Quote: If the VMS is inherently deceptive about the nature of the text, either because it is strongly coded or encrypted (an anachronism in the 15th century), or because it represents something else than language, then everything else prima facie about the VMS (an otherwise unremarkable herbal/astrological/medicinal manuscript) is probably nothing but deception and misdirection too.
I don't see how that would follow from the fact that the text is not a plain text. Imagine you are a learned person of 15th century, and your income in a competitive market relies upon your knowledge, and upon your knowledge not being disclosed to others. (Pretty same thing as it is still today, only that there was no file encryption back then.) Some pieces of information can be represented in text, some pieces you have to put in graphical form. The text you can protect (through some secret encoding procedure, or through using your own synthetical language), the images you cannot.
What though there are hints about the subject? Everybody knows that you are a medical man and an astrologer. You won't hide that, and you will not, because that's what brings you money. What you'd like to hide are exact pieces of knowledge, so that if your fellow astrologer crushes your skull and steals your book, he is not able to make use of it. You generally won't care about researchers half a millennium since, and (to be honest) even those cannot boast much success up to date
(05-04-2019, 12:37 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What though there are hints about the subject? Everybody knows that you are a medical man and an astrologer. You won't hide that, and you will not, because that's what brings you money. What you'd like to hide are exact pieces of knowledge, so that if your fellow astrologer crushes your skull and steals your book, he is not able to make use of it. You generally won't care about researchers half a millennium since, and (to be honest) even those cannot boast much success up to date
It is better not to have anyone steal your precious book (and crush your skull) because you were careful enough to make it look worthless. A low-quality "ugly duckling" with no recognizable value in its drawings, circles and text to a learned man of the 15th century who would value tradition and ancient knowledge, not originality. Astrology was highly codified, not something that could be done seriously with fake star maps, silly-looking naked women in barrels and tubes. The text is also designed to look silly, with its many repetitions and almost-repetitions.
Well I think we have not enough data yet to judge whether the diagrams look worthy or worthless from the perspective of a 15th century learned man (or some charlatan perhaps).
Also there are definitely no reasons to state that the text was designed to look "silly". In those years people had no idea of statistics, entropy, noone would have calculated how many paragraphs start with gallows and bother about whether otol and odaiin are both mentioned in the first page or not. It is almost impossible that anyone in 15th century would have carefully modelled the "silly" look of the text with all its observed characteristics. Say, it was some process which, by its inherent properties, made the text look as it is - or it was a synthetic language that looks "silly" by unpretentiousness of the design, but not by the latter's intention to make it look "silly".
What vaguely glides on the surface is that as many textual designations of the imagery as possible have been avoided, but it is still unclear whether it is an additional layer of secrecy or it is a limitation of the script which does not allow to express many notions.
(05-04-2019, 02:53 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Also there are definitely no reasons to state that the text was designed to look "silly". In those years people had no idea of statistics, entropy, noone would have calculated how many paragraphs start with gallows and bother about whether otol and odaiin are both mentioned in the first page or not. It is almost impossible that anyone in 15th century would have carefully modelled the "silly" look of the text with all its observed characteristics. Say, it was some process which, by its inherent properties, made the text look as it is - or it was a synthetic language that looks "silly" by unpretentiousness of the design, but not by the latter's intention to make it look "silly".
No statistics are needed to notice autocopy reaching the level of glossolalia in Q13 and Q20 with such wonderful phrases as
qokeedy qokeedy qokedy qokedy qokeedy and almost all the large reoccurring strings. Since this is much more visible on some page than on others it seems that it is not a necessary feature of the system, leading to my supposition that it is intentional. I don't know of course. Maybe the cleartext is less varied for some reason on some pages (for example if they contain many roman numerals or whatever) forcing a less varied ciphertext.
Mind that this (pseudo)-glossolaliac (have I just invented a new word?) appearance is just due to our own inherent perception of "what I see is what I read". That's subjective. In fact, if "qokeedy" is just one character distant from "qokedy", that does not preclude them two from having totally different meaning, and (in the case of a synthetic language or cipher) totally different "etymology". Strict reduplication would be more problematic, but some years ago I opened a thread about that and provided several real world examples where you can find reduplication even four times in a row (the VMS is limited to three, as far as I remember). This even shuffling let alone, and we should have in mind the possibility of shuffling of course.
But I'm afraid we're wondering a bit offtopic from the subject set forth by
rasiratros 
.
Getting back to the Collection of alchemical, technical, medical, magic and divinatory tracts posted by Paris, the magic characters remind me of some of the Liber de quindecim stellis which describes the virtues of fifteen stars, stones, herbs and magic characters. I've seen these characters in the book Magic in medieval manuscripts by Sophie Page. One of them is very similar to one of the Voynich, the extended Eva-t.
Liber de quindecim stellis shows how to make natural talismans incorporating the combined powers of a star, stone, herb and character. According to Sophie Page it was natural magic and that's why several copies of the manuscript survived the ecclesiastical censorship.
There is another coincidence with the VMS. The virtues of natural talismans are greater when the Moon is in conjunction with the constellation of the Pleiades.
(05-04-2019, 08:42 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Getting back to the Collection of alchemical, technical, medical, magic and divinatory tracts posted by Paris, the magic characters remind me of some of the Liber de quindecim stellis which describes the virtues of fifteen stars, stones, herbs and magic characters.
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Which magic characters do you mean and in which manuscript? There are several works from "Liber de quindecim stellis". I only know this one but that's probably not the one you mean:
Universität Kassel, Lateinische alchemische Traktate..., first half 16th century, 4° Ms. chem. 66, You are not allowed to view links.
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It looks like this page in
Collection of alchemical, technical, medical, magic and divinatory tracts is from a translation of the Picatrix.
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attachment=2767]
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Keen observation Nablator !
(05-04-2019, 08:42 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Getting back to the Collection of alchemical, technical, medical, magic and divinatory tracts posted by Paris, the magic characters remind me of some of the Liber de quindecim stellis which describes the virtues of fifteen stars, stones, herbs and magic characters. I've seen these characters in the book Magic in medieval manuscripts by Sophie Page. One of them is very similar to one of the Voynich, the extended Eva-t.
The one that looks like EVA-t has a very old history. In the Middle East, in areas where talismanic incantations were very common, it was one of the characters used for divination and to repel devils.
I think the resemblance to EVA-t might be coincidental, however. The talismanic signs all were basically constructed of lines with small loops at the end and were drawn this way to represent angelic influence, in books of magic and kabbalah that came into the west.