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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 1114 online users. » 6 Member(s) | 1101 Guest(s) Applebot, Baidu, Bing, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yandex, Juan_Sali, Slavik1980 Latest Threads Deconstructing the VMS : ... Forum: Analysis of the text Last Post: nablator 53 minutes ago » Replies: 24 » Views: 494 Aries Design: Truly Aries... Forum: Imagery Last Post: eggyk 2 hours ago » Replies: 45 » Views: 2,931 No text, but a visual cod... Forum: Theories & Solutions Last Post: ololololo 2 hours ago » Replies: 1,882 » Views: 1,309,364 I am not convinced by the... Forum: Provenance & history Last Post: Bernd 3 hours ago » Replies: 36 » Views: 1,090 What if it's a "Lossy Enc... Forum: Voynich Talk Last Post: Rafal 5 hours ago » Replies: 14 » Views: 309 Voynichese is a numeric c... Forum: Theories & Solutions Last Post: ololololo 6 hours ago » Replies: 202 » Views: 21,654 Voynich is encrypted ENOC... Forum: Theories & Solutions Last Post: Radim Dobeš 7 hours ago » Replies: 364 » Views: 53,215 The 'Chinese' Theory: Fo... Forum: Theories & Solutions Last Post: Linda Yesterday, 03:09 PM » Replies: 803 » Views: 214,011 Month names collection / ... Forum: Marginalia Last Post: Koen G Yesterday, 02:38 PM » Replies: 347 » Views: 81,281 New members: trouble regi... Forum: News Last Post: Strong Test Yesterday, 02:15 PM » Replies: 1 » Views: 173

A return to f25v - the dragon is the key, obviously, but is it basil? Posted by: david - 22-02-2017, 09:04 PM - Forum: Imagery - Replies (61) Well, I must admit that tonight it struck me that it could be basil, as I've been going through different plants that were associated with wyrms and their ilk. What really tipped me off was the mnemonic of the dragon. T.H. White makes mention of basil being an antidote to basilisks, and by extension, to other stinging worms such as scorpions and the like. He notes: Quote:Basil and Basilisk both derive from the same Greek root meaning Royal, so the one was presumed to be the antidote to the other. Turner's Herbal says: "it is goode for the stryking of a dragon or sea serpent". In White's 1954 translation of The Books of Beasts (a translation of a 12th century bestiary) the scribe mentions that basil is used to catch animals under the sign of Scorpio, as it is the active ingredient in the bait recipe given. Aldrovandus adds a recipe including basil to catch sea scorpions, as well as carp for some reason. The only thing stopping me from crowing here is that despite the obvious similarities in the crowned leaf arrangement of the depiction and original plant, basil leaves have a single distinctive central vein with arteries radiating out to the leafs edge, whilst the Voynich plant has multiple strong central veins with no radiating arteries. Can anyone think of a plausible reasoning for this? Is there a close family of the basil with these attributes, or do dried basil leaves go like this?   List of line-initial words that only appear line-initially? Posted by: nickpelling - 22-02-2017, 09:48 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text - Replies (8) Has anyone compiled a list of line-initial words that only appear line-initially? I was reminded of this by a 2008 Cipher Mysteries post (which I had inevitably forgotten about until stumbling over it yesterday) where I mentioned that Marke Fincher had pointed out to me that ycheo[-] and ysheo[-] only ever appear line-initially, along with something similar with dche[-]. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.   Does this nymph have a red nipple? Posted by: Koen G - 21-02-2017, 08:59 PM - Forum: Imagery - Replies (6) It seems like, before someone went over it in a darker ink, this nymph's nipple (viewer's right) was red. Or a red dot was added on top of the dark ink. I'd find it interesting if it were red, but since the ink has faded it's hard to see. What do you think? Also, if it is red, would this be the only nymph with such a feature? I shifted some values in photoshop that seemed to bring out the color more, and noticed that it does appear to be the same pigment as the blush on the cheeks. Maybe someone with more image editing skills knows of a better way to test this.     PS: this is important but I'd like to know your opinion before explaining why.   "Not knowing", or changing one's mind. Posted by: ReneZ - 18-02-2017, 08:28 AM - Forum: Voynich Talk - Replies (12) (15-02-2017, 05:38 PM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.History is not an exact science in the sense of chemistry or computing the ballistics or whatever you call it of satellites (sorry, Rene). I have no problem with that In fact, I think it is important to be able to accept that something is 'not known'. At least 'at the present time' and based on the available evidence.  That also happens all the time in the so-called exact sciences. While it may seem unsatisfactory not to be able to answer something, this may simply be the reality. The way forward is either to find more evidence, or accept that there is no way out of the situation. It is tempting to just 'decide' one way or the other what one prefers. This helps to get out of the unpleasant situation of not knowing. However, then one has to be able to change one's opinion whenever new or better information arises. The capability to reject one's own ideas when better ones arrive is what matters. This may be easier in exact sciences than in the humanities, because usually the evidence is much stronger and much more quantitative, and the mindset is therefore a different one. It is expected to happen a lot. Entrenching oneself with one's hypothesis against unpleasant evidence, and tactics like sweeping it under the carpet or discrediting their source are just not going to work for very long.   Scribal hands and Currier languages Posted by: Koen G - 14-02-2017, 08:20 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text - Replies (15) While writing my latest blog post, I read on Rene's site You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that Currier concluded that six to eight scribes wrote in the manuscript. That's main text, ignoring marginalia. I have no experience with telling apart different handwritings, so I thought I'd ask here. Has this been confirmed? Has anyone else studied this in detail?  Of how many hands can we be certain? Again, only considering core text, not marginalia or quire numbers. And how do the different hands correspond to Currier A and B?  And are we even certain about the clean distinction between these "languages" to begin with? The location of <aiin> and <ain> groups Posted by: ThomasCoon - 11-02-2017, 01:57 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text - Replies (22) Whenever I am analyzing the VMS text, I start with objective facts and then try to figure out the paradigm they fit into. Here is a fact about the placement of "aiin" and "ain": <aiin> and <ain> appear word-initial over 500 times but are never once line-initial. To me, this is an argument against the following theories: The Autocopying hypothesis: If the VMS scribe was just manufacturing text through autocopying, why is there this very strict rule about never placing <aiin> at the beginning of a line - especially when <aiin> can be the beginning of a word (or a standalone word) in at least five hundred other instances? Wouldn't we expect at least one occurrence of <aiin> beginning a line, instead of 500-to-0? The "Natural language" hypothesis: if Voynich is a natural language written in an unknown script, it would be odd that certain words can be found anywhere else in a paragraph but never at the beginning of a line of text (*note, I didn't say "beginning of a sentence")   Discuss!    Why the auto-copying hypothesis is not valid? Posted by: stellar - 09-02-2017, 05:01 AM - Forum: Voynich Talk - Replies (12) @ Torsten and all, Quote:With my app I only want to demonstrate that it is possible to generate a text with such features with a algorithm simulating my auto copy hypotheses. The main problem was to model human ingenuity in to the algorithm and to keep the algorithm as simple as possible. Therefore the algorithm only produces a pseudo text with features similar to the VMS. If I would generate the same text as in the VMS Emma would be right with her objection that my algorithm only reproduces the movements of the scribe. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. My major objection here comes from two competing theories Torstens' and what is done if vords represent numbers to words. How could and auto-copying produce meaning as in numbers from glyph's in a Zodiac and a cipher?  That would be impossible right!   Plus why would the Author of the VMS use the same glyphs for chives and fishes which fit into a strategy to setup a decoding process for the VMS.  The Author obviously intended to do what I have demonstrated here in this image below. Have I stumbled upon a cipher?  I have seen the copying process which is linked above to Torsten's app and eerily similar do the VMS but many vords are different. The demonstration for objection if this theory below shows a consistent Zodiac and then Pleiade, Aldebaran and Tauris.  How could an auto-copy do this?   Shameless possible plant mnemonic discussion & speculation thread Posted by: Koen G - 08-02-2017, 10:50 PM - Forum: Imagery - Replies (9) Just a thread to bounce some plant mnemonic ideas around, which might not be worthy of their own thread. If some ideas here come to fruition, the mods can always split them off into their own thread to properly discuss the individual plant there. So in this thread some chaos is permitted as long as it's about possible symbolic aspects of the plants, and how those might help with identification. I thought of making this thread because I had compiled an image which in retrospect was a bit too stupid.  I call it Rise of the Plant Men, Return of the Biomancer, from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .      This plant also has a rather interesting root, which either really badly drawn or super mnemonic. With its spindliness it clearly takes a different route than the common fat brown roots. No idea what it's supposed to represent though.   foldouts line transcriptions Posted by: Davidsch - 08-02-2017, 07:39 PM - Forum: Physical material - Replies (4) During analysis of the text I've located an anomaly Often this an indication there is something wrong. It surprised me that after all this time I did not notice it before, and rather inconvenient, because now I realize many (of my old) statistics are actually false. The foldouts, have a transcription which is spread along the width of the foldouts !! f101r1 => the transcript is actually of page  f100v + r1 + r2.  By inspection it sounds logical. But it is rather special, having such long lines of text !! f101v2 => i did not know this is a foldout !!  Now You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. tells that  f101v2 actually holds the transcript for 101v2 + v1 !! Since there is no picture of the foldout, I do not know if the text really is 1 long line,  or that actually the text has to be cut up into 2 pages. Zandbergen writes: "There are 10 lines of text in three paragraphs, all at the bottom of the page. The text crosses the vertical fold between f101v2 and f101v1 and spans the total width of the foldout folio. The last line has been centred, also in the middle of the pair of pages. The fold, which is rather damaged, makes reading of part of the text very difficult." But, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., tells that #   This page spans two normal-size panels (f101v2 + f101v1) in a #   four-panel fold-out folio. They were originally entered as two #   separate pages (f101v2 and f101v1). However the text and plants #   clearly connect across the joining fold. [Stolfi] I would like the possible to decide for myself if it is or is not a long line of text. Unfortunately, I did not find such a picture of the entire stretched foldout. f89r2 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. It is not difficult to see that indeed the text is written as one long line along 89r2 + r3 f89v2 It is not difficult to see that indeed the text is written as one long line along 89v3 + v2 --- Question to René "so called" Z.: are there more texts which are really long foldout texts?   What is the VMS text? Posted by: stellar - 07-02-2017, 11:29 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text - No Replies I believe a poll here is needed for sort of a guide that everyone can see and maybe agree upon.  There are many perspectives and theories of just what the text is.  Maybe a consensus can be reached regarding the VMS text by people who have been working in Voynich studies for years.  I will leave this as an ongoing poll and open so that we can acquire the most data on the texts meaning relating to what it could be. Please part take in this experiment as it will be beneficial to all.  Your input is valuable regardless of how long you have held your ideas about this subject.  Also as time goes by and if your ideas change just state that here in a post.  We have to share more on this topic as if we have enough input maybe we could target the text in a more coherent manner.  I find that the most interested minds with a great deal of time invested in this subject may point us in the right direction; as to move most of us in a similar direction in targeting the Voynich Manuscript methodology for a possible reading or not. First Previous Next Last