The Voynich Ninja

Koen, there is a portico fresco version in Treviso that I didn't mention earlier because I was hoping to find a date but I couldn't find enough free moments to hunt down a date, so here is a link:

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My favourite interpretation of the small writing at the centre of the illustration is that it is a colour annotation. This was previously discussed You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..


With reference to other similar cases in the VMS and in other manuscripts, the relevant features are:

• the text is inside the outline of an illustration
  
• the text is much smaller than ordinary text (see comparison image below)
  
• the text is extremely short
  
• the text could be written in the Latin alphabet (this last point is uncertain)
  

[attachment=3565]

I see the text as made of two symbols, the first of which was meant to have a descender ending horizontally. The second symbol is U-shaped. On the basis of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. cere/tere and gasmich, one can think that this could be a poorly executed "gr" for "grün" / green. It could also be "gu" with the same meaning, but I am not sure this abbreviation is possible.

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An alternative could be "yu", possibly related with "jaune", but this is even more far-fetched. A while ago, someone (VViews?) posted a paper about colour annotations, listing several of them, but I cannot find it at the moment.


But the truth is that these symbols are unrecognisable.

(23-10-2019, 06:17 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But the truth is that these symbols are unrecognisable.

That is why I doubt it's a colour annotation. The other ones, like the various "rot" are easy to recognize, and any doubts we have about the reading of individual letters are the same we would have in a regular MS.

This, on the other hand, requires much more coercion. Of course, it does so with any interpretation. But the advantage of IHS is that it was often written in some distorted way, with flourishes underneath and a crossbar on top, addition or omission of connections between the various strokes. 

This is certainly not a correct rendering of any IHS form (or YHS as Bernardino preferred), but it might be an attempt, or an intentionally masked version. I know I'm deep into theorist territory now, but if there is hidden Christian symbolism in the VM then it's, well, hidden, so they couldn't write a huge Christogram across a sunburst shape.

I can't make sense of the shapes in the center and I can't tell if it leans more toward being a drawing or being text (it doesn't look like a scribble and it doesn't look reasonably clear like the color annotations).

Even in other languages (e.g., Arabic) I can't make any sense of it. Arabic has many curves, but they don't go together like that. It doesn't look like Amharic either.

Upside-down, it could be omega-something, but I've looked through a lot of Greek manuscripts and it really doesn't have much in common with Greek text other than the curve. The particular way the curvy shape is drawn isn't usually how they draw omega and the shape that follows isn't very coherent.

Right-side up, the first shape could be g or y but only if we use our brains to fill in the gaps... the bottom "stem" isn't a stem at all, it's not even attached and it comes out of the middle, not the right-hand side. The second shape doesn't match any Latin letters or symbols, they simply didn't write u/v like that in the Middle Ages (at least not that I've seen so far).


They don't look like tradesmen's marks or numbers.

It doesn't even quite look like the start of an inner drawing part, it looks slightly more like text, the way it lines up. It almost has a monogram-like quality (some of which could be quite difficult to read).

Sometimes I wonder, when I look at it, if the Roman numeral IIII was written first, and then the other shapes added. Keep in mind that the last shape in IIII sometimes had a descending tail, just as the last stroke of letters like "n" and "h" often had an extended descender (especially when the letters are in the final position). But... if that last "descender" is a tail, it curves more to the left than normal.


.
So putting the odd marks aside for a moment...

the rayed sun shape of the outline is not like any plant I know and the way it is attached to the stalk is quite unusual as well, so I'm pretty much open to investigating symbolic interpretations.


I do find it interesting that the shapes are not one-for one in terms of the dark-light pattern of the green-painted and unpainted "rays".

That's an interesting idea about the descender.

Mind that this writing is really very tiny, probably written with a magnifying glass. This would have made the otherwise normal letters somewhat awkward.

You know, I pretty much rejected the idea of Omega (it only works if you turn it upside-down), but if you turn it upside-down and put an "o" (omicron) in front of it, it's almost ὁ ὤ ν (o [font=Roboto, sans-serif]ὤ n - He Who Is).[/font]

[font=Roboto, sans-serif]This is pretty far-fetched because the "o" isn't there, but I thought I'd add it to the thread anyway since the concept is related to IHS.[/font]

(23-10-2019, 10:13 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I do find it interesting that the shapes are not one-for one in terms of the dark-light pattern of the green-painted and unpainted "rays".

That's something I noticed as well when counting the rays. The typical Bernardino star has twelve "front" rays, for a whole series of symbolical reasons. And of course, the VM flower has 13  But there's a bit of a mess on the right side... Just like the supposed "IHS" it's a bit off.

Upside-down the part on the left looks like the Leo symbol, Leo is a sun sign.

In fact, there is often a red "star" on zodiac depictions of Leo (and the VMS feline has a red splot that looks like candle wax but also somewhat resembles the red suns on a number of zodiac Leos):

[attachment=3582]

The 2 glyphs/symbols are possibly alchemical. The sideways "S" shape is used for "solution" and the "U" symbol is for purity.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (see symbols in red) 

If the "4" and "l" symbols are Voynich letters that the combination would mean Caste in Hebrew. Like the Hindu Caste society of ritual purity. Otherwise they could just be the numbers 41. I know 42 in Alchemy was for potash, not sure about 41.

There are a few other strange properties of the plant as well. On the right side of the stem and leaf, there is a double line, as if they wanted to make it look 3D. And the root top I can only see as if it represents chiseled wood, but it may be something else entirely.

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