The Voynich Ninja

In alchemical symbology, EVA-T (capitalized, with the horizontal line through it) means to mix well.

In a way, the VMS reminds me of the substitution code in the alchemical manuscript we've been discussing on the other thread. Pretty much all the symbols in that cipher were taken from astrology/constellation symbols.

The VMS glyphs are mostly Latin and Greek letters and abbreviations, but the ones that are not, the few that don't appear to originate from Latin or Greek, fit well with alchemical symbols.



That does not mean, however, that meaning is attached to shape. It seems unlikely that 89 attached to the ends of thousands of words means to add salt. I've read enough herbal manuscripts in a variety of languages to know that salt is mentioned, but not frequently.

(31-10-2016, 11:26 PM)DarrenW Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This discussion about soap, minerals and the recent posts suggesting similarities between the VM Zodiac section and Lapidary texts (texts about minerals and gemstones) lead me to wonder if this object might be soapstone.

Curiously, the alchemical symbol for soapstone looks like an empty T-O map. Perhaps the diagram at the centre of the VMS f86v3 could be a reference or "visual metaphor" for soapstone, rather than an unfinished T-O map?

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Prof. Rampling writing in an essay found in the new Yale Voynich book suggests that the balneological section is not alchemical but features a kind of visual metaphor that could be paralleled by alchemical illustrations. I wonder if this "visual metaphor" could extend to the script itself (and to other parts of the VMS)?

There are a number of similarities between the VMS script and alchemical symbols, for example. I've included a table excerpted from M.E. D'Imperio's The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma (p.120). The source of this appears to be "Die Geheimsymbole der Alchymie, Arzneikunde und Astrologie des Mittelalters" by G.W.Gessmann, 1922.

The most notable similarities being the EVA:k and EVA:t symbols meaning "to prepare" and "urine" respectively. (The symbol for "month" also looks like the symbol found on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. : You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

Hi Darren, Nice to see you here.


My eye catched that interesting table, but the source is  "Geheimsymbole der Alchymie, Arzneikunde und Astrologie des Mittelalters" by G.W.Gessmann, 1922"

Everything which has such a dating as 1922 must be handled with high skepticism. 

In fact, I've seen that table before and the contents seems to be based on zero references.

I keep forgetting to post Argentum (silver) as one of the minerals/ores that is sometimes depicted in old herbals with a miner, even those that are primarily plants, with few references to minerals.

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Image courtesy of minerology4kids.org
Click thumbnail for original source

.deleted.

Why is the blue stone found in the manuscript of Egerton MS 747 (f51v You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ), like MB among plants?
The plants in this manuscript are drawn in alphabetical order, and the section where the stone is drawn begins with the letter “L”. And the name of the stone is inserted in the list (table of contents) of the drawings (f51r), like an ordinary plant. Maybe this is a plant in the name, which is the word “stone”, or it is a root crop, turning blue when interacting with atmospheric oxygen.
Connoisseurs of Latin. Please translate the text to this stone.
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Hi Wladimir,
Egerton 747 is an illustrated "Circa Instans": a treaty about "simple medicines" i.e. the basic substances that can be directly used as medicines or mixed among them to produce compound medicines.
Most of the simples are plants, but a few are of mineral or animal origin (e.g. the whale from which "ambra" is extracted, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

This blue stone is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Other examples of minerals in the book are gold (aurum, 2r) and the unillustrated stones (lapis) at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

Mineral simples from this tradition were discussed by Alexandra Marracini with reference to the Voynich manuscript: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

It seems conceivable to me that f102v2 represents the components of dyes. These could be obtained from stones ( Lapis Lazuli) as well as from plants. For example, blue and red tones were extracted from Chrozophora tinctoria. The extraction of this dye has been known since the 13th century and the product was used e.g. in book illumination (turnsole). Plant dyes were a cheaper substitute for higher quality dyes such as Lapis lazuli.

I am not saying that Chrozophora tinctoria is shown on f102v2, but it is one of several possibilities. Other plants, for example Isatis tinctoria and Indigofera tinctoria, are also possible for ( darker ) blue. Not to mention the other colors.

The word next to the blue and yellow cube, is used 3 times on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (red underlined) the "4" or "K" letter in front of the word us for "like" in Hebrew. 
I believe the plant is a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. where the fruit was crushed and mixed with water to make a eatable paste.

I was reading up on sunstones, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., a polarising crystal used in the early middle ages as a navigational device ; you can use them to determine the solar azimuth even on very over cast days. Abulafia explains how the Nordic people used them. From Wikipedia :

Quote:Research in 2011 by Ropars confirms that one can identify the direction of the sun to within a few degrees in both cloudy and twilight conditions using Iceland spar and the naked eye. The process involves moving the stone across the visual field to reveal a yellow entoptic pattern on the fovea of the eye. Alternatively, a dot can be placed on top of the crystal so that when you look at it from below, two dots appear, because the light is “depolarised” and fractured along different axes. The crystal can then be rotated until the two points have the same luminosity. The angle of the top face now gives the direction of the sun.

Which would explain the two 'eyes' in the blue cube. 
Of course, there is zero reason for a sun stone to be depicted amongst plants, but for some reason I immediately thought of the blue cube. 

(31-10-2016, 11:26 PM)DarrenW Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
There are a number of similarities between the VMS script and alchemical symbols, for example. I've included a table excerpted from M.E. D'Imperio's The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma (p.120). The source of this appears to be "Die Geheimsymbole der Alchymie, Arzneikunde und Astrologie des Mittelalters" by G.W.Gessmann, 1922.

The most notable similarities being the EVA:k and EVA:t symbols meaning "to prepare" and "urine" respectively. (The symbol for "month" also looks like the symbol found on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. : You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

When this was posted in 2016, I downloaded two different editions of Die Geheimsymbole der Alchymie, Arzneikunde und Astrologie des Mittelalters and went through them several times.

It's called symbols of the "Mittelalters" but there are actually very few symbols from the Middle Ages. Most of them are what we would now consider to be Renaissance-age symbols and some of them are post-Renaissance. Since that time I have kept my eyes open for these symbols in manuscripts and relatively few can be found in early 15th-century manuscripts and they are usually not the ones that look like VMS glyphs.


Alchemy symbols are like talismanic symbols. They are very numerous and diverse. Even so, and even though I have tried to locate them in early codexes, I have not found very much overlap between the early alchemical symbols and VMS symbols. In fact, it's difficult to find alchemical symbols from the late 1300s and very early 1400s, compared to the many that appeared in the very late 1400s, 1500s and 1600s when alchemy was popular and was evolving into early modern chemistry.


If you look at the 48 references at the end of [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Die Geheimsymbole der Alchymie, Arzneikunde und Astrologie des Mittelalters (what is called a list of relevant works), the dates range from 1597 to 1832, with no mention of any 14th or 15th-century manuscripts.[/font]


[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Internet Archive has a catalog of the James Kelley collection of alchemical books (quite extensive), some of which are earlier than those in the previous reference. It was published in 1906:[/font]

[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]https://archive.org/details/bibliothecachem00ferggoog/page/n348/mode/2up[/font]



[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]This Rylands manuscript is quite interesting You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. but it too is from the 1600s.[/font]