The Voynich Ninja

(04-09-2025, 02:20 AM)anyasophira Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am curious since I have limited exposure to historical ciphers or script meant to be encoded- when those were decoded did they also show a lot of natural errors made by the scribes?

AFAIK, encryption was used mostly for relatively short documents of substantial diplomatic, military, or commercial importance.  Thus I suppose that their scribes took great care to avoid errors that could spoil the decryption. 

As for encrypted books, I don't know if there are any examples that could be compared to the VMS in length and contents.  I know about a couple that were written as demonstrations of encryption methods, and the (more recent) Rohonc Codex which may have been encoded to hide thoughts that could have been considered heretical or embarrassing to the Author.

All the best, --jorge

Welcome, @anyasophia. First, let me just say that I relate to your hesitancy to jump in and get involved. Like you, I’m an educated professional (46 year old general practice physician). I’m also an amateur linguist, historian, and mystery solver, and a lifelong lover of words. I got sucked into the VMS rabbit hole in the 2010s, because it seemed tangentially relevant to both my profession and my hobbies. And here’s what I’ve found: The VMS humbles people. (Which is a good thing.)

I’m not only referring to the book itself. I have been humbled by the many amateur and professional scholars here at Voynich.ninja and the blogosphere, many of whom have education and training in bodies of knowledge I don’t have, which have turned out to be much more useful and relevant to attacking this mystery than anything I’m practiced at. The culture and tone of discourse of the VMS community were an acquired taste for me. I definitely got told off a couple times here as a noob. I lived and learned. Ironically, one lesson I had drilled into me in medical training turned out to be extremely relevant to my participation in this community: Always keep in mind what I do not know, and always be honest about what I do not know. I’ve seen a lot of well-meaning and thoughtful but odd people find their way here, break this rule, and lose their interest in the VMS when they’re written off as cranks. And I’ve seen a lot of bona fide cranks come and go here too, lol.

Anyhow, I just wanted to say I like the focus of this study very much. Like a good scientist, historian, or philosopher of the Analytical school, your study here narrows in on one specific exemplar, analyzes it systematically, and sticks entirely to the facts of what’s there on the page, no more no less. This study, or one like it, could be a valuable stepping stone to understanding the structure of Voynichese, what (if any) information it encodes, and how it encodes it.

I think we’ve all taken a long pause looking at f65r: It really is a uniquely brief herbal page. But I can’t recall anyone doing anywhere as in-depth an analysis of f65r. I’m definitely following this to see what you turn up, and where further research leads you.

Welcome 

Hello!
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is a strange and hypnotic folio, indeed. Notice that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is in the same quire as You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and all the pages in that quire look really awkward and somewhat different to the rest of the MS. It is composed by these folia f57r, f57v, f58r, f58v, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f65v. I use to say it is a mini-Vlynich within the MS, as the quire has herbal, stars, roses, a very strange text folio (f66r)... Worth investigating it. I posted a thread about it You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

Q8 is strange because it breaks down the usual cohesion within bifolia we see in the rest of the MS. 

Here's an image I made last year. RED is what we would expect with Currier A, BLUE is what we'd expect with Currier B.



All of the following things are very unusual:

First Bifolio: 

f57r mixes different types of B-language (according to Rene). The B-language and B-hand 5 go together with a strong alpha-plant image. In other words, we would really expect A language and scribe 1 with this plant. So you get a fluctuating B-language added by a rare herbal scribe to an image for scribe 1. I feel like this should tell us something about the relation between languages, scribes, text and image, but it's not clear to me how exactly.
f66v is on the same bifolio and has the same issues.
f57v is equally strange, because we get a 4-figure diagram (as found elsewhere in the MS) on the verso of a plant page, and it is done by scribe 1, who normally doesn't do diagrams.
f66r is a text-only page.

Second Bifolio:

f58r and f58v are text-only with some stars. These are usually in Currier B, and the scribe is one that usually writes in the B-language. However, the language here is Currier A, written by B-scribe 3. Again, very unusual.
f65r is a plant with only a bit of text, which is also unusual.
f65v has an image that leans towards the alpha type, but it's still by B-scribe 3. This same scribe writes in Currier A and B on this one bifolio.

All of this is strange, and even for the Voynich, very unusual. Usually scribe, language and content are consistent per bifolio. Which is what's actually the bizarre thing compared to other MSS