The Voynich Ninja

I was expecting some skepticism about the d glyph being interpreted as "a" for an a.e.i.o.u sequence. It doesn't quite look like an "a", but I think it's reasonable to consider the possibility because the double-story "a" was still in use at the beginning of the 15th century (although less and less as the century wore on). And, historically, the letter "a" was sometimes written in variously looped ways.

This does not mean it's the letter "a" (I'm only suggesting it might represent shape "a" for an a.e.i.o.u sequence).


Another thing to note is that in the VMS, the d shape is not homogenous. There are hundreds of instances in which it has a straight back (in my mind, I call it "straight d" as per an EVA-d variant). Sometimes it doesn't look like a d at all, it looks like a very common Gothic ligature (the c + l ligature) used in words like "clar". I've posted at least one example in another thread.


Here are examples of straight-d, round- and straight-d in the same token, and some that resemble a cl ligature:




Some things to note...

• Most of the straight-d glyphs are in Currier B. Every scribe (as per Lisa Fagin-Davis) uses it.
  
• There are places where both rounded-d and straight-d are in the same token. When this happens, it is usually the straight-d that is second (but not always).
  
• It is rare to find straight-d twice in the same token but I've included two examples here.
  
• There is also a reverse-d (this is a separate j char in the EVA font) with the straight leg on the left side (two examples included).
  

You can see in the ddl example on the far right that EVA-d and straight-d can be adjacent.

How much of this is hand variation and how much is character variation? I don't know. The VMS is so homogenous overall, that they show up in many of the same tokens in the same position. Does this mean it's essentially the same char written differently? Or are they to be interpreted as different characters? If this were a western language, they would usually be something different. But it's the VMS. We don't know what the chars mean.

(16-12-2020, 12:18 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
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I've been reading a bit about the origin of AEIOU and I must say the possible explanations, even those offered by Frederick's contemporaries, feel like backronyms. ..

That's how they feel to me too.

But... if the king had heard the a.e.i.o.u. song, which was apparently popular at the time, maybe he adapted it as his own.

This thread could use a handy link to a full digital scan of HRE Frederich III's notebook, full of doodlings and experimentations with AEIOU, at the National Library of Austria. Shelf mark: Codex 2674
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Here are two sheets on Wikipedia:

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The inspiration for the AEIOU might be related to two other vowel-only "pseudo-words" that were in use during the middle ages, and especially found in psalters, service books and other repositories of religious music.
The first is EUOUAE, which abbreviates "saeculorum Amen".
The other is AEUIA, for, you guessed it, Alleluia.

Both are frequently found in medieval music scores.
I mentioned earlier how the dots above the posited Voynich AEIOU might evoke the rhythmic nature of the vowels, but actually they might be an allusion to neumes: musical notation.

See this detail from Morgan MS 1153. Fol. 030r, c.1320 France

Or this one from Philadelphia library mcai420011, c. 1390 Germany:

Or this one from BNF Latin 780, 11thC, France.


According to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. the practice continued into 20th century english music, with OIOUEA for "World without end. Amen"

Another vowel-only pseudo word is AOI, found in many "laisses" in the Chanson de Roland.
Variants such as AE, AEI, AEO, can also be found at the end of courtly love poems.
The exact meaning of AOI and its relatives is debated, but according to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. overview paper on the subject, it was most likely a musical reference like the others discussed above (although the author attributes a byzantine origin to the AOI and its derivatives, he still sees it as music-related).
Bodleian MS Digby 23, f 5v, England, 12thC:

VViews, I'm fascinated by this:

"The other is AEUIA, for, you guessed it, Alleluia."


All consonants removed and yet, if you know the context (even without specifics) you can guess what it is.

Usually with ciphers, one of the first things you look for is whether it has abjadic qualities. Completely understandable because there are natural languages written as abjads (there's a historical precedent for it).

But consonants are less likely to be removed. And yet, if you were to pick languages that are mostly vowels (compared to other languages), they would be ones like Hawaiian and Occitan/Catalan, very round sonorous languages. When I see historic Occitan/Catalan next to Old French, one of the things I can't help noticing is that consonants in common words are frequently dropped.

I know someone who comes from a rural region where they speak a dialect where consonants are dropped. People in bigger cities nearby turn their noses up at this for being "provincial" but the dialect is completely understandable and considered perfectly legitimate by the people who speak it.


And, further, when there are computational attacks on the VMS (from a linguistic point of view), Hawaiian is often mentioned.

So these vowel sequences are well-known in the musical world. You know, I always wondered why the VMS, which covers so many topics, was so completely bereft of musical references. In medieval manuscripts, the margins are often filled with musical references.


So this one, that VViews mentioned "Saeculorum Amen" is found at the ends of phrases as a melodic ending, and is written as e u o u a e (and they know what it means). Sometimes they shorten it all the way down to e ... e.

It reminds me of Agios, Agios, Agios which is a phrase used in prayer and song that is often written A A A.

I think I've finally got that link proper, JKP. I clearly don't make my living tinkering with webpages. 

I'm currently working on a project trying to put the Herbal B pages back in their original order, and part of this has involved looking at a lot of Herbal A pages that are mixed in with Herbal B pages in Quires 5~9. What has caught my attention are all the varieties of EVA=[p] (and to a lesser extent, EVA=[f]) embellished with dots and extra loops in many of the Herbal A pages. The embellishment of any loop with a dot only strengthens the already striking similarity to the "sling" surrounding Frederick III's AEIOU, which in his notebook has an almost identical looking dotted loop.

Just like I'm playing around with rearrangements of the Herbal B pages looking for a clear progression or theme, I wonder if all the Herbal A pages containing dotted loops can be rearranged to form a clear progression of some sort. For example, might f42r, with one dotted loop in a paragraph-initial EVA=[p], come right before a page containing two dotted loops? This is all speculation, and might not amount to anything, but I feel as though by trying to put the pages back in their original order, inter-folio patterns may become clearer. This is at least a step in the direction of the manuscript, or at least one section of it, coming into view as a coherent whole, with any references or connections to outside works that might exist (like Frederich III's AEIOU) easier to establish. I could really dream big and hope that this process could point us in the direction of a cipher key, but I've already speculated enough.

My wife is very much into Law of Attraction and similar "new agey" schools of inner transformation, all of which have their roots in Hermeticism and the Western Alchemical tradition, by way of New Thought and Transcendentalism. When I told her about HRE Frederick III's unexplained use of AEIOU as a sort of motto to mark all of his personal affects, along with the proposed meaning of All of the world is under Austria's rule, her immediate response was, "Oh, so it was his mantra. His sigil. A manifestation tool he came up with." And this is basically what I think as well. In fact, my next dive down this rabbit hole will probably be to Google-translate transcripts of Frederick III's earliest travel diaries, and to look for early occult, alchemical, or possibly even Kabbalah-related works linking the five vowels of the Roman alphabet to other important sets of five, like the five classical elements, or the five points of the pentagram. (Funny how "pentagram" also means "string of five symbols" in computational linguistics nowadays.)

AEIOU, and Frederick III's use of it, is an interesting mystery in its own right, regardless of any connection to the VMs.

If I remember correctly, Disney's version of Alice in Wonderland includes the Hookah-Smoking Caterpillar repeatedly saying, and blowing as smoke clouds, the letters AEIOU, right before Alice encounters him. I reckon this is not only a reference to Frederick III's well-known mystery, but also the appearance of the string AEIOU in hornbooks, abecederia, and other didactic models for teaching children penmanship. After all, the main point of Alice in Wonderland is how abstract and confusing the highest levels education and the deepest levels of knowledge can get.

There is a chart here with examples of dropped characters in Occitan, Catalan, and Friulian:

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