The Voynich Ninja

(26-01-2026, 10:59 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But now I wonder how handwriting and book bindings can be dated with such precision.

At work, one of my colleagues had a sign on his door which explained the difference between dillettantes and specialists. 
The dillettante knows epsilon about everything and the specialist knows everything about epsilon.

One of the two aspects of Dunning-Kruger is that the dillettante is likely to massively underestimate how much there is to know about any (epsilon) topic. 
And each specific sub-topic has its own specialists, so only few people will know about it. At the same time, they are likely to know who are the specialists that know more about each sub-topic.

Just to say that this works for me. I can happily accept that knowledge exists (because it has been gathered and improved over generations of specialists) in which I have no insight whatsoever. It is not generally accessible, and the bit that is ('Google'), is not much more than 'epsilon'.

(26-01-2026, 01:08 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One of the two aspects of Dunning-Kruger is that the dillettante is likely to massively underestimate how much there is to know about any (epsilon) topic. ... I can happily accept that knowledge exists (because it has been gathered and improved over generations of specialists) in which I have no insight whatsoever.

I agree that specialists usually know much more than a "dilettante" can hope to learn from the internet.  

But I know also that there are many specialists who know much less than what they think they know, and will categorically emit opinions that are flatly wrong. 

And there are also some experts who will categorically state some blind guess as if it were certain, instead of honestly saying "I don't know".  Because saying "I don't know" is not good for one's reputation as an expert...

But, fortunately, for each expert there is always some other expert who will categorically state the exact opposite opinion.  So we always have the choice. 

But anyway, my question still stands.  Did handwriting and book binding really change completely, all over Europe, at the same time?  Is that "15th century" assessment for the handwriting of the month names specific to Germany, or good for all over Europe?

All the best, --stolfi

By placing the date outside the creation of the vms we have more range to search for matches of the zodiac names.

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@Jorge_Stolfi Well, what about divinations where the chart represents a Day of the Week or a Day of the month with the sections representing hours? not sure how to correlate it with the labels. Seems a mismatch but had to mention it (could be a deadend. I can't read astrological charts and i'm not sure if it is already being mentioned and discarded.)
This is my reference: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Ms. Ludwig XII 8 (83.MO.137), fol. 56v
Pisces, diagram for friday:
[attachment=13675]
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I wonder if the month names or day names or zodiac names titles in voynichese should have been besides a star. Most of zodiac figures really skip the stars and even the ones who had them have no titles at all. A star not having titles could be very interesting because they may be curiously where the names should have been in voynichese -and added later, but the main question is: why only the zodiac names?
If there were other unnamed stars would have been named too?

Also, it looks like each chart gradually lowers the quality for some reason as if wanted to shorten the time invested...
The star that is held by the upper fish is the only one with a title i wonder why.
[attachment=13676]

I have no clue. Maybe the patron of the scribe changed the deadline or stopped the funding and then, he/she added later the months of the names... Is a funny idea to think about it.
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By the way, the virgo drawing is interesting too.
[attachment=13677]
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If there are no "French" words in the marginalia that dialect will be tied only to the zodiac names...

(27-01-2026, 01:13 AM)Zauriek Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.what about divinations where the chart represents a Day of the Week or a Day of the month with the sections representing hours?

The problem is that each Zodiac chart has either 30 or 25 "things" (but see the comments about Pisces below).

Quote:I wonder if the month names or day names or zodiac names titles in voynichese should have been besides a star. Most of zodiac figures really skip the stars and even the ones who had them have no titles at all. A star not having titles could be very interesting because they may be curiously where the names should have been in voynichese -and added later, but the main question is: why only the zodiac names?

In my view, the only meaningful contents in a Zodiac diagram is the list of 15 or 30 labels, their order, and the approximate sign of the Western Zodiac that the diagram applies to.  Everything else is just decoration. 

Each label presumably corresponds to a 1° sector of the Ecliptic, which is a bit more than one day (about 24 hours and 21 minutes).  The label may be the name of a star that lies in that sector; then the number of rays could perhaps carry some information, like the magnitude of the star.  However, the Scribe omitted a couple of stars in Gemini (but wrote the labels), and the Author did not seem to mind.

We don't quite know the order of 30 or 15 labels, because we do not know whether the inner or outer band comes first, where each band starts, and whether it should be read clockwise or counterclockwise.  

However, we can tell with some confidence that the Scribe apparently drew the nymphs clockwise, inside band first, and starting at around 12:00. He presumably wrote the labels in the order they were given by the Author.  It seems more likely that he wrote each label after drawing its nymph, in which case the order of the labels is the nymph drawing order above.  But he may also have written all the labels in a second pass, after drawing all the nymphs -- in a different order. 

The Pisces diagram is special in many ways.  Judging from the nymph style, apparently it was produced after Aries and Taurus, when the Author decided to switch from the 2x15 degree format to the 30-degree format.   

My interpretation of that diagram is that the Scribe, who had never heard the word "planning", ran out of space when drawing the outer band, in spite of squeezing the last 5 nymphs and their labels as close together as he could.  So the diagram was missing one entry (label, star, and nymph).  To fix that he drew one extra star in the central medallion, above the fish, and put the missing label next to it.  Then he added a star for the bottom fish for some reason -- maybe symmetry, maybe because he counted wrong and thought that there were two entries missing in the diagram.  

Anyway, that is my guess for why that diagram has 30 labels, 29 nymphs, and 31 stars...

All the best, --stolfi