(10-10-2023, 10:55 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Is something needed from me to connect the blogosphere thing?
The Blogosphere link is one of the main links in this site's header but the instructions on how to have your blog added are a little buried there. Here is the direct link: You are not allowed to view links.
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(10-10-2023, 10:55 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Is something needed from me to connect the blogosphere thing?
Not really, what I usually do is ask David and then he either adds it or complains that the blog in question is not compatible
I'll leave him a message.
(09-10-2023, 07:28 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I tried recreating various astrological patterns and comparing them to f67r2 and found a good match with a partial domicile chart. After this I
encountered the same pattern in 1490x - 1500x editions of De Sphere Mundi. If it's the same pattern, in Voynich manuscript it's rotated 160 degrees
clockwise (putting Jupiter on top).
This is a good match. Though it doesnt mean that the VMS follows the same order.
(09-10-2023, 07:28 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's possible to create potential mappings between various labels on f67r2 and astrological/astronomical concepts using this information.
I have been also working in something like this, trying to match the labels with the planets. If they are the plantets, is there any logic in the VMS in the order of the planets? I have also tryed it as a domicile chart but the labels doesnt match well with the names of the plantets (I am also wiorking with other labels in other folios).
My last idea in progress is the following: the planets are ordered by the day they are relationed with, they follow the days of the week: your Jupiter
okal would be Sun (Sunday), and to the right Moon (Monday), Mars (Tuesday), Mercury (Wednesday), Jupiter (Thursday), Venus (Fryday), Saturn (Saturday). This order matchs better with the labels, but still I have some problems to match all the labels with the planets.
In spanish most of the days also comes from the planets: Lunes (Monday), Martes (Tuesday), Miercoles (Wednesday), Jueves (Thursday), Viernes (Fryday).
(10-10-2023, 12:12 PM)Juan_Sali Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have been also working in something like this, trying to match the labels with the planets. If they are the plantets, is there any logic in the VMS in the order of the planets?
If the order in VMS is the same as in De Sphaere, then this is a somewhat easier question of why De Sphaere chose this way of showing domiciles. Looking at how they show the planets on their separate orbits, they were kind of forced to put Mercury next to the Sun, otherwise this would not represent the actual universe they believed in. So maybe it's just the best compromise they found between keeping planets in their homes and showing a realistic celestial configuration.
Quote:I have also tryed it as a domicile chart but the labels doesnt match well with the names of the plantets (I am also wiorking with other labels in other folios).
I have no strong opinion on the underlying language, if there is any at all, so I can't tell whether the labels match or not. That's why I chose to ignore them altogether when looking at patterns. I guess the language could be anything known in or before the 1400s. It could be something well known now like Latin or Greek, but also Venetian or Maltese or some other obscure regional or global language. I tried checking with this site that attempts listing the names of the planets in many languages: You are not allowed to view links.
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Quote:My last idea in progress is the following: the planets are ordered by the day they are relationed with, they follow the days of the week: your Jupiter okal would be Sun (Sunday), and to the right Moon (Monday), Mars (Tuesday), Mercury (Wednesday), Jupiter (Thursday), Venus (Fryday), Saturn (Saturday). This order matchs better with the labels, but still I have some problems to match all the labels with the planets.
That's an interesting idea. I've just looked up the origin of this order of planets for the days of week, never knew why they go this way You are not allowed to view links.
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Quote:I have no strong opinion on the underlying language, if there is any at all, so I can't tell whether the labels match or not. That's why I chose to ignore them altogether when looking at patterns. I guess the language could be anything known in or before the 1400s. It could be something well known now like Latin or Greek, but also Venetian or Maltese or some other obscure regional or global language.
If you are new to the subject, maybe you haven't read about conditional character entropy yet. It's a statistical measure that is unaffected by simple substitution: for Voynichese it is exceptionally low, showing that Voynichese is not an ordinary language (like those you mentioned), just written with a fancy alphabet. You can find more information in You are not allowed to view links.
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The labels of the possible seven planets are ordinary Voynichese words, showing the typical rigid structure. For instance, 4 out of 7 start with EVA:o- (two of them start with EVA:oka-) and 2 of the others start with EVA:y-. If it were a simple substitution, we would be looking for languages with a similar distribution of initials for planet names.
(10-10-2023, 05:33 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If you are new to the subject, maybe you haven't read about conditional character entropy yet.
Thanks for the tip, I'm not really new. I've been passively reading the Voynich maillist since ~2008 or maybe even earlier. About two years ago I decided to make analyzing Voynich MS one of my hobbies, so I occasionally spend some free time on this. I like it and I use it as the perfect fool-proof learning tool, you can throw all kinds of analysis or computational models at VMS, and it will never break :)
I usually work under assumption that VMS "code" is a method of secret writing that can produce what appears as different Voynichese given the same plaintext and vice versa. If this method works on character level, has few or no nulls and is additive in nature, then in general the longer the word or phrase you encode the longer the result. Under these assumptions it makes sense to compare the lengths of various labels even if we have no idea about the specifics of the algorithm used.
Well, if the only tool you've got is a hammer... I've found a bunch of new nail-looking planetary label things on f72r3 (Cancer Zodiac).
Quick summary:
As I've said in my last post, my favorite hypothesis on VMS writing is that it is a many-to-many character based scheme, where depending on some unknown factor the same plaintext can be encoded in different ways and at the same time the same
transliteration of the encoded text can produce different plaintexts. The unknown factor in question could be the context (page key, preceding text), some feature of the writing system (variation of letter shapes, variation of spacing) or something purely external to the text (idk, distance from the edge or some predefined point of page or even an external grille).
It is possible that a scheme like this would produce partially matching encoded text for the same plaintext, in character sequences or in structure. E.g., when encoding some word one of the outcomes could be BGGKLFGJ, another ACCKLFCJ, with G replaced by C and B by A and the rest of the letters remaining the same.
So, after making a somewhat plausible, but very uncertain mapping between planet labels in planet names for f67r2, I've started poking around for other similar sequences of 7 labels in VMS. And I found something interesting, a sequence which bears some visual similarity to the planet labels on f67r2 and put in a plausible order. There are some implications for the planetary labels research for f67r2 as well.
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Is this wishful thinking or something potentially real, what's your opinion? I really can't tell. I spent two weeks looking mostly at astrological charts, so now naturally I tend to see planetary sequences everywhere.
(10-10-2023, 06:24 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If this method works on character level, has few or no nulls and is additive in nature, then in general the longer the word or phrase you encode the longer the result. Under these assumptions it makes sense to compare the lengths of various labels even if we have no idea about the specifics of the algorithm used.
(11-10-2023, 05:40 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.my favorite hypothesis on VMS writing is that it is a many-to-many character based scheme, where depending on some unknown factor the same plaintext can be encoded in different ways and at the same time the same transliteration of the encoded text can produce different plaintexts.
I am not sure I understand correctly, but I don't know how these ideas explain the available evidence.
1. Though average word length is comparable for Voynichese and ordinary European languages, the shape of the distribution is significantly different. In particular, Voynichese has fewer short and long word tokens than ordinary languages (see You are not allowed to view links.
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2. A simple example of a many-to-many cipher would be a Caesar cipher where words are written in "Boustrophedon" style, i.e. alternating left-to-right and right-to-left for each line, so that 'wolf' can be ciphered as 'XPMG' or 'GMPX', and both 'XPMG' and 'GMPX' can be decoded as both 'wolf' and 'flow'. This would increase character conditional entropy (while we are looking for methods that decrease entropy) since each bigram would occur in both its original and reversed form with the same frequency (e.g. TH vs HT, CK vs KC). Also, this cipher does not explain why consecutive words tend to be similar in Voynichese (e.g. <f108r.42> okeey.qokeey.qokeedy.qokeey). Maybe this method is not what you are thinking of, but it seems compatible with the description you gave.
(11-10-2023, 07:48 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am not sure I understand correctly, but I don't know how these ideas explain the available evidence.
1. Though average word length is comparable for Voynichese and ordinary European languages, the shape of the distribution is significantly different. In particular, Voynichese has fewer short and long word tokens than ordinary languages (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
2. A simple example of a many-to-many cipher would be a Caesar cipher where words are written in "Boustrophedon" style, i.e. alternating left-to-right and right-to-left for each line, so that 'wolf' can be ciphered as 'XPMG' or 'GMPX', and both 'XPMG' and 'GMPX' can be decoded as both 'wolf' and 'flow'. This would increase character conditional entropy (while we are looking for methods that decrease entropy) since each bigram would occur in both its original and reversed form with the same frequency (e.g. TH vs HT, CK vs KC). Also, this cipher does not explain why consecutive words tend to be similar in Voynichese (e.g. <f108r.42> okeey.qokeey.qokeedy.qokeey). Maybe this method is not what you are thinking of, but it seems compatible with the description you gave.
Thank you for the comments!
I'm now writing a summary explaining my personal favorite hypothesis with regard to the encoding method in VMS (again, with pictures
, oh I love pictures). I think I'll finish it later today and then post a link to the forum. As far as I can see, it should address your comments. I actually don't insist that what I'll describe is the way the text was created, that's why here I'm talking about many-to-many encoding models in generic sense, but it will be a good particular example of a system like that, and could also explain some peculiar properties of the manuscript.
Sorry for not addressing your points here specifically, if my summary won't give you a good enough answer, I will be happy to discuss them
Looking forward to your summary!
