The Voynich Ninja

It's the pangolin of pareidolia! Or is it the fox of faux interpretations? Or the armadillo of ambiguity? Ambiguity and pareidolia go well together. The artist has seen well to that. The innate lack of artistic skill played well into an appearance of certain deficiencies which serve as a sort of mask for VMs connections to various aspects of medieval history and other relevant information.

It is a trait of VMs artistry that warrants further recognition. There is intentional ambiguity. And ambiguity is trickery. The oxymoron cosmos has a code shift at its core. White Aries holds a clear duality, the recognition of which establishes an important historical grounding.

The VMs critter is a three-part puzzle. Fiddling about with the one part won't go anywhere. It's an 'even if you're right, you can't prove it' situation. It takes *all three parts* to solve the puzzle.

The nebuly line is not a perfect indicator. Much better than a dolphin - but it is the combination of the critter and the nebuly line, plus the droplets in sequence which mirrors the structure of the historical example. It is necessary to recognize the historical use of the nebuly line based on heraldry to include the celestial implications. With all three parts, the puzzle has only one solution.

Some of the better examples of a plain nebuly line being used as a cosmic boundary are in Morgan M.133. This is the Berry Apocalypse. The primary example of the Cosmic Comparison [BNF Fr. 565] was also part of the Berry library.

One can only imagine how the VMs cosmos was constructed. Borrowing various parts, retaining the essential structure but intentionally creating a maximum visual difference. Counting the undulations.

(19-11-2025, 06:49 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Unfortunately, there are many options for scaled creatures. I wrote about this in 2019: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. If the thing actually has (reversed) scales (and not scallop-patterned wool or fur), then arguing about the exact species depicted is pointless, as Lisa said in the other thread.

I think it is safe to assume it is scales, not wool.  Bad as the VMS art is, I cannot imagine how a sheep or any other species common in Europe could have mutated into that thing.

If the animal was cribbed from an European book, it could be a dragon, griffin, or the other fictional animals you mention, like the kylion and karabo (hmmm, ... but wait, could those be echos of the pangolin, too?)

But if the animal was copied by the Scribe from a sketch provided by the Author, there is the possibility that it was a real animal.With scales, by the same argument above.   And then a pangolin seems to be the most likely option. 

The Author need not have seen the beast himself; he could have copied it some non-European book, painting, pottery, carving, etc.

The direction of the scales and other differences are details that the Author and/or Scribe could have got wrong.  By comparing the Herbal plants with their "ghosts" in Pharma we get an idea of how (un)reliable the process was for that kind of detail.

All the best, --stolfi

(19-11-2025, 05:14 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If we have people arguing that the same image may be of an armadillo, a pangolin, a dragon or a ram, then what should our conclusion be?

The answer to this Socratic question is not: 
"Well obviously our conclusion should be that all those other guys are wrong, because they are ignoring different parts of the image than the ones I'm ignoring!"

I was rather expecting something along the lines of: if people see an armadillo, a pangolin, a dragon, a ram or even a fox, then clearly the drawing is not an accurate representation of a living creature, and we cannot deduce which species was intended by comparing the critter to living creatures. If a natural species was intended to begin with. 

R. Sale does have a point about the surroundings. But here, again, you can be picky. 

I see an image of a young, nude woman with long hair. In her hand, she extends a round, red object. Above her head is positioned a curving scaled creature, bending its head towards the woman.

What did I just describe for an average medieval European audience? 
Hint: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

"But it doesn't look like a serpent!" That's because it hasn't lost its legs yet. How is it supposed to look like a snake before it gets transformed as a punishment?

Do I think this is the solution? No. It ignores too much for that, and I have no theory that would prefer it to be this over anything else. I frankly don't know what it's supposed to be, but I see the scene echo one that was engraved in medieval brains. Whatever it is, it must be a magical creature because to people with New World theories it's an armadillo and to people with Asian theories it's a pangolin...

R. Sale: you'll see a cloudband too in the page I linked, though the composition isn't quite there

Edit: cross-posted with Stolfi - we seem to be in agreement that the drawing is not too reliable

(19-11-2025, 05:59 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Fortunately we can exclude the armadillo because of the C14 date. (Unless one assumes a modern forgery, which I don't).  

Well, one need not assume a forgery nor a modern one. It would only require that the drawing was made later than assumed -- sometime in the mid-16th century or later (barring any doubly extreme scenarios like earlier explorers reaching the Americas, etc.).

(19-11-2025, 06:02 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Conclusion: While the presence of the nebuly line is integral to the interpretation of the illustration, the failure to recognize its existence and the inability to use the correct terminology throw open the doors to misguided explanations.

Assuming it is a "nebuly line" can throw open the doors to misguided explanations as well.  As drawn, it appears far more likely to be a pillow.

(19-11-2025, 09:54 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.clearly the drawing is not an accurate representation of a living creature, and we cannot deduce which species was intended by comparing the critter to living creatures.

Indeed.  As you say, to get a match one must choose which details are to be trusted and which are to be ignored as errors.

But that applies to every image in the VMS.

So I understand why some people just hate the Retracing Theory, and the Herbal Plants Are Some Bits Copied From A Sketch From The Author With The Rest Made Up By The Scribe Theory.   Because they greatly increase the uncertainty about which details can be wrong, and how big the errors may be.  The latter, in particular, pretty much makes all plant matching efforts futile.

Take f9v, for example.  I am convinced that this plant is one of two or three that can be identified with certainty -- as the pansy, Viola tricolor.  Not just for the shape of the flowers (which, however, are upside down -- put that into my "ignore this" bag) but mainly because of the way the shape of the leaves changes from bottom to top.  I believe this match is more certain than Centaurea for f2r, or any other proposal I have seen.  

But do I think that the text is about Viola tricolor? No.  I suspect that the only part of this figure that was based on the Author's draft is the root, that is totally unremarkable and hence unidentifiable.  I bet that the Scribe filled everything else either from a real pansy plant that he plucked from his garden, or from some Herbal that happened to depict that plant true to nature.  The Scribe, and quite probably the Author too, had no idea of what the rest of the fochor oporody plant actually looked like...

All the best, --stolfi

(19-11-2025, 10:29 PM)asteckley Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Assuming it is a "nebuly line" can throw open the doors to misguided explanations as well.  As drawn, it appears far more likely to be a pillow.

The Armapillow


.. sorry R.Sale has encouraged me with previous post

(19-11-2025, 10:25 PM)asteckley Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, one need not assume a forgery nor a modern one. It would only require that the drawing was made later than assumed -- sometime in the mid-16th century or later

You are right, we cannot assume that the critter was drawn by the original Scribe.

I doubt that the later Retracers would have drawn the whole animal from nothing. And an armadillo, to boot.  A crown maybe, a robot tentacle, maybe, ... but a whole animal?

However it is possible that there was something there that they thought looked like an armadillo.  Or what they though that an armadillo looked like.  Or a pangolin...  And they "restored" it as such.

All the best, --stolfi

An armadillo on a pillow. Guess it depends on one's experience with pillows. I try to see things from a perspective congruent with the C-14 dating. Nebuly lines are either heraldic (Wolkenstein) or they are used as cosmic boundaries and other msc.

If one were to designate the line pattern as serpentine, meandering, or undulating, the etymology of the term would shade the interpretation of the illustration. It's an armadillo stomping the juice out of snakes.

Correct terminology <heraldic terminology of the era> is the key. The artistic elements are unknown, until they can be named correctly.

(19-11-2025, 09:50 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think it is safe to assume it is scales, not wool.  Bad as the VMS art is, I cannot imagine how a sheep or any other species common in Europe could have mutated into that thing.

I agree they are scales. However the animal need not actually have scales in reality if it is actually something else denoted by the scales.

In maps, we have scales, even those resembling pangolin scales in the Catalan atlas. But they generally represent rocks, or mountains.

  

Some of these even resemble some graphics in the vms, on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for instance. I think those are mountains too.
Let's go back even further and show that we had scaly rocks in the shape of the Alps in the 1320s on some maps. It is the C shape in the lower section.



Now, let's say you wanted to denote this as an animal, perhaps to to obfuscate but at the same time to confirm if one knows the reference. Perhaps Capra ibex, endemic to the Alps, historically shown jumping onto their heads from mountains. 

 

We even have some with scaly mountains and one in the same position as the vms, which happens to match the Alps themselves somewhat.



Now you have an actually wooly mammal, meant to imply the region in which it resides, with the scales which also give a hint regarding said region being rocky, along with the shape of the pose. I have more to say on it but will leave it at that for now, but will end with this thought: What is the rest of the page about if it is a pangolin or an armadillo? The hunt? Doesn't seem like it, and the vms makers know how to draw a hunter. It seems to be about water, like how cloud vapour deposits moisture on the mountain, which finds itself gathering and moving down into the ground in the valley below, in the form of springs, or filling lakes and rivers along the way to the sea. I noticed the little fly wings at what would be the armpit and did a bit of research, it would be the location of the river Talfer, a river which splits the area it is in into two like the fly wings, which area was well known to flood Bolzano and other places multiple times, recorded again as a drawing in 1541, with various taxes being levied to do things about it (create water walls) at various points in the 14th and 15th centuries. (de.wiki) Showing the Alps above a nebuly cloud band raining down on various other locations would make sense for that story and especially pointing out that particular place to show how bits of moisture can become a torrent.