The Voynich Ninja

(07-11-2023, 07:36 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Is there any 'linguistic' evidence to support one interpretation of these labels over the other?

As far as I'm concerned, there is no linguistic evidence so far. While the labels appear meaningful in some technical sense, I have no plausible mapping between any of the labels and any words in any language.

From the way my investigation goes so far, it seems likely the cipher (if there is a cipher) does scramble/reorder natural language letter sequences, so it could be hard or impossible to map pieces of cipher-text to pieces of plaintext by visual similarity. It's still likely that longer plaintext words produce longer cipher-text labels on average, but not necessarily for any particular pair of words.

More info on Wenzel Faber. He appears to be the 'astrologer' responsible for the particular pattern of planet to zodiac connection that was something other than the old stacking all of the planets in one place or setting them all out as presumed to be in their original sequence, and for presenting the pattern that is found in the Leipzig reprint of Sacrobosco. The most significant difference is that Mars has been placed in its primary zodiac sign, which is Aries. This implies that there was a recognized "zodiac connection" where originally there was none.

Where did Wenzel Faber learn his astrology?
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We meet Faber[2] in 1483 as a member of the Small College of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Leipzig, after he had already enrolled there in 1475 and become Baccalaureus in the summer of 1477 and Magister in 1479. After completing his studies, he taught at the Faculty of Arts, became Rector in 1488 and was awarded the title of Doctor of Medicine in 1497.

From 1499 he worked as a doctor in Brüx and from 1505 as a parish priest in Budweis.

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His bio also mentions his connections with the Sacrobosco text, which leads to the connection with the 1494 Leipzig reprinting. The novelty, or at least the matter at hand, is the distribution of the planets (or planetary symbols) within the cosmic illustration, particularly as it relates to the zodiac symbols when they are placed in one of the outer circles.

Sacrobosco listed the planetary spheres (vertically), but it did not connect individual planets (via symbols) with specific signs in the zodiac. In contrast, the 1494 Leipzig illustration, starting with the moon in Cancer and putting Mars in Aries, is quite close to the standard set of astrological interpretations.

Where does this astrological dimension originate? Was it Faber's invention or something older? Is there something connecting this example of 4-1-1-1 structure with the VMs version? The ideological connection seems reasonable even if the linguistic investigation is thwarted. The VMs cosmos connects with Oresme (BNF Fr. 565) and it isn't legible either.

Here's an alternate way to make the planet to zodiac connections.

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It results is a 3-1-1-1-1 structure. Not finding relevant provenance.

(23-12-2023, 01:53 AM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Not finding relevant provenance.

Venice, 1482:
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Looks like the day domicile pattern, I think I mentioned it in the article, but I don't remember actually seeing it in books/manuscripts. It's astronomically impossible, since Mercury is too far from the Sun, which could be the motivation for changing it to astronomically possible 4-1-1-1 in other editions.

Interestingly, it says printed by Erhard Ratdolt, according to Wikipedia he was printing in Venice till 1486 and then moved to Augsburg.

So, the question is how (when, where and by whom) were the astrological associations of the planets introduced to the cosmic diagrams of Sacrobosco? There are now these printed examples for two variations, but earlier manuscript versions with good astrological connections are not to be found - apparently.

By way of contrast, here is the cosmic diagram from Beinecke MS 335, f17r.
Provenance: from Italy, dates 1400-1450

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The dating is great, but all this cosmic diagram does is to name the different planetary orbits. It has no zodiac ring. It makes no use of the astrological symbols for the planets. It contains nothing in regard to the astrological information shown in two later cosmic diagrams of interest.

Cod. Sang. 827 is one of the sources where You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. appears. This could be the first example that was brought to the attention of Voynich studies, several years ago. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. attributes this finding to Brian Cham and "Job".

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., the manuscript has this diagram of the zodiac and the planets. Most of the planets match their domiciles, with the exceptions of the Sun and Venus. The pattern is 4-2-1.
The manuscript was made in 1425-28 near Lake Constance The book includes several works in German and Latin, some by Sacrobosco, but I don't know which work this illustration belongs to.