probably the approximate sync of that division with the Western months.  Maybe (but probably not) also the number of rays in the star assigned to each degree, e.g. indicating its magnitude. Everything else seems to be decoration contributed by the Scribe.

All the best, --stolfi

Jorge, I don't share your ideas about the Voynich manuscript having a non-European inspiration. It's a very European codex in terms of the images that can be interpreted, and even in those that are simply the product of the authors' imagination.

  In the previous post, as I have done in others, I have shown clear indications that the Rosettes page is a representation of the medieval universe, naturally a European representation.

(20-10-2025, 05:49 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..] There are enough Christian symbols in the Voynich to suggest that the philosophy underlying it is a Christianized Aristotelianism.

There is exact 1 clearly christian symbol (79v) and another one being the work of "the retracer", so maybe without any relation to the original manuscript.

All other things are so-called "interpretations", or better imaginations and hallucinations of Believers, without any foundation.

(18-11-2025, 04:26 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is exact 1 clearly christian symbol (79v) and another one being the work of "the retracer", so maybe without any relation to the original manuscript.

And even the cross on the NW corner of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. may not be original.  I believe that practically everything on that page (and in many others) was carefully retraced once in a "professional" restoration job (Rt1). Then later other Restorers (Rt2, Rt3), less careful and skilled, retouched here and there.

I believe that, when the first restoration was done, the whole page looked like the cheek and chin of the  nymph with the ring (which may be a later addition too).  Or worse: that face presumably was not retraced because it still looked "good enough" at the time.

I admit that I don't have good evidence on this page for that extensive first round Rt1 of restoration.  But evidence for the later rounds is obvious, in the form of thick dark strokes that do not follow the earlier lighter ones and make a mess of the nymphs' outlines.  Like the right thigh of the nymph with the cross.

The way she is (not)holding the cross is more consistent with a later addition than with an original arrangement.  I bet that the nymph was simply pointing generically into the air, like the third nymph in the top row of f80r.  (By the way, nymph #2 in that group has two armpit lines; I would guess that one is original, the other is Rt1...)

All the best, --stolfi

(13-11-2025, 08:47 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..] It is not easy to find exact parallels, but in this miniature from the 15th century we see four containers on the shelf, and two of them bear a certain resemblance to those in the Voynich.
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It can be seen that both jars [..]

And so you don‘t find an exact parallel here, just a misleading similarity.

I can put this here in:



..showing some vessels which look a bit similar, or as you say, „bear a certain resemblance“.

Fun thing about that: it is a tomb painting from a Byzantine grave in Silistra, Bulgaria from 4th century, being 1,000+ years older than the Voynich Ms., in quite a temporal distance by this, clearly not western european, barely christian, non-pharmceutical or „alchemistic“. 
But it‘s resemblance of some VMS vessels is not worse than your comparison, in some ways even better.

So were are the good parallels…?

It makes no sense to look for images that are not more or less contemporary with the Voynich, much less images a thousand years earlier.

Retracing, restoration... I honestly don't know where that comes from. There's no evidence of that. In any case, the authors may have made adjustments as they went along.

I believe that the Voynich is a work of natural philosophy, as it was called in the Middle Ages, more specifically an astrological herbal. It is not a religious work, and that is why there are few allusions to religion, Christian of course.

(18-11-2025, 08:48 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There's no evidence of [retracing].

I understand that the Retracing Theory is hard to disprove, because, when you say "I don't see any sign of retracing there", I could always reply "it is because the Restorer was very careful and skilled and retraced everything perfectly". 

But in fact there is evidence, all over the place.  Evidence that cannot be explained away as the Scribe going back over his own work.  

I understand that some people find the Retracing Theory not just unlikely but unpleasant.  Even though it would have rather limited consequences for the basic riddle.

It would basically explain away some puzzling details here and there, and actually simplify some analyses.  For instance, weirdos that occur only once or twice can be dismissed as retracing errors, even if they look deliberate (like that (P) glyph in the previous post); and then either excluded from the data, or transcribed as "?", or replaced by the most likely original glyph.

The claim would have a significant impact on attempts to interpret the images in Bio/Cosmo/Zodiac that give much importance to specific details.  Like the crowns of Zodiac, or the cross and fish of f79v. I believe that many of those attempts have been mostly a tragic waste of time, because they focused on details that (in my view) are very late additions or distortions.

And that goes in particular to the attempts to decipher f116v.  I indulged in that game myself for a while.  (My first idea, in the previous millennium, is that it was an intentionally undecipherable anagram, like those that Galileo sent to Kepler to ensure priority in his discoveries without letting them out.)  But since I saw that big stain on the ultraviolet images, not long ago, I have concluded that there is nothing (literally) to decipher there, except the "oror sheey" that barely escaped the wash-out.

My other two main theories -- that the language is "Chinese", and that the Herbal plants were partly made up by the Scribe -- would have a much bigger impact on Voynichology.  That is why I am not pushing the first one (much) until I have good evidence. But the second, I think, should be taken seriously by everybody.

All the best, --stolfi

Please explain your theory in your own thread, or create one if you don't have one. Don't use mine to do so.