The Voynich Ninja

I found a charm in a German manuscript that may be relevant to the Voynich charm from the last page:

[attachment=17576]

I mean the word "ahia" from VM. Maybe it's not "ahia" after all? In my charm there is something looking a bit similar and also unsure. I marked it for you.

The charm, according to Gemini AI, seems to say:

So schrib diese wort vnd drag sie by dir
Caput xpi [christi] + fons elye + orti ysaie + nasus moysi + libra noe + lingua salomonis + sanguis abel + mens benjamin + abra heliam + gracia iohannis + et pax xpi [christi] hodie et cottidie et semper mecũ [mecum] Amen


So write these words and carry them with you:
Head of Christ + fountain of Elijah + garden of Isaiah + nose of Moses + balance of Noah + tongue of Solomon + blood of Abel + mind of Benjamin + ??? + grace of John + and the peace of Christ today and daily and forever with me. Amen.

"Abra heliam" doesn't really make sense. Also "abia" and "ahia" don't make sense.

But what if the word is actually some corrupted form of "labia" which is mouth? That would make sense as the charm mentions other body parts. It would mean "mouth of someone".

The man's name is also unsure. Heliam, Hesiam, Hesiim? The working candidates would be Isaiah, Elijah, Jesse and Elisha. However Isaiah and Elijah are already mentioned

Can you read something with more certainty? 
And could "ahia/abra" be labia, both in my example and Voynich Manuscript?

I read "labia noe" "abra hesimi" - it's clearly an s, see semper

abra of course suggests abracadabra, I don't know about the meaning

Could you link to the MS so we can see the original? 

I'm not used to this particular kind of script and the resolution is bad, but I would read the Noe part as "labia". 

So you have: fountain, garden, nose, lips, tongue, blood, mind, abra, grace, peace. Maybe "fons" was once "frons", forehead?

Our missing word sits between mind and grace, so it may be an abstract noun. My first idea would be a misread "alma"? But that's pretty far off. The dictionary tells me "abra" can be a female servant, but I doubt that's relevant here.

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Upon closer examination, this appears to be a version of the "Corpus Christi charm", which is mostly known from Irish sources.
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Cod. S. Galli No. 1395. has it as "Caput Christi, oculus Isaiae, frons nassium Noe, labia lingua Salomonis, collum Temathei, mens Beniamin, pectus Pauli, iunctus Iohannis, fides Abrache Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth."

This might offer an explanation for the "Abra" part, as having come from "Abracham" (?)

Here is an open access article about it, apparently it is indeed about Abraham: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

If the charm you found is unknown in the literature, some Irish scholars might be interested

Good spot about Abraham!
I will post my source later today.

(09-09-2026, 02:43 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I found a charm in a German manuscript that may be relevant to the Voynich charm from the last page:

T
I mean the word "ahia" from VM. Maybe it's not "ahia" after all? In my charm there is something looking a bit similar and also unsure. I marked it for you.

The charm, according to Gemini AI, seems to say:

So schrib diese wort vnd drag sie by dir
Caput xpi [christi] + fons elye + orti ysaie + nasus moysi + libra noe + lingua salomonis + sanguis abel + mens benjamin + abra heliam + gracia iohannis + et pax xpi [christi] hodie et cottidie et semper mecũ [mecum] Amen


So write these words and carry them with you:
Head of Christ + fountain of Elijah + garden of Isaiah + nose of Moses + balance of Noah + tongue of Solomon + blood of Abel + mind of Benjamin + ??? + grace of John + and the peace of Christ today and daily and forever with me. Amen.

"Abra heliam" doesn't really make sense. Also "abia" and "ahia" don't make sense.

But what if the word is actually some corrupted form of "labia" which is mouth? That would make sense as the charm mentions other body parts. It would mean "mouth of someone".

The man's name is also unsure. Heliam, Hesiam, Hesiim? The working candidates would be Isaiah, Elijah, Jesse and Elisha. However Isaiah and Elijah are already mentioned

Can you read something with more certainty? 
And could "ahia/abra" be labia, both in my example and Voynich Manuscript?

Hello,
This has nothing to do with the text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. which is a recipe. The German dialectal word "azia/atzia" means "let steep/let rest" and refers to the cooling time of the ointment. The second character is the gothic cursive "z" or "tz"  but NOT h or B! It makes no sense looking at single words but it is important to understand the complete context. I refer to my study on this page published on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. where the spelling and the text is explained and translated both in Standard German and in English.

I am back. And I think that I have a solution 

If you were to associate Abraham with some body part what would it be? Bosom of Abraham, right? How is it in Latin? "Sinus Abrahae". "Abrahe sinus" form is less correct but also possible.

It looks like our scribe could not know this idiom. Instead of "Abrahe sinus" he wrote it phonetically from hearing something like "Abra hesinii" or so, putting the space in the wrong place.

It only confirms things that we already know about charms. They often contain garbled, unexisting words that could originally have some meaning but it was lost when you heard it someone murmur it.

A nice discovery is that this charm is related to the Irish charm mentioned by Koen. It seems like some international charm  For me the Irish one is more original version and the German one more corrupted version. Frons (front) in the Irish version became fons (source, fountain) in the German one. As the charm is generally about body parts, "frons" seems more natural.

The link:

Ms. germ. fol. 244, folio 295r (1445)
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Notice the date is close to Voynich Manuscript if it matters in anything

And there is a second interesting charm:

[attachment=17577]

Der vmb den lyp gefangen ist
Sprich yme die wort in daz recht ore + aglaus + melachim + aglamat + aglyt mortis + er wirt ledig

For one who is imprisoned in body
Speak these words into his right ear + aglaus + melachim + aglamat + aglyt mortis + [and] he will become free.

Gemini AI claims it  not a charm to cast a devil out of someone's body but rather to liberate some human prisoner.

It also claims that aglaus/aglamat/aglyt words are related to AGLA magic word that appears in many charms:

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I don't know if it was already discussed here but maybe "oladabas" from Voynich Manuscript is some very corrupted, written from hearing,  version of "agla" ???

The information in the invocation follows a pattern that first names the "attribution" and then the "person".
If the original text is something like "abra heliam", and it refers to Abraham, then that would be a unique reversal, putting "person" before "attribute".

Yes, this part seems to have inverted words: person + attribute instead of attribute + person.
Maybe it confused the scribe.

Anyway, at this moment I believe that the first word is "abra". If you accept it, then it is therefore attested in German charms from roughly the same time as Voynich Manuscript.

So the Voynich dubious word could be "abra" as well. But yes, it could be something else too 

What exactly is the first sentence? The last word isn't 'ist'. 'hit'?