The Voynich Ninja

@ oshfdk, thanks for your further note. Now, I see that you were trying to explain why you are not persuaded with any significance for the Botrus near-matching to image beside it.

I had a chance to go over your “method” and it seems quite problematic to me, and I don’t understand how you can even rely on that to debunk a claim never made generally. It is based on comparing apples and oranges, so to speak, both in terms of its internal logic, and how you are applying it to what I was sharing.

First, I don’t know how to say it again, but I am not generalizing anything yet from that finding of that one match between “word” and image. I said many times, I just wanted to bring to others’ attention an interesting association. That is all. I even said it is possible it may be a case of extreme coincidence, no? What is it in your method that prevents you to actually from appreciating what I was saying?

So, I am not sure what in “your” method is trying to attribute or apply to something I never claimed. The problem with quantitative supposedly more “scientific” and positivist sounding methods is that they do not pay attention to the qualitative side of things, and that includes the observation I am making that you are attributing a claim to me, to make it a lever for debunking it. How do you quantify that shortcoming in your “method”?

First of all, even if we assume your “method” and tentative calculations is valid (which in my view is not at all), concluding that there is 45% chance that there is value in the word/association I was making, even that sounds pretty good to me (though I will further explain how that number is actually been cultivated to invalidate a claim in your own favor rather than done in the spirit of reasonable consideration).

A problem with your quantitative method is that it does not pay attention to qualitative and cultural, as well as visual association, contexts and evaluation. Even in the 30 or so likely words you thought may stand for stars, you are giving each an equal qualitative valuation. I think it is an example of how billiard balls of separation of quantitative versus qualitative dualisms come into play. So, you separate those cultural/visible significations from your guessed numbers, and then develop your quantitative method, treating it, even when admittedly “not exact,” to debunk a generalization claim never made.

Pleiades being compared to a cluster of grapes has a cultural and visual significance that others lack (you can do a search in google to find out how ancient it is, in the Bible, in Greek literature, in Islamic literature, and I am familiar with it in Persian poetry as well, it is a part of the astrological tradition). The visual proximity of the “word” to the image in the VM, for me, makes it more likely a reference to the stars cluster than a general Taurus association, for example. You may dismiss that; I don’t, since the little larva thread things like this also count for me (but not in your method).

You can of course try other words in your list, and if you come up with any “coincidences” that is better than Botrus, I will congratulate you for it and withdraw mine. But, you are just playing with numbers in abstraction of cultural and visual attributes of the association made between an image and a “word” possibility.

But even then, the 45% possibility you found of its being meaningful is good enough for me, and I hope you can find a better possibility that matches not just the numerical, but also the visual and cultural association the finding evokes.

Your “method” does not really help debunk a claim that has not even been made. I see serious problems with it and I am unfortunately not convinced at all. There is a huge qualitative difference between the images/labels you shared for text in association with nearby images, and the image of Pleiades and a culturally and visually valid association one can make between the seven-stars and its label image. This difference is lost in your abstract quantitative method.

So, yes I agree with you that “I think this is not an issue with the labels, but with the method.” The problem is with your method.

You have applied, even in your words, a “not an exact” calculation (which you call instead just a “template,” but you end up actually using it as a valid basis to debunk a generalized claim never made). You just say thirty words, but give examples of only 9, and you just assume that number can be valid for other words.

You disregard the visual and culturally established association between Pleiades and cluster of grapes and think “group” is an equally valid option, for example.

You then arbitrarily consider the text of the VM to be nearly equally made of letters, and not more so of abbreviations. I don’t know how you come up with 400 not even knowing what the VM text contains in terms of abbreviations, possible ciphers, etc.

Your method is just a list of guesses for numbers, designed in your own mind just to debunk an idea (I wonder if you had chosen other numbers that could have broken your 50% threshold in my favor and you opted for numbers that did not!), such that even you yourself are not calling it exact, but a “template,” yet you come up with a percentage that you rely on to consider a suggestion a spurious match?!

That does not sound like a solid or reliable method, oshfdk, sorry! With a slight adjustment of your “not exact” calculations, the 45% threshold you found would have exceeded 50%. But even the 45% is good enough for me. Thanks.

I did not want to belabor your distinction between good or bad salad words, but even the bad salad words you suggested can be interpreted in a poetic narrative. “The Sun star brings rays to grass that in a natural cycle indirectly helps feed even tuna fish in the ocean. Poetry can help cultivate larva threads of meanings that can flush new blood in our thinking to see the whole giraffe”!

I will be moving on to other possible clues that may invite rethinking, so that we don’t belabor just one concrete example I have shared so far.

@nablator, I just read your reply. Thanks. That word "Koreni" assumes we know the first letter is (visually) k, the one before last (visually) n, and the 9 is not accommodated in your transliteration, I think the earlier post you had made had missed the 9 (hence, “koreni”), so you have added it now without accommodating for it in your “coincidental” solution. B looks more like an 8 than your candidate's first letter to k. But I am not in a position of agreeing or dismissing that candidate even if sarcastically made, since I want to move on to other material I wanted to share.

@MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) you are more than welcome to use any alternative method to support your hypothesis, I have only shown what kind of validation I would find sufficient to actually consider your hypothesis as worth further evaluation. As I said before, a theory for the Voynich MS is only as good as other researches consider it to be, there seems to be no alternative way to settle it.

@ oshfdk, thanks for your reply and considerations. I was about to share another idea when I received your reply, so I will just post it separately.

It seems that the evaluation of VMs 'labels' varies in different situations. When 'labels' are found with nymphs, they look like potential 'names', but what do the nymphs represent? When they are found with stars however, it seems they can only represent stars. So, when there is a cluster of stars represented and given a 'label' or name, then it represents a cluster of stars. Whatever 'label' that is associated with it is another matter.

Reading the end of the previous Post #31, the word that came to mind was 'corona', the Latin word for crown. Perhaps there was some obscure dialect in which this is the Voynichese word for crown. Forget the whole seven sisters' mythos and reinterpret it according to the same standards as the medieval bestiaries did with the pelican. The one apparent structure that the VMs sky contains is the holy crown. This from an artistic astronomer who omitted all the planets from the VMs representation of the cosmos and put a headband on the sun.

This was an era in which the ongoing influence of Mariology was quite potent.

@ Hi all, regarding the chart on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of the VM (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), I wanted to share just some ideas to consider. I have no idea what all the “letters” or “words” on the circles individually may stand for (except for the third circle from center, for which I share some ideas as explained below, only to the general extent I am speculating about).

Since I have seen researchers (such as Nick Pelling, and others) wonder about how the figures in the center may convey a sense of direction, and what the repeated four sets of symbols on the third line (from the center) may stand for, I wanted to share below, in case it is helpful. Please correct me and let me know if these have been shared before.

Although the orientation of faces on the left and right may have other meanings too (such as why they are facing the person on the bottom), they also serve to indicate a right-hand and left-hand direction in this way.

If the top and bottom figures with outstretched hands represent the north and south nodes (which later became represented as horseshoes looking down and up, respectively, although they can represent other meanings Pelling and perhaps others have suggested and quoted about), the left person is raising his or her left land, and the right person is raising his right hand—and the faces serve to establish that depiction doubtlessly.

If facing north, the left and right hand represent the west and east directions. Now, this contrasts with the usual way in horoscopes east and west are depicted, usually the east being on the left and the west on the right. Does this contradict that the meaning of the right and left person’s gestures? No, and this brings me to the third circle with four sets of nearly identical symbols on it (I am aware that some researchers have found variations in one or two of the glyphs across the four phases, but I am not sure yet whether they are shown differently because of fading or scribal miswriting, and even if they are different, it may be conveying a message related to what I think is happening there).

Pelling has tried to see 18 repeating characters, with the larger starting glyph before 9 as being a composite of two symbols. Others have tried to see the significance in just 17 symbols repeating in four sets. I have not been persuaded by either of the above explanations.

My initial reaction when I saw the chart was that the large glyph before 9 signifies just a separator of the four sets. It could mean something, but it is not a part of the repeated sets. This makes the set being composed of 16 items, and this may indicate that the four sets signify the 16 geomantic figures, making this chart serve, at least in part, as a magical volvelle. And that larger glyph before 9 may then signify the meaning of geomantic figures being displayed on that circle.

If that is the case, then this chart on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is not a chart of heavens, but of the Earth in the sense of its being a "geo"-mancy related chart, and if I am not wrong, it is usually depicted flipped left-and-right, i.e., as a reverse in east-west directions compared to birth charts. Perhaps those who know more about this topic can comment on this possibility.

This explains why the four figures, especially the right and left figures are raising their hands as such, and the faces serve to make clear what the hand gestures may (also) represent. This also explains why the right figure is holding the ball, which may represent the Sun, suggesting that this chart is from the standpoint of an Earthly viewpoint, rather than of the viewpoint usually depicted in birth charts, for example, where the ascendant and the first house is always on the left (East). This interpretation may even explain why the left and right persons are looking to the person on the south.

I may be completely off on the above, so please see this as just a suggestion, if it has not been brought up before as explained. I am not sure about it and I am not generalizing it to anything in the VMS. However, if there is any truth to it, this indicates the author(s) of the VM were also engaging with geomantic considerations. 

For example, if a specific birth chart was in mind (say, in the pages that are now removed), if it was superimposed on this chart, it may indicate where the phases of the 16 geomantic figures would fall in the houses of that birth chart (I think the house system used at the time was Alcabitius). 

These are just speculations I wanted to share, and you can ignore if it is not helpful.

For more information about geomancy and the 16 figures, one can start from its wiki page here You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. I am sure many of you know more about it than I.

@ R. Sale, I just read your post. Thanks. I agree with you regarding the difficult of knowing what the labels mean when related to the nymphs, because we don't know exactly what they are referring to. I think no image in the VM has a more universally recognizable meaning than those seven stars, so it can serve to explore the label's meaning more reliably.

Regarding your statement, "This from an artistic astronomer who omitted all the planets from the VMs representation of the cosmos and put a headband on the sun," I think is something that requires rethinking and I have seen this kind of judgment made by many about something not being in the VM. We keep on forgetting that so many folia and pages have been removed from what we have today.

So, in my view, nobody can claim definitively that what you find missing in the existing VM was not there originally. This is a most important "does it exist?" question and hopefully I can comment on that more in the future.

The whole repeating thing is a (often repeated) myth, I only keep trying to reinforce this because maybe it is important rather than trying to nit-pick.
The surrounding words conforming to the boundaries of "repeats" feels fairly conclusive to me and should be part of considerations for an hypothesis based on repeats.   

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(29-12-2025, 09:20 PM)Bluetoes101 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The whole repeating thing is a (often repeated) myth, I only keep trying to reinforce this because maybe it is important rather than trying to nit-pick.
The surrounding words conforming to the boundaries of "repeats" feels fairly conclusive to me and should be part of considerations for an hypothesis based on repeats.   

Wow, never thought of this. Even if you consider the words within the central circle, p appears in the bottom right and f at the left middle. So, p is the Upside Down version of f

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If you look for the main "B language marker - ed" too, it is perfectly aligned to 1F+1P as per the "o" repeat starts
There is something much more structured and possibly informative than 4 repeating sequences on this page, I just have never been able to fathom what. 

Anyway, sorry for going a little off topic  . I just get triggered by "a repeating pattern"   . 

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@ Bluetoes101 and oshfdk, regarding your last three posts, I must be missing something and am not sure what you are referring to, sorry. Perhaps you are just referring to other patterns than the one I was referring to.

If there are repeats in other parts of the chart, I must have missed them (from what I see in your photos, all I see are repeated expressions across the circles), but I was not referring to anything as far as “repeats” go except for the third circle of “symbols” from the center.

It seems to me there are four sets of repeating symbols (on that circle only, not across the circles of the chart); however, I did acknowledge that some (which includes Bluetoes101, it seems) think some of those 16 are not repeated in all four sets, which is fine and debatable and a separate matter to consider, and I said that itself may be significant if existing (that is, not all the letters are exactly repeated).

But I see four sets of 16 symbols repeating on the third circle from the center, not counting the largest symbol, which is also repeated. If you don’t count it which is the largest of the symbols (maybe I used the wrong word “glyph” for it, sorry, I think it is the Extended EVA 171, coming always before the 9 (if you read clockwise) there are 16 sets of symbols in each set. I suggested the Extended EVA 171 symbol may just serve as a separator for the four repeats of 16 other symbols.

I was not referring to anything else as far as repeats go. It would be interesting to explore the other patterns you are referring to, but I was not referring to anything.  Seeing what I have described on the third circle from the center does not seem like a myth to me (the difference in the symbols marked as F by Bluetoes101 on that circle withstanding).

I really do not have anything else to say about this chart (so far as I know now) and I wanted just to share what I thought may be helpful, as far as interpreting the persons’ gestures and the third circle from the center goes. But I agree with you both (and Pelling) that there is something important going on in this chart, as if it is providing some sort of a key. It does seem like a volvelle to me.