(29-09-2025, 03:34 PM)RadioFM Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (28-09-2025, 10:01 PM)oaken Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In the era before widespread clocks and watches, incantations also served as one of the few available methods of time keeping.
One Mississippix
Two Mississippix
Three Mississippix... ?
That would be a method that serves exclusively a time-keeping function. Whereas I was suggesting this is an additional function of incantations. I heard this point from an interview with one of the authors of You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. (where modern microbiologists reconstructed a thousand year old, effective, treatment for staph infection, whilst at the time not fully understanding how or why it worked).
I agree with them that it would make much more sense to people writing their recipes down from a deeply religious and alchemical or magical world worldview to use prayers and incantations for a plurality of reasons, one of them being an in-culture way of measuring periods of time during a recipe (which included real chemical and biological time-sensitive reactions, as in the paper).
Whether this has anything to do with the vms is of course an entirely different question.
(26-09-2025, 08:13 AM)quimqu Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If we are talking about a fake cipher (a text with no meaning), it makes no sense to write such a quantity of identical words together. The author should be aware not to repeat words excessively, since words repeated too closely can lead one to think the text is fake. I mean, imagine writing and inventing words at the same time; consciously or not, you’re not going to repeat the same word twice in a row.
On the other hand, there might be stylistic reasons to emphasize adjectives or words (as in that old, old man…), but this is mostly common in novels or storytelling, and the MS does not seem to be that sort of book.
I would also make a point here, since we are talking about repetitions, regarding character repetition. It is extremely rare to find languages with such long consecutive repetitions of characters (e.g. ???ooooooooolar (if it is really a word, so werid with the dots after and before...), eeee appears in eight words, hhh in five words, rrr in one word). While word repetition may sometimes be stylistic, character repetition within words makes the word itself different. I know I could write difeeeeeeeeerent and you will still understand it as different, as if I were screaming, but this is a modern style, and I doubt it was intended that way in the 15th century.
At that time most words had no fixed writing forms. It was more write as you speak it. For example in Latin people wrote sometimes occtobr or occtbri or octobris for October and a bunch of different other crazy stuff, people loved abbreviations.
It could be numbers...11, 22, 33, 44 and so on. While maybe higher numbers are less common.
in 1400 doesnt exist much words, so they use the same word in repetition that means something different.
BY example, Hermes Trismegistus literally means “three times master” or “thrice great.” In Hermetic philosophy, the number three was never random. It represented completion, total knowledge, and the passage from the material level to the spiritual one. Repetition in threes was used to elevate an idea — it meant that something had reached its highest state of meaning.
That’s why, in alchemical texts, when a word appears three times it’s not a mistake or meaningless redundancy. It’s a symbolic language. The repetition in threes marks the three phases or states of the same element. For example, when you see something like “aqua, aqua, aqua,” it doesn’t simply mean “water, water, water.” It’s describing the process of transformation: first the physical water, the raw matter; then the transforming water, the vapor or energetic essence; and finally the purified or spiritual water, the essence that remains after distillation.
This triple repetition was part of a way of writing that mixed science, philosophy, and ritual. It was common among Hermetic and alchemical authors. The number three expressed the passage from matter to energy and finally to spirit — from the visible to the invisible. So when we see this kind of repetition in old manuscripts, like in parts of the Voynich, it’s not nonsense or copying error. It’s a linguistic ritual meant to encode a complete process of transformation, where matter, change, and spirit are the three stages of the same truth.
(Yesterday, 01:02 AM)ZamnaMx Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This triple repetition was part of a way of writing that mixed science, philosophy, and ritual. It was common among Hermetic and alchemical authors.
Please post a source for "aqua, aqua, aqua", and other examples of triple repetition to support this extraordinary claim. They should be easy to find since they are "common" in Hermetic or alchemical texts.
(Yesterday, 01:02 AM)ZamnaMx Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.in 1400 doesnt exist much words, so they use the same word in repetition that means something different.[..]
WHAT..?
You do not really mean such things, do you?
(Yesterday, 02:22 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Yesterday, 01:02 AM)ZamnaMx Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This triple repetition was part of a way of writing that mixed science, philosophy, and ritual. It was common among Hermetic and alchemical authors.[/i]
Please post a source, an example of a "common" triple repetition in a Hermetic or alchemical text to support this extraordinary claim.
It’s not really an “extraordinary claim,” it’s actually something basic — anyone who’s even slightly familiar with Hermetic tradition knows what the number three means, and what “three times three” represents. The entire structure of Western religion and philosophy is built upon these same Hermetic principles.
Hermes
Trismegistus literally means “thrice-great,” which already tells you how ancient writers understood the power of repetition. The triple form is not decoration — it marks completeness, totality, and the passage through the three planes: body, soul, and spirit; or, in alchemical language, matter, energy, and light.
This isn’t something I made up — it’s everywhere in the literature. You can see it in:
- The Tabula Smaragdina: “Tota est una, una est tota, una est.” — the triple “one” to express unity across all levels.
- The Corpus Hermeticum, Lib. I (Poimandres): “That which is born of Light is Light, and from Light comes Light.” — the classic triadic pattern of emanation.
- The Rosarium Philosophorum (1550): the triple conjunction of Sol, Luna, and Spiritus Mercurii — repeated as coniunctio, coniunctio, coniunctio — showing the three moments of the same work.
- Paracelsus, De Tribus Substantiis (1567): constantly repeating Sal, Sulphur, Mercurius — the threefold nature of all existence.
- And even in Christian liturgy: “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth” — the triple invocation of holiness, which is Hermetic in origin before it became liturgical.
So when a word or a symbol appears three times in a row in a medieval Hermetic or alchemical text, it’s not random — it’s a linguistic ritual, a way of encoding a complete process of transformation.
It marks the three stages of the same truth: matter → change → spirit.
This is why, in manuscripts like the Voynich or any other esoteric work from that era, when you see a repeated word three times, it’s not a scribal error — it’s a deliberate rhythm, an initiation code written into language itself.
i am surprised because this is a pretty basic knowledge.
(Yesterday, 02:28 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Yesterday, 01:02 AM)ZamnaMx Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.in 1400 doesnt exist much words, so they use the same word in repetition that means something different.[..]
WHAT..?
You do not really mean such things, do you?
Of course I mean it.
Medieval languages had far smaller vocabularies — Latin included — and writers reused the same root to express different shades of meaning.
That’s literally how symbolic language evolved: repetition wasn’t a lack of words, it was a method.
And seriously — you didn’t know that most modern words were invented over the last few centuries?
Five hundred years ago dictionaries were tiny or didn’t even exist, and adjectives were scarce.
Writers stretched the few available words through rhythm, repetition and symbolism.
That’s how language grew.
It’s a bit strange, honestly — trying to “study” or “translate” a book born from Hermetic and alchemical tradition without even knowing the basics of that tradition.
It’s almost funny.
(Yesterday, 02:29 PM)ZamnaMx Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So when a word or a symbol appears three times in a row in a medieval Hermetic or alchemical text, it’s not random — it’s a linguistic ritual, a way of encoding a complete process of transformation.
You haven't posted a single example from medieval Hermetic or alchemical texts... Where is your "aqua, aqua, aqua" from?
Quote:The Rosarium Philosophorum (1550): the triple conjunction of Sol, Luna, and Spiritus Mercurii — repeated as coniunctio, coniunctio, coniunctio — showing the three moments of the same work.
This "coniunctio, coniunctio, coniunctio" doesn't exist in the
Rosarium Philosophorum (1550).
Are you posting AI hallucinations again?
(Yesterday, 02:33 PM)ZamnaMx Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Medieval languages had far smaller vocabularies — Latin included —
Can you substantiate this claim in any way?