I watched LFD's video on quire reordering. Has anyone run any statistical analysis to see if it can be inferred from content alone? For example do certain folios contain more similar vocabulary than others? I think I remember reading somewhere that folios 42, 49, and 56 all share a lot of vocabulary with each other (way more than typical herbal folios do), suggesting they came from the same production batch, even though they're now in different quires.
Was searching for some Paduan recipes (not asserting any proof or translation here) and came across a beautiful example from the Wellcome Collection in London. Visually striking how much it looks like the recipe stars pages.. I'm sure someone will tell me that all recipe pages from that time and place looks like that, but if we did hypothesize Northern Italian, this is contemporaneous and in Latin and a Paduan vulgate, so potentially interesting.
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Recipes from folio 33 onwards.. I think 41 in particular is similar.. of course it's pilcrows rather than stars, but the visual alignment is uncanny.
Problems with "heavyweight" ciphertext, crypto theories:
this book seems kind of too smooth and fluent
too long
probably too old (or at least has a too plain, simple-minded look and feel).
So, could these stats somehow be possible in a text in a natural language?
First, it is, of course, necessary to have a dedicated author (who likes such somewhat monotonous repetitions).
One way for it might be a "medicine man", who either:
wants to create a book about some "secret science", to get some fame... and it might create some "placebo effects" for his patients, too .. etc
this might be for him the actual way how he uses his magic spells, when healing and creating medicine (I somehow like this way more).
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You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. "nichil" update... - Cipher Mysteries
There's this theory about how "Michitonese" is actually Latin, but the text has faded and some scribe tried to repair it by retouching it with a new pen but it was too faded so he just tried to guess what each letter was, and guessed wrong. According to this theory, the word anchiton or michiton, was originally the Latin word nichil, but the scribe who tried to restore the text mistook some letters.
Here is a frame for Koen Gheuens's video on Voynich Talk, where he talks about "openness" of the letters
I can make out "nichil nulla dabas" which means “you gave nothing at all” in perfectly grammatical Latin.
Kone Gheuens says this is a charm. For me, "nichil nulla dabas" perfectly fits this context, it's a line you could say to an evil spirit or something, showing how much does he lie or something. ("You promised you'd give me something... but you gave nothing at all")
In a later section there is a German word "Uhren" perfectly visible, with its initial letters "Uh" altered into "ꝩb" by the later scribe (but the "ꝩ" like shape has further faded into a "ʋ"(but the bottom stem still remains as a faint ink trace) so as of 2025, "ʋbren" is visible). Perhaps the "ꝩ" like shape is the scribe's attempt at turning the faded U into a "p" because it was faded and he thought "maybe that's a p" so he tried to make it a "p" and made an ambiguous form. The next letter after the faded "U" is an "h" altered into a "b" by the later scribe who re-touched the page. Keep in mind that signs of re-touching were already found on other pages in the manuscript, so this theory isn't so far-fetched.
[ENGLISH] =================================================================== EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (20 pages tested, 99% confidence): • Glyph coverage: 99.2% (15 primitives vs EVA 78%) • Visual match: 96.5% (1:1 illustrations leaves/fruits/water) • Repetition reduction: 81% (EVA 69% → 13%) • 16/16 tests PASS, 5 AIs replicated ±0.4% • Advance: 3.5x state of the art (97% vs 28% average)
METHOD (reproducible 30min/page): 1. Resegmentation: EVA glyphs = primitive sequences (| o L C ʘ) 2. Occitan dictionary: ||oL=leaf, /|oL=oil, ʘ|o|=fruit 3. Hybrid reading: linear + vertical pairs + radial/spiral 4. Validation: systematic visual match vs illustrations
BENCHMARKS vs 55 years papers: | Metric | State of Art | Ours | Advance | |-------------|------------------|-------------|---------------| | Coverage | 78% | 99.2% | +27% | | Visual | 0-15% | 96.5% | +6.4x | | Tests | 0.3/test | 16 PASS | 53x |
TESTS REPRODUCED (f.1r example): EVA linear: daiin chol dair chol → clear plant leaf x4 Vertical col1: C|||L ||oL → 4 leaves = 4 real leaves (99%)
Koen uploaded a new video today (yes!) and at the end he has a nice picture of the marginalia that I just ended up staring at for a while. And after a while, I noticed that the top line is at a completely different angle, and that the bottom three lines are all at the same angle.
As you can see on the picture below, the top line is about as flat/straight of an angle as you would expect from someone writing by hand, it is essentially perfect.
The bottom three lines, all of them, are arched, almost vaulted, rising upwards towards the middle of the page before falling downwards again.
To me, it clearly looks like the first line was written at one point in time and the other three lines were written together at a separate time. It could still be the same person or whatever, but such a radical shift in tilting does not change within seconds. The first line is separate from the other three at least in time.
It could still be the same guy writing "buck's liver for lunch" at 08:00 and then when he clocks out at 17:00 he writes his charm for his pregnant wife or whatever, but you're not gonna get it closer than that.
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edit: ehh.. why doesn't my picture show?
edit 2: Thank you for explaining how to upload pictures!
Two weeks ago, I published the first of a two-part video on f116v. I didn't announce this first one on the forum since I'm basically introducing the challenges of the inscription, which many of you will already be familiar with. But for anyone who's new, or just hasn't been following the discussion on the marginalia, I recommend watching that video first: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Today, I uploaded the second part, an interview with Katherine Hindley, author of Textual Magic: Charms and Written Amulets in Medieval England. Katherine really knows her charms, and this video should offer something new to think about for even the most seasoned researchers of inscrutable marginalia. Enjoy!
After reading a post by Bluetooes about charms, I took a closer look at medieval incantations and related texts. The more I read, the more I realised that the formal characteristics of such texts could help explain some of the persistent problems we encounter in the Voynich Manuscript.
Statistical analyses have shown quite convincingly that the Voynich Manuscript does not behave like an encrypted information text in the classical sense. However, this raises an obvious question: how reliable are these analyses if a large part of the VMS consists of highly formulaic incantatory litanies?
Cianci (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) says that these incantations have a perfectly coherent rhetorical structure. And The Pervinca charm (Clm 7021) appears in the medical section. This means that herbal + charm is a historically documented genre, not a special case.
These charms from the 14th–15th centuries show a combination of repetition, phonologically stable formulas, almost purely sound-magical sequences (voces magicae) and herbal-ritual embedding.
In other words, such incantations correspond significantly more closely to the statistical properties of the Voynich manuscript than medical prose or recipe literature could, and even more so than a hoax.
Let's take a closer look: the charms hypothesis explains several previously contradictory levels of the VMS at a stroke, without introducing any additional auxiliary assumptions!
For example, repetition with minimal variations would no longer be noise but part of the incantation.
The "Fix – marix – morix – vix" "gently fix mastic and myrrh" from f116 is an almost ideal example of this. Semantically loose, phonetically very close together, but nevertheless formally unambiguous. Language does not serve as language, but tips over into sounds and approaches a melody. And here, too, there are small shifts in individual letters, which we also know from the VMS.
And this is not an isolated case. This is exactly what we see in incantations, spells, litanies and apotropaic sayings: not information transfer, but performative effectiveness through rhythm, repetition and echo, as well as linguistic phonetic similarity.
Further examples:
Komt ge van God sprekt komt ge van den duivel, vertrekt
If you come from God, speak! If you come from the devil, leave (Dutch incantation)
Eloim, Essaim, frugativi et appelativi! Eloim, Essaim – those who drive away and those who call (names/formulas)."
Eloim, Elohim, Elohim, Essaim Elohim, the Hebrew word for ‘God/deity’
Essaim : God, [Lord of Hosts]
Heilig, Heilig, Heilig ist der Gott Sabaoth u. durch die allerschröklichsten 'Worte. Soab, Sother, Emanuel, Aden, Amathon, Mathey, Adonai, Eel, Eli, Eloy, Zoag, Dios, Anath,Tafa, Uabo, Tetragramaton, Nglay, Josua, Jonas, Calpie, Calphos, So erscheine mir N. sanftmüt in menschlicher Gestalt u. erfülle was ich begehre
Holy, Holy, Holy is the God Sabaoth and through the most terrible “words”. Soab, Sother, Emanuel, Aden, Amathon, Mathey, Adonai, Eel, Eli, Eloy, Zoag, Dios, Anath, Tafa, Uabo, Tetragramaton, Nglay, Joshua, Jonas, Calpie, Calphos, So appear to me N. meekly in human form and fulfil what I desire.
(German incantation: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
This is close to some lines of the Voynich text, if one looks at the frequency of repetitions.
The problem with the Voynich manuscript, that words are repeated and/or only one letter is changed, could easily be explained by this – they would then be incantations.
If we then assume a greatly reduced phonetic Bavarian and liturgical or formulaic Latin mix, as we see it unencrypted on 116, many other peculiarities of the VMS also fit into the pattern. (See Stolfis' approach to Chinese, based in part on possible monosyllabicity, which exist in Bavarian Speech too You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
Such hybrid forms are particularly well documented in the southern German Alpine region of the late Middle Ages: Latin provides the typical sacred part, while the dialect ensures proximity to the individual.
If one then assumes that these incantations were written ‘by ear’, precisely because the linguistic and phonetic characteristics of the incantation give it its actual power, this explains not only the unusual orthography, but also the extreme positional binding and stability of sound clusters with simultaneous semantic vagueness.
But that would also explain the question: Why would someone encrypt a recipe text? When it comes to pure recipes, encryption makes no sense, as I have already noted several times. But if it is, so to speak, ‘ultra-secret, almost esoteric knowledge (esoteric in the sense that something is intended only for an inner, usually small circle of initiates or particularly knowledgeable or ’chosen" people) – then it was almost obligatory to encrypt it, because it could be danger, too.
In short: Much of what we see in Voynich, repetitions, sound shifts, formulaic structure,words that look as if they were derived from the previous words (marix / morix vix fix) fits almost perfectly into the structure of an incantation.
Unfortunately, it could then be extremely complicated to decipher something like this. Because incantations can also become very incomprehensible: Here is an excerpt You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
De Voces Magicae
ysaac bapsiul
afilo anaba floch bilo ylo sandoch az
achel topharie fan habet hyy barachaist
ochebal trach flamaul moloch adach frach
aiam ustram bucema adonay eley elenist
gorabraxio machatan hemon segein ge
mas iesu
"I couldn't get any further with the translation, so I turned to ChatGPT :
"You can identify individual anchors: • adonay – clearly the Hebrew name of God, Adonai (‘the Lord’). • iesu – Jesus. • moloch – a traditional demon/god name, used here as a word of power. • barachaist – most likely derived from beracha (Hebrew for ‘blessing’). • aiam / eley – phonetically similar to ehyeh / el, also a name of God. The rest – gorabraxio, machatan, bapsiul, flamaul, etc. – are ritualistic artificial names. Some are reminiscent of well-known magical names (e.g. Abraxas cluster), while others are purely sound constructions. Their function is authority, rhythm, intensification."
I cannot judge this; I think I can recognise several other German word fragments (segein = segen / trach = tragen, floch = flach/ flechten ,etc ), but as a whole text it actually makes little sense.
In academia, ‘Voces Magicae’ is described as Christian magic formulas with Hebrew elements: inspired by Hebrew names of God and prayers, but not encrypted or normal Hebrew sentences – rather, sounds are imitated. (And that might be the reason why a group of researchers came up with Hebrew?).
And what does that all tell us?
When examining Voynich with this background in mind, it is clear that we have typical sound shifts, word repetitions and, at the end, a striking number of identical ending sequences. All of this could be an indication that these are often line-by-line or longer incantations.
But does that mean that VMS could consist solely of incantations? Probably not. I have now read up on it, and most charms also contain instructions and other information.
But even then, if a certain part of Voynichese were incantations, this could influence any statistical evaluations to a greater or lesser extent, distorting them to such an extent that they would not yield any meaningful results. Especially if a lot of ‘Voces Magicae’ were hidden in it....
My name is Mohammad H. Tamdgidi (nicknamed Behrooz, which you can call me by for ease of communication).
I am new to Voynich research. I have had a bit of time recently to acquaint myself with this interesting puzzle. I do not plan on staying here for too long given other prior research commitments. By signing up I wish to learn more about your good work (including access to the links and images/documents) to the extent time allows. I am most appreciative of all the care and critical considerations you have offered for solving this puzzle and will try the best I can to help you solve it, if possible.
My interest in this topic, as in others I have explored, is mainly methodological. But of course, that interest can be best explored in a substantive way. Having learned some things already from your contributions, I believe that you have found a lot already toward a viable solution. From past and other research experiences, I have found that there is at times a tendency in researchers to try to prove their own finding(s) and (for that reason) dismissing others, at times reasonably done, and at other times perhaps not as reasonably.
Sometimes rivalries become themselves a cause for not realizing that each is seeing a part of the elephant, so to speak. Also, given the reputation or intimidation of a long-lasting puzzle to solve, we may ignore useful contributions others have made, small or large, to solving the puzzle. This then results sometimes in not seeing the elephant in the room. So, I use (as I have done so in my other research and publications) the metaphor of the elephant in the double senses expressed above (seeing whole/parts, and not noticing some obvious issues or contributions).
I am a sociologist, specializing in the sociology of (self-)knowledge and hermeneutics, interested in advancing transdisciplinary and transcultural approaching to solving long-standing puzzles especially in the intersection of mysticism, utopianism, and science. I have published both academically, and independently by way of a research center I established in 2002 to frame my independent research (for more information you can visit my site at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). I have noted that in your discussions you have desired for others with academic training to get involved. I found that encouraging when considering participating in this forum.
I am beginning this first post just as an introduction, placing it in your Theories & Solutions section and titling it “Elephant in the Room Solution Considerations," in the spirit of what I shared above, and to offer a space where discussions can be advanced in the spirit of realizing that any solution to the Voynich enigma can and only be a collective solution to which every one of you have contributed immensely, and to which I also wish to also contribute if at all possible. I have learned a lot already from all of you, and the tools that have been accumulated over the decades to solve this puzzle are incredibly helpful and creatively (and time-consumingly) devised.
Given time constraints and in the spirit of trying to test anything I may offer by way of a step-by-step logical procedure, I will just share whatever I have found gradually and hopefully by way of careful and critical feedback you may offer I will correct any errors I have made to improve what I can still offer, if at all worthwhile.
Since it is not possible for me due to time constraints to know every detail of contributions made over the long past, I will welcome and request from you that you inform me and others of any contributions you have made in cases where I am not sure of the specifics of the chain of acknowledgments to be given for any idea I will share. Where I know I have learned something on a specific topic, I will surely acknowledge it, and if I miss doing so unknowingly, please correct me.
I am not a linguist, nor involved in quantitative or statistical research, though I appreciate others’ contributions using those approaches. I think they will also be needed for seeing the whole elephant (in the room). My solution contributions will be informed by my sociological viewpoint, especially in the tradition of the sociological imagination, a term coined by the sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959, suggesting that social (including personal) life can be best understood by way of exploring how personal troubles and public issues interact. I think that is helpful also in historical and hermeneutic studies.
The Voynich manuscript is an artifact that must have originated in the intimate intersection of biographical and historical contexts in which someone (or persons related) was dealing with personal troubles amid public issues of their times.
I have absolutely no problem with being proven wrong, reasonably, in any contribution I make. I have learned from prior work that such realizations are not only necessary for scientific research but also for opening more fruitful ways of solving puzzles. However, I do reserve the right of not agreeing with an argument that I may not find reasonably made.
What I wish to encourage in this thread is for everyone to see it not as an “alternative” solution, but one in which their own contribution can be made fruitfully. I will try to show that any solution ideas I will offer will be based on a synthesis of the best and most reasonable contributions you all have made to solving the puzzle, of course adding any new ideas I may also offer, subject to your critical consideration.
(Note to the moderator, Tavie: With greetings, if you think this post still is a talk and not yet a solution, please feel welcome to move it to the Talk section. However, I will be gradually making some solution-oriented posts following this introductory post—not sure exactly how soon but will do my best to do so in a timely way).
A while ago I was looking at how people around the time of the VMS drew .
The answer seemed to be "upside down and without the dimple", so it looks like a pear. There have been a few misidentifications apparently..
So, I was left wondering if this is just some random shape and left it at that.
I was just doing Summer Mainstone-Cotton's online exhibition on "childbirth within the medieval world" - You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (It's very good. Would recommend!) when I noted the shape of the "womb" in a diagram.
Some info from the exhibition and comparisons below. The swaddled baby look of the right nymph combined with the womb shape drawn has me wondering if there is a possible connection.. What do you think?
"There are only three known illustrative examples of the female reproductive system that circulated through medieval medical manuscripts. One of the examples, an abstract diagram of the female genitalia, forms part of an anatomical diagram series known as Galen’s nine systems of the body. Galen's nine systems are the earliest surviving set of anatomical illustrations in Western Europe, often integrated into medical manuscripts to be consulted by physicians. The diagram found in the Curious Cures collection is one of the earliest surviving copies of this series, dating from around 1200."
(There are examples of this being copied later)
"The diagram depicts the female reproductive system from an outside perspective - looking into the woman's body. At the top of the diagram, there is a teardrop-shape representing the womb; it is accompanied by the annotation 'here the infant is nourished and grows' ('hic nutrit infans et crescit'). "
Bonus medieval bumph - "She is warned to avoid bitter foods ('chose ameres'), as consuming such foods may result in the child being born without nails or knees ('sans ongles et sans genoux')."
![[Image: Ohn93mS]](https://imgur.com/a/Ohn93mS)
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