The Voynich Ninja

We have a lot of threads completely going off the rails into retracer territory, to the extent that some pages can no longer be discussed without retracers and restorers and redactors and The Author and The Scribe coming up and taking over the discussion. Please discuss theories about such characters in this thread as much as possible.

(18-11-2025, 05:39 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes, funny.
I hope you do not doubt the existance of the (only one) retracer at all.

I'm only messing about. I've been one of the more won-over ones and shown examples where additions look to have been made, and we can say certainly that some have because we have page numbers and such, so someone wrote in it that was not original. There are also areas that have been clearly retraced.. I'm just not won over to the retracer.. more the retracing. 

I'm staying on the fence for now

(18-11-2025, 06:09 PM)Bluetoes101 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm just not won over to the retracer.. more the retracing.

Yeah, there is no arguing that some lines are darker, and even that there are patterns sometimes (breasts, "diadems"...). But yes, The Retracer and his implied consequences for what we see in the MS is a personal theory which deserves its own thread.

(18-11-2025, 04:43 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Until there is actual proof of significant time distance, the late retracer is make-believe.

I have yet no evidence that would convince the hard skeptics.  But one main argument is to consider why someone felt the need to retrace certain parts.  The only reason I can think of is that the original traces had faded so much that the owner thought they could get lost.  That would imply that at least several decades, if not centuries, had passed.

What convinced me is hundreds of cases where a late retracing seems to be the only explanation for the present state of the VMS. 

Take for example these two items for a "Pareidolia Test Quiz" that I posted some time ago:[attachment=12475]
At (Q) there is a loose bit of a plume over a rather misshapen o glyph.  My best explanation for that is that the o was originally an s.  But a worm that sneaked between folios f1 and f2 scraped away the writing in that area; in particular, between the red lines ®.  That erased the left half of the s, leaving only a bit of an e and the loose half-plume.  The restorer did not notice the plume, and misread what was left of the body as half of an o, and "restored" it as such.

A better example is the weirdo (P).  I interpret it as having been originally an Sh.  An insect again scraped a furrow through the middle of it (and through the first i of the daiin above, ending in the wormhole in the dolchody further up).  That erased the ligature and the left half of the plume.  A Restorer (who also retraced the first i above) correctly restored the ligature of the Sh, but did not recognize the surviving half-plume as part of an Sh.  Instead he extended the right end of that half-plume down until the topline.  And he extended the ligature to the left, past the top of the C, in order to connect that "backwards plume" to the glyph.

These two examples of "creative restoration" tell me that the retracing happened after the original had been damaged by worms.  Which again must have been decades, of not centuries, after the original scribing.  Moreover, the (P) case implies that the restorer in question (unlike the original scribe) did not know the Voynichese alphabet.  Otherwise he would have parsed the damaged glyph as an Sh, instead of that weirdo.

These two examples alone could perhaps be dismissed with other explanations.  But, again, I see hundreds of other examples where the current state can best be explained as restorations botched in various ways by a Retracer who did not know the alphabet and could not figure out the original because it was faded or damaged beyond recognition.  It is the mass of those examples that makes be believe in the Big Retrace and subsequent Small Retraces.

All the best, --stolfi

(18-11-2025, 05:11 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I see it the same way as in the example.

How difficult it is to maintain the same ink colour over the years. And these were professionals. But I don't see any difference in the VM. The date is on the right. Lisa will know for sure if it's the same handwriting.
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As you can see, the darkness of the ink varies a lot from line to line.  The hue, however, is the same for any given darkness, over the years, because it is the color of the iron-tannin complex that is the coloring substance in iron-gall ink.  

That gamut of colors is characteristic of inks and paints based on transparent dyes. Namely, as the layer gets thicker, the apparent color gets darker and the hue shifts, until the thing is black.  Like tea changes from light yellow to dark red-orange and eventually to black as the thickness x concentration increases. 

That is different from inks and paints that are suspensions of solid pigments in a binder, like watercolors, gouache (tempera), oil paints, frescoes, etc.  With these, as the layer of paint becomes thicker, the color tends "in a straight line" to the pigment's color; and, above a certain thickness, the color does not change any more.   If you dilute ketchup in water, dilute solutions will look pink against a white wall; but above a certain concentration x thickness the color will remain the same tomato red, no matter how thick you make it.  Even against a black wall.

I mentioned before some of the reasons why I believe that the ink in the VMS is not iron-gall ink but some watercolor based on an iron pigment like sienna.  The way its color changes with thickness is another reason.  The first Restorer must have tried his best to match the ink type and color, just like a modern painting restorer would.  Later Retracers were not so careful. One of them may even have used iron-gall ink instead.   

All the best, --stolfi

[attachment=12492]

You yourself say that the colour tone changes constantly. Therefore, a later change or addition is virtually impossible.
Example image.
The pages are next to each other. Nevertheless, you can see that two different inks were used.
You can't tell me that space was left to insert text later with red ink. Nevertheless, I have the same red on both pages but different writing ink. Now it is very likely that the darker ink was also used to insert corrections and additions. Example: crowns.
This happened in quick succession. Probably around 1438-40. The crown is the key. From king to emperor.

[attachment=12493]
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(19-11-2025, 02:05 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Example: crowns. This happened in quick succession. Probably around 1438-40. The crown is the key. From king to emperor.

I agree that the crown matches the Habsburg model (triangular points with serrated margins, optional arch with cross on top).  And I see that as good evidence that whoever drew the crowns was in a country whose king/emperor/whatever wore that type of crown.

But I don't follow the rest of your conclusions.  It seems that you agree that at least some of the crowns were added some time after the main drawing.  The dispute is how long after.

The crowns themselves give no clue about that.  Accepting the above hypothesis, they could have been drawn any time between the early 1400s and whenever that crown stopped being used, which I guess is at least centuries later.

But on practically every illustration, including that one, there are interventions in that same ink that reveal gross misunderstanding of the original drawing.  Like mistaking a nymph's leg for a barrel.  I see that as strong evidence that those interventions -- and thus, probably, the crowns -- were made when the Author and the original Scribe were no longer around.  Moreover, the primary goal of those interventions seems to have been restoring parts of  text and drawings that had faded or been damaged (like that Sh turned into a weirdo on page f1v, that I posted recently). 

All the best, --stolfi

[attachment=12498]

That's not all.
When I look at this text and compare the light and dark colours.
When Lisa explains to me, for example, that the dark writing belongs to one of the different writers, a ‘maybe’ is enough for me.
Because the colour of the dark ink matches the crown and also the other headdresses, breasts, and much more.
Now I have so many clues that all match the C14 data.
Now you can understand why I cannot agree with your theory about repairs over centuries.
Nothing against the theory, but for me it is simply wrong and without background.


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(19-11-2025, 02:05 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You yourself say that the colour tone changes constantly. Therefore, a later change or addition is virtually impossible.[...] The pages are next to each other. Nevertheless, you can see that two different inks were used. You can't tell me that space was left to insert text later with red ink. Nevertheless, I have the same red on both pages but different writing ink. Now it is very likely that the darker ink was also used to insert corrections and additions.

I am not sure I understand you argument.  Indeed there is variation in the ink color within and between pages f67r1 and f67r2.  

Some of the ink color variation within the same page can be explained as normal ink-flow effect as the pen is periodically recharged and eventually starts running out of ink.   Some can be explained by variable degrees of wear over the page, like near the edges of f67r2.  That does not explain isolated glyphs that are noticeably darker than their surroundings, like the o in the otaldy label at 12:00 of f67r1; but those can be cases where the Scribe himself went back and reinforced some glyphs that had come out too weak or crooked.  

Other cases are harder to explain that way, like the o in okal at 11:30 on f67r2.  Or the kar in ytokar at 07:00 on the same page. 

What I think happened to the brown parts on page f67r2 is that, decades or centuries after the initial scribing,  the whole text and part of the drawings, which had faded to near invisibility, were carefully restored.  Then, decades or centuries after that, a few glyphs here and there were retouched again. 

As for the red text, my best guess is that it was retraced over original brown text, at some unknown time.  Possibly even when the color paints were applied, which seems to have been even later than the last retracing round of the Zodiac and Herbal pages (by the Boobs Retracer).  The red ink (unlike the brown one) is prone to cracking and falling off.  I can see brown traces left where this has happened.  However I am not sure that it is brown ink; it could be some brown component of the red ink that stuck to the vellum better than the red pigment and binder.

All the best, --stolfi

[attachment=12507]

Let me put it this way.
No matter how much I enlarge the font, I cannot see any darker font underneath. Not even where the red is very thin or even completely missing. And that's everywhere.
The dark ink is not so light that you wouldn't be able to see it even if I tried to cover it with red.
Because of all this, I can't follow your theory. There's simply nothing there to support it.
Give me facts, not hypotheses.