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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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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 off, I wish to demonstrate how I derived my cipher. Most of the VMS glyphs were mapped from the, “Lexicon Abbreviaturarum”. About 60% of the glyphs are from the Lexicon and have a direct letter for letter match to my cipher. Other glyphs were moved to different letter values. The cipher I use is the closest representation for the VMS and indicates Middle English. This cipher also has decoded very few Latin, French and Greek words. As to disguise the VMS the Author constructed the cipher in this manner.
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I believe the Author encoded the VMS in such a way as to make one assume the VMS is predominately Latin. My interpretation is from a view about its look and feel and that Latin has too high of an average number value for it to be Latin. The VMS text is not meaningless, but its structure does not indicate a natural language. The VMS language is only understood by the Author and has a limited vocabulary with an intensely low use of conjunctions. The VMS language is in tune with Ordinal Gematria; when translated words equal to numbers do convey meaning.
The statistics below show the average Ordinal Number values from several languages as a means to compare my Cipher and maybe answer some deeper questions which I don’t understand. One Idea is that my cipher can produce a quality interpretation in Middle English, because the VMS may very well have a limited conjunction vocabulary. Ordinal Gematria was used as in A=1 through alphabets to Z=26.
These statistics below show the differences in higher weighted numeric valued letters to lower, from Modern, Middle and Old English. When I say higher weighted letters, I’m showing letters like (R through Y) from Middle English have a lower Ordinal Value of occurrences when compared with Modern English! The charts below do indicate that the choices made for letter placement correlated to the VMS have a strong relationship to Middle English Gematria.
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Therefore, the VMS is hidden to look like Latin and that it really is just simple Middle English Ordinal Gematria. Also if the VMS contained an abundance of words used as conjunctions then a more structured language would appear even if it is invented as I have explained. The VMS corpus of words would be longer if the Author used conjunctions. The absence of structure is related to a very low use of conjunctions and the use of Gematria in the VMS is the single reason which has stymied the Voynich Community for the last 104 years! Another point is that the, “Eva transcription” although good for statistics may have to be reworked to my cipher if we can ever decode the entire corpus.
You can download my interpretation of the VMS here:
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This is one of not so many plants that can boast some consensus amongst various researchers' identifications. Th. Petersen, the Finnish biologist and Steve D all consider it Paris.
Now, -JKP- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that Paris does have four leaves (btw, hence quadrifolia), while the plant in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has more. -JKP- suggests this plant to be trientalis europaea.
But trientalis europea has seven leaves, which (unlike Paris, the four leaves of which reveal themselves at best in "cross" only - like Kreuzblatt or Crux Christi) are explicitly resembled in its folk names in some languages (German Siebenstern, Russian седмичник). So if the author confused the number of leaves indeed, he would have been more likely to do that with Paris, and not with Trientalis, wouldn't he?
What do you think? Any other interpretations? Sherwood considers this Arnica montana.
Koen posted an interesting cosmological image in the 'wolkenband thread' You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .
I found that very interesting in a different context: For the first time I saw simple signs (little circles, little ticks in group of two) as part of the concentric circles , which I thought of depictions of elements.
In that context, I never found a hint for a similar depiction in the Rosette folio for the four spikes (in the Rosette folio) that connect four of the outermost spheres with the central sphere (see attached image).
Question now is, is that comparsion valid? Obviously only the little circle could be seen as a match but that is far from sure. But could the circles in the concentric display in: Paris, Bibl. Sainte-Geneviève, ms. 1029, f 108 (angels cranking the celestial spheres, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Le livre des propriétés des choses. c.1350) be related to the 'link of spheres in the Rosette folio (centre and four spokes) ? In the Rosette folio these are definitely four different little IDs commencing (1) circle, (2) two chevrons, (3) group of three ticks in italics and (4) group of three ticks in straight line/alignment.
If not, what could the circle and the group of two ticks (in ) or the four different signatures in the Rosette folio represent?
The Sanskrit word मिथुन You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is used in Hindu Tantras (esoteric scriptures) to refer to the sacrament (sacred ritual) of sexual union between husband and wife. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or Mithuna has various appearances in scripture:
Mithuna: paired, forming a pair; copulation; the zodiacal sign of Gemini in Vedic Astrology, which is depicted as a man and woman in a sexual embrace
Mithunaya: to unite sexually
Mithuni: to become paired, couple or united sexually
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You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. maithuna.
What I would like to discuss here on Ninja is:
is the gemini in the VMS indeed a man and woman having sex (not visually of course), but are they "paired" as discussed in Maithuna (in the VMS symbolical)
why are they fully dressed and the other women in the VMS are not
is the gemini in the VMS an really original picture and not added later
is the paint original and not added later
what does it mean, or what implications can we make if the gemini indeed shows Maithuna
ps. More on how I came there and the background of this, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (start reading from Nag Hammadi)
The past few years have seen a rise in the number of people arguing for and/or demonstrating non-Latin European character and content in the imagery.
Reviewing threads where a member has raised this issue, it seems that they tend to be diverted, in one way and another, so this thread is only for issues and examples of non-Latin and non-Christian influence and comparative images.
I'll start with one detail I've mentioned often, not only because depicting the sun with a false beard is something we find before the Christian era, but because then we also find documentary evidence that provides a coherent explanation for a sun's being shown like this.
![[Image: demovmsmadetolook-like-latin.png]](https://voynichgematria.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/demovmsmadetolook-like-latin.png)
![[Image: graph-3.jpg]](https://voynichgematria.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/graph-3.jpg)
![[Image: moenglish.png]](https://voynichgematria.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/moenglish.png)
![[Image: menglish.png]](https://voynichgematria.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/menglish.png)
![[Image: oenglish.png]](https://voynichgematria.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/oenglish.png)
![[Image: Shiva-and-Parvati.jpg]](http://gnosticteachings.org/images/stories/hindu/Shiva-and-Parvati.jpg)
![[Image: gemini-vms-342x400.jpg]](http://voynich.webpoint.nl/wp-content/uploads/gemini-vms-342x400.jpg)
![[Image: f-sun-lge-blog.jpg]](https://voynichimagery.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/f-sun-lge-blog.jpg)