The Voynich Ninja

(26-12-2023, 06:36 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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.

Not Sacrobosco, from the description (the Tractatus de sp[h]era starts p. 273):
5). S. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.-You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Aderlassmännchen nebst deutscher Anleitung dazu. Lat. Diätetik der 12 Zeichen und 12 Monate (Verse). Monatsbilder mit lat. und deutschen Reimsprüchen dazu. (Alles ungefähr wie in den gedr. deutschen Augsburger Kalendern von 1489, 1490, 1502 etc. In Hss. gibt es noch ältere deutsche Kalender als der Cod. 827, der von 1425-28 ist, nämlich von 1400 und 1415 s. Mone's Anzeiger 1833 p. 119 und 1865 p. 257. Doch ist auch die St. Galler Hs. alterthümlicher als die Augsb. Drucke, z. B. das Bild des Jenners noch ein Janus bifrons wie im xylogr. Kalender v. 1439 ( Falkenstein Buchdr. gesch. p. 53).

Google translation:
5) P. 262-273 Bloodletting man along with German instructions. Lat. Dietetics of the 12 signs and 12 months (verses). Monthly pictures with Latin and German rhyming sayings. (Everything roughly as in the printed German Augsburg calendars from 1489, 1490, 1502 etc. In Hss. there are even older German calendars than Cod. 827, which is from 1425-28, namely from 1400 and 1415 see Mone's Anzeiger 1833 p. 119 and 1865 p. 257. However, the St. Gallen manuscript is also more ancient than the Augsb. prints, for example the picture of Jenner still a Janus bifrons as in the xylogr calendar from 1439 ( Falkenstein book dr. written p. 53).

Only Latin on this page so I'm not sure which part of this description is relevant. German and Latin verses: this must be the description of the previous and next pages.

Title in red ink:
Nota quod ista figura ostendit ordinationem totius machin[a]e mundi post ordinationem 12 signorum in[ ]zodiaco et 12 mensium et quatuor elementorum
Note that this figure shows the organization of the entire machine of the world after the organization of the 12 signs in the zodiac and the 12 months and the four elements

The Sun (Taurus) and Venus (Gemini) are not in their domiciles, indeed.

Well, that's a beauty! Great provenance. Thanks for the translation. As noted, it's a third variation for planetary placement in relation to the signs of the zodiac "along astrological lines" - shall we say. Whether it's a 'Sacrobosco' or not depends on the definition. Is there a preferable alternative to be found in the Cod. sang? It's a cosmos.

What is the original 'Sacrobosco'? It seems pretty minimalist to me. Just names of the planets in a vertical stack to specify their orbits, without symbols or numbers and without a zodiac cycle. Those things were added and combined in various ways. And with these additional elements, different patterns of planetary distribution were being set forth. I believe I read in one of the Springer articles that, in contrast to Sacrobosco's texts in the post-printing era, the pre-printing era was not that well documented. If there's more data available (1400-1450+), this could be interesting.

Does the 4-1-1-1 pattern have an earlier origin?

PS: The writing is also interesting; the 'r' and the '9' in Aquarius. I still get hung up on planet Veng.

And another thing to be noted is that this zodiac sequence is clockwise.

This one is quite early; has zodiac signs; shows planets dispersed; Mars in Aries.

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It’s interesting how the structure of the Voynich diagram stands out with respect to the other illustrations. In particular, the concentric spheres/orbits of the planets are missing, while there are those bizarre crescents and the large star at the center.

This latest reference (Post #123) really blows the lid off of things. Hard to believe the location, let alone the date. It's before Sacrobosco. And the planetary orbits aren't exactly concentric. Where did that idea come from?

The main question is planetary placement in relation to the signs of the zodiac. All four examples of the 'dispersed' patterns place the planet Mars in zodiac sign of Aries. After that it's three out of four for the Moon in Cancer and for Jupiter in Sagittarius, with the new English example as odd man out in both cases.

Several other odd thigs: The animal faces on the back of Cancer. Who's that Virgo? And two planets, Saturn and the Moon, in the zodiac sign of Capricorn. Which makes this another unique pattern of planetary dispersal.

It seems that the two newer examples [1494, Leipzig and 1482, Venice] are the ones that fit best with the "standard" astrological connections, and they are most similar, differing only in the placement of Mercury, while the other two older examples [1425/28 Cod. sang. and c. 1000 England] are increasingly more diverse. What would be the motivation for these more diverse versions?

The use of a 4-1-1-1 pattern in the VMs would seem to express a strong conformity with astrological interpretation. It's not possible to say how this pattern similarity of the VMs with 1494 Leipzig might affect VMs chronology, other than the supposition that astrological conformity apparently implies something newer.

You're definitely correct about the comparison. The VMs cosmos is somewhere else - and it doesn't use concentric planetary orbitals either. There aren't many options to put the planetary symbols in their proper astrological positions in accordance with their traditional zodiac domiciles. Moon in Cancer, Sun in Leo etc.  The 4-1-1-1 pattern is an option. The VMs takes this quasi-astrological / astronomical pattern and goes completely astrological - just uses the pattern and eliminates the orbitals. It's something the VMs artist has done repeatedly. What looks like decorative ambiguity actually has valid historical significance, if the historical details are known, like the VMs cosmos and BNF Fr. 565 etc. - and what it took to get the proposed interpretation from Newbold to Velinska.

I have been working on my own version of Blasto. You can find the code here:
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As always, the code is messy, probably bugged and certainly brittle.

I implemented a number of very simple ciphers and added the option to provide a "crib" that the algorithm tries to match (in addition to quadgrams for a particular language).
I ran a number of experiments in Latin and Italian on the supposed labels of the seven planets, passing the names of the planets as a crib.

One of the experiments matched 3 of the Italian planet names. The cipher is a simple substitution with nulls and the input encoding was reversed EVA:

(In the EVA original order):

dolchsody|okal|okainam|opcholdy|ofaroeoldan|ytoaiin|yfain|
CEVOS_ECI|ETRV|ETRAMR_|ELOSEVCI|E_R_ENEVCRM|IGERAAM|I_RAM|

reversed decipherment (_ marks nulls):

MAR_I|MAAREGI|MRCVENE_R_E|ICVESOLE|_RMARTE|VRTE|ICE_SOVEC

Key: a:R c:O d:C e:N f:_ h:S i:A k:T l:V m:_ n:M o:E p:L r:_ s:_ t:G y:I

VENERE, SOLE, MARTE were matched. It's interesting that label boundaries were respected: since this code is based on Blasto, the input string is stripped of word and line separators and the input string was actually: niafyniiaotynadloeorafoydlohcpomaniakolakoydoshclod - nothing prevented a plain-text word from crossing the boundary between different Voynich labels.

Though the order does not match what oshfdk proposed in the first post of the thread, the three labels are consecutive and the order matches Ptolemy's cosmos (image from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Boston).

[attachment=8044]

Matching 3 out of 7 labels might seem like a good result for Voynich standards, but this is very unlikely to be relevant for numberless reasons, e.g. a few nulls do not solve our problems with entropy and EVA:ch behaves like a single character, not like the Italian 'SO' bigram.

For instance, reversed SATVRNO, ONRVTAS, would be encoded as EVA:cealkih cealkih
MERCVRIO, OIRVCREM. as EVA:cyaldaon cyaldaon
these don't look like Voynichese words.

That's interesting, in particular that there are three in a row, that fit in sequence. It's also problematic in that the Ptolemaic sequence does not have good astrological connections. And it is the astrological 4-1-1-1 pattern that ostensibly makes the VMs relationship.

Other planetary designations may not be as straightforward. The vord might be an epithet or in a different language (Saturnus = Cronos with variations), even something outside of Greco-Roman traditions. If the VMs artist gets credit for half the things they have been accused of, simplicity is not one of them.