The Voynich Ninja

I recently found my way back to browsing Voynich research things and have been enjoying it enormously. I watched episode 1 of Koen G’s Voynich Talk series which led me back to Lisa Fagin Davis’ work. After reading her latest Voynich blog post and her very interesting article in Manuscript Studies I found myself enjoying browsing the VM on Jason Davies’ Voynich Voyager tool. I was looking at the bifolios Lisa identifies as Scribe 2 that seem to have been shuffled into the outer layers of Quire 5, namely folio 33/folio 40 and folio 34/folio 39. 

I was having a grand old time when something about the B style daisies on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. caught my eye. Their positions seemed to line up through the page.

I wasn't sure but I was curious so I attempted to use my very imited graphic design skills and programs (i.e. microsoft paint and microsoft paint 3d) to see whether the daises were actually in the same spot. I took some screen shots of the areas of interrest on Voynich Voyager. I reversed the image of f40r, aligned it as best I could with You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. using the faint paint bleed-through visible on f40r, and then faded one image over the other. I have recorded that process to share what appeared here:



To me, it does look like the “inserted daisies” were placed in the sam position on both sides of the folio. At the same time, the daisies themselves do not align in a way that suggests one was simply traced from the other.

This may just be coincidence, of course. 

But I am not entirely sure that it is. Koen G has pointed out elsewhere that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. :

(27-06-2024, 06:52 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.... are the two VM plants that have a "daisy" imposed on another flower. ...

So if these two daisies are actually aligned with each other on opposite sides of the same folio, that seems potetially interesting to me. Is the artist responsible for these two plants using a deliberate visual cue to signal some kind of relationship between these two plants?

I thought there was something very interesting You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. where Koen G posted an image of plant that he had found in Dioscorides manuscript Chig.F.VII.15 with a similar weird "rayed" daisy on an oddly structured plant. User Juan_Sali replied:

(26-06-2024, 11:22 PM)Juan_Sali Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Koen G. You compared the plant with the VMS You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. but I think that it is closer to the VMS You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , both plants are in the same folio, maybe it is not casual

Could it be that the two plants are meant to be related botanically, perhaps two members of the same plant family, marked by the shared daisy insertion as a visual cue? 

Another possibility that occurred to me. Could they represent two stages in the life of the same plant? It is more far-fetched, given how different the two drawings are. But could the large bulb below the flower on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. be something that develops into the triangular form beneath the flower on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as the rosette of petals emerges? The double stem on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. versus single stem on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. makes this less likely, of course, but the leaves on both plants do share some similarities.

Could this be a visual cue signalling a more symbolic or religious relationship between these two plants? That certainly seems plausible, though I don't know where I would even start to try and figure out what on earth it could mean!

Of course David Jackson’s suggestion in part 2 of episode 1 of Voynich Talk may be right: perhaps the B style artist is just a bit sloppy and isn't really interested in what the centres of flowers really looks like and just thinks they all look more or less like daisies. It could just be that the way these two line up with each other is an accident or coincidence.

I'd love to hear what other people think.

If there is a reason for them lining up, other than pure coincidence, it may be due to the transparency of the parchment. Maybe the daisy in the large flower was whimsically drawn because it was shining through from the other side?

(09-04-2026, 03:12 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If there is a reason for them lining up, other than pure coincidence, it may be due to the transparency of the parchment. Maybe the daisy in the large flower was whimsically drawn because it was shining through from the other side?

A good possibility since it explains both "how" and "why" they would line up (if they truly do).

However, the shapes of the daisies themselves don't look like they are a tracing of one another. Not that this precludes drawing a daisy on the same spot where the one shining through was without tracing it exactly.

I hope it is not too tiresome for me to be posting again in this thread that is about a very small and probably unimportant detail, but I just can't stop thinking about these little "daisies!"  


I kept thinking about Koen's suggestion that, if it wasn't just a sheer coincidence, the "daisy" on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. may have been drawn there because the "daisy" on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was visibile through the page. 

I am no graphic designer, so my first attempt at lining them up and comparing them was quite sloppy. I started to think that the images being at different angles might have led me to incorrectly see them as less similar to each other than they really are. Perhaps they do look like a lot alike, as though one was drawn over the other.

So I wanted to see whether I could align the images a bit better in order to judge more clearly how much the two “inserted daisies” on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. really look alike.

This time I downloaded the original size high-quality images of the 2014 scans from the Yale University Library. I removed the background of f40v, leaving only cutouts of the blue and green paint and the daisy-like flower. I again flipped You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. horizontally and aligned the two images as closely as I could using those areas of blue and green paint visible through the page on f40r as guides. This took me a very long time because the pages lay differently depending on which side is facing up, so getting every area of paint to line up was extremely challenging. In the end I prioritised the paint closest to the "daisies" assuming this had a higher chance of positioning the daisies more accurately. I then again compared the two flowers by adjusting the transparency of the upper layer.

The result isn't all that different and it is still far from perfect or reliable, but I have included the video here in case anyone is interested.



This is still only a very rough comparison, and I do not think it proves anything. But my impression now is that the flowers may line up somewhat better than I first thought, and that their shapes may be more similar too. Not exact matches, but more similar than I first thought.

I think this does support Koen’s suggestion, although it is hard to know for sure. I am not sure whether there would be a way to prove (or disprove) this idea. I wonder if someone with the realistic facsimile reproduction version of the VMS would be able to tell? I don't know.

Although it is a small detail and it may be a coincidence which means nothing, I keep thinking of questions about these little "daisies." Like, are there other examples in the Voynich Manuscript of this kind of playful response to what was visible through the page which we just have not noticed before? If so, what would it mean if they occur only on Currier language B pages, or scribal hand 2 pages, or B-style flower drawing pages? Are there examples of this same thing in other medieval manuscripts (it seems quite possible given the propensity medieval scribes and artists had for doing little drawings around defects in the page and other sorts of things)? What might this tell us about the aritst's intent for the drawings on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - did they not mind if a little whimsical detail like this introduced a botanically inaccurate element to the image? Why not?

Certainly there is never a shortage of things to wonder about when it comes to the VMS!

It is quite interesting, also because in both cases, the location of the daisies makes sense from a design standpoint. (We are far beyond caring about naturalism in the case of these plants). I mean, in both cases, they are at the centre of a larger flower. 

We have no way of knowing which plant was drawn first, though maybe the recto has a slight advantage. In either case, it would mean that the daisy from the other side served as a focus for the drawing of the flower.

Keep in mind that we see this sort of whimsy elsewhere too, where roots are positioned to incorporate a hole in the parchment.

[attachment=15134]

I have a theory about this little flower, but I can't prove it.
In the Middle Ages, mushrooms and lichens were also counted among plants (flowers).
I assume that the little flower is meant to describe this strange formation as a plant and not as something mysterious.
Image of classic medicinal plants. It resembles the plant drawn in the VM.
Incidentally, I see four plants that correspond to the VM.