I’ve spent twenty-odd years thinking about the mystery of the Voynich Manuscript’s gallows glyphs; and I thought I’d post about how I believe these glyphs evolved. Whether or not I’m right probably doesn’t matter much, because I suspect I may be the only researcher looking at this particular mystery. The only similar attempt I can … Read More → The post Towards a secret history of Voynichese gallows… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

As I posted here a few days ago, it’s possible that unusual-looking (and probably longer) Voynichese words or phrases are actually unusual plaintext words (perhaps proper names) that needed to remain unabbreviated in the ciphertext, because they were so much less predictable than the rest of the words. So: who has previously gone looking for … Read More → The post Rare (possibly unabbreviated) Voynichese words… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

I’ve just thought of this trick, and I don’t remember anyone suggesting it before. So here goes… I’ve long suggested that the Voynich Manuscript was written using a combination of the latest (for the 15th century) techniques – abbreviation, verbose cipher, steganography, etc. And (I believe) a good part of the practical problem that this … Read More → The post A cartouche attack on the Voynich Manuscript…? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

As most CM readers will know, it’s widely considered that the greatest (unsolved) cipher mystery is the Voynich Manuscript. However, I’ve long wondered whether this might actually run a rather poor historical second to John Dee’s works of “angelic magic”. Whereas the Voynich Manuscript only has a ragtag bunch of cryptologists (a group I am … Read More → The post John Dee’s Tabula Angelorum Bonorum 49… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

To the sustained disbelief of my wife, I’ve recently watched all eleven series of The X-Files (they’re available on My4 / Channel 4 catch-up) from start to finish. Though not the films or the Millennium or Lone Gunmen spin-off series (because that would have been really insane). When I started this, I had the vague … Read More → The post My thoughts on The X-Files… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

I’ve previously posted a few times about the Ohio Cipher (e.g. here in 2013, here in 2013, here in 2013, and here in 2014). Having determined what I think the (likely) most reliable version of the ciphertext is, I noted that it seemed to be made up of two substitution alphabets, one for odd-word-position letters … Read More → The post Ohio Cipher – two alternating MASCs? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

I’ve just bee(n) reading Gene Kritsky’s “The Quest for the Perfect Hive”, which, though it covers many different sides of apiculture, ultimately focuses on the evolution of hive technology. This, of course, brought me back to thinking about the Voynich Manuscript’s ‘Bee Secrets’ page that I discussed briefly in The Curse of the Voynich. Back … Read More → The post The Voynich Manuscript’s Bee Secrets page, revisited… appeared first ....

Quick digression: I went into several second hand bookshops a couple of weekends ago, and while I found a few nice historical books to keep me occupied, what struck me was the complete lack of the usual breathless UFO books. In the olden days (i.e. five years ago), these used to fill the shelves, so … Read More → The post Roswell and Sheridan Cavitt… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

A few weeks ago, I decided to try to dig up any papers or books online by renowned Mauritian archivist/researcher Auguste Toussaint that I hadn’t previously read. One of these was his 1977 article “Le Corsaire Bordelais Jacques-Francois Perroud“, which appeared on pp. 99-124 of Revue Historique de Bordeaux et du Departement du Gironde, #26. … Read More → The post Auguste Toussaint: Les Petites Affiches, Jean Baptiste Castaing, haches d’abordage… appeared ....

I first asked the question of whether there might be a mapping between the alchemical herbal manuscript tradition and the Voynich Manuscript in a 2019 post, having not long previously put up a post trying to link to scans of alchemical herbals. The fact that the Voynich Manuscript’s Herbal A pages originally (as far as … Read More → The post Bryce Beasley, alchemical herbals, and Voynich Herbal A… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

I thought I ought to briefly post on something which I worked out recently. In BN3 (the third Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang document, though almost certainly not written by him), the writer mentions both a “Commandant Hamon” (who was currently supporting him in his ill health) and a former “Capitaine” (from whom he had got … Read More → The post Commandant vs Capitaine vs Lieutenant de vaisseau… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

....

You may not have known that 2024 saw a flurry of Dorabella-related activity. For example, here’s a picture of the blue plaque that was unveiled in Dora Penny’s honour in June 2024: Dan Bartlett (more about him below) also went to Mount Noddy Cemetery in East Grinstead to have a look at Dora Mary Powell … Read More → The post Dorabella Cipher update… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

In my efforts to work out exactly who the Commandant Hamon in the BN3 letter was, I found two recent issues of Outre-Mers filled to the gunwales with Eric Saugera’s somewhat epic archival research into French slaving ships during the tumultuous period 1794-1814. Saugera has a good-sized section on Captaine Emmanuel-Hypolite le Joliff and his … Read More → The post Commandant Hamon and a slave ship Apollon…? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

A while back, I noted that H. C. M. Austen mentioned (“Sea Fights and Corsairs of the Indian Ocean”, p.79) a ship’s surgeon called Hamon from 1796. This was on a pilot brig which the famous corsair Robert Surcouf had captured and renamed the Cartier on 28 Jan 1796: while Surcouf and the rest of … Read More → The post Perhaps Commandant Hamon was a surgeon? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

The third letter of the Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang set mentions the writer’s close relationship with a certain Commandant Hamon: But who was this Commandant Hamon? Given that this letter seems to have been written not long after the Fall of Tamatave (20th May 1811), and that the letter writer was a seaman (“marin”), I … Read More → The post Tracing Captain Hamon / Commandant Hamon… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

A few years back, I put a lot of effort into trying to identify a possibly pressure-suited 1940s US Navy balloonist at NAS Lakehurst. One unresolved lead related to a prototype full-pressure suit (the Strato Model 7) developed for the US Navy in 1947. There are some great pictures of the Model 7 in Dennis … Read More → The post Who is this man in a prototype pressure suit? Is he John B. Werlich? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

For a change, I thought it might be interesting to take a fresh look at the -n words solely in f1r. If you recall Lisa Fagin Davis’ (2020) paper, she describes (p.173) how her five putative Voynich scribes write the -n glyph in different ways: f1r is right at the start of Quire 1 (Q1), … Read More → The post Voynich Manuscript f1r: Five Scribes, five vibes? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

....

Apologies for the ridiculously late notification, but I’ll be meeting up with Elonka Dunin and Klaus Schmeh (and hopefully a fair few other crypto people) at the very wonderful Prospect of Whitby in Wapping on Saturday the 29th June 2024 between 2pm and 5pm, before heading off to Brick Lane for a curry. Yes, I … Read More → The post Crypto pub meet, Prospect of Whitby, 29/6/2024 appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

I thought it would be a good idea to try to draw up a list of the Voynich Manuscript’s male zodiac nymphs, as a dataset that might be useful when attempting to map between zodiac nymphs and feast days. And yet if you try to do this, it turns out to be really hard, because… … Read More → The post On male zodiac nymphs, and Aries hats… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

While going through old voynich.net posts (courtesy of Rich SantaColoma, thanks!) in my hunt for previous insights into how the zodiac nymphs were ordered, I found an unexpected ally: on the old mailing list in Jan 2003, a now all-too-familiar face asserted that the nymphs were ordered inner ring first and clockwise, starting from 10 … Read More → The post Zodiac Nymphs, St Peter’s Seat, St Faustus, and Madonna of Caravaggio… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

I’ve spent some time recently revisiting the Voynich Manuscript’s labelese, as well as its Pisces zodiac roundel page, and thinking about how that might relate to February. However, making all of these parallel strands “land” at the same time has proved difficult: even if the zodiac labels are some kind of cisiojanus “syllable soup”, we … Read More → The post Male nymphs and nymph numbering… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

As previously mentioned, I’ve been grinding my way through the Cisiojanus entries for February (mainly from the Usuarium website). However, it turns out that there is far less variation than I supposed. For example, “Ig” (on the 1st February) appears in only a single missal (FR Noyon 1541, Missale Noviomense). And even though St Walburga … Read More → The post Thoughts on February… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

In a comment to my last post, I remarked that I suspect the labels on the pages with the zodiac roundels might be verbosely-enciphered syllables of a cisiojanus mnemonic. As an example of how this might work, I expanded out “cisiojanus epi sibi vendicat”: unfortunately, this was for January, and January was (circa 1400-1450) associated … Read More → The post Attack The Fish! (Pisces, f70v2) appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

One of the enduring mysteries of the Voynich Manuscript’s enigmatic “Voynichese” script is that it varies. Not content with having two full-blown ‘languages’/’dialects’ (known as Currier A and Currier B), the way Voynichese ‘behaves’ on a glyph-level, word-level, line-level, paragraph-level, page-level and even section-level varies in many, many other ways (e.g. LAAFU etc). This pervasive … Read More → The post Might “Labelese” ....

What I infer from Prosper Thomson’s 1947 small ads: The obvious question here is: who owned the 1939-built property in Alta-Mira crescent, Belair before Prosper Thomson? This leads me to the most interesting pair of Adelaidean small ads of all, and they weren’t even placed by Thomson: [25 Aug 1948] ELECT. eng, 50, many years’ … Read More → The post A Victoria-licensed electrical engineer in Prosper Thomson’s Henley Beach house…? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

I enjoyed Pete Bowes’ most recent “bloodhound” post, but I was pretty sure I’d seen many, many more ads placed by Prosper McTaggart Thomson than he listed there. So I thought I’d have a go at compiling my own list. So… here are all the small ads I found for 1947 (including a single one … Read More → The post Prosper Thomson’s 1947 in Trove… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

My b2t w4s a1d w5t h3s to a1l C4r M7s r5s a1l a4d t1e w3d. M1y y1u h2e a f7c y2r a1d s3e l2s of h8l m7s! The post M3y C7s a1d a H3y N1w Y2r to y1u a1l! appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

While searching Gallica just now to try to see if Charles de la Ronciere had donated his personal papers to the Bibliotheque Nationale (TL;DR: I didn’t find anything, but maybe something is there), I noticed that it had a digital copy of (what was almost certainly) de la Ronciere’s last book, (1941) “Explorateurs et pionniers … Read More → The post Charles de la Ronciere’s thoughts on Le Flibustier Mysterieux… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.