The Voynich Ninja

@ Jorge_Stolfi, thanks.

That page is actually very helpful and in some ways is taking you in the direction of seeing the draft (from which the scribe was copying) as more than just short instructions, but a more elaborate original. 

You write there (I am copying from your post directly), “I used to think that, apart from those Pharma bits, the plants were entirely made up by the Scribe.  But now, after think about that misalignment of f34r, I changed my mind.  I now believe that Author's draft already had a rough sketch of of the whole plant and of the overall layout of the text relative to it.  This in fact seems more plausible than my previous theory.  The Scribe surely could flesh out simple details of the illustrations, like nymph hairdos and dresses; but inventing a whole plant on each page would have been asking too much of him.”

I think you are entitled of course to the theory that the author was alive then. I am inclined to think otherwise, whether or not the scribe could understand the text. In my study of Khayyam’s treatises reading them in original Arabic in scribe hands, I could see that even when the scribe knew the language, they were sloppy and made great errors (sometimes because they were themselves copying from other sloppy copies). The scribes are scribes, they may not even think carefully when they were doing a text, even when they could read the text.

The bigger picture of your contribution here is that there must have been a draft from which the vellum was being prepared, whether or not the scribes could understand it. I think they could, but they were sloppy, and unlike your inclination, I think the author was no longer around, so their errors were compounded in the scribing task. That is all I am trying to suggest as the bigger picture, and it is worth considering a whole range of possibilities the original draft may have looked like.

You are in the page you linked inclined to see the author was around and giving more detailed (than you previously thought) instructions. I am inclined to see more the possibility that the scribes were given the task of transferring to vellum a complete draft (it may not have been even called a draft, but just the very original manuscript that had been used also by the author for a long while when alive), and doing so had to be concerned about space (given vellum costs), so the text and plants they had likely seen on separate pages in the draft, now they had to try to put them on the same page to the extent they could. Sloppiness had less to do with the question whether they could read the original. I think they could have, and the complete was not as mysterious as it looks today – to us.

Your contribution, Jorge, is the bigger picture. This VM vellum was not the first thing, it was being done from another manuscript (called draft or not), and this opens many possibilities and in fact is a very important contribution, in my view toward solving the puzzle.

I have not had a chance to work on my next item but will post it when I get around to it.

(04-01-2026, 04:46 PM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.the scribes were given the task of transferring to vellum a complete draft [by a deceased author]

That is indeed a possibility.  

However, after spending many hours looking at the text and transcribing it, I believe that the original Scribe(s) knew the Voynichese alphabet (unlike some later owners who tried to "restore" faded text).  That makes it more likely (but of course not certain) that the Author taught them and had them train until their handwriting was acceptable to him.

There are also hints that the VMS was put to vellum in installments, over a period of many years, and the "spelling" (or encoding) may have changed in between.  See the "Language A"/"Language B" shift.  That too suggests that the "vellification" of the VMS happened while the Author was still alive.  

But of course nothing of this is certain.

All the best, --stolfi

@ Jorge_Stolfi, thanks, I am glad we are further agreed on some possibilities. You are offering your view about what preceded the vellum stage, involving other “original scribe(s)” knowing about the alphabet, and the vellum was put together “in installments” over several years, with possible changes from the later scribes (in your view, possibly while the author was alive). I understand what you are trying to say, with some of which I agree in a different way as explained in my next post.

In this post I want to continue with, in my view the important and necessary, notion of the proper unit of analysis of the Voynich manuscript as I outlined previously, by focusing on the topic of the history of the VM and offering an alternative viewpoint as a hypothetical framework for your consideration.

Having that broader unit of analysis in mind for the VM, I would roughly periodize its history into three phases.

The first phase, during 1300s, I no longer will call “draft” but in fact “the original parchment” (assuming it was not yet on vellum, that is calfskin, but either on paper or other less expensive sheep or goat skins or a combination of them, more likely the paper parchment since it served as a workbook, but it really does not matter which). It was an author created and used original, used for a long while in her life to deal with personal troubles amid public issues of her time (for now, to make it easier, given some indications in the existing incomplete vellum, I will refer to the author as she/her).

The text may have been offered to the author by specialists per her request, such as astrologers, plants experts and book sources, healing suggestions, medical advice as framed in the cultural context of that time, etc. But the author could have over time added illustrations to make the more abstract and technical material more understandable for her. This was a handbook, written and kept privately and used as a workbook.

It was most likely not bound, since it did not need to be, for personal use. It would have been easier just to use the information sheet at a time, a plant, an astronomical chart, a pharmaceutical making/using instruction, chanting ideas, etc. We owe to Lisa Fagin Davis that idea and good finding (although she was referring to the vellum version, while I am adding that the unbind, sheet-based usage preceded that). 

To go to the roof to see the lunar and star maps to plan her next balneological or pharmaceutical treatment, let us say, you don’t need to take plant pages with you, just one sheet or two will do. The texts related to each plant would not have to be on the same page as the plants. As new information was found and creatively drawn and painted about a plant, some text was written on a separate sheet (it could have been on the same sheet, but that did not have to be necessarily always the case, is what I am saying).

There were “boxes” perhaps including various sections. Plants, likely birth or planetary charts (now missing), lunar charts for timely actions, pharmaceutical section, balneological section, a section listing the stars used for the handbook, and a fold-out imagining what the goal was, bringing it all together, perhaps with some magical considerations for wishes to be made and realized (like in astrology, Ferdaria type visions of things that can and are expected to happen, or achievements to be made as depicted in the largest foldout).

I won’t go into more details of the first phase of what I call “Original Parchment” (OP) phase. The author was alive, and likely developed her own, for privacy and other public scrutiny reasons, system of abbreviations, alphabets, some borrowed from standard sets, others entirely made up by her that only she could know what they stand for (letters, words, even thoughts or technical data, etc.). There was no need for “scribes” doing it. She may have received instructions from experts so may have had some texts given to begin with, but expressed them in her own way, adding her illustrations to make the details more tangible for herself, and perhaps for loved ones she was also trying to help.

The second phase is that of the “Complete Vellum” (CV). This is what was most likely prepared around 1400-1450, during a range of time uncovered by the carbon dating tests. Since we don’t have some sections anymore, even some may have been prepared starting earlier, and could have taken several years.

During the second phase, the author was no longer alive, but perhaps by her instructions and prior planning, it was planned to be transferred to the durable vellum. This CV most likely included everything from the OP (original parchment), all the now-missing sections still present. Because the OP was not paginated, neither was this CV, though some scribes doing it could have had some (likely proven wrong) ideas about how to order the folios for possible binding as a collection.

There is no reason to assume that the scribes of the CV had absolutely no idea what language the text was in. The reason is, they may have known who the original author/user was, and just based on that could have guessed its main language. Perhaps they did not know exactly one or another symbol or abbreviation or contraction method, but the CV included information that could have identified the author and background of the OP. This CV was completed at some point in mid 1400s, whereas the OP belonged to the previous century (1300s).

The scribes added their own styles to make the vellum, since now the concern was to make sure all the OP was transferred economically to the vellum. So, texts were included mostly on the same page as the plant images, they used foldouts, etc. For them, it was not a mysterious text, short of some aspects they may have had to transfer by copying from the original, without scrutinizing what they made. Scribes were scribes, after all. Mistakes could have happened, but generally were minimal since they had a PO to copy from.

The third phase I would call the Incomplete Vellum (IV) phases. This is when for various reasons having to do with the interest of selling the vellum to a highest bidder, who ended up being Rudolph II, the CV transitioned to the IV. And this is where the story of the VM becomes very interesting, in my view, resulting in the existing partial “enigmatic” vellum.

Here is a possible hypothetical way this could have happened, at some point after the CV had been completed.

First, they paginated the CV to bind it for the purpose of selling it, and it was done. Although they did not know exactly the best way to put them in order, they did it in a way that was not reasonable, or did it in intentionally distracting way, such as moving some folios of the plant section to the end, moving the stars/recipe section to the end, rather than before the star/moon charts, etc.

However, as they did so and paginated the collection, they began to wonder if the sections in the CV identifying the author could make it less enigmatic, or even give away the author, so to speak. After all, if Rudolph suspected that the manuscript he way buying belonged to an archive already in his dominion, let us say, why would he buy what he already owned and was fetched from a place belonging to his dominion.

So, they said, let’s take the birth/planetary charts out and other identifying quires, including perhaps even anything that could have served as a title page, cipher key (for personal use of the original author), or anything making the text decipherable more easily, out. Then they bounded it.

However, they soon realized two pages related to the Zodiac pages could still give away their intended enigmatic artifact and spoil the sale. So, they had no choice but literally cut those two pages off after binding with a razor.

So, this is how the third stage, IV that exists today could have come about. Since it was handled a lot as an enigmatic text, it shows the wears, and the rest of the history is known thanks to the efforts of ReneZ and colleagues and other scholars.

In reading posts in this forum, at some point I was puzzled and began to wonder why scholars are taking for granted the “pages removed” or “pages missing” as just benign incidents that happened to the manuscript? Specific quires have gone “missing” and more significantly, two half bifolia have been literally cut off. Why? Why assume this happened just accidentally. Yes, accidents happen too, but why not take seriously the intentional factor into account?

What else do we need to at least consider that the VM existing today is a socially constructed enigma, not an enigma that originated in the OP or even the CV, other than the private and personal nature of them as a source its author created for personal use o deal with some personal troubles amid public issues of her time?

I am not inclined to see the VM as a modern forgery and have to rely on the trust given by experts on the tests made on the existing incomplete vellum. However, if modifying the CV (when the OP had been destroyed as commonly done at the time) to make it more enigmatic than it was intended to be, evidence for which is present in the surviving incomplete manuscript, in a way, counts for some “forgery” intention, that would be fine with me as a forgery attempt, but not meaning that the vellum itself was created as a hoax. I am not there so far.

The Voynich manuscript has been characterized as the most enigmatic book for 600 years. First, including the original parchment from which it was copied in early 1400s, it can be regarded as having existed in parchment form in 1300s. Second, there is no evidence as of the present to suggest that the manuscript had been enigmatic until the process leading to its sale to Rudolph II. I am not convinced of a 600-year enigma, and that prior history before near to the Rudolph sale is unknown, according to the expert’s own admission. What has become enigmatic is an incomplete manuscript on vellum whose whereabout we can trace to sometime that began from its journey to Rudolph’s archives.

I think Rudolph II may have been duped into buying something he already owned from another archive already in his dominion. The author’s identity had to be removed for that to happen, and in fact there could have been other reasons for suppressing the identity of that author.

In this post, following what I shared about the proper unit of analysis of the Voynich manuscript, and the three possible phases of its broader existence that it implied—namely, a Complete Parchment (CP) phase in 1300s, (likely) Complete Vellum (CV) phase in 1400s into 1500s, and an Incomplete Vellum (IV) phases starting from the time it was likely modified for sale to Rudolf II—I will focus on the question of the proper order of the manuscript sections, not as how it is today, not even how it was in the second CV phase, but how its original author/user would have logically conceived and ordered it, even if page numbers were existing on that original CP in 1300s.

I will go into the details only to the extent that it can give us a hypothetical sense of how the manuscript could be logically organized for the purpose it seems to have been intended for.

After I purchased my Yale copy of the VM, believe it or not, and sorry to say given the elegance of the volume, I stripped it from its binding (I have paper cutting/binding equipment, so it was easy to do, and perhaps I can put it back together, hopefully), so that I can make the bifolios the way it has been proposed, including the missing pages/quires it is assumed it must have had given the page numberings added in the CV stage (1400s-1500s).

Focusing on the original Complete Parchment (CP) is important for this purpose, since we are concerned with how the original author/user had come up with its logical organization (whether or not it had been intended for binding, which I am inclined to suppose it was not bound for practical reasons of easy handling and privacy maintenance).

If we consider the 1300s CP for this thought experiment, we will not be concerned with the question of following exactly the order of sections as intended in CV (remains of which we see in IV).

Also, rejecting the possibility of reversing bifolios would not come into play, since we are not looking at IV, but CP here. Although it has been recently suggested that reversing of bifolio folding is not found as possible in the examination of IV material, I am not yet inclined to dismiss that possibility since it seems not all the pages of the IV have been examined in recent tests, and also, in any case, we are not here concerned with either IV or even CV, but the CP of 1300s for our thought experiment.

To begin with, I am fine with the existing first page starting the CP, nor do I see any reason to reject the first section being comprised of the plant/herbal section. The first page images (as I showed before as far as images go) reliably fit well in terms of giving in a nutshell what the manuscript is about.

For now, I am abstracting from the nature of the plant drawing. All I can say at this point is that they do not seem to be (in my view) a record of actual plants, but a creative record of plant features seen in nature or in books, at times shared in a comparative way (even in the same plant drawing) that was instructional for the author.

For instance, she could draw small leaves and large leaves for the same plant to say, comparatively, it looks like on the left not as it is depicted on the right. The root looks like this. They are done creatively to explain and be a record of how the features can have certain medicinal or other properties.

I will later comment on how a proto-doctrine of signatures can reasonably explain the depictions (and in fact in a way the whole volume), without dismissing the possibility of actual practical information the author was trying to gather in her handbook/manual.

I realize the doctrine of signatures have been brought up and discussed and hotly debated by many of you, but I think it is worth considering it more seriously and in a more flexible way.

Also to be considered is that generally, it does not matter (since we don’t know yet the textual content), whether the bifolia are treated as nested or separately arranged, except for a few cases that I will specify. For, now, I will treat them as nested (as found in imagined CV map in the Yale collection (p. 24), except for the modifications I will suggest below.

1. Plants section:

The plant section begins on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and follows as follows:

Bifolia 1v/8rv, 2rv/7rv, 3rv/6rv, and 4rv/5rv (as it is in IV)

Bifolia 9rv/16rv, 10rv/15rv, 11rv/14rv, 12rv(missing)/13rv (as it is in IV, noting with interest the missing 12rv, as a half bifolia)

Bifolia 17rv/56rv ….. 36rv/37rv (this entire quire is fine with me as found in IV)

The next subsection of the plant section I would modify as follows (these have been suggested by other researchers):

Bifolia nested as follows 65rv/58rv (reversed), 66rv/57rv (reversed), 87rv/90rv(foldout), 93rv/96rv, 94rv/95rv (foldout)

The last set basically brings those plants currently from the pharma section to its proper place as part of the botanical section. In other words, quire 8’s missing inside bifolio are, in my view, actually not missing, but have been misplaced in the pharma section.

Those missing bifolia are missing, nonetheless, but they belong to what could have been another (planetary charts belonging to the astrological section) now missing in IV.

The above, makes the plants section relatively self-contained as far as plant images go. But what the last subsection above does is that it ends with the f57 chart, followed by two all-text pages f58rv. This makes a logical transition to the astrological material to follow.

2. Star/Recipe section:

I think logically, what is now (in IV) the recipe/star section, follows next. Yes, it can be placed anywhere in a later vellum, but logically, following a major section of plants which are subject to the study of how stars influence them, it is logical to make a detailed listing of the stars, as commonly known at that time.

Yes, you can find “word” in them that are found in other manuscript sections, but that does not prove anything as far as order of sections go.

So, in this section we have Bifolia 103rv/116rv … 109rv/110rv (missing in IV).

I have no problem with adjusting the order within this subsection, if a researcher thinks another bifolia such as 105rv/114rv should come first.

I also have no problem with the last page of the current IV, not “fitting” in this section, since I am not looking at the CV or IV, but considering the CP (the original CP) in this thought experiment. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. became a last page because how IP was put together.

And until we learn what the text of the VM means, we cannot dismiss the possibility of the order I am proposing (of the stars section following the plants section).

The stars subsection follows the all-text last pages of the plants section, preceded by the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. chart that seems to be giving a key or guide about how directions and other information about the rest of the manuscript is to be understood.

3. Pharmaceutical Section

The third section of the CP, in my view, belongs to the pharmaceutical section. There are no nymphs there, but in the nymph sections there are lots of pharmaceutical related bathtub containers.

At this point, the author has made a detailed record of the plants features and associated properties and has also made a detailed list of the stars and their significance. The influence the stars have on the plants do not have to yet be customized to any person.

These are general and broader considerations giving the author the natural (earthly and spiritual/cosmic) elements to make necessary medicine or essences for physical and possibly spiritual qualities and healing aims. Perhaps the flat top and curved-top containers refer to solutions that are meant to be digested or bathed in, or both.

So, in this section I include the following:

Bifolia 88rv/89rv (foldouts), 99rv/103rv (foldouts), and 100rv/101rv (fold-outs). They don’t have to be considered nested. Note that I have not included any just-plants bifolia in IV, because they have been moved to their “proper” plants section (as explained above).

4. (Partly Missing Planetary) Astrological Charts

From this section, the astrological section begins.

At the beginning of it, I will include the missing bifolia (59rv/64rv, 60rv/63rv, 61rv/62rv).

Also, I include next in this section bifolia 67rv/68rv (foldouts, lacking any bathtubs or even nymphs, other than the traditional images of the Sun and the moon, or other faces that may point to the author’s identity)

Then come bifolia 69rv/70rv (foldouts), which begin again with illustrations as in the previous subsection, but then begin to include Zodiac monthly charts, that now include bathtubs and star references, etc.

Then follows bifolia 71rv/72rv (bifolia), 73rv/74rv (the 74rv missing likely related to the missing two Zodiac months) come next, ones that include Zodiacal monthly planners, so to speak.

I strongly believe the planetary birth charts of the original author were part of the PC.

First, because, from an astrological point of view, remaining at the level of general plants and stars information is not sufficient for any practical use, in the context of the cultural belief systems of the time. Stars influence human lives in the traditional astrological belief system of the time, in very specific ways, depending also on their birth charts and life events.

Second, although the birth charts or other pages from the astrological section were likely removed in IV to suppress the identity of the author of the VM to make it enigmatic for Rudolf II acquisition, in my view, traces of those charts are still evident in the surviving astrological charts in ways that are very interesting. I will comment on this later, in the interest of not making this already long post longer, and because my purpose in this post is to outline a logically better sense of the organization of the original 1300s CP.

The month charts in this section provide a very practical time-organized way guide to its author about how the pharmaceutical material introduced in the previous section must be used in a way that is customized for the author based on her birth chart and her own life conditions.

Contrary to what has been believed, unless others have raised this point (so please let me know), I believe a majority of the nymphs in this section (and the following section) are actually depictions of the same person, and if others are depicted (such as males, or any relatives or acquaintances) they are done in relation to the author using this handbook.

Yes, images may look different, at times even young or old, wearing this or that hat, with this or that hand gesture, flagged to relate to this or that star, etc. But the differences are depicting the different ways the different stars are influencing the same person’s life.

An old or young nymph can be a depiction of each reflecting on the other age of herself. The fighting, or together dancing (in the balneological section, for instance) can be depictions of lack or existing of harmony between various selves of the same person, physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, even different body parts, etc.

The author is telling herself, I am influenced by the star so and so in this month, it is benefic or malefic, good to bathe in this or that, take this or that medicine, and so on. She is making a very tangible record of how to go about implementing her researched guidelines.

5. Balneological/Biological Section:

To this section belongs the balneological bifolia, depicting how the pharmaceutical material can circulate inside and outside the body to induce healing, bodily and spiritual.

I don’t mind moving the bifolia in which the tubs run across the fold to the inside of their nested arrangement (as proposed by other scholars). So, we have the following in this section:

Bifolia 75rv/84rv, 76rv/83rv, 77rv/82rv, 79rv/80rv, 78rv/81rv.

While it is possible that other nymphs are also included in this section (such as those the author knew), I have no problem seeing groups of nymphs here as depicting the harmonizing process of the health as part of the treatment of the person, inside and outside, by the application of the pharmaceutical material reported in previous sections.

6. Cosmological Section:

I include the remaining missing bifolios 91rv/92rv and 97rv/98rv as being possibly related to the last section of the 1300s CP, which ends in the largest foldout, that is bifolia 85/86 comprising the quire 14 of the IV, generally referred to as the cosmological section.

I think this largest foldout is bringing the whole volume together, including any visions the author may have had for her remaining life and earthly afterlife (legacy).

This post has already become even longer than usual, sorry. I will end it for now and will share more about the ideas later for your considerations.

I am taking this moment to add something aside from my intended flow of presentations, and it has to do with textual matters along the lines of what I proposed at the beginning regarding the proposed “Botrus” solution for the Pleiades image on f68r3. One does not need to be a linguist or statistician to consider various possibilities. I will explain later in this post how that proposed solution can help us understand the EVA “daiin” or “8aiin.”

One of the issues Voynich scholars have faced is regarding whether its text is based on a natural language, constructed language, a cipher, astronomical data or instructions, or even a hoax, and so on. The long list of proposed language here You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. demonstrates the extent of possibilities proposed as far as natural languages go.

An either/or approach to the question would look for a single natural language, if considered, as a solution. So, either Latin, or German, or Turkish, or this, or that, would be an easy guess. However, if there is any natural language underlying the VM text, it could have elements from many languages, even if the most prominent language is, say, Latin and/or German.

If the author excelled in Latin, let us say, and was deeply interested in astrological themes for various, including healing, purposes, and had the time and the means to do so, she could have obtained a copy of the Latin translation of a most important source in astrology, originally written in Arabic, by the Persian Abu Ma’shar from Balkh (d. 886) (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) which was already translated into Latin as Flores Albumasaris by John of Seville in early 12th century. If she had an astrological advisor familiar with Arabic because of his specialty, she could have also heard material and words used in Arabic/Persian/Turkish.

So, exposure to Arabic or Persian terms used in astrology was assumed, and some names still are used and familiar today (such as Aldebaran, the star following the Pleiades). If the author was looking for ways of expressing herself in a ciphered language that she herself could understand for privacy reasons, she could have even used Arabic original terms, without this necessarily meaning the VM text is in Arabic, or Persian, or that she spoke Arabic.

So, a part of the text’s elephant may be found to be Turkish, Arabic, German, French, Greek, etc., depending on where you touch it, each time thinking that that specific word suggests that its source language comprises the whole elephant, when it may not be so. Even a term in Persian, can be at the same time used in Arabic, or Turkish, by a Latin or German speaker/writer, even if she does not fluently speak those other languages. Words can transpose with one another, at once being used in multiple languages.

If the author lived in an area where she had been exposed to Latin, German, Italian, French, etc, and their local dialects, and by reading books had learned important words from Arabic, Persian, etc., which would be likely given the deep interest in botanical, likely medical, and astrological themes found in already translated texts from those languages (such as the writings of Avicenna, Albumasaris which is the Latinized word for Abu Ma’shar …), she could have used the original words as another way of ciphering her text for privacy purposes. 

Koen G’s interesting recent video on the words on the last page of the existing VM shows that Latin and German are mixed up there along with Voynichese and other yet unreadable material, and the author could have also been aware of the mixed language sources used in the VM text.

Now, going back to the “Botrus” proposed solution, I suggested that the author seems to be using ‘a’ as a wild card, or a joker in a card game a la magnisium’s suggestion (but less complicated than his proposal), which can stand for anything (letter, word, whole sentence, etc.), but likely primarily a phonetic substitute of ‘t” such as ‘et’ or ‘at’ or ‘te’ or ‘ta’ etc. Even today, we read @ as ‘at’ without a ‘t’ being evident in it visually (this is just an example, not that the symbol was used as such back then).

My suggestion was, if Botrus is a solution for 8oa29 and that cipher rule is being applied, if an ‘a’ is preceded and/or followed by a vowel, it would trigger the rule, asking the reader to substitute it with something, depending on the image or textual context, or by referring to a table of possible substitutes, if less evident.

According to the VM browser, any errors in it notwithstanding, there are 13614 ‘a’s and 21895 ‘o’s, but only 282 ‘oa’s (there is just one ‘oa’ alone but I think it is an error by the browser).

If there is a ‘t’ used in its text, in the middle of any word, it could then be hidden under the ‘a’ provided that the preceding and/or following vowel rule is found, for triggering the rule. Otherwise, the ‘a’ would just be an ‘a’.

Now, if we apply that possible rule to one of the most appearing and discussed “words’ in the VM, that is the EVA ‘daiin’ (8aiin), an interesting solution can be found as a hypothesis.

The word, applying the rule, since the vowel follows a (and in fact, sometimes the i could be used to trigger the rule, even when not needed), we obtain the solution “batin.”

Batin (in the original باطن ) is a very important word used in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and essential to astrology and esoteric knowledge, because it means ‘inner’, ‘interior’ ‘occult’ ‘hidden’ etc. It is contrasted with ‘zahir” (or “Zaher”) again used in the same languages and traditions, meaning ‘outer’ ‘appearance’ , etc. I would rank this word as one of the most important, perhaps the most important, word in esoteric sciences.

In a manuscript seemingly dedicated to expressing hidden meanings, be they botanical, astrological, medicinal, etc., it provides a key language for expressing the hidden meanings of their elements, so it can be used as part of any term, across all the sections. The browser shows the word used 1393 times as part of other words, and 864 times alone. I can’t think of any word that could best describe this manuscript filled with “inner meaning” of things. The illustrations are actually ways of making those hidden meanings apparent.

Using the term as such does NOT make the overall text necessarily Arabic, Persian, Turkish, I must add. All it shows is that the word is the part of the elephant of an overall language the author is using to write her text likely for privacy. Using many language borrowings, therefore, can be a distinct possibility, without denying that the overall language of the author can be X or Y.

Just another side note to add to the above in light of a recent contribution made by JustAnotherTheory, seeing “baths” or “hamams” as indicating a Persian or Arabic source for the VM, would be like the same as explained above. Just because there are transcultural themes influencing the VM, it does not make it necessarily belong to those sources. Most evident of course is the astrology or the botanical items, obviously influenced by Persian/Arabic sources influencing the Medieval sciences in the period. 


This does not signify the manuscript necessarily is belonging to those source influences, though the transcultural seeing of the elephant is essential for understanding the VM, in my view. The author may have even seen images of those proposed source material, and tried to depict them in her own way in the VM, but I doubt those symbols are actually referring to mundane pipes and hoses, so to speak.

As far as I know, and as I noted earlier, there is no reliable evidence for the claim that the COMPLETE Voynich manuscript (not the existing incomplete one) was, before the process that concluded with its sale to Rudolf II, enigmatic and a puzzle. What is puzzling to me is how the absence of the pages has been treated as a benign event. There is simply no evidential basis for claiming that the Voynich manuscript has been enigmatic for 600 years.

No experts or scholars can scientifically claim that. At best, observers’ documented puzzlements about the manuscript’s date back to late 1500s (so at best we have a 450-year puzzle, that is 2026-1576=450, per its Yale publication chronology). If the manuscript’s provenance timeline is marked “unknown” from 1400s to late 1500s, and it has been established that it was up to some point during that time complete, that means claims made about the enigma of the currently existing incomplete vellum cannot be readily assumed valid for the complete vellum that once existed.

The reason is, nobody can claim to have seen the contents of the missing/removed pages, and it can plausibly be considered that their going missing and being removed was an act of forgery to make the manuscript enigmatic and marketable to a highest bidder. I am surprised Voynich scholars have ignored or underestimated that possibility and treated the missing pages as merely incidental.

However, I am not inclined to believe that the manuscript itself was a forgery from the beginning. It could have been subjected to forgery later as described above and in my earlier post in this thread. And yes, I agree with Proto57’s point that even the vellum’s preparation timeline can start earlier, such as 1365.

Proto57’s point (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) that “…  is written on parchment that dates from 1365 through 1497 (but we can help by "adjusting" that inconvenient result through averaging the differing samples, until we have a more believable number)” has merit, in my view principally because we have significant missing pages that are no longer even available to be carbon-tested, and the carbon testing was made on selective pages of the incomplete manuscript existing today, not all of its pages. The curves of the tested pages’ timeline extend to an earlier time than 1405, with less probability, understandably.

The obtaining and using of the vellum could have spanned a wider timeline, some done earlier that could have started even in 1360s, some later, the bulk perhaps falling in the 1405-1438 period. But I would not rule out the possibility that it was even entirely prepared during 1405-1440 while being transferred to vellum from a complete manuscript authored and used in 1300s.

Any modern forgery thesis, if true (which I doubt to the extent being claimed), does not have to assume the original manuscript had been also a forgery.

(10-01-2026, 05:51 PM)MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The reason is, nobody can claim to have seen the contents of the missing/removed pages, and it can plausibly be considered that their going missing and being removed was an act of forgery to make the manuscript enigmatic and marketable to a highest bidder. I am surprised Voynich scholars have ignored or underestimated that possibility and treated the missing pages as merely incidental.

I think you answer your own question here. Nobody knows what was on them, so your possibility is equally as likely as any other. 
With that being the case, it is sort of is "incidental". If you are in a plane at night and everyone is sleeping with the windows closed, how fast are you travelling? 
Einstein said the answer is that it doesn't matter, because you can't know, you have nothing to measure. 
I think the same logic applies here.

Maybe they contained plain-text instructions to decipher the text and someone cut them out to aid them reading it. 
Maybe they were cut out to make it more sellable.
Maybe they were so damaged someone decided to cut them out. 
Maybe they were deemed to have troublesome content for the person who owned it at the time. 
Maybe it's next weeks lottery numbers  

.. excluding the last one, I don't see how someone can build a compelling case for something we don't have.
What happens is people tend to choose one that best fits their theory.

@Bluetoes101, yes, you actually illustrated my point very well. Thanks. In your list what is missing is the possibility of the forgery to obscure the ownership of the manuscript, while doing your best to come up with alternative, at times unserious, considerations. That is all I was saying, as a POSSIBILIY and you confirmed how benign considerations can minimize that possibility and thereby lose possibly significant explanatory considerations.

Looking at when the binding was done. When page numbers were added. Stubs of missing pages and jumps in numbers, etc etc, can be informative and Lisa has produced a lot of info on this. We can learn from that. 

We can't learn from invisible pages. I'm not trying to minimise significant possibilities, I'm just saying every significant possibility is based on "the invisible man". There is nothing to be learned from guessing what was on pages we don't have.