| Welcome, Guest |
You have to register before you can post on our site.
|
| Latest Threads |
Elephant in the Room Solu...
Forum: Theories & Solutions
Last Post: MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz)
Less than 1 minute ago
» Replies: 126
» Views: 6,363
|
Starred Parags: the last ...
Forum: Analysis of the text
Last Post: ReneZ
1 hour ago
» Replies: 7
» Views: 163
|
Folio reorder in the herb...
Forum: Theories & Solutions
Last Post: ahalay-mahalay
1 hour ago
» Replies: 0
» Views: 24
|
Water, earth and air
Forum: Voynich Talk
Last Post: Jorge_Stolfi
1 hour ago
» Replies: 25
» Views: 7,247
|
Knight's Path, an upcomin...
Forum: Fiction, Comics, Films & Videos, Games & other Media
Last Post: bi3mw
4 hours ago
» Replies: 0
» Views: 50
|
L. Rauwolf
Forum: Provenance & history
Last Post: nablator
8 hours ago
» Replies: 50
» Views: 6,517
|
Distribution of Q-Q gaps ...
Forum: Analysis of the text
Last Post: Jorge_Stolfi
Yesterday, 01:33 PM
» Replies: 5
» Views: 215
|
structural medical encodi...
Forum: The Slop Bucket
Last Post: Koen G
Yesterday, 09:51 AM
» Replies: 1
» Views: 97
|
ORIGINAL stains on the ve...
Forum: Physical material
Last Post: Jorge_Stolfi
Yesterday, 08:06 AM
» Replies: 7
» Views: 208
|
On the word "luez" in the...
Forum: Marginalia
Last Post: JoJo_Jost
Yesterday, 06:44 AM
» Replies: 42
» Views: 1,322
|
|
|
| The reproduction of roots as healing objects |
|
Posted by: JoJo_Jost - 24-11-2025, 07:54 PM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (46)
|
 |
Background: In my translation attempts, I have encountered the problem that, instead of recipes as expected, I find descriptions of the plant's vascular system on the herbal pages. I have considered this nonsense so far and questioned my translation matrix: However, I had only looked at the herbal text so far.
To check this, I concentrated on pages 88r to 102 because of the many roots. In my translation attempts, I came across replicas of plants on these pages (very speculative)
And then it dawned on me: the devices on these pages are attempts to combine and imitate the typical properties of several roots and other plant parts. Probably together with water, this is supposed to bundle and intensify the healing power.
The background to this could be a medieval concept of magic: images, figures, and illustrations are believed to have the same power as the actual thing. And this was already believed in the 12th century.
Let's look at some examples:
Here you can see that the roots of the device resemble the roots of the plant.
And here is another nice example:
Not only are the roots similar (blue circles), but this “cut-off” root representation is also adopted (red circles).
Here you can see the similarity between the device and the root depicted right next to it, with its delicate, branching structure:
But the shape of the root can also be recognized, as in this example, where both the shape and the root can be seen:
An other hint:
And yet another one of these devices that bears a strong resemblance to the shape of roots.
Conclusion: I see indications that the aim here was to imitate and condense nature in order to replicate the healing powers of plants, i.e., to directly imitate and probably also condense several plants.
This can also be applied to other parts of the VMS, but more on that later.
Okay, now you can pick me apart, or rather this theory. Have fun! 
|
|
|
| Folio 10v Plant Identification |
|
Posted by: Skoove - 24-11-2025, 02:21 PM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (21)
|
 |
Recently I have been trying to take a 'fresh eyes' look at the plants in Herbal A to see if any of them stand out as stronger or useful matches. I know this has been done before (largely in vain) however I thought why not. My larger work is still in progress but I wanted to share my identifcation for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. because it is one of the most interesting to me and I haven't seen it really discussed elsewhere. I believe that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. actually is an identifiable plant and that if this identification is correct, it is potentially very helpful in shedding light on the VMS itself. So, here we go:
The roots are potentially pareidolic in nature, yet I immediately thought of a large wing with feet/talons. My first thoughts were to a griffin or eagle.
Although this seems thin, a plant that is commonly associated with the eagle is ‘aquilegia’ (a.k.a columbine). Aquilegia has the exact colouring and drooping flowers that we see in f10v. It however, does not normally have the drooping leaves which are shown in the VMS version, although I am allowing a little wiggle room. Here we can see the visual similarities between You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and aquilegia.
Aquilegia is named as such because the latin for eagle is ‘aquila’ and the plant is said to resemble an eagle’s talons. Based on this strong visual and mnemonic connection, I am leaning quite strongly to this identification.
An important implication of this finding (if correct) is that the association with Aquilegia and the eagle are largely Italian and German, whilst French sources tend to use the name ‘columbine’ which comes from the latin for a dove or pigeon. From my perspective, the ‘wing’ in the root points much more to a large bird like an eagle rather than a dove or pigeon. This then points to the illustrator thinking of (or knowing it as) the latin for eagle rather than the latin for dove/pigeon, maybe pointing to a specific area.
We also know that Aquilegia was discussed by Hildegard von Bingen (she called it agleya) as useful for curing fever. Albertus Magnus also mentions it. Therefore, it would not be out of place to be discussed given its believed properties. Aquilegia vulgaris has also been connected to Christianity and been cultivated within monastery gardens in England, Germany and Italy during the 1300-1400s. Likewise, many Aquilegia species are native to Western Europe and the Alpine regions.
I'm happy to hear everyones opinion on this idea (and whether or not I am just retreading other's work).
|
|
|
|
| VMS to pseudo - latin ( not a solution !) |
|
Posted by: bi3mw - 23-11-2025, 11:30 AM - Forum: Theories & Solutions
- Replies (44)
|
 |
First of all: This is NOT a serious solution for the VMS! Since I have seen many “solutions” with pseudo-Latin lately, I just want to demonstrate how easy it is to replicate this with any word list. Anyone can reproduce the procedure described below. You may only need to install Metaphone for Python:
pip install Metaphone
First, you can map the most common letters in VMS to the most common letters in the Latin alphabet. This step isn't really necessary, but it's “nicer”.
cat RF1a-n-x7.txt | tr oehyacdiklrstnqpmfgxzv ieutasrnmocdlpbqghfxyz > voyn2latin.txt
Now you create a word list from any Latin text. I took an excerpt from Regimen Sanitatis. 5388 Latin words were extracted. That is definitely sufficient.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Finally, run the following Python script. This will take a few minutes. The script checks the Levenshtein distance and the phonetic similarity of the words in voyn2latin.txt against the word list. The words found are inserted accordingly and written to the output.
python phonetic_levenshtein.py voyn2latin.txt mapped.txt
Code: #!/usr/bin/env python3
# coding: utf-8
"""
DoubleMetaphone + Levenshtein Hybrid Decoder
--------------------------------------------------------
1. Load Latin words from wordlist.txt
2. Build a DoubleMetaphone index
3. For each Voynich word:
- Compute its DoubleMetaphone codes
- Find matching or phonetically similar Latin words
- Rank candidates using Levenshtein distance
- Output the best candidate (or <no match>)
"""
import sys
from metaphone import doublemetaphone
from collections import defaultdict
from tqdm import tqdm
# ---------------------------------------------------------
# Levenshtein distance
# ---------------------------------------------------------
def levenshtein(a, b):
if not a:
return len(b)
if not b:
return len(a)
dp = range(len(b) + 1)
for i, ca in enumerate(a, 1):
new_dp = [i]
for j, cb in enumerate(b, 1):
if ca == cb:
new_dp.append(dp[j-1])
else:
new_dp.append(1 + min(dp[j-1], dp[j], new_dp[-1]))
dp = new_dp
return dp[-1]
# ---------------------------------------------------------
# Load Latin words
# ---------------------------------------------------------
def load_wordlist(path="wordlist.txt"):
words = []
with open(path, "r", encoding="utf8") as f:
for line in f:
word = line.strip().lower()
if word:
words.append(word)
return words
# ---------------------------------------------------------
# Normalize a Voynich word (remove non-letters)
# ---------------------------------------------------------
def normalize_voynich_word(w):
return "".join(c.lower() for c in w if c.isalpha())
# ---------------------------------------------------------
# Build Metaphone index
# ---------------------------------------------------------
def build_metaphone_index(words):
index = defaultdict(list)
for w in words:
m1, m2 = doublemetaphone(w)
if m1:
index[m1].append(w)
if m2 and m2 != m1:
index[m2].append(w)
return index
# ---------------------------------------------------------
# Combined DoubleMetaphone + Levenshtein matching
# ---------------------------------------------------------
def hybrid_match(v_word, index, top_n=1):
if not v_word:
return ["<no match>"]
m1, m2 = doublemetaphone(v_word)
candidates = []
# 1) Exact metaphone matches
if m1 in index:
candidates.extend(index[m1])
if m2 in index:
candidates.extend(index[m2])
# 2) If too few candidates, try similar metaphone keys
if len(candidates) < 5 and m1:
prefix = m1[:2]
for key in index:
if key.startswith(prefix):
candidates.extend(index[key])
# 3) Still nothing? → no match
if not candidates:
return ["<no match>"]
# 4) Compute Levenshtein distances
scored = []
for cand in candidates:
score = levenshtein(v_word, cand[:len(v_word)])
scored.append((score, cand))
scored.sort(key=lambda x: x[0])
best_score = scored[0][0]
# All equally good candidates
best = [w for s, w in scored if s == best_score]
return best[:top_n]
# ---------------------------------------------------------
# MAIN
# ---------------------------------------------------------
def main():
if len(sys.argv) < 3:
print("Usage: python3 phonetic_levenshtein.py voyn2latin.txt output.txt")
sys.exit(1)
infile = sys.argv[1]
outfile = sys.argv[2]
print("Loading Latin wordlist …")
latin_words = load_wordlist("wordlist.txt")
print(f"{len(latin_words)} Latin words loaded.")
print("Building DoubleMetaphone index …")
index = build_metaphone_index(latin_words)
print(f"Index contains {len(index)} metaphone keys.")
print("Decoding …")
with open(infile, "r", encoding="utf8") as f:
lines = f.readlines()
output_lines = []
for line in tqdm(lines, desc="Lines"):
if not line.strip():
output_lines.append("")
continue
words = line.split()
decoded_line = []
for w in words:
normalized = normalize_voynich_word(w)
matches = hybrid_match(normalized, index, top_n=1)
decoded_line.append(matches[0])
output_lines.append(" ".join(decoded_line))
with open(outfile, "w", encoding="utf8") as f:
for row in output_lines:
f.write(row + "\n")
print("Done →", outfile)
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
If you want to do this to yourself, you can run mapped.txt through a translator. The result is just as meaningless as most of the Latin “solutions” I've seen. If you actually find a meaningful sentence, you can keep it 
|
|
|
|
| Why is promoting a specific theory on every single thread of the forum permitted? |
|
Posted by: Yavernoxia - 21-11-2025, 10:19 AM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (6)
|
 |
Dear all,
I'm opening this thread to discuss why a specific user is promoting his theory in every single thread, post and section of the forum, and why this behaviour seems to be tolerated.
I'm talking obviously about the scribe + author + retracing theory. Honestly, it's becoming unbearable. For example, when reading a thread about marginalia, you'll see comments from that user like 'But this wasn't in the original text by the author! No, this was retraced!'. Then you open another post about analysis of the text, you'll see the same comments again: 'But the scribe isn't the author, and this was retraced!'. Literally in every post, even when it has nothing to do with it, the same (highly improbable, in my opinion) theory is always brought up and the thread starts to go off topic from there.
Specific theories like this one should be kept within You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.; as far as I'm concerned, don't ruin the reading experience of the entire forum.
|
|
|
|
| The Cliffs of Moher |
|
Posted by: Doireannjane - 20-11-2025, 11:39 PM - Forum: Theories & Solutions
- Replies (62)
|
|
I propose that the manuscript is at least partially based in The Burren of County Clare and the cliffs of Moher in Ireland.
I'll provide comparison of the botany drawn in the manuscript and that of the biodiverse region of The Burren and other coinciding climatic, historical and mythological elements.
I will also provide some textual evidence from the manuscript (the textual element will presuppose that my Irish translation has already been evaluated and deemed accurate. The textual element will be considered anecdotal evidence for the time being. I ask that this be entertained and that your overarching linguistic analysis take a backseat for this thread).
This thread will also look at the manuscript choices, the chemistry in pigment and the need for gall ink with climate, as well as the use/sharing and passing of the manuscript as an object of purpose both as it was made and in the following years.
In my research now, I'm trying to narrow down some things geographically now that I know there are some places referenced by name. I have reason to believe the woods near a Monastery in County Clare may be referenced. This thread will also discuss the history of Irish Monks and Nuns spending time in and around Italy and the movement of the manuscript leading up to and after Italy.
|
|
|
|
| f115r / Hand @ or Hand 3 ? |
|
Posted by: dashstofsk - 20-11-2025, 12:38 PM - Forum: Physical material
- Replies (11)
|
 |
Could anyone say why it is that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. needs to have '$H=@' in the transliteration page header?
This seems to me to be wrong.
Pages 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. are on the same side of the parchment sheet. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is on the left side, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is on the right side. Now, if you look closely at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. you will see that the writing is in a colour that is darker than normal for quire 20. Also the top lines in f115r are similarly dark. Moreover because there is good evidence that the manuscript was written sheet-by-sheet and not in book page order it is likely that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and the top lines in f115r were written in one sitting by the same person.
Would this not be sufficient reason for making hand 3 the writer of f115r?
Some of you will notice that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. which faces You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. also has its top lines dark. However I still believe sheet-by-sheet to be the most likely conjecture.
|
|
|
|
| A Hydro-Phytotherapeutic Interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript |
|
Posted by: Gabriel Gottig - 20-11-2025, 06:04 AM - Forum: Theories & Solutions
- Replies (4)
|
|
Note: I will not be studying this topic further; I’m simply sharing this idea in case it is useful to someone who works on Voynich research.
I would like to share a personal hypothesis about the Voynich Manuscript that may offer a different perspective on its content.
After examining the botanical section and the so-called balneological section, I propose that both may be connected through a single conceptual framework: a hydro-phytotherapeutic system—an attempt to understand and replicate the healing properties of medicinal plant roots through networks of flowing water.
This idea comes from two main observations:
- Unusually detailed and prominent root illustrations.
In the Voynich Manuscript, roots are depicted with exceptional detail and visual emphasis compared to the typical medieval herbal tradition. This suggests that medicinal properties may have been attributed primarily to the roots rather than to the full plant.
- The balneological section shows networks of pipes, channels, vessels, and flowing water.
These structures do not resemble anatomical diagrams or realistic bath installations. Instead, they appear to represent idealized hydraulic systems. Some of them connect symbolically to human figures, as if illustrating therapeutic baths or processes involving water circulation.
Based on this, I hypothesize that the author might have been attempting to conceptualize a water-circulation system whose structure imitates the functional properties of plant roots. The idea would be that, just as roots absorb, transform, filter, and distribute substances, a designed hydraulic network could produce “healing water” either without using the herbs directly or in combination with them, using the water system as an enlarged artificial “stem.”
In modern terms, it resembles a pre-scientific, proto-hydrotherapy or proto-spagyric concept, where the geometry and flow of water play a therapeutic role inspired by botany.
I’m not claiming that this hypothesis is correct or verifiable. I simply haven’t found prior research exploring this exact connection between root morphology and hydraulic systems as a unifying conceptual model. If anyone working in Voynich studies—historians, botanists, linguists, cryptographers, or independent researchers—finds this idea interesting, I would be honored if they explored it with more academic rigor.
|
|
|
|
| New Podcast (German) |
|
Posted by: Torsten - 19-11-2025, 09:21 PM - Forum: News
- No Replies
|
 |
A podcast in German: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Quote:In diesem Zeitzeichen erzählt Martin Herzog: welche Spekulationen es über das Voynich-Manuskript gibt, wo das Original-Dokument heute aufbewahrt wird, welche Auffälligkeiten die 200 Pergament-Seiten aufweisen, was außer Pflanzen und nackten Menschen sonst noch darin abgebildet ist, was Kaiser Rudolf II. mit dem Manuskript zu tun hat.
|
|
|
|
| New podcast |
|
Posted by: LisaFaginDavis - 19-11-2025, 02:25 PM - Forum: News
- No Replies
|
 |
Here are both parts of my Voynich podcast on "Archaeology Tea Break" with Matilda Siebrecht:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Lisa
|
|
|
|
|