I want to return for a moment to a comment made by Marco earlier in the thread, where he says
Quote:VMS hobbyists tend to almost exclusively focus on manuscript images. This forum is no exception: in the last month there were 13 active threads in "Imagery" and only 2 in "Analysis of the text". As you know, I discovered the ms through the work of Prof.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., so I have always been interested in the language as well as the illustrations. I am positive about all contributions that seriously examine the Voynichese language.
Just as a matter of the history of this study: Apart from some vague observations which were acute enough but undeveloped (such as a couple of John Tiltman's), there was no informed comment on this imagery between 1912 and 1931, when Anne Nill made a note of some offered by Panofsky. Once again there was no explanation in detail for those observations, though that doesn't lessen their importance as the first unforced, informed commentary we have.
Thereafter there appears to have been nothing recorded of any informed observation or comment on the imagery before 2008.
There had developed a reverse-engineered sort of 'identification': a person with a theory would then point to one detail or another and assert it supported their theory, but again it was not well-grounded and not informed by any effort at analytical discussion of the image-as-image, and no historical perspective or explanation for the *whole* picture on any folio was attempted. In this way we had Pelling's effort to argue that the botanical folios were Averlino's, and then to interpret them as obscured imagery of machinery. Rene occasionally pointed to some detail or other which he thought supported his 'central European' idea - and this led to more errors, such as the assertion that the cloudband was Germanic in some way.
I began publishing analytical treatments of one folio and another - complete with brief historical and contextual notes designed to assist those seeking the Voynich language - from 2009.
In about 2012 (?) you and Darren Worley began trying to re-visit some of my conclusions, including the map which had, in the meantime, attracted a number of efforts to imitate the method while reaching some Euro-centric conclusion.
You and Darren, especially, offered in a very public arena a positive image of the way we must contextualise images from the manuscript, and it was in some ways a relief no longer to be alone.
Thereafter we saw Koen, and then JKP and various others determined to move beyond the style in which the imagery had been treated from 1912 to 2010, and I admit that not everyone now involved produced work that deserves to be described as other than a 'hobby'.
However, I've made no mystery of the fact that I'm not an amateur in the field of comparative iconography - which is rather different from specialising in one tradition or period.
Since you have had so important a role in raising the profile of study for the pictorial text - where for years the attitude was that there was no point to it before the written text was deciphered - I think you should congratulate yourself on having made a real difference to the study in this as in other things.
I am not completely sure I haven't made substantial mistakes. So take this with a grain of salt. Also, I don't know if this has been discussed before.
These graphs represent the expected (red) and actual (green) counts for consecutive words in which the last letter of the first word is the same as the first letter of the second word. For instance (where '.' represent word boundaries):
but.these
others.said
seventh.hour
I considered:
a classical Latin text (De Bello Gallico). 51328 words
early modern English (the gospel of John from King James Bible). 19131 words
a medieval Occitan text (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). 15461 words
medieval Italian (Divine Commedy). 105682 words
VMS - Takahashi's EVA transcription. 37718 words
VMS Currier-D'Imperio transcription, extracted via ivtt. 16120 words
The expected occurrences for each letter occurring as -X.X- is computed in this way:
T is the total number of consecutive word pairs
E is the number of these pairs in which the first word ends with -X
S is the number of these pairs in which the second word starts with X-
The expected number of X.X is T*(E/T)*(S/T)=E*S/T
For instance, in the VMS Takahashi transcription there are 32053 word couples.
In 1082 of these, the first word ends with EVA: -o ( 1082/ 32053 = 3.4%)
In 7315 couples, the second word starts with o- ( 7315/ 32053 = 22.8%)
We expect 22.8% * 2.4% * 32053=247 occurrences of o.o (plotted in red), but we only find 114 actual occurrences (plotted in green).
While all the texts show some degree of difference between expected and actual, I think it is clear that for Latin and English the differences are small and in both directions, while they are much larger for Occitan and Italian and all due to smaller actual counts than expected. This is due to the fact that Occitan and Italian spelling is subject to euphonic transformations that avoid the repetition of the same vowel across word boundaries.
For instance, in Occitan, the final -e of the preposition 'de' is dropped before 'e-' juntturas.de.las.cambas fuelhas.d.erba
The same things happens for the determinative articles: lo.matin l.omme
One can also note that the most apparent shift from expected values in Latin corresponds to a.a. In my opinion, this is due to one of the very few euphonic variants of Latin: the two versions of the preposition a/ab, the second one being used before words starting with a vowel.
a milibus a germanis
ab inimicis ab aliis ab armis
In my opinion, this evidence (if confirmed) could support the word-boundaries transformations discussed by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
It is clear that, if what we observe in the VMS is due to euphonic transformations, these are quite different from those that happen in Latin languages. In these languages, transformations are limited to short and frequent words (mostly prepositions and articles) and typically affect the end of the words. The phenomena discussed by Emma affect longer words and mostly seem to happen at the beginning of words (I am thinking in particular of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on the basis of the ending of the preceding word). [/i]
Hi Morten St George,
I'm creating this thread for the discussion of the theory you present on your website, which is better than discussing it in the thread about protein analysis.
I'll admit I have not read your whole website, but just from the Q & A page you linked to, several problems are apparent.
Several of the assertions you make there are incorrect.
I don't have time to go into details this morning,but for starters, a simple factual observation:
you claim that the male character on 80r is the only one and that "no other males are depicted in the manuscript". This is incorrect: there are several men in the Voynich.
If you go over to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. thread, you'll find that, per Koen Gh and Sam G's count, there are about 17% men in the zodiac section, including the obvious central figures of the male Sagittarius and one of the Gemini twins.
As for Quire 13, there appear to be 4 men depicted there.
I was intrigued when I saw You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
The story's all over the Canadian press. Here's another article: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
The paper they published is: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
The authors have a general method, which they applied to the Voynich Manuscript, and the closest match was Hebrew with words anagrammed in a particular way. They decrypted the first line into Hebrew which they then translated into English (using Google Translate) as “She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people.”
A thread which J.K.Petersen has just started informs us of a paper published a day or so ago by J. Michael Herrmann, entitled, 'The Cannabis Page of the Voynich Manuscript'.
(by 'Cannabis page' he means folio 16v.)
In that paper the author says:
Quote:Another fascinating speculation could arise, if it turns out the the VM is of Manichaean origin
And this makes me interested in the history of that 'Manichaean' idea in Voynich studies. When it started, whose bright idea it was and so on.
Setting aside the textual problems caused by Latin Christianity's calling any sort of dualist belief 'Manichaean', where modern scholarship distinguishes Manichaeism from Catharism and Bogomilism etc., I'll accept any sort of 'Manichee' , though I use Manichaean only in the stricter sense, myself.
The first person I've found with any kind of 'Manichaean-ish' theory is Dr. Leo Levitov. He was only talking about the western European 'Cathars' though. Pelling, mentioning Levitov, refers readers to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of Levitov (October 10, 1998) -and a jolly good refutation it is too.
Pelling later reviewed a novel by Emery Borka (ciphermysteries.com, 23 November , 2011) where Cathars get a look in, but that doesn't count.
In the interests of the historical record, the earliest (of 30) posts mentioning Manichaeism at voynichimagery is dated Sunday, July 22nd, 2012. The post of September 8th, 2012 speaks about Manichaeism in detail, includes a map of the region near Ghazni where (as I'd already said) Mani's Picture Book is said to have been preserved until the 11thC and so forth. None of the 30 posts was about Cathars, or Bogomils; only Manichaeism in the strict sense, and only the '5 elements' diagram on f.77 is said certainly to embody documented Manichaean beliefs. The most recent of the Manichaeism-related posts was published on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
so, while those posts were going up between 2012 and 1016..
On July 27, 2013, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.reviewed the ideas of Morten St George - but once more, it was all about Cathars, not about Manichaeans as such. M.St.George (realising the anachronism of 'Cathar' theory) linked it as component A to the O'Neill-Brumbaugh 'New World' theory as component B, and had all the Cathars go west in the literal sense.
(Voynich studies consistently shows a quirky preference for anachonism over having to enter any region, culture or period not monotheistic).
On Feb 12, 2014 , a new blog 'You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.' began, carrying the slug, 'Voynich and Manichaean Studies', though not so much about studying Manichaeism, or studying Beinecke MS 408 as about another 'bee in the bonnet' theory - linguistic as well as other. Could prove a good 'bee in the bonnet' - who knows? The author's ideas are very close to those just published by J. Michael Herrmann, and the parallel extends to the list of references cited, which omit all 30 of my historical-cultural-iconographic discussions, of course. Since Herrmann's paper is supposed to be about the written part of the text and its possible translation, though, I find it odd that he makes no mention of Agnostic Voynich, or of Anton's papers or any other solid non-theory based study of the written text.
On October 30th, 2014 (10 PM) Darren Worley offered a long comment to Stephen Bax' site, summarising information (mostly from wiki articles) about various non-mainstream groups, from Essenes and Mandaeans to Bogomils and Cathars, merchants and others. A lot of it had been said before, but Worley puts it all into one neat outline, which is helpful.
23rd January 2018, Mr. Herrmann publishes his chapter online, speaking of a 'fascinating speculation... if Manichaean...'. I don't know how Herrmann decides what is 'fascinating speculation' and what is 'a theory' or just fantasy and kite-flying, or what is a conclusion reached in the normal way by presenting analysis of the material and then the informed conclusion... but I suppose we'll find out.
That's as far as I've got mapping the history of a 'Manichaean' element in Voynich studies. Anyone able to add more?
If you don't assume that he single star is something to do with Taurus and the group is the Pleiades then there is the possibility that the single star is one of note and the ring of stars is just for positioning....
Like Arcturus with the 7 stars next to it being the constellation Bootes (at about the 15 hour position). Then going clockwise you get Lyra (21 h), Perseus (3 h) and Cancer (9 h).
There has been a flurry of recent Voynich "solutions", so I was curious about whether we had missed any and Googled "voynich solution"and found this paper just published yesterday from J. Michael Herrmann at the University of Edinburgh entitled "The Cannabis Page of the Voynich Manuscript".
There's a fair amount of agreement on the identity of this plant. Quite a number of researchers have suggested Cannabis. To me it looks like cannabis as well. In fact, I had trouble coming up with good alternate IDs. Perhaps that's why the author chose it as an example for his theories about the text.
The author believes the VMS "is written in a natural language" and states the following, indicating that he is referring to his previous paper on the Pahlavi hypothesis:
"The present attempt builds on earlier work of the author on the Pahlavi hypothesis, but revises some of the claims made in the previous paper [7]."
The link to the new article is here:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Potential explanations of the VMs group themselves into hypothetical paradigms of various types. One is the natural, ‘face-value’, it is what it appears to be – type of interpretation. And it assumes that the VMs really is an unknown language or it really is an extremely difficult cipher. But whatever it is, it is an earnest and genuine effort to communicate sensible, understandable information. Whatever it is, it is valid and authentic, even if it really is an extremely difficult cipher for an unknown language.
Another view is just the opposite. The VMs is not an earnest effort to communicate any sensible, understandable information. To the contrary of the first paradigm, the VMs makes no sense. It is pure nonsense. It was never intended to make any sense. However, a closer examination reveals a variety of interesting features in the VMs language and the illustrations. Is it too complex to be nonsense? Or, perhaps, it is possible to make patterned nonsense –either accidentally or on purpose. And in the end, the absence of sense cannot be proven anyway.
A third alternative, recently proposed, is that the VMs is a modern forgery. It is suggested that all the problematic irregularities from the two previous paradigms correlate with the sort of idiosyncratic errors and mistakes that are found in forgery. But forgeries are made to be familiar and similar to known examples. They are not made to be strange, exotic and incomprehensible like the VMs.
One of the first things in the investigation of a totally unreadable text, such as the VMs, is to go through the illustrations and see what is there to be seen and to compare it with what is known to the investigator. The first data is visual and pictorial, the comparisons found depend on the individual researcher, and the assumption is that visual similarity indicates correspondence. When the author wishes to indicate correspondence between one of the VMs illustrations and an earlier representation of the same sort of image, then visual similarity would seem to be the presumptive technique. The author would attempt to present a visual replica of the selected, historical prototype in order to indicate such correspondence.
That is the standard practice. That is the practice many have presumed. But what if there are other factors involved? What if a strong visual similarity is something that is not desired? Is there a way to indicate a comparative correspondence that does not rely entirely on visual similarity? Rather than create visual similarity with the expectation of correspondence and recognition, is it possible to produce correspondence and recognition by some other means?
This suggests a forth type of hypothetical solution paradigm. This paradigm is based on visual deception, intentional visual deception, and then recognition based on other factors. Those factors include placement and structure. Similar structure and placement comparable with that of medieval art is significant. However, the element essential for the comparison is to have identified a source that represents the proper, historical prototype for a particular VMs reproduction.
There is a world of difference for the task of paradigm comparison when this historical prototype is real and specifically indentified, rather than some hypothetical proposal. It is an uncommon event in VMs investigation to be able to present a historical prototype for a particular VMs image. The prime example for this (IMO) is the matching of the Oresme cosmic illustration (BNF fr 565) with the VMs version from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (E. Velinska, 2014). Through the comparison of the Oresme prototype with the VMs replica, it can be seen that a certain methodology has been employed to create a new solution paradigm. The new solution paradigm is based on deception and recognition. The deception is visual. It is created by using different methods of representation to illustrate the same thing.
Consider this description. This cosmic illustration is quite unusual, when compared with the standard medieval representations of the geocentric model. The general cosmic diagram of that type follows the familiar ‘music of spheres’ format. The cosmos in question here is much simpler. The round earth is at the center of the cosmos. It appears to be represented in the manner of an inverted T-O construction, as is generally found in the three-fold division of the classical elements of air, earth and water, with water consistently in the bottom half. Around the earth is the starry sky. The earth is surrounded by stars. And the whole image is enclosed in an artistic structure, conventional to the medieval period, that was used to represent a cloudy band.
Which representation fits this description? It could be either one – the Oresme or the VMs. Yet the visual differences between the two images are significant. The earth is an inverted T-O diagram in both, with water, earth and air represented pictorially in Oresme, but presumably labeled in the VMs. The starry field in Oresme is a lighter medium blue, while VMs blue is darker and much augmented by black inclusions to produce a better representation of the night sky. The stars themselves, which are naturally scattered in Oresme, have all been artificially lined up in a rough circle by the VMs artist. This is an obvious, visual difference, a distinctive indicator, but both examples still clearly fit the description of an earth surrounded by stars.
The third part of the cosmic structure, the outer shell, the cloudy band is a prime example of visual extremes. Contrast the ornate and elaborately detailed, scallop-shell patterned, blue and white painted, perfectly circular cloud band in the Oresme representation with the wobbly, meandering, sloppy looking, plain ink line of the VMs image. They could hardly be further apart in their appearance. But, once this line pattern from the VMs can be shown to correspond quite well with the traditionally defined, heraldic example of a nebuly line, then the etymology of the name makes it clear that, despite such strong visual differences, both of these parts perform the same, corresponding function by definition. Note that the VMs does contain a cloud band representation visually comparable to the Oresme example as part of the Central Rosette.
So far then, the three parts, a central earth, stars and cloud band, correspond in location and produce equivalent structures despite their significant visual differences. Now the singular presence of the textual banners forming a large wheel with curved spokes around the VMs representation is actually a further confirmation of the intentional creation of visual deception. Simply put, these textual banners are ephemeral. They are not physical objects. They do not exist. They have been used to create a significant, additional, visual difference, but they count for nothing in the cosmic structure. They provide further confirmation of the solution paradigm based on deception and recognition [visual deception and traditional structural recognition].
Recognition is another issue altogether. Recognition will only occur when the proper historical prototype is known. And when it is not known, it needs to be discovered – not an easy task. Such discovery has proven rather difficult, hence the significance of the simplified, Oresme-style of cosmic representation as the historical prototype for the VMs cosmic replication. Here is the example where it can be clearly shown that, despite significant visual differences, the parts correspond in their functions to produce the same, uncommon type of cosmic structure. Hence this is a clear example of the new solution paradigm based on visual deception and structural recognition. What other solution paradigm has provided a clear example of how it functions? And that is an example that is not hypothetical, but actually exists in the Oresme comparison.
The deception and recognition interpretation, as a solution paradigm, demonstrates further confirmation in the dualistic representation of an optical illusion on VMs White Aries. Visual deception, created through illusion and ambiguity, disguises the historical origins of a known religious tradition, one that is repeatedly confirmed through traditional placement and heraldic canting. This is how the VMs needs to be understood in order to be properly investigated. Visual similarity may be insufficient, even confusing, by intent. That is how things were hidden. That is how this version of Oresme’s cosmos was hidden. The important part is to recognize the reality underneath, as supported by traditional structural and positional correspondence. And that reality is supplied only by the proper historical prototype, through the use of the proper solution paradigm. That is what this cosmic comparison demonstrates. The solution paradigm of deception and recognition is not hypothetical, like the others. It actually functions. Deception is recognized. Trickery is revealed. This allows us to understand the process of conversion that goes from prototype to VMs replica. It relies on the intentional creation of visual difference without contradicting the essential features and functions of the historical prototype. And since the VMs artist was specifically selective, in the choice of historical prototypes, and intentionally deceptive in their depiction, much of modern investigation, in its search for visual identity, tends to see either some disqualifying error or nothing at all, as was the case prior to the important, cosmic discovery and comparison examined in this discussion. Now that situation can be reversed. Now the paradigm of trickery has been proposed, revealed, examined in detail and demonstrated by example. Are there any questions?
There is a saying by Francis Bacon, that God took delight to hide his works, to the end to have them found out. This same motivation has been employed by the creator of the VMs, who has hidden historical events, religious tradition and scientific information of the medieval era in the VMs illustrations.
