The Voynich Ninja

Hi, new to the forum and hoping to discuss the supposed You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 


Going by the article, this might have been an early attempt at translation conducted by Johannes Marcus Marci. Now I know that this key cannot provide any actual translation of the manuscript. All the same I was curious as to why specifically this key was chosen. After all, someone (Marci according to the handwriting analysis) must have had a hunch that this was the way to go. They made sure to write it down on the very first folio. If they were just toying around why not scribble on some piece of paper instead of the actual vellum? 

So I matched the table above to EVA transliteration and applied the key to the full "text" of the manuscript. The result can be seen in the attached file (split for file size). There are a couple of legit words that in there, but nothing that really stands out as a likely starting point for Marci's substitution attempt. If he believed an simple substitution was behind it (and not having the luxury of conducting computer powered brute force attempts), I would expect that he would pick some word standing by themselves or serving as a label to some image and go from there. "Rex" (latin for "king") shows up a couple of times, but usually in the middle of text blocks and not matching any part of the text you might expect to say "king". 

Of course we do not know what Marci would have thought the original language of the manuscript to be. 

• Does anyone know a good method to double check if there are more meaningful words in this substitution in any appropriate language?
  

There is also a chance that his key did produce some legitimate plain text words, but only in the folios lost to us. This might be supported by the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.that do not appear anywhere else in the text. 

• Are there any theories as to their meaning?
  

Funny enough, there is one word that does appear quite clearly, showing up 17 times and perfectly describes my success rate so far: "bleak" 

If Marci found any meaning it would be in his letters, obviously we can say maybe some were lost or secret.. or none were real, but what we have is what we have.
Understanding the validity of Marci's substitution can be done by understanding the validity of a substitution cipher as a whole - close to zero %. People can add "what-if's" but... "what we have is what we have".

Assigning a single letter to the Voynich script is not going to produce anything meaningful, at least from our current understanding.

Everything beyond that that I find very interesting. Why does the list on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. exist, why is there another on f66r, why does that one seem to have "words" assigned to letters and the letters are not always lining up with lines.. is the text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. related at all, or presumably maybe its like You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and some sort of alphabet... I don't know, but I think trying to reverse engineer meaning will likely be a dead end.. but who knows, good luck , the "juice in the squeeze" I think is maybe trying to find connections between these lists or if none, why none. Or why "Marci" (assuming Marci) seems to have chosen extremely rare glyphs for his alphabet in places. I get its not the days of internet, but 1 occurrence = alphabet letter(?).

(18-08-2026, 02:58 AM)Bluetoes101 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Understanding the validity of Marci's substitution can be done by understanding the validity of a substitution cipher as a whole - close to zero %. People can add "what-if's" but... "what we have is what we have".

Yes, like I said I never thought that his "solution" would lead anywhere. But I agree that the choice of substitution key is rather odd. That's why I believed it must have returned some specific word that made him think it might work (as any number of substitutions might do for such a long text).

(18-08-2026, 02:58 AM)Bluetoes101 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.is the text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. related at all, or presumably maybe its like You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and some sort of alphabet...

Interesting idea! I didn't consider anything related to f66r

On the right, there is an alphabet with a shift. It could also be used...

(18-08-2026, 12:16 AM)exlipsiae Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Going by the article, this might have been an early attempt at translation conducted by Johannes Marcus Marci. Now I know that this key cannot provide any actual translation of the manuscript. All the same I was curious as to why specifically this key was chosen. After all, someone (Marci according to the handwriting analysis) must have had a hunch that this was the way to go. They made sure to write it down on the very first folio. If they were just toying around why not scribble on some piece of paper instead of the actual vellum? 

I'm not sure we have the same understanding of what happened on this margin. As far as I understand, specifically the Latin writing was identified as Marci's. Given that the Voynichese column has unique characters that don't appear elsewhere in the manuscript at all (at least not in the folios we have) while some existing characters don't appear in the list, I assume this column was there before Marci and is likely part of the original manuscript, and the upper right red weirdo is the heading of this column. What Marci did was only to write Latin letters next to the glyphs. Maybe, for the first attempt he made a mistake skipping a character and then produced another column.

What is more, I'm not at all sure this was an attempt of solving the cipher via substitution. This would be a very strange attempt, its failure would be obvious immediately just looking at the Voynichese on the same page. It could be just a way to give the glyphs an easy to understand names (similar to what EVA does nowadays), because properly writing some of the glyphs is not easy and giving them names would simplify the communication about this script. In this case writing this list in a permanent ink on the first page would make sense.

(18-08-2026, 11:25 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(18-08-2026, 12:16 AM)exlipsiae Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Going by the article, this might have been an early attempt at translation conducted by Johannes Marcus Marci. Now I know that this key cannot provide any actual translation of the manuscript. All the same I was curious as to why specifically this key was chosen. After all, someone (Marci according to the handwriting analysis) must have had a hunch that this was the way to go. They made sure to write it down on the very first folio. If they were just toying around why not scribble on some piece of paper instead of the actual vellum? 

I'm not sure we have the same understanding of what happened on this margin. As far as I understand, specifically the Latin writing was identified as Marci's. Given that the Voynichese column has unique characters that don't appear elsewhere in the manuscript at all (at least not in the folios we have) while some existing characters don't appear in the list, I assume this column was there before Marci and is likely part of the original manuscript, and the upper right red weirdo is the heading of this column. What Marci did was only to write Latin letters next to the glyphs. Maybe, for the first attempt he made a mistake skipping a character and then produced another column.

What is more, I'm not at all sure this was an attempt of solving the cipher via substitution. This would be a very strange attempt, its failure would be obvious immediately just looking at the Voynichese on the same page. It could be just a way to give the glyphs an easy to understand names (similar to what EVA does nowadays), because properly writing some of the glyphs is not easy and giving them names would simplify the communication about this script. In this case writing this list in a permanent ink on the first page would make sense.

This can be confirmed by the fact that the column in the middle is erased more thoroughly than the Latin letters.
But the inconsistency is that the symbols don’t look much like Voynichese. Look at what should be EVA r or EVA y. Also, in this alphabet, something “quirky” happens with f1r.

There are many rare variants and non-attested glyphs, some of them don't look like Voynichese at all, however to me this proves that the list is more likely original and not produced by a later decoder. Also, full text pages in the manuscript rarely if ever leave a large enough right margin to host this column of characters, so it's more likely some space was reserved for it by the original scribe. And thirdly, the top right red weirdo is very well positioned to be the header of this column. Without this column the weirdo would just strangely dangle over empty space.

(18-08-2026, 02:58 AM)Bluetoes101 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If Marci found any meaning it would be in his letters, obviously we can say maybe some were lost or secret.. or none were real, but what we have is what we have.

His last letter that mentions the (supposed) VMS is the cover letter that was (supposedly) attached to the book when he sent it to Kircher.  It is unlikely that he had a copy of the book made, and thus it is unlikely that he kept trying to decipher it after that letter.

The handwriting of the letters on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. may be compatible with Marci's, but they could have written by someone else -- like Barschius.

I think that Barschius is a bit more likely than Marci as the author of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. table, and maybe of the others too.

• Barschius was clearly obsessed with the VMS for many years. There is no evidence that Marci spent any significant amount of time studying it, or even had any interest in it besides satisfying his friend Kircher's request.
  
• By the time he sent the book to Kircher, Marci's eyesight reportedly was so bad that he had his letters written by his secretary.  Would he engage in code-breaking in that condition?
  
• Barschius did not intend to send the the book to Kircher or anyone else. Marci intended to send it to Kircher since the moment he got it.  Thus its seems a bit unlikely that Marci would deface the book with his own worksheet; whereas Barschius would not have such worry.
  

All the best, --stolfi

(18-08-2026, 11:23 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.On the right, there is an alphabet with a shift. It could also be used...

I have tried this as well. Generally the results witht the 3rd column look even less promising, since there would be no "a" in the plain text. Also I believe that the 3rd column was more "playing around" by shifting the 1st column key, when it became clear that this was not working. 
But the main problem as with any substitution is still to identify what particular word might have casued Marci to assume this key in the first place. 

(18-08-2026, 11:25 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Given that the Voynichese column has unique characters that don't appear elsewhere in the manuscript at all (at least not in the folios we have) while some existing characters don't appear in the list, I assume this column was there before Marci and is likely part of the original manuscript, and the upper right red weirdo is the heading of this column. What Marci did was only to write Latin letters next to the glyphs. Maybe, for the first attempt he made a mistake skipping a character and then produced another column.

That cannot be ruled out either
But it would be very disappointing   and still leave the question as to why the original author would leave this arbitrary list of symbols

(18-08-2026, 11:25 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What is more, I'm not at all sure this was an attempt of solving the cipher via substitution. This would be a very strange attempt, its failure would be obvious immediately just looking at the Voynichese on the same page. It could be just a way to give the glyphs an easy to understand names (similar to what EVA does nowadays), because properly writing some of the glyphs is not easy and giving them names would simplify the communication about this script. In this case writing this list in a permanent ink on the first page would make sense.

You're right, we don't even know if it was intended as a substitution key at all.
The EVA comparison is very interesting, too. But wuldn't the be a strange way to go about it for the same reasons? If the goal was a basis for easier transliteration (and maybe copying) of the manuscript, wouldn't you want to assign a letter to all symbols? As it stands, it doesn't even cover the first page. Furthermore, what would be the point of the 3rd column in that case?

Again, my thinking was that if Marci had an idea what one spcific word or maybe sentence of the manuscript might mean, he may have tried to derive the substituion alphabet from it. After trying to apply this substituion to the rest of the text he soon would have realized that this isn't working, maybe try plaing around with the shifted version in the 3rd cloumn and then give up on it. 

My goal was to try and find this one specific word or phrase that might support this. 

(19-08-2026, 07:02 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The handwriting of the letters on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. may be compatible with Marci's, but they could have written by someone else -- like Barschius.

Also true. For my intial post I just went with Marci based on the expertise of Lisa Fagin Davis. If there are other clues that point away from Marci, that might well be the case.

(19-08-2026, 11:35 AM)exlipsiae Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But it would be very disappointing   and still leave the question as to why the original author would leave this arbitrary list of symbols

Why would this be disappointing? There are quite a few glyph sequences in the manuscript, which seem to be in the same hand as the main writing on the corresponding pages. We don't know why they were made, but we do know that this happened.

(19-08-2026, 11:35 AM)exlipsiae Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The EVA comparison is very interesting, too. But wuldn't the be a strange way to go about it for the same reasons? If the goal was a basis for easier transliteration (and maybe copying) of the manuscript, wouldn't you want to assign a letter to all symbols? 

I'm pretty much certain the middle column was already there. Given that it's made of non-repeating symbols, and includes some very common glyphs too, it would be easy to assume that it lists the alphabet of the manuscript. So, Marci, or whoever it was, decided to give legible names to symbols in this list.

(19-08-2026, 11:35 AM)exlipsiae Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As it stands, it doesn't even cover the first page.

We don't really know that and I think Marci was smart enough to realize that he couldn't know that either. Maybe this list does cover the first page. Consider this: glyph 'a' doesn't look like 'A' and 'b' is only somewhat similar to 'B', yet we know these are the same letters. If two glyphs look almost nothing like one another, they still could mean the same thing. When you are asked to list the alphabet, you will likely go abcde... or ABCDE... and not AaBbCcDd. So even though there are glyphs in the text that don't look like anything in the second column and there are glyphs in the second column that don't look like anything in the text, this doesn't automatically mean the column is not just the full list of letters used in the text.

(19-08-2026, 11:35 AM)exlipsiae Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Furthermore, what would be the point of the 3rd column in that case?

Looks like Marci didn't know whether to include the top red weirdo glyph in the list? The first column doesn't include it, the third does.

(19-08-2026, 11:35 AM)exlipsiae Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Again, my thinking was that if Marci had an idea what one spcific word or maybe sentence of the manuscript might mean, he may have tried to derive the substituion alphabet from it. 

I find this extremely unlikely. If it was Marci who created the list of Voynichese symbols, why are there many symbols that don't appear in the text? If it wasn't Marci, why does the "substitution" map just go alphabetically?