| Welcome, Guest |
You have to register before you can post on our site.
|
| Online Users |
There are currently 748 online users.
» 3 Member(s) | 740 Guest(s)
Applebot, Baidu, Bing, Google, Yandex, BessAgritianin
|
| Latest Threads |
I am not convinced by the...
Forum: Provenance & history
Last Post: anejati
26 minutes ago
» Replies: 23
» Views: 734
|
15thc perception on swall...
Forum: Imagery
Last Post: Koen G
8 hours ago
» Replies: 602
» Views: 335,196
|
No text, but a visual cod...
Forum: Theories & Solutions
Last Post: ololololo
8 hours ago
» Replies: 1,869
» Views: 1,306,093
|
Voynichese is a numeric c...
Forum: Theories & Solutions
Last Post: ololololo
8 hours ago
» Replies: 196
» Views: 20,741
|
New members: trouble regi...
Forum: News
Last Post: Koen G
8 hours ago
» Replies: 0
» Views: 63
|
[split] Measure uncertain...
Forum: Analysis of the text
Last Post: Grove
10 hours ago
» Replies: 7
» Views: 249
|
Voynich is encrypted ENOC...
Forum: Theories & Solutions
Last Post: Radim Dobeš
10 hours ago
» Replies: 361
» Views: 52,388
|
The 'Chinese' Theory: Fo...
Forum: Theories & Solutions
Last Post: Linda
10 hours ago
» Replies: 799
» Views: 212,478
|
A Glyph Is Not a Letter, ...
Forum: News
Last Post: rikforto
Yesterday, 11:22 AM
» Replies: 22
» Views: 1,270
|
Voynich Reconsidered
Forum: News
Last Post: dfs346
22-08-2026, 08:47 PM
» Replies: 151
» Views: 108,738
|
|
|
| Why is there no more Voynichese in any other manuscript? |
|
Posted by: Jimmy123 - 12-06-2026, 03:49 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (14)
|
 |
So this is a stupid question but we know that the VMS was used heavily, due to paper fading, so that means that many people used it for practical purposes and were able to read it without many problems. So my question is: why did nobody continue to use this method of encipherment in any other manuscript?
Why are there no Voynichese in no other astrology MS from 1400 or 1500, or even 1600?
If the encipherment was so successful, I would think that whoever could read it, and use it every day, would also continue to use it later? Like in marginalia of existing astrology manuscripts, for personal annotation, or even to encode other mysteries and hidden knowledge?
But there are NO Voynichese in ANY manuscript, ANYWHERE.
Why??
|
|
|
| Was the VMS artist a fan of Michael Scot? |
|
Posted by: JustAnotherTheory - 12-06-2026, 07:28 AM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (46)
|
|
Hi everyone. It's been a while  In the past weeks I've been busy researching a quite peculiar (possible) connection to the VMS. It all started when I saw an extract from a manuscript from the 13th Century Scottish mathematician and writer Michael Scot (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
It appears that Michael Scot's work was widely appreciated in the late 14th, early 15th Century South Germany, where it was copied a lot. His contributions mainly concern mathematics, astronomy, astrology and his travels to Arabic-speaking countries. Today, we can find a lot of his work in the form of 14th-15th Century copies from South Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
After having looked through a lot (a lot) of such copies, I found many parts of Michael Scot's imagery that closely resemble that of the VMS. I show some of these resemblances below.
Let's begin with crayfish, because it's one of the more unusual features of the VMS, because its legs are on its tail (incorrectly):
Next, we have depictions of women next to stars:
Many pipes that resemble those in the Rosettes section, are organs:
There are depictions of cylinders containing people or things:
Some animal faces look very similar to those in the VMS:
People crossing hands:
And some other unusual features:
But the most unusual, actual artist style can be seem in this manuscript from the Admont Abbey Library:
It seems to me, that whoever the VMS artist was, he/she might have been a fan of Michael Scot's work. Perhaps he/she was surrounded by many copies of his works? Maybe he/she was based in a library or abbey where many of his works were preserved and copied?
What do you think?
|
|
|
|
| Some suggestions and theories |
|
Posted by: SpamBot - 11-06-2026, 12:56 PM - Forum: Theories & Solutions
- Replies (32)
|
|
I am just a passerby with some mild curiosity about the manuscript. Bellow are some suggestion and hypotheses (for which I have nor competencies, nor resources [nor willingness] to check them by myself), some might be obvious or stated elsewhere, some might be new and can, hopefully, if not help to uncover the mystery directly, then, at least, lead to some new insights (mainly the reason why I am writing this).
0.Based on the pictures alone, I make the assumption that it is some work of science (lecture notes, textbook, research etc.)
1.Since there are suggestions that the manuscript was used often, I make the following proposition: manuscript is not "cyphered", it is written in its own language. Otherwise you would need to decypher it every time you need it and it wouldn't practical (especially if the "cypher" doesn't have a simple solution).
1.1 Who wrote it: some private society (masons, their subgroup, the Order of Dagon or whatever).
1.2 Why own language: my grandma speaks Polish whenever she doesn't wants others to listen to her phone conversations. Here the reason might be similar: if you are a secret society, then with a language known only to the initiated, you can hold conversations anywhere without eavesdrop. As a bonus, if you have members from different countries (speaking different languages), then you have universal communication tool.
2.Why plants look exotic (and not like their real counterparts): the manuscript was dictated by someone (for ex. professor to a student), thus the one who draw them didn't saw the actual plants, he only had the word descriptions of them. This also explains why there are several handwrites (1 student writes the book, while others do some other tasks, then rotate)
3.If geometry books taught me anything, then it's that shitty drawings are always accompanied by a textual explanation. Thus it's reasonable to assume that the plant pages of the manuscript contain words for leaves, root, flower etc. We (and by that I mean You, the researcher) can extract words common for all the plant pages and try simple substitutions (X is "root", Y is "leaf") until we get a meaningful sentences, the rest of the words (from the plant section) can be picked logically. But it should be kept in mind that some words most likely are written with mistakes.
4.Additionally, with the help of a Botanical Expert, we can pinpoint (a biome) the location where the manuscript was written (since it's unlikely that the author was a traveler). Studying the history of the place may give hints about the order (maybe other similar works could be discovered there, maybe even the order itself)
|
|
|
|
| Similarity of Voynichese glyphs according to their immediate statistical environment |
|
Posted by: Mauro - 09-06-2026, 02:36 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (14)
|
|
I posted You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. about the 'similarity' of Voynich glyphs with each other and I'd like to elaborate further on that. Not sure if it's useful and/or a new thing (I doubt), but anyway..
For each glyph I calculate the frequency distributions of the preceding glyph: this gives a vector of numbers (adding up to 1) for each glyph. Then I calculate the Euclidean distance between each couple of vectors (root-mean-square: the square root of the sum of the squares of the differences). I do the same for the distributions of the following glyph. By construction, each distance can be as a minimum zero, and as a maximum SQRT(2) =~ 1.414
What does this mean in practice? If we find that EVA 'k' and EVA 't' have small distances, both of them, and, say, we find the sequence 'oka' in the text, then it's probable we'll also find 'ota', and moreover the ratio between 'oka's and 'ota's will probably be similar to the ratio between 'k's and 't's.
These are the most similar glyph couplets, as measured by the average of distance_previous and distance_following, considering the whole RF1a-n transcription and excluding rare glyphs (defined as all the glyphs with a frequency lower or equal to that of EVA 'g'):
If you want to consider also the rare glyphs, add the following couplets:
For reference (excluding rare characters), the two most dissimilar glyphs are, unsurprisingly, 'q' and 'n'. Average distance = 1.39, previous = 1.39, following = 1.38. Almost maximally orthogonal.
Notice: the above analysis considers 'ch', 'sh', 'ckh', 'cth', 'cph' and 'cfh' to be stand-alone glyphs. This is arbitrary of course (but I think there are good reasons for it). Also, there was some manual work involved in creating the results tables, so excuse for any errors or omissions.
When I can, I'll try to get the same data for each section of the VMS.
|
|
|
|
| About the scribes |
|
Posted by: ololololo - 06-06-2026, 12:37 AM - Forum: Theories & Solutions
- Replies (6)
|
 |
In this post, I will describe my assumptions about the supposed scribes of the manuscript. I have identified three of them: A (the author of Herbal A and part of the pharmaceuticals), B (the author of balneology and part of the recipes), and C (the author of Herbal B and the diagrams). I will not touch on the topic of languages A and B, I will only look at the features specific to these scribes and make some suggestions. Perhaps they will be useful...
Also, don't forget that I'm not making any claims here; this is just MY OPINION, and you may have a different one (and I would love to hear it ) !
What can we say about scribe A? First of all, this person knows how to write beautifully. Of course, it can't be called calligraphy, but it's definitely noticeable that he writes evenly, even without lines, and his letters are uniform and clear. One of the best examples of this is the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. page
The first two volumes were written by him alone.The first folios (especially 1-3) were written by his hand. Starting from page. But folio 4 already contains traces of the scribe C's intervention (f26v and f31), and so on.
First, he could have been a professional scribe, as evidenced by his rather skillful writing style. This suggests that he is most likely the author of the notes on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f116v. It is possible that he has written other books as well.
Second, he clearly understood what he was writing (in any case). This is evidenced by the confidence in his handwriting, as well as the fact that his "language" (Voynich A) differs from the language of other scribes. It is possible that the differences in language are a result of the fact that scribe A knew a little more about what he was writing. I also suggest comparing the lines written by scribe A and the lines written by scribe B:
Tsheoarom shar or chor olchsy chom otchom oporar (f3r)
qokchdy chcthy lo dsheckhy qokain chckhy lshedy okeedy (f75r)
Maybe this examples they are not entirely accurate and do not reflect the general pattern of language differences, but you may notice that while scribe A often repeats a single character, scribe B tends to copy an entire word with slight variations.
Thirdly, he may well be the author of the manuscript. Since he was a good writer and seemed to understand what he was writing, he could have been the creator of what we call voynichese (i.e., a code, a system of abbreviations, transcriptions, etc. I still respect the opinions of other users, so we'll avoid being too specific).
What can we say about the scribe C? His handwriting is minimalistic and "blurred":
However, the blurring does not always occur, and there are cases where the handwriting is similar to that of scribe C, but more distinct:
First, scribe C was most likely an assistant to scribe A. Since they first wrote a section together, it cannot be said that scribe A invited scribe C only to reduce his workload. However, it is worth noting that scribe C often writes more than scribe A, as exemplified by f34r.
This is not a result of his small handwriting, or at most only partially so (perhaps because of his small handwriting, he was able to fit more text on a page, and so was entrusted with such work).
Secondly, he was probably also aware of what he was writing. You see, while Herbal A and Herbal B have visible differences, if you compare Herbal B and balneology, you can also find quite a few differences between them. Since scribe C was likely "hired" before scribe B and worked on the same section as scribe A, he may have known a bit more about the cipher. This is also evidenced by the fact that he is entrusted with working with diagrams, and as we know, the vocabulary of astro- and cosmology cannot be unambiguously assigned to any particular language.
Thirdly, apparently, he was sometimes... very lazy (f65r looks like it wasn't finished).
What can you say about scribe B? And there's a lot to be said about him...
Let's start with the handwriting. In general, his handwriting is quite standard and does not have any distinctive features. The glyphs are even, and the letters are clearly visible. The overall appearance of the handwriting seems somewhat rushed, as if the person was writing quickly.
I assume that the first pages written by scribe B are You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f58v. On voynich.nu, the text on these pages is described as "a transitional stage between A and B". However, this is not a fact, as the handwriting could also belong to scribe A.
One of the distinctive features of scribe B's handwriting is the lines - they are not always straight, and there is often very little space between them. Sometimes, the author even falls off the lines, as seen in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (perhaps he was simply tired).
First, scribe B writes exclusively in Voynich B, and his version is the most different from Voynich A (I don't think it needs to be explained that the botanical and balneological sections are different).
Second, the texts of scribe B are always larger than those of scribes A and C. It seems that he was almost always given larger texts. This suggests that he was likely a hired individual who was employed by scribe A to reduce his workload.
Thirdly, it may be that scribe B did not understand what he was writing at all, or that he was writing nonsense on purpose. The text he wrote is characterized by a lot of repetition, similar words (usually placed next to each other), and a generally low level of text variability (this is especially evident in f75r, but it is also reflected in other pages of balneology). Such a drastic difference may indicate that he most likely wrote it himself (it is unlikely that the author gave him something to copy, as he could have done it himself if he had the strength to give scribe B a sample), and most likely, if he wrote it meaningfully, it was not always accurate or meaningful. There is an example of a rather unusual word taken from the Rosettes and clearly written by the scribe B:
It is quite long, consists only of "vowel" characters, and has two consecutive double letters. For the entire manuscript, this word is too strange. Although this is an isolated example, it raises questions about the meaning of this word and whether scribe B may have "slacked off" on other pages.
This person also seemed to be very interested in drawing betonies, but he wasn't always successful...
Total, in my opinion:
Scribe A is a professional, most likely an author or at least an expert in Voynichese.
Scribe C worked with Scribe A and clearly understood Voynich.
Scribe B may have been a hack or just a klutz. In any case, the question arises as to whether the texts he wrote make sense.
|
|
|
|
| Templatic Voynich generator |
|
Posted by: Labyrinthinesecurity - 04-06-2026, 10:21 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (21)
|
|
Dear all,
I have made a template driven voynich text generator which passes the statistic tests, including my own 4 signature tests which are quite demanding. Is it something that would be worth sharing, or template generators are already well described and known? I couldnt find much litterature except the groundbreaking work from Stolfi, but I dont know if he made an actual generator. Thanks for your inputs
|
|
|
|
| How much time and effort may have been put in? |
|
Posted by: eggyk - 04-06-2026, 03:57 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (10)
|
 |
Quite often, I see opinions here discussing various theories and judging them based on the amount of effort that would have been required from the VMS author for them to be true. I want to discuss that, even though it's almost definitely been discussed before.
How much effort do you think could have been put into the VMS text, illustrations and/or ciphers?
How much effort from the author does a theory require before you dismiss it as unlikely, and why?
How much effort would a potential decoding require before you dismiss the cipher as unlikely, and why?
I'll start: I think that any amount of effort/monotony, up to the scale of decades of work, sits within what's possible. There are countless examples of people doing extensive monotonous work for no specific reason beyond "why not?". Some people simply want to do something and do it, regardless of utility.
You have communities and individuals everywhere that do things on this scale. Some people go out and collect rocks from different places, some people spend years organising and digitising manuscripts knowing that almost noone will ever look, others build an extensive library of all of the worlds road bollards, electrical posts, and plant species for no reason other than knowing where they are on geoguessr. A group of players in minecraft are attempting to build the entire earth at a 1:1 scale!
Perhaps the most relevant example is the Voynich community itself. Many people set out to research and solve this manuscript, spending hours, days, weeks, months, sometimes years, and sometimes decades putting in 1000s of hours of effort in. Is it so unbelievable that someone may spend an entire year's worth of their free time writing a book meant to be unreadable, just for the sake of it? We tend to assume that if there is meaning in the text then there must have been a use case, but what if the author simply enjoyed writing weird/fancy books?
|
|
|
|
|
