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I am not convinced by the...
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Voynichese is a numeric c...
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Voynich Reconsidered
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| f14v f14r - contemporary damage? |
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Posted by: mykiavellian - 23-06-2026, 06:52 AM - Forum: Physical material
- Replies (11)
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Hello all! This is my first post on the forum (shockingly, I have not come in to say I have cracked the code and it's actually all in pre-Christian Pictish), and I am well-aware I am not an expert, so please, feel free to correct me if I'm incorrect at all in my question.
I was looking at f14v/r and I noticed the unusual page shape. I do understand that the vellum is extremely precious material and even the highest quality manuscripts would not necessarily dispose of a damaged/misshapen piece.
However, it got me interested in contemporary versus non-contemporary damage in the manuscript. In this case, it looks to me like the scribe on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. left the exact space needed in the margin to avoid the cut-out, but then again, the hole is ragged and there's damage overlaying a leaf in f14v.
Is this an example of contemporary (ie, to the time of the creation of quire 2) damage/natural page shape, which has degraded faster than the other edges because of relative thinness? Or is the damage that was inflicted sometime in-between? Is there an existing consensus?
Also, I tried looking this up but it's almost a certainty with this manuscript that my question has already been exhausted answered, so if there is an existing google doc with a full list of damage to the manuscript etc., please point me to it!
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| 15th-Century Multimedia Production Ledger? |
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Posted by: MoteT747 - 22-06-2026, 04:09 AM - Forum: The Slop Bucket
- Replies (3)
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Is the Voynich Manuscript a 15th-Century Multimedia Production Ledger?
Hello everyone,
I wanted to share a structural hypothesis regarding the text layout and illustrations, specifically looking at the manuscript not as encoded prose, but as a Master Production Ledger for a 15th-century multimedia theatrical performance (a Renaissance Spettacolo or Mystery Play).
Because the text violates standard linguistic practices and features hyper-repetitive word chains, I believe we are looking at a polyphonic musical score and vocal canon layout rather than spoken sentences.
Here is the structural framework of the hypothesis:
The Vocal Script & Backup Cues (Folio 1r): The text behaves like a multipart vocal score. The large "pi-like" characters and distinct "gallows" symbols at the margins function as signum perfectionis (canon cues) or backing vocal indicators. They mark the exact beat where backup singers or a secondary choir layer into a horizontal round.
The Positional Paradox: The strict rules governing where letters can appear (such as the "figure-8" and "number-2" shapes) may represent consonant closures or phonetic articulation cues designed to align different voices holding long, polyphonic vowel sounds.
The Circular Rotas as Stationary Stage Directions: The circular diagrams act as medieval rotae (perpetual canons). The single subject drawn in the dead center is not a cosmological map, but a visual representation of the stationary set piece or mansion where that specific movement takes place.
The 9-Rosettes Folio is a Venue Cue-Sheet: The 6-panel foldout maps out a grand finale utilizing an entire Italian castle courtyard complex. The surrounding circles track a cascading timeline of Renaissance stage illusions (water features, flash-powder fire effects, and reflected mirror starlight), culminating in a strategic acoustic layout where backup choirs perform from the towers, forcing acoustic resonance down into the central courtyard.
How to Test This (Calling all Programmers):
To test this mathematically, we need to bypass standard alphabet decoding and treat the text as an audio grid. I am looking for anyone interested in writing a script to analyze the repetitive phrases (like triple-repeating words) by stacking the text blocks over themselves at varied word-offsets.
If we map the characters to a 15th-century microtonal scale (such as an Arabic Maqam or a Byzantine/Old Russian Znamenny framework) and offset the lines like a musical round, do the overlapping vertical columns yield statistically significant harmonic intervals rather than dissonance?
I'm just a fresh set of eyes looking at the visual pacing of the document. I would love to hear your thoughts on the structural viability of this performance-led approach!
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| Influence of Parisian Sources |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 21-06-2026, 10:37 PM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (24)
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Certain representations in the VMs are proposed to have potential connections to historical illustrations produced in Paris early in the 15th C.
BNF Fr. 565, the posthumous 'Oresme' cosmos, with a very simplified structure without any planets and with 43 undulations in its elaborate, scallop-shell cloud band. Dated c. 1410, belonged to the Duke of Berry.
Harley 334, an even more posthumous 'de Metz' version of cosmic illustrations, lacking the elaborate cosmic boundary, but has a mermaid with four "companions". Dated second quarter of 15th C.
Morgan M.133, The Berry Apocalypse, which has examples where a plain nebuly line is used as a cosmic boundary - as is seen in the VMs cosmos. Dated 1415, belonged to the Duke of Berry (d. 1416).
Harley 4431, the Book of the Queen, the illustration of the nine Muses bathing in an arcaded fountain. Other versions show nine ladies, but the tub / fountain is different. In the VMs, the only pool with nine women is curvy, and only arcaded on the distal portion. Dated 1410-1414.
Several Parisian sources depicting fillet-type headbands comparable to VMs f67v1.
UBH Cod.Sal.IXa Missale Parisciense Dated 1400.
MET 54.1.1 Belles Heures Dated 1405-1408, belonged to the Duke of Berry.
BGE Ms. fr. 190/1 Des cas des noble hommes et femmes. Dated 1410, belonged to the Duke of Berry.
Harley 4431, the Book of the Queen Dated 1410-1414.
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| New analysis of f116v, Central Bavarian dialect |
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Posted by: monisusa - 21-06-2026, 05:42 PM - Forum: Theories & Solutions
- Replies (82)
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I have completed a linguistic analysis of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. marginalia based on several years of work.
Findings (very brief):
- script and phonology indicate a Central Bavarian Dialect (15th century)
- numerous Latin pharmaceutical abbreviations could be resolved
- The text reads as an ointment recipe, it is not magical
- The two encoded words in "Voynichese" were resolved and fit the recipe context (not a spell)
- Linguistic interference shows the scribe wrote in Central Bavarian with Latin abbreviations
but was not a native German Speaker
- Previously unnoticed "wrong" word boundaries (e.g. anchiton > an/ c / hi / ton > an Zeh hin tun > apply to toe) were corrected and now yields a coherent context
Full analysis: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Feedback is welcome. Thank you for your interest.
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| Book suggestions |
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Posted by: JoeyB - 20-06-2026, 10:03 PM - Forum: Fiction, Comics, Films & Videos, Games & other Media
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My teenagers have (surprisingly) expressed a bit of interest in this subject matter and I noticed Simon Singh had a version of The Code Book adapted to younger readers, which I've added to my Amazon cart.
Does anyone have suggestions of some other foundational books that might be approachable for the high school/early university level reader? I'm thinking Andrew Robinson too, but I definitely don't want to over-do it and scare them back to their ipads, so any approachable summer reading suggestions for them would be welcome!
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| The geomantic theory |
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Posted by: JustAnotherTheory - 19-06-2026, 09:09 PM - Forum: Theories & Solutions
- Replies (16)
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In this post I am proposing a system that generates Voynichese using a method available in the early 1400s.
The resulting text is meaningless, in the sense that it does not encode a particular language, concept or idea. On the other hand, it is consistent, to some degree, with several features of the text in the VMS. These include local features such as common prefixes, suffixes, combined glyphs (such as bench-gallows), as well as more global feautres like positive word autocorrelation, repeating consecutive words, words that differ by only a few glyphs, and page-wide (or indeed section-wide) topics.
The method of my theory is based on geomancy. Geomancy was a widely used divination technique in the late middle ages, and even much before that. It was not only used in Europe, but in the Arabic world as well. There is a very good explanation on this divination system on the website of Princeton University (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
In a few words (and simplifying a lot) geomancy is a way to gain knowledge about future events by making a number of random points on a sheet of paper (or tossing pebbles, etc…) and then counting the result. If the result is an even number, you translate that to 2 points. If the result is odd, you get 1 point.
You do this 4 times, so that you get a "figure". Here is an example of a figure:
In geomancy, you start the divniation process by constructing 4 figures in such a way, these are called Mothers. Then 4 more, the Daughters. Then 4 more, the Nieces, then 2 Wtinesses, and then 1 Judge.
What is interesting about this is that when you go from one layer to the next (f. ex. from the Mothers to the Nieces), you use information from the Mothers to create the Nieces using a combination. This makes the Nieces a "transformation" of the Mothers and Daughters. In other words, each subsequent layer is dependent on the one above.
The exact way of making these transformations is quite simple and is basically binary arithmetic. Please see the Princeton page for the full details (otherwise I wouldn’t have any space left in this post, sorry).
The final step then consists of assigning a House to each figure. There are 12 houses, but some systems add 4 more so that all 16 combinations of the figures can be "housed".
Each house is a way of telling a particular aspect of the future. For example, the house "Vita" will tell you about life. The house "Carcer" about prison or illegal activites. Here is an example of a House diagram:
In my system of generating Voynichese, I make use of this geomantic process: - The figures are Voynichese glyphs,
- Each layer of figures is a combination of glyphs above,
- Each house is a prefix- and/or suffix-rule, or a NULL rule.
Thus, when casting the figures and placing them on the table, we get Voynichese.
Since the different layers of the figures are dependent on the layers above, this creates a "structural" effect in the text whereby it appears that words in each other’s vicinity are related, or connected in some way. Repetitions might also occur.
The rules of each house are chosen in a unique way, which therefore creates the "signature" of the page, or its "topic". Finally, going through the houses in a given order will generate the text. I will give a simple example (and then a more complex one).
Example 1. Simple illustrative example
Let us assume that we have cast our Mothers, which gives (all Voynichese is written in EVA):- Mother 1: d
- Mother 2: k
- Mother 3: c
- Mother 4: h
Therefore, using the aforementioned combination rule, the 2 Nieces are:
Having the Houses as follows:- House 1 (Vita): X + "aiin"
- House 2 (Lucrum): "qo" + X + "aiin"
- House 9 (Itineris): X + "ol"
- House 10 (Regnum): X + "o"
Then we would get the text:
daiin qokaiin dkol cho
Remember, whoever is casting the figures, does so randomly. It is, in some sort, in today’s terminology, a "random seed". All other glyphs and words are therefore related to these first seeds, which makes a curious structure emerge in larger texts. I will illustrate this with a more complex example.
Example 2: A more complete example
Now let us assume we have these figures:- Mother 1: ain
- Mother 2: d
- Mother 3: y
- Mother 4: k
- Daughter 1: h
- Daughter 2: c
- Daughter 3: p
- Daughter 4: e
Then the Nieces are:- Niece 1: dain
- Niece 2: ky
- Niece 3: ch
- Niece 4: ep
And the Witnesses:- Witness 1: kydain
- Witness 2: epch
And if we have these Houses:- House 9 (Itineris): NULL
- House 11 (Benefacta): ot + X + al
- House 13 (Witness house 1): X + y
- House 14 (Witness house 2): y + X + ol
Thus, the result is (reading in a particular order):
kydainy yepchol dain otchal
Discussion
I will briefly discuss a few points about this method:- The order in which the houses are read, in traditional geomancy, is sequential (ie, 1, 2, ... ). In this method, no such rule is made. Therefore, a scribe, having cast the figures and placed them into houses, might decide to follow an alternative path, which can be row-by-row, column-by-column, zig-zag, etc. This will make the resulting text none the less structured.
- The fact that all Nieces are combinations of Mothers and Daughters, and that Witnesses are again, combinations of the above, makes the resulting generated text very much inter-dependent. It results in repetitions, small differences in words, and positive word autocorrelation, depending on the path taken through the houses.
- Combining benches and gallows via Mothers/Daughters/Nieces naturally gives rise to complex bench-gallow glyphs.
- Some glyphs or glyph pairs are only used in the houses. This results in words that have a specific prefix or suffix all throughout the text.
- Each page has its own house arrangement, and possibly rules. This gives rise to topics that emerge at each page.
I will not make any assumption as to why one would generate such text, nor do I prove anything with this method. I am only showing a possible way to generate Voynichese.
Thank you for reading
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