The Voynich Ninja

(23-04-2026, 10:33 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Regarding the Voynich texts, Alan Turing (surely one of the most quaified persons in deciphering) was asked and it seems like he either rejected the possibility of deciphering VMS at all or rejected just the idea of him trying it. This may be a result of VMS's circumstances or only a personal disposition of Turing himself, who was known to be more than excentric.
I don't know details about Panofsky, but the classic Science completely failed yet with all tries to solve this mystery.
Panofsky gave, obviously, also just some not-satisfying answers.

But You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Turing's colleague at Bletchley Park, did take the challenge, like with Milton Friedman at the NSA; and IIUC he passed the "virus" on to Mary D'Imperio in the 1970s.

When I gave a talk on the VMS at my university, sometime in the 1990s, Bill Tutte -- another Bletchley Park "graduate" (by then a graph theorist at the U of Waterloo, CA) was visiting us and happened to be in the audience.  He corrected my spelling of Tiltman's name, blush.  (But how could someone be called "Tiltman"?  Only in Britain...)

Reminds me of this joke that my advisor told me, before my first presentation at an international conference:

  Joe was a timid and totally unremarkable man who lived a boring but perfectly 
  correct life, without a single sin or ill deed.  So, when he passed away, he went 
  straight to Heaven.  There, to his surprise and embarrassment , he was met 
  by a cheering crowd, and Saint Peter in person greeted him profusely with hugs
  and long handshakes. 
  -- Why all this? -- asked Joe -- I did not do anything remarkable or heroic...
  -- Well, you see -- explained Peter -- nowadays we get very, very few new 
  people here. So, when one arrives, we must throw a great celebration.
  -- Oh yes?
  -- Yes; and, by the way, tonight we are going to have a dinner in your honor. 
  You will be asked to give a speech, so be prepared for that.
  -- A speech? Me? But... but... I have never given a speech, and  don't even 
  know what I could say...
  -- Don't worry -- said Peter.  -- Just tell us something interesting that happened 
  to you down there.  Everybody is your friend here, they will applaud anything 
  you say.
  -- But... I can't recall a single interesting thing.  My life has been just boring
  routine...
  -- Come on, think hard.  Anything will do.
  -- Well... The most extraordinary thing I can think of is one day when I was a
  little kid there was a heavy rain, our house was flooded, and we had to climb
  onto the kitchen table.  Do you think it will do?
  -- Well... Yeah, it will do.  But I must warn you: Noah will be in the audience.
  
All the best, --stolfi

(21-04-2026, 10:22 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(21-04-2026, 07:30 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..] as you will have seen in the Voynich, the moon is depicted with feminine features. [..]

Frankly, when talking about symbolism, I cannot help but to show those symbols here, this is a quick combination of all (hardly to doubt) symbols for sun and moon, with humanized faces I remembered:



"Suns" seem to have a more feminine appearance, while "moons" look quite like guys. At best, some "suns" look at bit butch, but never clearly male. Of course, a question of interpretation, as always.

When you assign male and female symbolism to sun and moon:
why do the few known and not-argued symbols for sun and moon appear like quite the opposite?

Seems more like "la sol" and "el luno" to me (without doing too much harm to your language).

A better entrance and approach to VMS would be to regard this quite obvious "understanding" of a female sun and a male moon
and to consider those cultures which tend to make that kind of "little difference" by standard.

REASON Wilfred was a misogynist he believe woman wanted to shine like stars and dulled the men.  The MS-408 has some imagery of misogyny with sagittarius and one being tied up.

After Stolfi and ooesordy's personal outbursts and Stefan's disdain for Panofsky, I return to what should matter in this forum: the Voinich investigation.

  According to what I read on ReneZ's website, in response to a question from Friedman about what the codex was about, Panofsky replied as follows: So far as can be made out before the manuscript has been decoded, its content would comprise: first, a general cosmological philosophy explaining the medical properties of terrestrial objects, particularly plants, by celestial influences transmitted by astral radiation and those "spirits" which were frequently believed to transmit the occult powers of the stars to the earth; second, a kind of herbal describing the individual plants used for medical and, conceivably, magical purposes; third, a description of such compounds as may be produced by combining individual plants in various ways.

(24-04-2026, 03:50 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..]
Reminds me of this joke that my advisor told me, [..]

As a German, I don‘t get this one, but I have one for you,
an „Interview joke“:
Q: What do you think about when seeing the Swiss flag?“
A: „About sex!“
Q: „How‘s that?“
A: „Because I am always thinking about sex!“

I am reminded of this joke quite a lot when I read several theory owners here promoting their ideas…

"Antonio Garcia Jiménez“ Wrote:Stefan's disdain for Panofsky

I don‘t disdain Panofsky.
I doubt the relevance, depth and scientific proof of his words about VMS.

We had accepted scientists who „identified“ sunflowers out of their expertise, profound knowledge or just authority. Others came up with Andromeda nebula or such things. Wasn‘t good for them, wasn‘t good for science, and wasn‘t good for VMS research.

@Antonio Garcia Jiménez, you cite Panofsky with some words about magical plants and their combinations, but: did he ever doubtlessly identify even some few of these plants at least?
As said: I doubt him, regarding the Voynich MS.

Academics can certainly make mistakes, but when someone has dedicated many years of their life to a specific field of knowledge, that person is a reliable source. In interpreting images from the past, I have learned a great deal from people like Aby Warburg and Erwin Panofsky. The latter taught how art and images in general illuminate the ideas of any historical moment.

  Stefan, I see that your main contribution to this forum is identifying the Rosettes with a geographical map of a region, specifically Crimea. To do this, you even provide real images taken from Google Maps. I'm not going to argue about that because it's pointless. You're just as convinced of it as I am that the Rosettes are a representation of the medieval cosmos.

    I won't repeat my thoughts on Rosettes here. Anyone interested can read about them in posts 1662, 1663, and 1673.

Any student of art history (and there don't seem to be many here) is familiar with Panofsky's method of the three levels of interpretation of artistic images: pre-iconographic, iconographic and iconological. Each of them involves a deeper exploration to clarify what we see.

  Leaving aside the iconological aspect, which would be the cultural study of the period, we can apply the Panofsky method to the zodiacal section of the Voynich.The first level, pre-iconographic, would be a careful description of what we see; for example, and in a schematic way, we see women each holding a star in each of the circles of the zodiac.

   If we move on to the second level, the iconographic one, we enter fully into the field of symbols and allegories, which requires a certain knowledge on the part of the interpreter. What I do then is compare those figures with others from the same period and geographical area. And what I learn is that the human figures served to represent ideas or objects, which in this way came to life.

   A contemporary example is a well-known miniature from Christine de Pisan's La cité des dames. In that image, next to the author, Christine, I see three crowned women, each carrying an object. They are allegorical figures, and each object represents a virtue: reason, rectitude, and justice. In other words, women only serve to give life to the objects they carry and that represent virtues. It is the same iconographic procedure as the female zodiacal figures of the Voynich, who hold a star to which they give life, which signifies a representation of astral influence.