The Voynich Ninja

(14-08-2026, 05:10 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If someone refuses to acknowledge just how chaotic writing was in the Middle Ages

But you have not presented any evidence that the letter shapes used by a single person could be "chaotic"!  

You have shown only a couple of examples where the "small s" was used in the middle of words.  That could have been because that writer used "long s" and "small s" at random.  But you have not shown that!  He could also have had a rule -- only that it was not just "use small s before a word space, otherwise use long s". 

And, again, the "short s" in your examples is a different letter shape than the "8" of f116v.  As different as a Latin "B" from a Latin "8".

While for each letter on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. people have found other manuscripts with similar letters, AFAIK no one has found a single manuscript whose letter shapes match all the letters of f116v.  

On the other hand, the script of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is truly "chaotic": the same letter is often written in two or more different shapes.  AFAIK no one has shown a manuscript from that time with script as "chaotic" as that of f116v.

All the best, --stolfi

(15-08-2026, 07:38 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Have you ever wondered what that strange squiggle is doing there on the right, above the "m" in "chiton"? That small superscript "e" next to an "m" is an abbreviation for "mariae."

On the UV images it very much looks like dirt, not ink.
[attachment=17164]

And anyway the scribal abbreviation for the genitive ending "-ae" or "-æ" is a small "e", not a diagonal stroke.

And the beginning of that word could be either "mchi" or "anchi".  

Quote:Hieronymus (Jerome), Epistula 64,11, Ad Fabiolam / De veste sacerdotali.

As the title of that letter says, Jerome is describing the garments used by Hebrew priests according to Exodus.  

There is no German or Latin manuscript referring to the Aachen relic as a "chiton", is there?

All the best, --stolfi

(15-08-2026, 12:05 PM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For example we see
TERIX. CONTERIX. PETRONIX. PETRONISSA. TERIX:
PIX, NIX, NOX, vermis, flagra, vincula, pus, pudor, horror.

There is little doubt that the "anchiton" and "six" lines of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are a charm or spell.  But that is simply what the Repairman guessed that they were, so he "reconstructed" them as such. 

And he knew that charms often had multiple words ending with "x", so that is what he ended up "reconstructing". 

However, AFAIK there is no example of a charm anywhere else that uses any of the words from those two lines, except perhaps "te" and "maria": "anchiton" (or "mchiton"), "oladabas", "multos", "ctev", "cere", "portas", "six", "marix", "morix", "vix", or "abta".  Is there?

All the best, --stolfi

(15-08-2026, 12:57 PM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.No, Chiton... I don't dispute it is Greek, but if there is no recorded contemporaneous usage of it in German Manuscripts, it's hard to argue that's the correct interpretation...

That is why I quoted the text by Hieronymus. Although Hieronymus lived much earlier, his works were read by a great many people in the 15th century, particularly, of course, by Christian and other scholars.

And in the passage quoted above, he writes indirectly that the term "camisia" was more commonly used (by soldiers), whilst ‘chiton’ was the term favoured by the educated.

This proves two things:
1. The term was probably in use in the 15th century
2. But most likely amongst educated readers

So if "camisa" became the established term, it was probably because it was frequently used by the general public. However, the author of the charm may well have chosen the scholarly, Greek term, particularly when referring to a saint.

(16-08-2026, 04:39 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[...] AFAIK there is no example of a charm anywhere else that uses any of the words from those two lines, except perhaps "te" and "maria": "anchiton" (or "mchiton"), "oladabas", "multos", "ctev", "cere", "portas", "six", "marix", "morix", "vix", or "abta".  Is there?

Just because you don’t understand the terms and, what’s more, refuse to consider possible interpretations, that doesn’t mean the text isn’t a real charm – that’s a subjective claim tailored to your theory; rhetorically clever, but unfortunately not tenable on the facts. 

To be honest, I’m a bit surprised that specially you, are putting forward such a narrow-minded line of argument...


And it’s not as though we have to substantiate possible meanings – because we’ve already done that here in this thread in many different ways, some more plausible than others – but rather that you have to prove your theory – and the evidence for that is very weak. And it is not enough simply to fail to acknowledge possible meanings.

@ Stolfi 

If you boost the brightness and contrast a bit in the image you suggested, you can actually see the slanted ‘e’ very clearly… That’s even better than my picture. Thanks for that

(16-08-2026, 03:13 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes, the Repairman thought that the first and second lines were a spell or charm, and "restored" them as such. But those two lines are definitely not meaningful, and AFAIK there is no other manuscript with a spell or charm that matches them, even partially.

So, was he translating the text? Or trying to decipher it based on the similarity of the letters? Or was he actually tracing the erased outlines of the letters?

(16-08-2026, 03:13 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But there is no precedent for this supposed effect (a person changing the way he writes Latin letters after writing some other script).

I suggested that you try it yourself as an experiment. In the case of Voynichese, the scribe might simply have liked writing the letters in that style, and he transposed it into the Latin script. Or maybe none of that. Sometimes the Latin alphabet itself is somewhat reminiscent of Voynichese. For example, here is a similarity between ct/ci and ch.

(16-08-2026, 01:04 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So, was [the Repairman] translating the text? Or trying to decipher it based on the similarity of the letters? Or was he actually tracing the erased outlines of the letters?

He was not translating it, because the assumption is that he did not know the Voynichese alphabet, much less the Voynichese language.  He was trying to reconstruct the erased text based on scattered bits of Voynichese characters that survived the wipe-out -- but he assumed (or hoped) that the text had been Latin script, and the language was German or Latin.  

Thus some of the "8"s and "ce" and "te" that he "reconstructed" probably were originally ds and Chs, and his "p"s were quite probably qs, etc.  And some of the crosses probably were bits of gallows.

But many letters must have been blank spots that he filled with guessed letters attempting to make some sense. 

For instance, he may have seen smudges that looked like "mc[blank]ia", and guessed that the original word was "maria".  And so on.

All the best, --stolfi

[Sorry but the EVA font seems to have disappeared from the menu.  Will fix the letters when it comes back...]

(16-08-2026, 06:56 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(16-08-2026, 04:39 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[...] AFAIK there is no example of a charm anywhere else that uses any of the words from those two lines, except perhaps "te" and "maria": "anchiton" (or "mchiton"), "oladabas", "multos", "ctev", "cere", "portas", "six", "marix", "morix", "vix", or "abta".  Is there?

Just because you don’t understand the terms and, what’s more, refuse to consider possible interpretations, that doesn’t mean the text isn’t a real charm

Sigh. 

YES, THOSE TWO LINES ARE A CHARM, AND THEREFORE I AM NOT ASKING FOR THE WORDS TO MAKE SENSE OR FORM A PROPER SENTENCE.

But people usually did not invent charms out of nothing.  How would the person know whether his all-new charm worked as intended? How would he know that "marix morix vix abta maria" would indeed alleviate one's putrifer, and not summon Brimstone Maria, the sharp-clawed brain-eating girlfriend of Belzebub? 

Charms were usually either copied or learned verbally, and mutated by the usual "telephone game" process.  As a kid I learned from my mom a Venetian charm to be recited during thunderstorms:

  Santa Barbara e San Simon
  che i difende da tuti i ton
  ton e saéte
  Santa Barbara benedete

  Saint Barbara and Saint Simon [Apostle]
  who protects from all thunderclaps
  thunderclaps and lightning bolts
  Saint Barbara bless us

Except that I am not sure about the last line; it may be missing a pronoun or something. And that is how charms evolve...

To make up a new charm from scratch, either one had to be some kind of nutjob who heard "voices" or convinced himself that he was a genius who figured out the formula for sure-fire charms; or one had to be some kind of unscrupulous swindler or prankster who enjoyed fooling credulous folk into repeating ridiculous strings of "magical" words.  Do you think the VMS Author could have been either?

Thus what I am asking is just ANY EXAMPLE OF A MEDIEVAL CHARM THAT USES ANY OF THE WORDS OF THE VMS CHARM.  

Because I claim that whoever wrote that charm did not copy it from somewhere else, or heard it from his priest or from aunt Mathilda: he just "reconstructed" those words from the smudges that remained on the page -- and thus he got a bunch of words that sounded "magical" but were not used in any charm anywhere else.

Quote:And it’s not as though we have to substantiate possible meanings – because we’ve already done that here in this thread in many different ways, some more plausible than others

No, you haven't.  

Again: over the last 100 years, even with extreme twisting of letter identification and spelling, and with the help of countless  paleographers  and linguists, people have come up with possible meanings for less than half of the words; and from those words one cannot parse a single short meaningful sentence.  

One would get the same rate of success if one tried to parse that same text as words of Latvian and Turkish, instead of German and Latin.  Of if one tried the same exercise on the output of a monkey banging on a typewriter.  

That historic failure is strong proof against the theory that the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. text contains a meaningful message and/or a real charm, which was deliberately written on bank vellum.  

And, by exclusion, that failure is a good item of evidence in favor of the Big Wipe theory.

All the best, --stolfi

(16-08-2026, 07:47 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If you boost the brightness and contrast a bit in the image...

... you will make gray dirt smudges look as dark as the ink strokes.  

Quote:you can actually see the slanted ‘e’ very clearly…

The abbreviation of "-ae" is not a "slanted e", it is a small regular "e".

And that whole "small e" is just as wide as a single pen stroke.  The top and bottom strokes are thinner than the thinnest pen strokes elsewhere.

All the best, --stolfi