The Voynich Ninja

Anyone who wants to discuss Egyptian hieroglyphics should have studied at least its basics or read at least a few of the fundamental books about it. (Note that this is totally insufficient, but it will help).

Why should the Voynich MS as a subject be treated differently?

There is no need to read about any of the bad proposed solutions, just like there is no need to read Kircher's misguided understanding of hieroglyphics.

Mary D'Imperio's 1970's book "An Elegant Enigma" is now widely outdated, but it stil includes valuable information. There is a point where she writes, after a short list of features of the Voynich MS writing:
"a proposed solution that does not address/explain these point can be rejected" (or something of a similar nature). Not knowing these basic things puts one in an impossible situation.

Note, no "haha" here...

(16-04-2025, 04:10 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Anyone who wants to discuss Egyptian hieroglyphics should have studied at least its basics or read at least a few of the fundamental books about it. (Note that this is totally insufficient, but it will help).

Why should the Voynich MS as a subject be treated differently?

There is no need to read about any of the bad proposed solutions, just like there is no need to read Kircher's misguided understanding of hieroglyphics.

Mary D'Imperio's 1970's book "An Elegant Enigma" is now widely outdated, but it stil includes valuable information. There is a point where she writes, after a short list of features of the Voynich MS writing:
"a proposed solution that does not address/explain these point can be rejected" (or something of a similar nature). Not knowing these basic things puts one in an impossible situation.

Note, no "haha" here...

Best example you could give (seriously, no HaHa from me included). 
Hieroglyphs studies and all books about it started with the lucky finding of rosetta stones in Egypt by some not-so-sober french soldiers or so. 
Until then, all theories and analyses about egyptian were bizarre trash.
Real Science started then, but without that lucky moment, it would still be complete bullshit.
Just like Voynich "research" until today.

(16-04-2025, 04:18 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.it would still be complete bullshit.
Just like Voynich "research" until today.

Hahaha!!!

In my opinion, it's perfectly fine to present any kind of “ complete solution” as long as it's done in a separate thread; scattering them across multiple threads without any recognizable context can be annoying.

Which and to what extent publications written by “veterans” are read through is up to you. Again, anyone who thinks they have found a solution for the VMS “from scratch” should be allowed to present it. However, in this case it is also permissible to point out the usual stumbling blocks in the development of a solution for the supposed solver. This has nothing to do with “I know better anyway”. The reason why newcomers who directly offer a solution often do not lead to meaningful discussions is that any criticism is simply ignored. It often seems to be all about getting unconditional confirmation. With such an approach, there is only one thing to do: move on.

I was amused to see myself compared to Elon Musk by Stefan Wirtz. I got the impression that he doesn't really like my ideas. I'm grateful to Koen for his positive review of my thread. I also appreciate his ideas and his work spreading basic knowledge about Voynich. ReneZ also often does.

Sorry if I'm being politically incorrect, but the big problem with the Voynich is that everyone thinks they can solve it. It's as if we could all solve the complex mathematical equations that led Einstein to establish his theories. This codex was not made by aliens but by men with a very different mentality than ours, and its study requires the mastery of many subjects.

I've seen some discussion about the possibility of plagiarism of theories. That doesn't worry me at all. I'm convinced I'm on the right path to a solution, but it's not up to me to establish that. Many people read my work, but I'm really just trying to convince a qualified minority who, over the years, might see things the way I do.

(16-04-2025, 11:22 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Sorry if I'm being politically incorrect, but the big problem with the Voynich is that everyone thinks they can solve it.

That's part of the problem. But it's a bit like saying: "the problem with Egyptology is that everyone thinks the pyramids were built by aliens". If you compare the amount of professional Egyptologists to the amount of conspiracy theorists, that statement is not at all far from the truth.

It is up to us to be the Egyptologists.

(16-04-2025, 11:22 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..]This codex was not made by aliens but by men with a very different mentality than ours, and its study requires the mastery of many subjects.
[..]

VMS is a written Bermuda triangle of unknown letters in unknown words of an unknown language.
Without knowing at least one of them, no one will get the other two.

The cited sentence is somehow funny, as it could be the complete opposite also (as often in VMS).

If this is really written be deep mastered men:
where are the men's themes?

We all can see the uncoded Visuals of VMS:
a collection of plants with rather short texts (foreseeable about gardening),
some longer texts,
kind of calendars and weather things,
roundels with categories,
some horoscope stuff,
easy bathing,
herbs with 1-word-comments and very short texts,
the Map I see totally different meanwhile (nearly nothing occult or metaphysical at all)
and maybe some prayers or indeed recipes.

Just by the plain visuals: is this really the deep knowledge?
The plant's texts are not more than some short snaps, all pages with roundels are wasting very much space in a very small book as there are only written the round things mostly, the herbs are generally turnips and roots, all short texts there don't seem like sophistic alchemy magic at all and, honestly: watertreading have not been the highest level of medical art even in ~1460AD.

In total, these are themes that would have been considered as women's matters.
Is this book even written for men?
I am lacking the fantasy to imagine a man who shows nudies to foreign women, willing to teach them how to trample through water with that.
Even with loose moral of middleages this would have been the scandal of village every time.

So you can also see this book as made for women's use just as well as for and by "deep mentalitied men", which may find not much of their interest in VMS.
In the end, this could very well be an early House&Garden Illustrated or some household Almanach.

Regarding this very physical map, I even would tend to the idea that some kind of "wise women" or mid-wifes were send out with this book as a starter kit, to show (pregnant) women out in the country all basics of plants and growing them, easy medics, healthcare, weather and some entertainment. (which would be at least give an interesting look into (job)life of women in 15tCt). And yes, women could show naked-pictures to other women without being creepy)
Under these observations, it may have been written by women, nuns for example.

I know most of you still hope for encrypted wonders, each letter one word of magic or so, but the whole makeup of this pocketbook looks like a daily-use helper for pioneer women of caring.

Not in response to anything in particular, but on the topic of this thread....

There is the famous story about a man searching for his lost car keys, and he keeps on searching in the area under the lamp because the rest is dark anyway.

We can use this, and change the car keys to a 200 Euro banknote.

The area under the lamp has been thoroughly searched, and the banknote is simply not there.

Numerous Voynich researchers are aware of this, and instead are investigating ways to shed light on the remainder of the dark area.

Some newcomers don't even bother to find out that the illuminated area has already been searched 100 times, and start their own search there.

(Fortunately, we also see plenty of newcomers here who are eager to learn!)

(16-04-2025, 04:08 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Antonio is just following the forum rules of keeping his theory within a single thread, which is excellent.

Asking someone to read the previous research may not be very productive. 90% of what is written about this MS is speculation. Newcomers don't necessarily have the insights needed to efficiently locate the remaining 10%.

That's what survey articles are for:

Reddy & Knight, "What We Know About The Voynich Manuscript" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

Bowern & Lindemann, "The Linguistics of the Voynich Manuscript" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

Also:

Lindemann & Bowern, "Character Entropy in Modern and Historical Texts: Comparison Metrics for an Undeciphered Manuscript" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

Timm, "Co-Occurence Patterns in the Voynich Manuscript" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

Peter Bakker, "The Voynich manuscript: the decipherment of ms. 408" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

I'm sure others can suggest additional key papers.

(18-04-2025, 04:05 AM)kckluge Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(16-04-2025, 04:08 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Asking someone to read the previous research may not be very productive. 90% of what is written about this MS is speculation. Newcomers don't necessarily have the insights needed to efficiently locate the remaining 10%.

[...]

I'm sure others can suggest additional key papers.

The problem is not so much not seeing the forest for the trees, but is is just not even trying. That is an attitude problem. 

For the really lazy people there are now good videos, but being lazy doen not get one there.

People who even think about looking for published papers already have the right mindset.