The Voynich Ninja

Greetings,

New here, but been interested in the VM for some time. Today f70v1 got my attention. It is an interesting piece of "art"  
What I am wondering about, is that the numbers in the "rings" are quite unusual(?). 10 in the outer ring, and 5 in the inner ring. Not often 10 and 5 is used in mythological/mystic traditions to my knowledge. I know that this probably have been discuseed before (i did a search, but did not find anything related, but sorry if I ignored something I shouldn't have ignored).
From wikipedia:
"f70v–f73v: The astrological series of diagrams in the astronomical section has the names of ten of the months (from March to December) written in Latin script, with spelling suggestive of the medieval languages of France, northwest Italy, or the Iberian Peninsula."
I find this peculiar
The original roman calendar also had 10 months, but they had 304 days in the year - and "these 304 days were followed by an unnamed 50-day winter period" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). That matches the march->december cycle.

Much later, so not related, in the french revolution they divided they year into weeks of 10 days (but 12 months of 30 days - ). 

Have anyone found any good reasoning for the 10/5 rings? I am no expert in astrology, and I guess the answer is there - as I understand this is the zodiac sign aries?

Also, I noticed that all the descriptions beside the drawings all start with "o", very often "ot" but sometimes other gallow glyphs. As I always have thought of the post/prefix system to be a case system, or something similar to that. My first thought was the "o" could be something like a instrumental case, or a locative case. Of course this is just pure speculation, and instrumental case is not very common in european languages to my knowledge. Locative existed in latin, so that would probably be known. That said, I don't think the case system necessarily follows known cases - it would not be difficult to create a new case system. I have thought about a language that does not have verbs/nouns, but just differ the words with a case.
a runner -> running
But again, this part is pure speculation. Just throwing everything out

I would appreciate any feedback, especially about the 10/5 stuff. But also about every word starting with "o".

The VMS zodiac has 12 signs of "exactly" 30 "days" each. Although at some point the Scribe tried a layout with 24 diagrams of 15 "days" each.  But after doing Aries and Taurus that way, he got back to diagrams of 30 "days" each.  He tried to draw them more compactly, but even so he sometimes had to put 4-5 "days" on top of the diagram, outside it.

I put quotes on "days" because, since there are 360 "days", not ~365.25, those items must be degrees of angle on the Ecliptic, not really days.

I put quotes on "exactly" because the three things that apparently should go together -- labels, nymphs, and stars -- are one off each other on a couple of diagrams.  These discrepancies do not seem to be significant; they seem to be merely mistakes by the Scribe.  

For instance, on f72r2 ("Gemini") the Scribe drew 30 nymphs with 30 labels, but forgot to draw the left arms of the outer band nymph at 04:00 and the inner band one at 01:30.  He then forgot to draw the stars that those left arms were supposed to be holding. He also forgot to draw the star of the outer band nymph at 09:30, even though she has a left arm.  Later someone (presumably not him) added two of the three missing stars -- but only painted in light yellow, without the penned outline.  So that diagram has 30 nymphs, 30 labels, 30 right arms, but only 28 left arms and 29 stars, two of them without the outline.

On f72r3 ("Cancer") again the Scribe forgot to draw the left arm of two of the nymphs, and thus also the respective stars.  The Painter who provided two missing stars on page f72r2 did not correct these two.

On f72v3 ("Leo") the Scribe apparently forgot to draw the left arm of the nymph at 09:00 in the inner band; and then he forgot to draw the star that she was supposed to hold with that arm.  So, in that diagram, there are 30 labels and 30 nymphs and 30 right arms, but only 29 left arms and 29 stars. 

And on f70v2 ("Pisces") the scribe apparently omitted a nymph entirely -- lock, stock, barrel, label, and star.  He must have realized the mistake at the end, because he apparently over-corrected by adding two stars in the central medallion -- but only one label.  Thus on that diagram there are 29 nymphs, 30 labels, and 31 stars...

Thank you very much for a great explanation. It makes sense now. I need to read up a little on astrology to understand this, but your overview is fantastic!

In my decode, o is sunrise, it's not a language it's a symbolic system for showing when the vital fluid in plants, humans and the earth is impacted by the harmonics of the planets, the music of the spheres. The zodiac radials are fertility treatment charts for people born under those signs, nothing is by mistake in this book absolutely everything means something. ot would be sunrise and then a Saturn tone. The little stars they are holding on a thread represent spiritus, it's the connection conduit from the subject to the heavens.

(25-07-2025, 07:32 AM)Kris1212 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The little stars they are holding on a thread represent spiritus, it's the connection conduit from the subject to the heavens.

You might not be too wrong. People in those times believed in the efficacy of astrological magic. The 'angels' holding a star might possibly represent the angels in heaven. There were angels of the mansions of the moon, angels of the planets, angels of the stars, angels of the four winds, angels of the four elements. Moreover, and this is a very important fact, each angel had a name. In particular the Bible mentions several angels by name: the angel Gabriel, Raphael, the archangel Michael. It was believed that angels had individual roles and that each could be summoned by name with an appropriate incantation for a specific intent.

But of course this is all bunkum. The manuscript is a fabricated text, a hoax. It fraudulently portrays itself to be a manuscript of the secret sciences. The circles in quires 11 and 12 do seem to illustrate common beliefs about angelic magic of the 15th century. The labels next to each 'angel' are nothing more than random names.

Let's keep our personal theories out of unrelated threads.

(25-07-2025, 10:41 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Let's keep our personal theories out of unrelated threads.

I'm not allowed to write what I think in response to someone's questions here? Isn't that what absolutely everybody else does, aren't they all just theories??

(25-07-2025, 10:41 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Let's keep our personal theories out of unrelated threads.

I will try not to. 

But the title of this thread is 'f70v1' so we are permitted to say anything that is relevant to this page. I do hope that my understanding about the belief in angels and angel magic in the 15th century, and that the labels here being just angel names is relevant. I am not sure that my ideas on this have been mentioned before in this forum.

I do also hope that some of my personal theories about this might also get to become other peoples' theories.

(25-07-2025, 12:14 PM)Kris1212 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Isn't that what absolutely everybody else does, aren't they all just theories?

Kris1212 is right. If the ultimate goal is to find out what the manuscript is about then we don't seem to have too much to go on. All efforts at decypherment seem to have failed. And so we need to make assumptions and explore possibilities, plausibilities and theories.

(25-07-2025, 10:41 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Let's keep our personal theories out of unrelated threads.

But also the title of this sub-forum is 'Theories & Solutions'. So if we cannot mention theories here then where else?

I think there may be a difference between things you can say that does not depend on your theory being true like "the figures might possibly be angels [because people at that time..]" on the one hand, and things you can say only if your theory is true like "it's all bunk [because my theory says so]" or "all words starting with o are related to the sunrise [because my theory says so]" on the other hand.

There's a risk of a lot of "noise" from the latter, subjectively, given the number of theories and the number of people actually convinced by each theory (around one on average, I'd guess).