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Welcome, Guest You have to register before you can post on our site. Username/Email:    Password    Remember me Search Forums (Advanced Search) Online Users There are currently 313 online users. » 2 Member(s) | 308 Guest(s) Applebot, Bing, Google, dfs346, Eiríkur Latest Threads New Decoder Forum: Voynich Talk Last Post: Eiríkur 7 minutes ago » Replies: 8 » Views: 826 Origin of the Shield Shap... Forum: Imagery Last Post: Dobri 1 hour ago » Replies: 100 » Views: 4,151 Why not positional variat... Forum: Analysis of the text Last Post: ReneZ 4 hours ago » Replies: 67 » Views: 7,949 Big Red Weirdos Forum: Voynich Talk Last Post: Koen G 9 hours ago » Replies: 63 » Views: 45,050 f85v and 86(part): using ... Forum: Analysis of the text Last Post: R. Sale Yesterday, 04:44 PM » Replies: 38 » Views: 2,656 Book Available on Amazon Forum: News Last Post: bi3mw Yesterday, 01:45 PM » Replies: 1 » Views: 124 Eleven Moon Phases in Fol... Forum: Astrology Last Post: Dobri Yesterday, 12:44 PM » Replies: 103 » Views: 8,934 Always impressive Forum: Fiction, Comics, Films & Videos, Games & other Media Last Post: Aga Tentakulus 11-05-2025, 11:28 PM » Replies: 14 » Views: 4,216 Solutions [discussion thr... Forum: Voynich Talk Last Post: davidd 11-05-2025, 10:16 PM » Replies: 55 » Views: 9,876 Favorite Plant Tournament... Forum: Voynich Talk Last Post: Koen G 11-05-2025, 09:05 PM » Replies: 5 » Views: 159

f8r Posted by: Anton - 12-01-2017, 08:50 PM - Forum: Imagery - Replies (15) The identifications of this plant have been: Th. Petersen: Paraenanthes, Atriplex hastata E. Sherwood: Pisum sativum Steve D: Tussilago farfara The Finnish biologist does not consider this plant. Of these three, methinks that Tussilago farfara is the best match. I'm not sure what does the small "pierced through" leaf stand for, though. Turning to the mnemonic side, I can't imagine what would these leaves and roots remind me. If the roots in this case do not bear any mnemonics altogether, then they look to me as simply resembling real roots of tussilago. As for leaves, folk names of tussilago in various languages have been pointing to a hoof. The large leaf can be thought of as resembling a hoof (when looking from the ground upwards), but, if a hoof, the depiction is surely not the best possible. So I am not sure. Are there any other proposed identifications from those who befriend botany? Sorry, corrected the thread name - should read f8r.   J. Janick interpretations of the VMS... Posted by: -JKP- - 12-01-2017, 06:54 PM - Forum: Imagery - Replies (33) DavidJackson kindly posted links to a collection of essays by J. Janick which interpret and support the Tucker New World theory. Since it's in the library section, it's not possible to comment on the individual articles. I read (with difficulty), the chapter on the zodiac section.  It was so full of errors, I had trouble getting through it and found myself unable to read the others (I didn't feel it was worth the time). However, mine is only one opinion, there may be others who feel differently or who want to address specific statements in the essays, so I thought I would start a thread in case others want to comment on his arguments and his conclusions.   VMS f56v: Cycad? Posted by: Sam G - 12-01-2017, 02:34 PM - Forum: Imagery - Replies (9) Edith Sherwood identifies the plant on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as a sago palm: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Turning to Wikipedia, I find that a sago palm is not actually a true palm at all, but a type of plant called a cycad: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. It seems that most if not all species of cycads have these characteristic cones that resemble the structure seen in f56v.  The Wikipedia article provides this image of a dying cycad cone, which is even closer in shape to the one in the VMS than the example provided by Edith Sherwood: Well, I do think You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. looks like it may be a cycad.  Is it?  What other contenders are there for the identity of this plant and its conspicuous cone-like structure? Also, here's a map from the Wikipedia article showing the approximate world distribution of living cycad species:   stop energy waste on herbal research Posted by: Davidsch - 12-01-2017, 12:00 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk - Replies (24) In my opinion so much time & energy is wasted on the 129 pages of herbals and the 20 pages with roots that someone has to try to stop the waste of human energy resources. Me too, yes, I am guilty too of spending much time of trying to solve the Voynich puzzle by identification efforts of the herbal pages. All that, has been proven is a total waste of time. The basis assumption that we see plants is wrong. Why we think we see plants, with a stem, root , leaves and flower is based on the details we see. But if you look really well, you will see that in every drawing there are things that do not match with the real world ! I could show an example here, but then the discussion will continue as usual: energy will go in the discussion of the details of the given example and a never ending discussion will start. Because we recognize existing parts and details it does not mean it is a plant. It is like the first time people saw an aircraft: "it's diabolical", "people are not meant to fly by God, otherwise he would have given them wings". It is in the nature of humans, that they will always try to identify things. Was it not Aristotle who wrote:  "if you want to analyse something, invent a name for it; because without a proper name, you can not identify it". It is my belief that the author of the Voynich is into medieval Aristotelian wisdom,  and wants to create a mood within he can tells us something.  This has only sideways to do with the herbals you see.   Searching for the exact names or identical brothers or sisters in the kingdom of plants, will therefore always remain fruitless.  The herbals are only illustrative and are not drawn to be identified as real existing plants. Save the world and please stop wasting your energy !    Analysis of the beast on f25v Posted by: davidjackson - 11-01-2017, 04:37 PM - Forum: Imagery - Replies (11) I think a little bit of analysis of the beast in question on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. may be called for, so we can narrow down what we are looking for in identifying it. This is my first draft of my ideas and I though I'd put them out there for some feedback. Questions: How many limbs are displayed? Why is the back limb stuck up like that? What are the ripples on its back? In what order were the plant, beast, paint drawn / applied? As always, nothing is easy, mainly because the perspective is screwed on the beast. Its body is drawn at an angle but the head is side on. Let's just look at the body: By cutting off the head it's a bit easier to see what I mean here. The chest is exposed on the animal and an attempt at perspective is made by drawing the nearside top limb in its entirety (event to the point of joining the shoulder onto the chest, albeit in a funny position) and showing only the paw of the back top limb. Also note that both paws have different number of toes (or claws) - the nearside has three, the farside four. The end limb clearly appears to end in a paw and we must thus assume this is a limb, not a tail. It has three toes, same as the top nearside paw. In fact, if that end limb went at a straight line instead of at a sudden angle up, the perspective works. Imagine the green smudge (the ground) wasn't there and the limb goes out. We're seeing the animal side-on, as we would expect to. But the body is then twisted round. JKP has posted an image of a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but I don't think anyone has found one with three legs. More-ever, there is something scribbled in the distance between the body and the end limb. This could be an attempt to depict the fourth leg - it's impossible to say.  If that scribble there is not an attempt to depict a fourth limb, then what is it? There are also some scribbles around where the bottom limb connects to the body. It's so small that I can't get a proper resolution on it, even with the big TIFFs from the Beineicke. It looks like three vertical marks where the limb joins the body. It could just because the artist wanted to shade in the shoulderblade. In summary: I think this is a four legged animal and the artist drew it too close to the ground. He then didn't leave room for the tail, and tried to draw it in the gap between the third leg and rear of the beast. Let us look at the second question: why is the back limb sticking up at that angle? It is clearly anti-natural (not that this matters too much in a 15th century depiction). My suggestion is that it's because the body was too close to the ground to be drawn in its proper place. I think the leg was going to be drawn in the correct fashion, but it was so close to the ground that someone had to draw it sticking upwards at an un-natural angle. Let us look at the third question: what's that stuff on its back? We see the body of the animal quite clearly. The artist has drawn the animal. He's then thought that more detail is needed and drawn these loops and whirls over the body and above the neck. The whirls also continue over the back of the beast. It's a covering of some kind. It could be scales, but then why draw them ontop of the body? It could be wool. It could be a crest and scales, but then why extend the crest around the neck? It could be an attempt to depict skin markings. Finally, the question of how the illustration was drawn. Plant, beast, paint. Well, I think the paint and ground came first. The beast was then drawn, and finally the leaf it is nibbling on. Look at the way the beast is eating the leaf. The leaf is drawn to vanish into the beast's mouth - ie, the mouth was there and then the leaf was drawn around it.   Identification of Phytomorphs in the Voynich Codex Posted by: Oocephalus - 11-01-2017, 03:02 PM - Forum: News - Replies (2) This article by A.O. Tucker and J. Janick has just come out in the Horticultural Reviews. It builds on the earlier paper by Tucker & Talbot in Herbalgram, attempting to identify the plants in the VMS as New World species, based on the hypothesis of a Mexican origin of the MS. There are 59 proposed plant identifications, including some that were not included in the earlier paper. A Google Books preview is online You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. I haven't yet looked at this in detail, so I can't say how convincing the identifications are. Just thought it may be interesting to some here.   Voynich mnemonics Posted by: Anton - 11-01-2017, 01:38 PM - Forum: Imagery - Replies (14) I decided to open a thread about Voynich mnemonics in general. There is a number of threads discussing various manifestations thereof and individual interpretations as well. But seemingly there was no thread about the general paradigm underneath which frames it into a system (yet to be revealed). First and foremost, mnemonics apparently reveal themselves in the botanical section of the VMS, which gives to some plants rather weird appearance. Three major questions present themselves from scratch: 1) What is the purpose of mnemonics? Namely: if there is text there (no matter if plain text or ciphertext), everything can be expressed by means of text. So why bother with the additional layer of complexity and introduce graphical mnemonics? 2) What is the information conveyed by mnemonics? Is it plant names, plant usage or otherwise? 3) Is there any system in mnemonics, or it is all ad-hoc? Namely, is there any repetitively applied "logic" that produces graphical shapes from the information as per item 2) above? Regarding items 2) and 3), I recently proposed a hypothesis in the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. thread, which I will repost here: Quote:I got a novel idea that can be named "heads and tails" paradigm. With this paradigm: a) the look of the Voynich plants is explained by that the primary purpose is mnemonics; b) the roots of the Voynich plants are used as mnemonics for one language/usage (say, Latin/"scientific") and the tops of the plants are used as mnemonics for another language/usage (say, German/"folklore") For You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. this would be the (provisional) Lysimachia and Schirmkraut, respectively. With this concept, there may be no plant names mentioned in the botanical folios at all (so my PPN idea would need to be discarded), because they would actually be not needed there anymore. So, according to this paradigm, questions 2 and 3 receive the following answers: - The information conveyed is plant names. The end result is that one is able recall the plant's name by looking at the image. - There is the system as follows. There are two levels of mnemonics generally (although for some plants only one of them may be in place): one in tops of the plants, the other in the roots. The former deals with common "folk" names of plants, the latter deals with "scientific" Latin names, being linked to descriptions in previous textual sources (such as the Natural History by Pliny the Elder). This is highly provisional yet, and, as of now, is more or less confirmed by one plant only (f5r).  After that, an idea came to me of a most simple yet elegant answer to question 1. It implies that the text is a cipher. It is often noted that drawings in the botanical section were made prior to putting down the text. But what if all botanical section drawings were made before putting down all the text? In that case, with 100+ plants out there, the author would have liked some means of identification, in order to avoid confusion. Normally, one could just put down captions when creating figures. But with the intention to encrypt the text, the author could not proceed with plain text labels, because that would reveal information. So he turned to mnemonics - for his own use - to be able to identify plants later when returning to the work with the text. Why not place encrypted labels at once? Well, it's basically the same question as why not encrypt the whole last line of f116v. Indeed, why not? But it's not wholly encrypted still.   f54r Posted by: Anton - 11-01-2017, 08:50 AM - Forum: Imagery - Replies (20) To put the exciting You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. paradigm under further test, I suggest to discuss the plant of f54r. The reason for the choice is that it is the second of the two plants out of my "focal set" with high consensus in identification between various researchers (the other being f5r, where the consensus nevertheless might have been misleading, as we discussed in the respective thread). Th. Petersen, E. Sherwood and Steve D all consider You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as thistle (cirsium oleraceum), while the Finnish biologist just does not provide identification of that plant. So is it thistle or there are better matches?   Cloud bands and the scallops in the sky Posted by: R. Sale - 10-01-2017, 11:46 PM - Forum: Imagery - Replies (7) Clearly there is an interesting example of a cloud band in the VMs central rosette. It was brought to my attention by Don of Tallahassee a while back. His investigations were significant (IMO), but not always focused on the definition provided by the VMs example. And the definition is: Scallop. Having seen examples that other investigators have posted, it is clear that the VMs example in the central rosette follows the general representation of a scallop much better than some of the other interesting contributions. If you take a nebuly line, one that is clearly bulbous, and across the top of these shoulders, you run an engrailed line, like a short series of 'mmmm's, then there you have it - a scallop. An alternating sequence of cloud scallops makes a cloud band. But I have to say, scallops in the sky sounds pretty nebuly to me. A unfortunate choice of etymology, one might say. Are there better matches to the scallop-patterned cloud band found in the VMs central rosette than those we see in the illustrations of Oresme and de Pizan?   Marci's letters to Kircher, revisited Posted by: Psillycyber - 10-01-2017, 03:59 PM - Forum: Provenance & history - Replies (31) After all the talk about Marci's memory in the other thread, I decided to revisit Marci's correspondences with Kircher, and as usual, when re-reading something one always finds something new.   There are three letters from Marci to Kircher:  one from 1640, one from 1641, and one from 1665 (the one found with the VMS).  I am using You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as my resource for the translations here.   I think I should note right off the bat that, professionally, I have a master's degree in history with an emphasis on American history and interwar European history.  So, medieval / early Renaissance history is not my specialty, but I do think very carefully about how I read a primary source.  And this time when re-reading the Marci to Kircher correspondences, I tried to put all assumptions out the window and figure out how I would describe each letter to a colleague who knew nothing about the context of the VMS controversy, who perhaps was interested in the letters for some other reason.   The main thing I immediately noticed after reading all three in chronological order was that I felt like I was playing a Sesame Street game of "One Of These Is Not Like The Other One". My thoughts on the 1640 and 1641 letters: The first thing I notice is that it is the style of these letters typically to update the addressee on a whole host of topics in a single letter. Contextually, I know that communication was difficult and letters were infrequent.  It makes sense that people corresponding with each other would take the opportunity in each rare letter to revisit nearly every point of ongoing business they had between themselves.  The author never passes up on an opportunity to convey greetings from so-and-so, and to discuss affairs regarding mutual acquaintances and how so-and-so is eagerly awaiting feedback on some previous letter.  That makes sense.   In this context, there's nothing that particularly jumps out at me about the following passage from the 1640 letter: Quote:The Sph*nx will understand from the attached sheet what my friend Mr Georg Barschius wanted to have written by me. Though he is undoubtedly a man of the highest quality and greatly skilled in chemical matters, he has not in fact achieved the real goal he longs for. He seeks it for the sake not of money but of medicine. Marci seems to be referring to Kircher here in third person as "The Sph*nx," possibly as an honorific compliment.  We learn that Marci's friend, Georg Barschius, is seeking some help with something having to do with medicine and possibly chemistry.  The help could be financial help, scholarly advice, a recipe, a letter of recommendation, or something else.  It is really not possible to say what this "real goal" of Barschius's was, just that it had something to do with medicine and that, if achieved, it could have potentially brought monetary rewards if Barschius were to achieve it (of which Barschius was reportedly not interested).  It is not clear what was on the attached sheet.  It could have been a letter from Barschius himself.  Perhaps Barschius didn't know Kircher very well personally and felt a bit abashed at the thought of his lowly self asking for help from someone so much more illustrious and of higher status, so Barschius wanted to have his letter tag along with someone else's letter to introduce Barschius's letter.  Or, the attached sheet could have been a pharmaceutical recipe with which Barschius was having trouble with, or trouble finding ingredients for.  It could have been any number of things.   Yet, we know that Voynich researchers have always interpreted this sheet as an except from the VMS and Barschius's "real goal" as having to do with deciphering the VMS.  I see nothing to warrant that conclusion, however.   Moving on to the 1641 letter: Quote:His Majesty replied that he had charged his confessor that very day to write to your Reverence to come here for Easter Day now that the work on magnetism is finished. And he also commanded me to encourage you to make your way here. If a flood of enthusiasm can achieve anything I shall try, not so much to encourage and persuade, as to attract your spirit with all the force of mine. Count Bernard has now been away for over three weeks, gone to Silesia by order of the Emperor. Our other mutual friends cordially salute your Reverence, particularly Father Santinus and Dominus Barschius. The magnetism book has doubtless already been dispatched and we eagerly await it. Here we learn that someone, (possibly Kircher himself, or someone else?), had just finished writing a book on magnetism, and it was generating great interest in Marci's social circle. We also learn that a copy of this magnetism book had been reportedly dispatched TO Marci's social circle, and that they eagerly awaited it.  They also eagerly awaited seeing Kircher, possibly in order to discuss the magnetism book, or perhaps for some other reason.  Marci seems to be trying to make a semantic pun here when he says (alluding to the magnetism book) that Marci himself is going to try to harness his powers of magnetism and "attract [Kircher's] spirit with all the force of mine" to have Kircher come join him and his social circle.   The only other topic referred to in this letter is... Quote:On another topic, could you be so kind as to bring with you the description of the journey of the Ethiopian whose country contains the source of the Nile, as I have asked in previous letters, since I love stories of that kind. ...which is obviously not referring to the VMS.  And the "book on magnetism" is also clearly not referring to the VMS, as it is instead referring to a book that was recently finished by someone and which was being sent TO Marci's circle.  So, I can make an even stronger statement about this 1641 letter and boldly state that not only am I unsure if there is anything here having to do with the VMS, but that there is clearly nothing here relating to the VMS.   Moving on to the 1665 letter: The first thing that I notice is that it has an entirely different style than the other two.  The other two letters are collections of updates about various affairs of mutual interest.  The 1665 letter is unusual in focusing on only one topic—a book of some sort that Marci and some friend of Marci's (not necessarily Barschius) cannot decipher.  The 1665 letter would feel less out of place if it had been taking place in the context of a very frequent correspondence, such that Marci felt no need to update Kircher on the goings-on of their various other acquaintances and affairs of mutual interest.  Do we have any evidence of this frequent correspondence around this time?  If not, then the style of this 1665 letter feels really out of place in focusing on only one topic.  Secondly, based on the types of contextual details offered about this topic, I have to conclude that this is the first time that Marci is addressing this particular topic with Kircher.  Here Marci introduces Kircher to the suspected provenance of the book and other basic information that one would present at the outset.   Things that remain unclear: 1.  Which book was this 1665 letter referring to?  We all assume it was the VMS because this letter was found inside the VMS, but if they were both part of the Kircher collection, this letter could have been referring to some other book but could have easily gotten shuffled into the VMS, either by Kircher himself (depending on his habits of organization), or by someone else.   2.  Who is the close friend who left this book to Marci in a will?  (We don't know it is Barschius because we don't know that the earlier letters were referring to this).   3.  Is the close friend of Marci's the same person as the "then possessor of the book" who "once sent [Kircher] letters seeking [Kircher's] judgment about a part of it" written down by the then possessor and sent to Kircher?  Can we rule out the possibility that the ownership went from: A.  "then possessor of the book" who sent letters and an except B.  Marci's close friend C.  Marci In other words, could A and B be different people?  I don't see anything to clearly imply that they are the same person.  After introducing the close friend, Marci doesn't say "this close friend of mine once sent you a letter and except."  Marci says, "the then possessor..." as if introducing a new character.  Nor are either A or B plainly referred to by name (why not?)  It's a bit confusingly worded. 4.  Allegedly the "then possessor" [Person A] "put untiring work into [the book's] decipherment. as will be seen from his attempts now sent to you under the same cover."  4a.  What exactly does "untiring work" mean?  How much work would "untiring work" look like?  Would the sparse VMS marginalia be described as "untiring work"?  and 4b.  What exactly does "under the same cover" mean?  Does "under the same cover" mean marginalia or stuff written on a separate sheet?    --------------------- I am left with several conclusions:   1.  If the 1665 letter is indeed referring to the VMS, then this is the first time that Marci has brought up the VMS with Kircher, and thus the 1640 letter cannot also be referring to the VMS.  It has to be one or the other letter that is referring to the VMS.   2.  If the 1640 is not referring to the VMS, then there is no reason to suspect that Georg Barschius was either the "then possessor" or "close friend" being referred to by Marci in the 1665 letter.  In this case, we simply don't know who Person A or Person B are, or whether they are the same person.   3.  In general, the 1665 letter feels...off...from the other two, based on the topical style alone.   (In addition to #3, one could add to that reports that the Latin in the 1665 letter was "vexing" to translate, but I am not one to judge that, as I have no experience with Latin.  One could also add to this feeling Rich Santacoloma's finding that the page folding on the 1665 letter was atypical, to conclude that the 1665 letter overall feels less surely authentic than the 1640 and 1641 letters).     First Previous Next Last