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| Automated Topic Analysis of the Voynich Manuscript |
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Posted by: quimqu - 31-07-2025, 10:46 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (103)
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Introduction
Previous studies have examined the topics of the Voynich manuscript by looking at the distribution of words or patterns across its pages. However, to the best of my knowledge, there has not yet been a fully automated topic modelling analysis that compares multiple algorithms.
In this work, I present an automated page-by-page topic analysis of the Voynich manuscript using three different models:
- LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) – which finds 5 topics
- BERTopic – which finds 5 topics
- NMF (Non-negative Matrix Factorization) – which finds 3 topics
The goal is to see how each model clusters the pages, whether patterns align with the manuscript’s illustrated sections (Botanical, Astronomical, Biological, Cosmological, Pharmacological, Recipes), and to observe if there are topics that dominate certain sections.
METHODOLOGY: HOW THE MODELS DETECT TOPICS
LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation)
LDA treats each page as a bag of words and assumes:- Each page is a mixture of topics (in different proportions)
- Each topic is a distribution of words
Through repeated statistical assignments, LDA discovers which words tend to appear together, grouping them into topics. Pages are then assigned the topic (or mix of topics) that best matches their word patterns.
BERTopic
BERTopic uses transformer-based embeddings (BERT) to represent each page as a high-dimensional vector capturing semantic similarity. It then applies dimensionality reduction (UMAP) and clustering (HDBSCAN) to group similar pages. Finally, it extracts the most representative words for each cluster to define topics. This allows for more nuanced grouping, even with subtle vocabulary differences.
NMF (Non-negative Matrix Factorization)
NMF uses a term-frequency matrix (TF-IDF weighted) and factorizes it into two smaller matrices:- One representing topics as weighted combinations of words
- One representing pages as weighted combinations of topics
Because all values are non-negative, each page’s topic weights are easy to interpret. The dominant topic for a page is the one with the highest weight.
RESULTS
Each model produces two complementary visualizations:
Timeline Plot (Top)- Horizontal axis (X) = Ordered folios of the Voynich manuscript.
- Vertical axis (Y) = Dominant topic assigned to each folio (numbered according to the model).
- Color = Illustrated section of the folio (Botanical, Astronomical, etc.).
- Marker shape = Topic number.
How to interpret: Clusters of the same marker in the same color band indicate topic consistency within a section. Sudden changes of marker shape within a section may suggest variation or topic.
Heatmap (Bottom)- Rows (Y) = Illustrated sections of the manuscript.
- Columns (X) = Detected topics from the model.
- Cell value (and color) = Proportion of pages in that section assigned to each topic (normalized so each row sums to 1).
How to interpret: A bright yellow cell (value near 1) means that almost all folios in that section belong to a single topic → high homogeneity. A row with several colored cells means that section contains multiple topics → possible internal diversity or mixed content.
Note 1: topic numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 are not the same topics for all the models. It is just a label for a topic in a model.
Note 2: ordered folios in timeline diagram should be read as "pages". Eg: page 48 should be f25v and 49 should be You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (as page 1 is f1r)
LDA (5 Topics)
![[Image: st8uiUT.png]](https://i.imgur.com/st8uiUT.png)
- Botanical and Pharmacological sections include all 5 topics, suggesting vocabulary variety and perhaps multiple subthemes.
- Astronomical section covers 4 topics (all except Topic 4; Topic 5 appears only in one page).
- Biological and cosmological sections are entirely assigned to Topic 1 – extremely homogeneous.
- Recipes section is mostly Topic 1, with some pages in Topic 3.
BERTopic (5 Topics)
[size=1]![[Image: PXyXvjz.png]](https://i.imgur.com/PXyXvjz.png) [/size]
- Botanical is dominated by Topic 2 (but touches all other topics to some degree).
- Astronomical is mostly Topic 4 with some Topic 1.
- Biological is entirely Topic 3.
- Cosmological uses Topics 3 and 1.
- Pharmacological touches all 5 topics.
- Recipes uses all topics except Topic 2 (striking, since Topic 2 dominates Botanical and Pharmacological) and leans toward Topics 3 and 1.
NMF (3 Topics)
![[Image: Ay7kGky.png]](https://i.imgur.com/Ay7kGky.png)
- Botanical spans all 3 topics, but is dominated by Topic 2 up to around page 48 (folio 24) before alternating among the three.
- Astronomical is entirely Topic 3.
- Biological is entirely Topic 1.
- Cosmological is entirely Topic 3 (like Astronomical).
- Pharmacological alternates between Topics 2 and 3.
- Recipes alternates between Topics 1 and 3.
MY THOUGHTS
Across all three models, the Biological and Cosmological sections appear linguistically homogeneous (each model consistently assigns a single dominant topic to them, with at most two topics for the Cosmological section in the BERTopic model). This could reflect genuine stylistic uniformity or simply the models’ sensitivity to repeated patterns in the text. But what if the Cosmological section is in fact closely linked to the Biological section?
Botanical and Pharmacological sections consistently appear more heterogeneous:- LDA and BERTopic detect a wider spread of topics here, possibly due to multiple subsections or thematic variation within the illustrations.
- Recipes are particularly interesting: they often share topics with Botanical or Pharmacological sections in LDA/BERTopic, but show different topic distributions in NMF.
A striking observation in BERTopic:- Topic 1 dominates Botanical and Pharmacological, but is absent from Recipes.
- This might suggest a shift in terminology or a distinct textual purpose for the Recipes section despite visual similarity to Pharmacological folios.
In NMF:- Topic 3 covers Astronomical and Cosmological sections entirely.
- This may mean that NMF sees these two illustrated sections as linguistically similar — perhaps due to formulaic text or repeated glyph patterns.
I would like to read your comments.
Thank you
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| Coffee with a Codex: The Voynich Manuscript (Facsimile) |
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Posted by: bi3mw - 30-07-2025, 01:17 PM - Forum: News
- Replies (22)
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On August 14, Curator Dot Porter will bring out a facsimile of Beinecke Library MS 408, aka The Voynich Manuscript. This is a realistic facsimile that looks exactly like the real thing. Lisa Fagin Davis will also be there.
August 14, 2025, 12:00pm - 1:00pm ( 5pm GMT )
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There is a series called “Coffee with a Codex” on YouTube. Perhaps this event will also be published there ?
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Decoding the Voynich Manuscript through African-Linguistic Phonetics and Ethnobotanic |
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Posted by: Abdulqadir1799 - 27-07-2025, 02:50 PM - Forum: The Slop Bucket
- Replies (3)
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hey here is my take on the script, you can download the paper via link and please comment feedbacks You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
some description i give here
This groundbreaking research proposes a novel decoding of the Voynich Manuscript using African-rooted linguistic models, with comparative analysis drawn from Nilotic, Berber, and West African languages. The paper constructs a plausible phonetic grammar, vocabulary, and morphological syntax based on visual glyph comparisons and contextual semantics from key folios (e.g., f1r, f26r, f34v).
The authors integrate: - Cross-cultural glyph analysis with Tifinagh, Ge'ez, and Ajami scripts
- Botanical and zodiacal references for semantic grounding
- Translation of a full ritual from a zodiac folio (f72v2)
- Paragraph-level translations of several pages
- A full glossary, grammar rules, and semantic map of repeated glyphs
The paper challenges Eurocentric assumptions about authorship and origin, proposing instead a highly plausible North or West African scholar (possibly Tuareg or Moorish) trained in medicinal botany and astronomy as the original author.
A new decoding method is introduced that fuses phonetic patterns, grammatical consistency, herbal-zodiac semantics, and African linguistic parallels. The Appendix provides a standalone linguistic model (Appendix A) and an extended glossary to support independent verification and further research
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| Zodiac labels |
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Posted by: takrobat - 25-07-2025, 07:09 AM - Forum: Theories & Solutions
- Replies (25)
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I am creating a new thread, as my previous thread was more focused on the images in the zodiac pages. But as I noted there, I find it interesting that a lot of the labels has "o" as the first glyph. We know that this is a common prefix, but I still think it is more than usual, so I did some analysis (which probably have been done before, but....)
I use the "H" transcription for this. There are 299 labels, this is because Gemini is missing 1 label: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
According to my script 76.9% (230) of the labels start with "o". But this varies amongst zodiac signs. Aries have 29 "o", 1 "c", while saggitarius have only 15 "o". I was wondering if this was perhaps moving with time, but I see no clear indication of that, even though it kind of drops gradually.
The script I wrote output:
aries : 30 lines
Starting letters: c:1, o:29
taurus : 30 lines
Starting letters: c:4, o:24, s:1, y:1
gemini : 29 lines
Starting letters: a:1, c:1, o:26, s:1
cancer : 30 lines
Starting letters: o:24, y:6
leo : 30 lines
Starting letters: *:1, c:2, d:1, e:1, l:1, o:22, r:1, s:1
virgo : 30 lines
Starting letters: a:1, c:2, e:2, o:21, s:1, y:3
libra : 30 lines
Starting letters: a:1, c:1, o:24, y:4
scorpius : 30 lines
Starting letters: a:1, c:3, d:1, k:1, o:20, s:2, y:2
sagittarius : 30 lines
Starting letters: c:2, e:1, o:15, q:1, s:1, y:10
pisces : 30 lines
Starting letters: c:1, d:1, o:25, s:2, y:1
------------------------------------------------------------
Total zodiacs: 10
Total lines : 299
I have also created a graph to show it more graphically.
![[Image: letter-frequencies.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/fsBtrZ0b/letter-frequencies.png)
As I said in my previous post, I am just looking at stuff. Feel free to guide me in any direction if anyone wants me to look at something specific, right now I am still where this is curious, but I have no "theory" of why this is the way it is.
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| F70V1 |
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Posted by: takrobat - 24-07-2025, 10:12 PM - Forum: Theories & Solutions
- Replies (13)
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Greetings,
New here, but been interested in the VM for some time. Today f70v1 got my attention. It is an interesting piece of "art" 
What I am wondering about, is that the numbers in the "rings" are quite unusual(?). 10 in the outer ring, and 5 in the inner ring. Not often 10 and 5 is used in mythological/mystic traditions to my knowledge. I know that this probably have been discuseed before (i did a search, but did not find anything related, but sorry if I ignored something I shouldn't have ignored).
From wikipedia:
"f70v–f73v: The astrological series of diagrams in the astronomical section has the names of ten of the months (from March to December) written in Latin script, with spelling suggestive of the medieval languages of France, northwest Italy, or the Iberian Peninsula."
I find this peculiar
The original roman calendar also had 10 months, but they had 304 days in the year - and "these 304 days were followed by an unnamed 50-day winter period" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). That matches the march->december cycle.
Much later, so not related, in the french revolution they divided they year into weeks of 10 days (but 12 months of 30 days - ).
Have anyone found any good reasoning for the 10/5 rings? I am no expert in astrology, and I guess the answer is there - as I understand this is the zodiac sign aries?
Also, I noticed that all the descriptions beside the drawings all start with "o", very often "ot" but sometimes other gallow glyphs. As I always have thought of the post/prefix system to be a case system, or something similar to that. My first thought was the "o" could be something like a instrumental case, or a locative case. Of course this is just pure speculation, and instrumental case is not very common in european languages to my knowledge. Locative existed in latin, so that would probably be known. That said, I don't think the case system necessarily follows known cases - it would not be difficult to create a new case system. I have thought about a language that does not have verbs/nouns, but just differ the words with a case.
a runner -> running
But again, this part is pure speculation. Just throwing everything out
I would appreciate any feedback, especially about the 10/5 stuff. But also about every word starting with "o".
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| Wandering Stars ( Planets ) |
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Posted by: dashstofsk - 23-07-2025, 09:24 AM - Forum: Astrology & Astronomy
- Replies (5)
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Has there ever been some discussion about the fact that the astrology pages seem to have no depiction of the wandering stars ( planets ). The planets were the most significant of the celestial objects for astrologers. Their unusual passage through the sky has always been a fascination for them, who could, through interpretation of their position, foretell events and the destinies of individual people. Such interpretation of the signs was a valued skill in that time. And rather than being a heretical subject was actually lawfully permitted when in the hands of authorised practitioners. So it does seem a bit odd that the VMS, which seems to portray itself to be a compendium of the secret sciences, should not mention them.
It does suggest that either the authors were unfamiliar with the subject ( in which case it might be equally so with the other topics, which would make the content of VMS empty and valueless ), or did not care too much to make the VMS accurate ( likely under the artificial construction hypothesis ).
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| f72v1 and f72r1 |
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Posted by: dashstofsk - 22-07-2025, 02:12 PM - Forum: Physical material
- Replies (11)
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Has there ever been some discussion about the hole on pages f72v1 and f72r1? It seems that the drawings had to be made to avoid the hole, which can only mean that it was there before the pages were written.
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| The VMS as a possible chain encryption ( Mod 23 ). |
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Posted by: bi3mw - 21-07-2025, 11:30 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (25)
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I asked in the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. if a made up chain cipher is easy to decrypt. Now I have written a Python script that decrypts a given Voynich word using the same method. The result is then mapped according to frequency analysis (EVA > Latin). Admittedly, this is a rather rudimentary approach, I am primarily interested in decoding with MOD 23. The method is simple enough to be considered and also much more effective than a simple substitution. It could be implemented practically with a letter disk (like Alberti disk).
Here is the python - script and a list of possibly unabbreviated words ( Stolfi ):
chesokchoteody [f68r1, outer ring, near the bottom]
oepchksheey [f93r, top line, but looks like half of a Neal key]
qoekeeykeody [f105r, which I’d note is possibly the original first page of Q20A]
soefchocphy [f102r2, right edge, but right on the fold, very hard to read]
ykcheolchcthy [f68v3, first word of second line]
shdykairalam [f106v, last word of a line]
shetcheodchs [f43v, first word of a line]
Code: # Reduced alphabet: No J, U, W
alphabet = list("ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTVXYZ") # 23 letters
def char_to_pos(c):
return alphabet.index(c.upper()) + 1
def pos_to_char(p):
p = (p - 1) % len(alphabet) + 1
return alphabet[p - 1]
def chain_decrypt_verbose(ciphertext):
ciphertext = ciphertext.upper()
decrypted = ""
table = []
prev_cipher_pos = 0
for i, c in enumerate(ciphertext, start=1):
if c not in alphabet:
decrypted += c
table.append([i, c]) # Nur zwei Spalten für Nicht-Buchstaben
continue
cipher_pos = char_to_pos(c)
plain_pos = (cipher_pos - prev_cipher_pos) % len(alphabet)
if plain_pos == 0:
plain_pos = len(alphabet)
plain_char = pos_to_char(plain_pos)
decrypted += plain_char
table.append([
i,
c,
cipher_pos,
plain_char,
plain_pos,
prev_cipher_pos,
f"({cipher_pos} - {prev_cipher_pos}) mod {len(alphabet)} = {plain_pos}"
])
prev_cipher_pos = cipher_pos
return decrypted, table
def print_table(table):
print("\nDecryption Table:")
print("-" * 90)
print(f"{'i':>3} | {'Cipher':^9} | {'cᵢ':^4} | {'Plain':^9} | {'pᵢ':^4} | {'cᵢ₋₁':^6} | {'Computation':<30}")
print("-" * 90)
for row in table:
if len(row) == 7:
i, cchar, cpos, pchar, ppos, cprev, calc = row
print(f"{i:>3} | {cchar:^9} | {cpos:^4} | {pchar:^9} | {ppos:^4} | {cprev:^6} | {calc:<30}")
elif len(row) == 2:
i, cchar = row
print(f"{i:>3} | {cchar:^9} | {'-':^4} | {'-':^9} | {'-':^4} | {'-':^6} | {'(not a letter)':<30}")
print("-" * 90)
def apply_fixed_substitution(text, from_list, to_list):
mapping = dict(zip(from_list, to_list))
substituted = ''.join(mapping.get(c, c) for c in text)
return substituted, mapping
if __name__ == "__main__":
text = input("? Enter ciphertext to decrypt (only letters A–Z, excluding J, U, W): ")
decrypted, table = chain_decrypt_verbose(text)
print(f"\n? Decrypted text: {decrypted}")
print_table(table)
# Substitution: Voynich → Latein
voynich_order = list("OEHYACDIKLRSTNQPMFGXBVZ")
latin_order = list("IEAUTSRNOMCLPDBQGVFHXYZ")
substituted, mapping = apply_fixed_substitution(decrypted, voynich_order, latin_order)
print("\n? Substituted (Voynich → Latin):")
print(substituted)
print("\n?️ Substitution Map:")
for voy, lat in mapping.items():
print(f" {voy} → {lat}")
A side note:
"shetcheodchs" was converted to "LDYIFEYNDUEO" using the method described. ChatGPT hallucinates "Fide leo, deus unde" from it by rearranging, omitting and adding letters, which means "Trust the lion - God is its origin". This is remarkable because the plants on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ( sun and moon ) could very well be connected with the lion according to alchemical interpretation. So you could easily fall for ChatGPT if you believe what you want to believe 
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