The Voynich Ninja

(17-08-2026, 12:11 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Perhaps it’s not a curse after all, but a prayer.

If you are referring to f116v: agreed, given the crosses and the "maria", I think it was more likely intended to be a protective prayer/charm rather than a curse.  

Although it seems that there are examples of Medieval curses that called upon Mary, with crosses and all, to inflict all sorts of bad things upon enemies.

All the best, --stolfi

One thing that surprised me when researching charms and interviewing Katherine Hindley is that the vast, vast majority of medieval charms are of the protective type: cure a disease, ward of evil, obtain some benefit. She said it's sometimes hard to tell them apart from prayer. So think protective amulets and spells rather than voodoo.

So by pure coincidence, I came across this charm in a MS I was looking at for other reasons. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

You can find quite a number of things in there that look familiar. Capital N, Maria, te... There are plenty of echoes of the charm genre, just no smoking gun.

During my intensiv image analysis – with the help of AI (Claude) – I was able to generate the image: The marginal note above actually reads: putpfer – so there is a second ‘p’ after all.

So u read there: putpfer (maybe putp'fer - but a part of this "Apostroph" seems to be a hole or something else?)

From the images taken in 2014, the visible-light images (570 and 625 nm) were averaged, as were those in the near-infrared (870 and 940 nm), and then the infrared image was subtracted from the visible-light image. This works because iron gall ink becomes almost transparent in the infrared, so the difference image mainly consists of the ink."

[attachment=17180]

@ Stolfi

What I find missing from these images, however, are the remnants that have been written over. You’d have to be able to make them out, because nobody could paint over something of that size so precisely with a quill without it being noticeable.

So, in your opinion, was there nothing left for the scribe to use as a guide? - apart from the two Voynichese words?

(The writing you can see there in this picture has bled through from the other side. I’ve tested it.)

(17-08-2026, 06:12 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What I find missing from these images, however, are the remnants that have been written over. You’d have to be able to make them out, because nobody could paint over something of that size so precisely with a quill without it being noticeable.

The Repairman would have traced over every bit of ink that he could see, usually expanding it into a letter.  

But still some of the ink that we see now may be original. Like the descenders of the "p" in "pal8en pbrey". 

Contrary to some claims made here, it is quite possible to retrace pen strokes without leaving obvious parts sticking out.  Any experienced scribe should be able to do that.  

Just because *I* cannot do that it does not follow that nobody can.  By that argument, we should conclude that it is impossible to play the violin or walk on a tightrope...

The Repairman's pen strokes are ~0.4 mm wide.  If the original trace is as faint as the descenders of the "p"s above, and sticks out along one side of the new trace by 0.1 mm, it will not be distinguishable in the images we have.  One would need much higher resolution (like the McCrone microscope images) to distinguish t.

And there seems to be a faint straight vertical stroke parallel to the vertical stroke of "f" in "gaf".  That may be original too.

Quote:The writing you can see there in this picture has bled through from the other side. I’ve tested it.

Yes, I have tested that too.  

Besides, someone who looks at the real vellum would hardly confuse bleedthrough with ink smudges, no matter how faint.  The bleedthrough text would be obviously on the other side, with blurred edges, wrong color, etc.  The confusion is possible only in low-res digital images like those we have.

All the best, --stolfi

@ Stolfi

Yes, but these are all just more speculation. 

Even when I zoom in incredibly far, I can’t see any signs of tracing.

The downward strokes visible on the ‘p’s’ are caused by him moving the quill very dynamically and jerkily; you can tell from the length. That’s why they’re so faint. And, unlike to the other images of 116v, u can see in this picture, that they fit perfectly into the ‘p’. The upward stroke in the ‘f’ of ‘af’ is probably the decisive clue that it is not an ‘s’ but indeed an ‘f’.

You’re always asking for proof and evidence. And that’s a good thing!

But here, the evidence is lacking. It’s all speculation, based essentially on the fact that there are two Voynich words in the text and that there’s a large watermark.

However interesting your theory may be, the evidence is missing… sorry

All we know is this:

"A charm with alliteration and rhymes, featuring crosses, which are also typical. We have the charm in the margin of the final page, which is also typical of charms. We recognise the word ‘Maria’, so we have a Christian reference, which also supports the theory that it is a charm. We have Latin words that may not be spelled correctly, which is also typical of a charm from that period.

Then we have a number of words that are clearly German and probably German (clearly: Six vix, so nim, mich, Poxleber; probably: palsen, pinen, gas (es as).
And two words that are probably Voynichese.

The rest are assumptions. And for me, it’s simply this: the more assumptions have to resort to, the less sound the theory is… 

It reminds me a bit of a German joke:

“Do you know why elephants have red eyes?”
“No?”
“So they can hide better in cherry trees… Have you ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree?”
“No.”
“Well, there you go – that shows just how well they can hide in cherry trees!” 

As far as I’m concerned, most of it is Latin, and much of that is error-free – as far as one might expect at that time. More importantly, it tells a story. People can’t keep telling me that it’s all just a coincidence.
‘anchiton (possibly a name like Anton) ol(l)a dabas multos te cere(e) portad sis maris moris vis altia Maria’
In the German text, only the part starting with “so nim ..” is clear, and that is a warning.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

(18-08-2026, 05:39 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It reminds me a bit of a German joke:

“Do you know why elephants have red eyes?”
“No?”
“So they can hide better in cherry trees… Have you ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree?”
“No.”
“Well, there you go – that shows just how well they can hide in cherry trees!” 

In a British version, they paint their toenails yellow so they can hide upside down in bowls of custard! 

Whilst I was waiting for my VBM-Generator to produce some lovely VMS texts for me , I had time to take a closer look at ‘putpfer’. It’s a shame – I thought ‘putrifer’ sounded quite fitting overall, but it’s clearly contradicted by the images.

There’s something strange that makes sense in itself, but not in context.

Why did I separate ‘put’ and ‘pfer’? Because the picture suggests that the stroke between the ‘t’ and the ‘p’ is separate, even though it would have been easy to write them as a single stroke.

I searched for german: ‘put’ but found nothing; however, in Bavarian, the ‘B’ is often written as ‘p’ (e.g. ‘bocksleber’ = ‘pocksleber’). So I searched for ‘but’.

‘But’ is a term for a part of a horse’s harness that sits beneath the saddle:

See:
BÛT n. a piece of horse tack. under dem sattel diu bût (: krût) fragm. 30. a. (under the saddle the but)

Source: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I looked for the source of this entry and found it. However, I still can’t say what ‘but’ means. 

----

And ‘pfer’ – interestingly, there is a passage in the Carnival plays (that reminds me of the search for poxleber  )

It reads: “Inn dem stall pei dem pfer.”
= in the stable by the horses.

[attachment=17271]

The interesting thing is that both independent sources have to do with horses.

But as long as we can’t work out exactly what ‘put’ means, this is a lead that’s merely interesting for now, but doesn’t lead anywhere yet.  But perhaps one of you has an idea about this...


_____________
PS: In Latin, ‘put’ with a clear abbreviation mark equals ‘prout’, and ‘pfer’ with a mark above the ‘p’ and the ‘r’ equals ‘praeferunt’ for ‘prout praeferunt’ = (‘as they prefer’ / ‘depending on what they prefer’) – there are probably even Latin examples of this. But two abbreviation marks are missing, one of which is distinctive.

A good source for Latin abbreviations:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 
(type thei ndividual words in there)