The Voynich Ninja

Koen, I was  interested in the history of the Zodiac signs and the relationship of the four-legged archers  and the two-legged archers, particularly from the mythological perspective. I believe the archers were associated with the ancient Veneti in later Scythians who were known as the horse-riding people, known for their excellent art.
The bow and arrow was also associated with ancient god Apollo. 
The Romans placed the Scythian archers in Switzerland, where I suppose they assimilated into Germans, just as the Scythians from Pannonia assimilated into the Slavs.
By the 15th century, the Scythians became a distant memory, however the question of the origin of people became very much a subject of debates and artistic depictions, to mention just the Italian depictions of Satyres. I believe the depiction of the two-legged archer in Heinrich of Laufenburg manuscript Regimen Sanitatis - 7493.pdf (wdl.org) shows clear association of Archer to Apollo (the Sun)- which is also the medieval sign for the Name of Jesus. In other words, the Archer is a assicuated with artists.
While you and Petersen were mainly focused on the artistic style, I wanted to understand why the signs were placed from heaven down to earth, and this is the explanation that I came with. As for the other signs, fish is associated with Jesus, so is own - the Lamb of God. The Capricorn in a legend from Trento is also alluding to Jesus (a mystical Jesus). The Taurus was the ancient divinity - probably because it was such a huge animal. In Slovenian, even the word for Taurus is BIK. The same word is used for BULL, and a similar Slovenia word - BUK means God and Buk. What we, Slovenians share with the people of Swabia is the ancient predecessors Taurisci (Noric people). When the true history was suppressed, the creative people had always found the way to leave some clues.

The appearance of a crossbowman in the VM is indeed interesting, since crossbows had different uses and connotations than bows (though both were used similarly while hunting). Here is a direct link to the Laufenburg page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . How do we know what the VM makers had in mind though? Did each sign hold a specific meaning, or did they just need a series of month emblems for whatever this section of the MS is?

Here you have a list of all the kings from France.
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Look at the crowns. You will see it is the fleur de lys or the cloverleaf.
And now explain to me why I don't see this distinctive feature on the VM crowns. And at the same time you have to explain to me the presence of dovetail tines.
These are only 2 small clues. But they have a key position, and many others follow.
There is no reference to Alsace or neighbouring regions.

We are interpreting art from our own prejudices and religious conditioning. If we step outside of this frame, we can see that the medieval artists were criticizing the Church in the religious images, particularly Carthusians who were very outspoken against the Canon Laws.
In the Zodiac from the Chartreuse Cathedral, the upper fish in pisces  seems dead, the same image of a dead upper fish is depicted in Laufenburg. In the VM, the fishes and the salamander are the only animals holding the stars, the image related to divine things. The Salamander was a divine animal of the Bogomils. There are legends of Salamander in the Bosnian mythology. Dante used the image as well. I suppose it has to do with its duality and its appearance in the rain. A similar costume as the VM archer could be found on the stele of the Bosnian Bogomils, which could be again a connection to Armenians and Scythians who first brought Paulicianism (the forerunner of Bogomilism and Catharism)to the Balkans.
The Zodiac signs Acquarius and Capricorn are explained as being related to Saturnus - the farthest limit, which might have an alchemical significance, since they are missing in the VM.

I also believe that the reason why Taurus and Ram are divided has a lot to do with the medieval religious/political division.

No, I'm sorry.
First I have to process what I see in the VM manuscript and where I can also assign it.
As you yourself write, "We are interpreting art". There are not so many religious symbols in the VM that can be interpreted so easily. And I also find them in other books, all over Europe.
This is probably due to the fact that in the Council of Rome around 400, many things were determined as to what and how something should be designated.

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Basically, I agree with you about the Duchy of Carniola. Here are the references. I wouldn't go too far north now. Here the use of the battlements ends and the spread of some plants becomes thin. For example, castor bean, to name just one. This is another reason why I don't look further north of the Alps.
There are exceptions. Classic growing areas along the Rhine and Moselle are usually a bit warmer.
I have not researched what the climate is like near Prague, for example.

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(27-08-2021, 05:53 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Basically, I agree with you about the Duchy of Carniola. Here are the references. I wouldn't go too far north now. Here the use of the battlements ends and the spread of some plants becomes thin. For example, castor bean, to name just one. This is another reason why I don't look further north of the Alps.
There are exceptions. Classic growing areas along the Rhine and Moselle are usually a bit warmer.
I have not researched what the climate is like near Prague, for example.

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I did not say the VM was written in Alsace. According to my theory, the  VM was written in the Duchy of Carniola (present day Slovenia) by a Carthusian mystic from Strasbourg, who spent over 40 years as prior of Slovenian monasteries Jurklošter and Pleterje. As such, he had connection to various monasteries and intellectuals of his time, and he probably also kept connection with his family back in Strasbourg. I believe the text on the flower pages has more to do with the poetry than with the description of the plants.

(27-08-2021, 04:15 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The appearance of a crossbowman in the VM is indeed interesting, since crossbows had different uses and connotations than bows (though both were used similarly while hunting). Here is a direct link to the Laufenburg page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . How do we know what the VM makers had in mind though? Did each sign hold a specific meaning, or did they just need a series of month emblems for whatever this section of the MS is?

 I believe the Zodiac signs in the Laufenburg manuscript are very revealing how the Zodicac signs were used in the alchemical medieval writing. I wish my German was better to understand the writing. According to the description on Wikipedia, the book deals with astrology and astronomy, yet the pictures seem to indicate the progress of civilization and the cultivation of the growing tree of knowledge of Good and Evil.

(27-08-2021, 02:06 AM)cvetkakocj@rogers.com Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Koen, thank you for this favour. 
Although EVA was not perfect, I was able to recognize enough words to convince me that the language of the VM was medieval Slovenian, which was much different than Slovenian language today. 

I don't see how you can be certain without a translation of a decent chunk of text to back up your theory.  All I see on the site are "translations" of individual words or at most a couple.  It is incredibly common to spot resemblances between Voynich words on the individual level words in a language - especially when you make tweaks to enhance that resemblance - and then get excited about it.  This site is littered with examples.  Check out the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. theory, and there's at least three separate theories by Geoffrey on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and most recently You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..  And those are only some very recent ones.  

All these different theories encompass different languages from different families, assigning different letters to the Voynich characters.  But they all have something in common:  the person with the theory rapidly becomes "convinced" it is true on the basis of isolated words.  They believe it can't possibly be a coincidence.  But any subsequent "translations" of full sentences result in a nonsensical word salad, or the translation is never done at all because it proves to be too hard.

If you want to distinguish your theory from those, you need to:

1. Work towards "translations" of full paragraphs, if not pages, ideally spread out across the different sections of the manuscript.  The aim would be to show that the text makes sense in context:  both in relation to the content in nearby paragraphs but also in relation to any imagery.  This should also provide you with evidence that the changes you make in order to find a Slovenian equivalent are part of a pattern, consistent with grammar and phonology.
   
2. Explain how your theory deals with the unusual behaviour of Voynichese.  You've put a lot of work into that site but I haven't found anything that covers this.  It looks like another simple substitution theory to me.  How does your theory explain how some letters are almost always found at the end of a line; how some are only word-initial; why most paragraphs begin with only one or two letters; why certain letters or pairings dominate line-initials and others are massively underrepresented at the start of a line or even virtually non-existent?  How does it explain why some initials seem "attracted" to following certain finals, or why there are long sequences of similar words?  How does it explain the Currier/scribal differences?  It's not enough to ascribe the latter to inflection in abstract terms. 
   
3. Be sceptical of yourself and your findings.  Avoid You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.   Being convinced from so early on sets you up for massive confirmation bias.  This has happened to every "Voynichese is Language X" theory that I can remember and has been fatal for it.  Actively force yourself to think of reasons why each conclusion could be wrong. 
   

@tavie - All good points. And as others have said; a solution needs to be reproducible and it needs to make sense.

Reproducibility is not the problem. The problem is in the basis for the solution. Does the basis for the solution derive from  a reading of some version of an EVA 'transcription'? *Reading* EVA into some form of linguistic output is apparently not too difficult for certain persons. It's fairly easy to start dealing with 'pronunciations'. The problem lies in considering the EVA to be a transcription in the first place. More properly it could be called a transposition. EVA is a system for the transposition of VMs glyphs to a 'QWERTY' keyboard. This was done on the basis of shape, to aid memory, as I understand it, and without any prior knowledge of any other potential alphabetic, phonetic, or numerical states of correspondence to the particular keyboard letters selected. Therefore, *reading* EVA is problematic and that seems to be the case in various recent and not so recently proposed linguistic interpretations /solutions.