The Voynich Ninja

As a bonus feature, this hypothesis could explain why a lot of drawings are awkward: maybe the author also tried to hide her/his artistic style by deliberately distorting shapes, especially when drawing human figures. To me the author looks remarkably skillful with some of the drawings and very sloppy with the rest of them.

(18-01-2025, 01:23 PM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If the drawings shouldn't be taken literally then why have them? Why waste expensive calfskin vellum?

Also, I'm not saying they are meaningless. It's quite possible that they are very relevant and important, one just needs to interpret them in a certain way, explained in the text. 

If this manuscript has something to do with alchemy after all, then the plants could be disguised schematics or mnemonics for various chemical reactions. For example, leaves and flowers could signify various ingredients and their proportions (say, 4 to 13 to 5, as you go down the branches towards the root) and roots specify the way to process the ingredients (e.g., mix, shake, boil, pulverize, etc). This is just one possibility.

(18-01-2025, 01:55 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.To me the author looks remarkably skillful with some of the drawings and very sloppy with rest of them.

Adults drew pictures and their children colored them.

Regarding 'heresy' in the early 15th century: Jan Hus was burned at the stake in Constance in 1415.

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Thanks for referencing my article! I actually suspect that the manuscript was originally bound in the "right" order (in which, as is typical for a medieval manuscript, each quire was the work of a single scribe) but that when it was rebound at a later date (possibly because of the catastrophic liquid spill in the top margins of the first few quires), some of the bifolia were bound incorrectly. This would have had to have happened before the foliation was added in the 17th century, since the ink of the folio numbers is not blurred by the stain. This is a topic on which I am currently working and on which I will publish at some point. The leaves that are now missing (e.g. f. 12) were removed at an even later date, as evidenced by their having been foliated. 

Also, it is worth remembering that we have no idea how many leaves or bifolia might have gone missing before the foliation was added. I do think that the quire numbers are roughly contemporary with the manuscript itself, likely original from the first binding, which means that the extant outer bifolia at least are in the right positions. The exception is Quire 9 (ff. 67/68) which has been shown to have been reoriented at some point such that the sewing, currently between 67v1 and 68r1, was originally in the fold between 67v2 and 67v1. This would change the order of the astronomical diagrams on 68v in a way that makes more visual sense: 68v3, 68v2, 68v1, 67r1. It also restores the quire number in the lower corner of 67r1 to its correct spot on the final verso of the quire. Stay tuned for a blogpost showing how codicology helps explain the various stages of the manuscript's history!

(17-01-2025, 09:15 PM)Bluetoes101 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'll take a took but unless Lisa has changed her opinion recently I know that she felt it may have been created in a workshop by several people working on different bits and sharing ideas. 

As for the order, if you consider Q13 to not be entirely transparent with its imagery the manuscript follows a pretty typical pattern. Ingredients > Processing (Q13) > Finished products > Recipes. "Processing" being heavily interlinked with astrology and cosmology is very typical, especially if you consider our "ingredients" are plants and our "Finished products" could then be processed plants in some way for a purpose. I think when you look at it this way it doesn't look like a jumble, more a few pages out of order and Q13 is weird. 

That's just my take on it, I'm no expert. I do recall seeing an extremely well done post about the binding of the manuscript on this forum though, it is likely in "physical material" and might be something that interests you.

There is Wladimir Ds' post in   >> Voynich Research > News > [Blog Post] Analysis of cover attachment and VMS binding.
here:  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

That's the one I was thinking of, thanks Rob ^

(19-01-2025, 05:55 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I actually suspect that the manuscript was originally bound in the "right" order
...
This is a topic on which I am currently working and on which I will publish at some point.

Looking forward to reading it.

Have you considered Nick Pelling's idea that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. comprise the original central bifolio of quire 13? I arrived at the same result independently, but mine is based on a theory of its contents so I won't go into that. However, Nick supports the idea not only by noting that both seem to contain half drawings that fit together, but that they also show contact transfer of red paint.

Quote:Water flows from the bath on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. [below left] right under a separate bifolio before reappearing on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. [below right].
These two pages must therefore have faced each other in the original page layout, and can only sensibly have appeared at the centre of a quire with consecutive folio numbers: and so the present (non-consecutive) folio numbers are plainly wrong.

Also highlighted with red squares in the above pair of images is some red paint contact transfer (going from right to left) that apparently happened while the manuscript was in its alpha [original] state. (They are not aligned perfectly because the manuscript was fully bound when scanned, leading to perspective distortion.)

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The same page speaks of different handwriting in quire 6, etc.

I don't agree with all of the ideas presented about which pages go together, but I think the above is a good one to consider in support of the idea that this quire used to be a looseleaf gathering, and was bound in the order last gathered before binding, which is to say, completely out of order.

My own preference is the following, which requires not only reshuffling, but some flipping as well: 76, 80, 84, 77, 78, 81, 82, 75, 79, 83
I think You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is first due to it being the sole text-only page, as well as for content reasons.

I do also agree with Glen Cranston's refolding of quire 14 as describe by Nick:

Quote:
[Nick: GC is proposing that the nine rosettes fold-out f86 was originally attached to the rest of the manuscript along the (now badly damaged) crease highlighted green (above), rather than along the crease highlighted blue. The shape of the whole codex is highlighted in red.]

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It would make this page 

the first page instead of the last page, and the other two drawings would be hidden until folded out, which seems to me to make more sense than folding out another drawing and some text while still looking at the drawing you could already see before folding out, and seeing it that way could also change expectations of what topics are discussed in the text-only pages.

I'm absolutely in agreement about ff. 78/81, and will in fact include that piece of evidence in the blogpost I'm currently working on.