The Voynich Ninja

(Yesterday, 07:51 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think it's key for all of us (which includes myself) to not lock anything down until this makes sense.

I must say I have kind of moved away from this approach. It's interesting to find out where the inspirations for the VM came from and how it was created, but I'm increasingly pessimistic about anything regarding 'making sense'.
Id like to again point out the eerie similarity between 'Voynichese', Imagery and Marginalia. All looks somewhat familiar and is definitely rooted in contemporary works of literature. None of the building blocks are alien. But the way they are arranged is profoundly odd and, at least until now, we cannot make any sense of it.

(Yesterday, 07:51 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.On that multispectral image, the supposed "e" in "pinen" or "umen" or whatever looks weird. Shaped kind of like ç. I can't tell what that's supposed to be.

Yes, I agree that's a weird 'e' just like so many marginalia letters, including the use of Voynichese glyphs. I have 3 hypotheses, maybe you have another:

1) The author was - for whatever reason - unable to write coherent German / Latin text in a Latin script
2) The author was - for a more obvious reason - unwilling to write decipherable text
3) The author had originally written legible text but either he himself or someone else has later mangled the letters making them unreadable.

I really can't say. The author had obviously been taught to draw Latin letters at some time and probably spoke some form of German. He was also able to draw some Voynichese glyphs without issues. This however does not automatically mean he was able to form coherent words or sentences in either German or Latin.

This leads us to an interesting question: Why did someone write this gibberish into an unreadable manuscript? Why is there not a single meaningful sentence?
If the marginalia author was able to encode meaningful information into Voynichese, why not use this instead? I think time-line wise it is hard to argue that the marginalia could pre-date the Voynichese text as some sort of encipherment. Either they were created at a later time where the ability to create Voynichese was already lost, or the author was not able to use Voynichese to the same extent as the scribe who wrote the VM text. To me it seems the marginalia author could neither write meaningful text in Voynichese nor Latin script.

Or this indeed are just nonsensical pen-trials without meaning. But then why make such odd letters or even overwrite them?

My inclination Bernd, is that the marginalia writer liked playing with words, or maybe just didn't have a very good grasp of language. I think we see this in "pox" (we think maybe "pocks").
A thought I have is that "p den muss (d)mel" might be something like "p" - A reference to something (maybe this poxleber line? - stretching probably) "den" (then) "Mandelmúsß" (muss mdel - switched places) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Which if you scroll, look a fair bit like the things drawn, and the smear on the belly might indicate food. 

As you say though, this is just trying to make sense of things that seemingly make no sense.. and the fact "plain-text" makes no sense is probably the most baffling thing about the manuscript for me.. and that's in a very big pool of "weird" to pick from!

(26-08-2025, 05:29 PM)sempervirentz Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi, I read the blog post about the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by Koen today, including the comments. I am asking myself if there was progress in the meantime?

This was Koen's final version:



I want to suggest this variation:

poxleber pinen p?tpfer
+ anchiton oladabad + maltos + te + cere + povtas + n +
six + marix + morix + vix + abia + maria +
palden pbren so nim gasmich

maltos ≈ malt
cere ≈ wax
povtas ≈ potash

As others have pointed out at least some words root (presumably) in medieval German:

poxleber ≈ Bocksleber (male goat’s liver)
so nim ≈ so nimm (so take)
gasmich ≈ Geißmilch (goat's milk)

So what do we have? A list of ingredients, a reference to a blessing (Maria) and instructions for use. This is quite something, I think. I hope others can fill the empty spaces.

I think the correct transcription of the top line might be poxleber umen mit pfer (Bocksleber-Omen mit Pferd). The way I see it, it relates somehow to the practice of haruspicy (divination with animal entrails), specifically hepatomancy, using a goat and a horse.