The Voynich Ninja

The Voynich Manuscript consists of normal language used in Slovenia in the 15th century. The examples could be found on my web page Voynich Slovenian Mystery in the long article on the VM grammar. Since then, I have discovered another manuscript with minims shaped with upward flourishes.
The VM is not written in code, but in the language the Stična Codex from 1428-1440, but by a foreign monk from Strassburg.

I guess it's your work and link.
It's best to open a new trade where you can talk about it.
Some of it would overlap with my work.

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(25-08-2021, 05:22 AM)cvetkakocj@rogers.com Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The Voynich Manuscript consists of normal language used in Slovenia in the 15th century. The examples could be found on my web page Voynich Slovenian Mystery in the long article on the VM grammar. Since then, I have discovered another manuscript with minims shaped with upward flourishes.
The VM is not written in code, but in the language the Stična Codex from 1428-1440, but by a foreign monk from Strassburg.

I think this deserves it's own thread so we can "have it all in one place".

Your hypothesis share some similarities to mine, but you are mentioning the Slovenia alone as the possible place of the origin. Why did you excluded other Slavic countries from your hypothesis?

Here is a map showing a distribution of Slavic tribes in the 7th to 9th century. 
I think the origin of the MS is not to be pinpointed to the exact place yet, because the dialects of Slavic tribes then were very similar with each other (if not the same) and could potentially bring your whole research to a blind spot and a lot of theories have fallen into the void this way.

Thank you for your response. I should open a new tread, but I don't know how. I apologize for intruding, I just wanted to explore the Slavic theories. Yes, there is a lot of similarity with the Czeck language. I just examined the Golden Legend in Czeck from that same period and the language is slightly different, but close enough for me to understand. The language is closer to Stična codex which was written by a Czeck monk in Slovenia. Also, in that particular time, the Catholics prevailed in Czeck kingdom and the Hussites were persecuted. Many found refuge in Slovenia which was relatively liberal under the Patriarchate of Aquileia.

(25-08-2021, 05:22 AM)cvetkakocj@rogers.com Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The examples could be found on my web page

I read this clearly written work with interest. I like the explanation for the creation of the gallows characters.

The background research stands on its own and "adds grist to our mill" ,to be sure.

Please do create a new thread for discussion of this! (Go to front page, scroll down and click on "Analysis of the text", click "Create thread" button near top right!) Or maybe a kind editor will split the thread for you.

I split the off topic posts into a new thread. Cvetka, you can post everything about your theory here.

Koen, thank you for this favour. 
I would like to assure everybody that my theory about VM language is not based on my nationalistic feelings, or on my wishful thinking. It also does not mean that I regard myself smarter than other VM researchers, who had enough faith in the manuscript to study it and promoted it, hoping that somebody would recognize the language.  I was just lucky that EVA script appeared on my computer four years ago. 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. 
Slovenian language is one of the most archaic language (which is why so many theories are proposing ancient languages). It defies the Google translation and because of many prefixes and suffixes, the number of words that would be spelled exactly the same as in the VM would not be found in the medieval dictionaries. 


For the past four years, I have been working on the VM from various perspectives, organizing my notes. Alenka Čuš, a professional Slovenian linguist, is helping me introducing my theory on my web page.

It is not my intention to translate the VM, because even if I could, such work would require more people to collaborate. And there is also a question how to present it to the members of the Voynich Community who are not familiar with Slavic language.  On my blog, I introduced comparison with Slovenian and VM grammar which could be helpful to those who are researching Voynich prefixes, suffixes and line position. I also compared the VM with various 15th century documents from Slovenia in Latin, German and Slovenian. A lot more material has been digitalized, which enables me better comparison with the script and vocabulary.

I had explored other Slavic languages, particularly Czeck and Croatian, because the dialect used in the VM contains the elements of both, but the Vocabulary and visual images are reflecting the religious and mystical images of the Alsace culture from where the foreign author came from.

What kind of religious images, and why do you think of Alsace?

Slovenians had a historical connection to Alsace that goes all the way back to the spread of Paulicians in the 7thcentury and  the Bogomils in the 10th century, who became known in Italy as Patareni, in France as Cathars and Albigensians. These 'heretical' religious movements also had influenced the medieval intellectuals who used symbolic art to criticize the official Roman Church. They were also prone to the  mystical brand of religion which explained the biblical writing as symbolic. Waldensians and Hussites in the 15th century had origin in the Bogomils.
In politics, historical connection goes back to Welfs, Sponheims and Habsburgs who ruled Carinthia ever since Slovenians lost their independence in the 8th century. Habsburg's Rudolf IV established the Duchy of Carniola (present day Slovenia). 
My main reason for the Alsace connection is the author of the VM, who I believe was Nicholas Kempf from Strasburg. 
It has been pointed out by many VM researchers that the author of the VM came from Southern Germany or Alsace, and that he was a mystic. When I recognized Slovenian words, I began to look for the mystic in Slovenian territory and the only one I could find in that period in Slovenia was a Carthusian monk Nicholas Kempf. He wrote his Mystical Theology most likely in the Charterhouse Pleterje in Slovenia. He was a prior of two Carthusian monasteries in Slovenia for over 40 years.

It has also been pointed out by some VM researchers, particularly by Koen G., that the VM contains subtle religious images. The use of flowers and water in religious imagery goes all the way to the Old Testament, and even to the older religions. The author of the VM used the floral imagery, which was very popular in the Middle Ages. The flowers were most suitable to explain mystical religious experience, because the germination of flowers was as mysterious as the propagation of words. In Slovenian language, the poems were compared to flowers.
Petersen traced the Archer image in the VM to Alsace. I found some more images of Zodiac signs in the book of Henrich of Laufenberg written in Swabian dialect of German.

I also have to point out that the medieval artists had different understanding of religion than the Roman Church was teaching. They were focused on the mystical transformative power of the words, particularly if they are spoken in the language that people can understand.

The origin of the Zodiac figures is very complex, and there are at least two stages to be considered.

One, the particularities of certain VM figures are first noted in (Northern) France around the 13th century. There is a lot of evidence for this, and it has been pointed out by various researchers including Diane, JKP and myself. The latest addition was when (forum member) Paris noticed how the Gemini's elusive "crossed arms" pose occurs in stained-glass windows of the Notre Dame in (the city of) Paris. See You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and consecutive posts. 

See You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. from my "lobster period" for another example.

What these French examples have in common is that they share unique properties with the VM figures, but are stylistically different since they were made about 200 years before the VM. If the VM figures were taken from a source, this source was most definitely from the early 15th century.

I then noticed that more up to date versions of these figures appeared in the works of Haguenau manuscript mass-producer Diebold Lauber and the anonymous "workshop of 1418" that preceded him. The Haguenau shop churned out a ton of illuminated manuscripts, and it is clear that they had certain methods to facilitate this pre-printing-press volume of mass production. They copied a lot from a number of examples they possessed, so the same figure in the same pose may occur in various different manuscripts. They used a relatively simple style and limited color palette, so if you see a Haguenau manuscript, you recognize it right away. Lauber inherited much of his material and methodology from the "1418" workshop that already existed in Haguenau. What almost certainly happened, in my opinion, is that Lauber or his predecessor obtained French zodiac figures, whether in Zodiac or calendar form. 

But this is where things get complicated: Lauber was active in the mid-15th century, and his figures wear period-appropriate clothing. But the VM figures wear very specific clothing appropriate for the period 1400-1430. So its source, whatever that may have been, precedes Lauber. There is a certain connection between the French material and Lauber, but we don't know the exact path it took and we don't know whether the VM obtained the material through Alsace. I have in the past looked over every Lauber and "Werkstatt von 1418" manuscript I could find, but have not gotten much wiser.

Here you can read more about my search for Gemini images: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Now, given the similarities in style between the VM Zodiac figures and Haguenau illustrations in general, there is certainly a good possibility that the VM figures were based on a now lost work from the "Werkstatt von 1418".