The Voynich Ninja

(27-10-2016, 05:40 PM)EllieV Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am sure it has been discussed by others through the years too. It is a page from the Book of Holy Trinity - the copy in the Rylands Univ Library. Hope the link works.
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Has anything been said about the transposition code at the top of the page (the statement about the blue water loosely based on astrological symbols)? I notice the person decoding it may have gotten a couple of letters wrong.

The image in the Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit does indeed bear some resemblance to some of the pools in the VMS.  Does this image have any precedent within the alchemical tradition?  If not, then I wonder if the creators of the Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit might have borrowed from a document similar to the VMS rather than the other way around.  It doesn't seem to make much sense to think the VMS would have been inspired by this one small image when you consider that in the VMS there are many different kinds of pools, many different types of flowing water, many different ways that the nymphs are interacting with each other, etc.  But what we see in this other book is only a small fraction of what can be seen in the VMS.

This morning I did a few Web searches to see if anyone had mentioned the substitution/transposition code at the top of the page. I couldn't find anything, yet I think it's worthy of note partly because it's a cipher, and also because it explicitly refers to blue water and, depending on how you decipher one of the symbols, might also refer to green water.

Most of it was easy to decode, but it's only one sentence, there aren't enough letters to be 100% sure of the meaning of the sun symbol and the last word. The sun symbol is particularly important because it can completely reverse the meaning of the sentence depending on how it is interpreted. Changing one letter shifts the meaning from pleasant to unpleasant.


So, to get to the deciphering...

I am not sure whether the sun symbol (2nd line) and the over-cap sun symbol (first line) mean the same thing, or something similar, but it's possible that they stand for umlauts or abbreviations (they may also represent letters).

The parts I am sure of are as follows (in old German which can be pretty inconsistent in terms of spelling and grammar):

Diese blau wasser ist das gr_nst und der _ein war_a_ti_ __.


After deciphering the first part of the code, I realized the dark messy writing above it was also an attempt to decipher the message (I didn't notice this at first because the ink bled and the handwriting is hard to read) but decoding first and reading after made me realize that whoever deciphered it may not have been sure of a couple of the letters. For example, the word written twice at the end of the first line (first above, with a double long-s at the beginning and then below with a single long-s) was an attempt to read the last word in the line as "sein" but the "s" is already accounted for with another symbol and I see no indications that more than one glyph has been used for a single letter.

So... I don't think the assumption of "sein" is necessarily correct. It might be mein, kein, pein (or something else).


Interestingly, depending on how the partial sun symbol is interpreted, the sentence can have opposite meanings. If it stands for an umlaut and "er" then it means "cherished" and if it stands only for "er" then it would be odious or gruesome. If it is simply an umlaut, then it means "the greenest" and that's when it gets interesting... because there's a lot of blue and green water in the VMS.


So if we go with the simplest explanation for the half sun symbol (the one used as a cap in the middle of the first line), then it says:

Diese blau wasser ist das grünst und der _ein war_a_ti_ __.   (This blue water is the greenest and the...)


Okay, it appears that the person deciphering the last word decoded the ending letter as an "f" (written with loops rather than a crossbar but written differently from the long-s so it doesn't appear to be an "s" and "s" is already accounted for). This doesn't make a lot of sense and it's pretty uncommon to find an "f" at the end of German words.

So, since the symbol occurs twice in the word, I have a different idea. I think it may possibly be an "h" which occurs frequently at the ends of German words and opens up more reasonable possibilities. This makes the following one possible interpretation:

Instead of warfa_ ti_f I think it might be warha_tich

But there's the problem of the sun symbol. Is it a modifier as it appears to have been used in the previous line? Or is it a letter?

Also, is this one word (this seems probable) or is it three? In German it can easily be broken up into war ha_ ich or war ha__ ich. I suspect it's one word since the words in the first line are written with normal spaces.


So, depending on what one substitutes for the sun symbol, and assuming the last letter might stand for "h" you can get some interesting but conflicting translations such as:

This blue water is the greenest (grünst) and my warmth (or without warmth/lacking warmth depending on which letter is in front of _ein).
This blue water is the most cherished (grüernst) and _____________________
This blue water is the most unpleasant/gruesome (gruernst) and __________________

If the sun symbol is an umlaut, modifier, or abbreviation, rather than a letter, then the last word might be something like warhätich or, if it's a letter, something like warhaltich (which is a low German word I've seen in a 19th-century book). I think there's a fairly good chance the last letter is an "h" but there are the other possibilities and I'm not a native German speaker, I don't have a crossword-puzzle vocabulary in German, so here's a snip of the last word and a list of which letters haven't yet been used in case someone has a better idea:




I don't know if the krebs symbol is one letter or two, but I suspect it's one letter and decided to go with that at least for the first run-through.

P.S., at the end of the first line, the _ein could be mein, kein, or pein (it's not an "s" as ess is already used), so whatever is substituted for the symbol for mercury in the first line cannot also be used in the last word.



Also, vis-a-vis the VMS. Since the cap over the Libra symbol is possibly an umlaut or medieval-style apostrophe (letters missing), it means at least one person in the 15th century may have used a cap shape to modify a letter, or indicate missing letters, in a cipher.

I have not taken trouble with the ciphre, but the writing in Fraktur is:


def[initio]. dieses blaw waßer ist dann grünes vnd der s[?]ein


warhaftig.


s[?]ein is repeated as stein in the second line


Translation: def[initio] This blue water is then green and the stone true


wahrhaftig is an old word and difficult to translate, it means the stone is the real thing

Genuine?

Genuine is good, what is difficult to translate is that there is a meaning that the stone is something they wanted to produce and they have it and not something else which looks similar.

(29-10-2016, 09:00 AM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have not taken trouble with the ciphre, but the writing in Fraktur is:


def[initio]. dieses blaw waßer ist dann grünes vnd der s[?]ein


warhaftig.


s[?]ein is repeated as stein in the second line


Translation: def[initio] This blue water is then green and the stone true


wahrhaftig is an old word and difficult to translate, it means the stone is the real thing

Helmut, thank you for the translation of the Fraktur writing.

Since the Fraktur spelling doesn't completely agree with the cipher spelling, but might agree meaningwise, your translation is helpful—it provides a point of reference.

Maybe the "stone" is the philosopher's stone?


I should post the whole thing here. It would be easier for posters to double-check the parts I decoded, to see if I got it right, and to figure out the parts I wasn't able to decode (especially the missing letters in the last two words). I'll be back in 10 minutes with a pic.

A pic with a tentative decryption (please note, I re-uploaded this because I realized there was another possible interpretation for a couple of the letters):

I think the open sun – symbol is an overline, which means the doubling of the letter


I have taken a second look at the Fraktur - warhaftig and I think it rather is warhaftich, g and ch are interchangeable.


The sun – symbol in the second line seems to be f and the crab – symbol h, which would fit nicely the ciphre, if you take the small hook before the second crab – symbol as c, he uses a normal d as well. And I am sure it is one word.


I am not sure of the Fraktur - grünes any more, it could be grundt or rather gründt


The Fraktur - vnd is really vnnd, there is an abbreviation stroke coming iout of the v, which doubles the n as in the dann.

Well, quick and dirty on a saturday morning


The @ - symbol looks like a capital S to me and like the same hand as the cipher


It is a very farfetched idea, but it somehow reminds me of the dying of linen

Thanks for your input, Helmut.

That's an interesting idea about the linen. Linen was used for straining things during distillation processes, so perhaps it's not as odd as it seems.