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+--- Thread: No text, but a visual code (/thread-2384.html)
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RE: No text, but a visual code - voynichrose - 08-09-2025
If it is a visual code then there are many interpretations and no way to interpret the original meaning.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 08-09-2025
I'll say something I've said several times: The Voynich is an authentic 15th-century document, and it has a meaning. If we don't understand its meaning, it's probably because we approach this book like any other, without realizing that it belongs to a distinct and specific sphere. I'll try to explain this as clearly as I can. There are medieval books that we could call normal; we understand them because their way of reasoning and seeing the world is similar to ours. But there are other medieval books, few in number, that are far removed from our way of thinking.
For example, I'll talk about something we're all familiar with: the so-called chemical herbs. They're herbs with both normal medicinal properties and magical ones. You can place the root of one of them around your neck and become invisible. You may think they were popular superstitions, but educated people believed in these kinds of things too.
In his book, Confessio Amantis, John Gower alludes to the Liber de quindecim stellis attributed to Hermes, the magical relationship of fifteen stars with fifteen stones and fifteen herbs. Gower was a poet friend of Chaucer, and like Chaucer, he wrote things that are very ordinary to us, but also things like these, in which he surely believed.
Voynichrose, I have answered you like this so as not to repeat my theory again. What I mean is that I, like many of us, call charlatans anyone who believes in the power of astrology these days, but that in Voynich research we must take it seriously because it was commonplace in people's minds.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Jorge_Stolfi - 08-09-2025
(08-09-2025, 04:19 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'll say something I've said several times: The Voynich is an authentic 15th-century document, and it has a meaning. If we don't understand its meaning, it's probably because we approach this book like any other, without realizing that it belongs to a distinct and specific sphere. I'll try to explain this as clearly as I can. There are medieval books that we could call normal; we understand them because their way of reasoning and seeing the world is similar to ours. But there are other medieval books, few in number, that are far removed from our way of thinking.
I can subscribe to that.
Quote:I, like many of us, call charlatans anyone who believes in the power of astrology these days, but that in Voynich research we must take it seriously because it was commonplace in people's minds.
And I agree with that too.
However, just as the VMS has no recognizable references to any major religion religion, or to European-style alchemy, it also has no obvious references to astrology beyond the Zodiac signs. And these were probably added by the Author only for the benefit of intended European readers; since the original plan seems to have been 24 divisions instead of 12.
And starting the Zodiac with Pisces instead of Aries, AFAIK, is also a departure from European custom. Although it seems to be astronomically more correct, since the Spring (Northern) equinox (which is now ~20 March) moved from the constellation of Aries to that of Pisces about 2000 years ago.
However I am still confused about which 30-degree segment of the Ecliptic was meant to be covered by the VMS diagram labeled "February/Pisces". I am not willing to assume that it is the same as the "Pisces" segment of European astrology (the last 30 degrees before the Spring equinox). If the author was copying those diagrams from some other book, that divided the Ecliptic into 24 sectors of 15 degrees, the central figures and month names may be just an approximation of the periods specified in that source, or even just his best guess.
To complicate matters, because of the precession of the equinoxes, 600 years ago the Spring equinox point on the Ecliptic, relative to the fixed stars, was 8 degrees from where it is today, in the direction of Aries. And the VMS was made some 150 years before the Gregorian calendar reformation, and the Julian calendar had by that time drifted so that the Spring Equnox was around March 10. Not sure whether this difference includes the effect of precession, or just of the simplistic leap year algorithm.
RE: No text, but a visual code - voynichrose - 09-09-2025
Antonio García Jiménez,
Do you purport that the document is decoded by you, merely by visual appearance? There is so much more text than pictures your theory should not hold under scrutiny. Like I said if you feel you decoded it this way then everyone is correct.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 09-09-2025
There's no text, nothing to read. If the script has never been deciphered, it's for this simple reason. There's no language, just successions of groups of astronomical symbols.
I've tried to explain that this codex belongs to an area of medieval culture where astrology was a predominant science. It wasn't marginal at all; even the Church hierarchy believed in it. In the mindset of the Voynich authors, each herb we see receives its medicinal or magical virtues under a certain astronomical configuration.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Stefan Wirtz_2 - 09-09-2025
(09-09-2025, 08:03 AM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There's no text, nothing to read. If the script has never been deciphered, it's for this simple reason. There's no language, just successions of groups of astronomical symbols.
I've tried to explain that this codex belongs to an area of medieval culture where astrology was a predominant science. It wasn't marginal at all; even the Church hierarchy believed in it. In the mindset of the Voynich authors, each herb we see receives its medicinal or magical virtues under a certain astronomical configuration.
Compared to my understanding, your point of view is from the other side of the universe...
In contrast to you, I see no durable elements of "astrology" in the VMS at all. Where are they?
The "zodiacs" are doubled, but some show double goats, not aries or capricorn.
What "zodiac" is iguana?
What "zodiac" is "ugly leopard"?
In which zodiac are pisces joined to stars, not to each other?
Why does not any "astrological zodiac" show at least one of the typical star constellations, but just rings of girls with single stars?
Why is a "moon sequence" not a moon sequence, but just a repeating change of half-moon and something else?
So if VMS is astrological, where is the astrology...?
Regarding your first and last sentence: there might be some astronomical content, but not in the herbs or the zodiacs.
And of course, there is a language and much text to read...
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 09-09-2025
I see Stefan that you must have never heard of Panofsky or the works of King Alfonso X.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Stefan Wirtz_2 - 09-09-2025
It might become necessary for you to accept that both of them may have as little to do with VMS as with a telephone book of Omsk.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 09-09-2025
You leave me speechless. I get the impression you're very young and, as such, daring. I don't know what to tell you except that youth is a disease that heals with time.
RE: No text, but a visual code - robappleton - 12-09-2025
Howdy there. I have been doing a little research and I wholeheartedly agree with you.
The Voynich Manuscript doesn’t really act like a normal alphabet or code. If it was just letters hiding real words, we’d expect the usual patterns you see in language—like how often certain letters show up, or how words repeat in predictable ways. AND, it would probably have been solved by some of the great cryptologists.
But instead, the symbols behave more like shifting rules: they change depending on the page, the layout, even what’s around them. That’s not how alphabets work, but it is how you’d design a system of steps or actions. It feels less like writing something to be read out loud, and more like writing instructions for doing something. You actually see similar approaches in things like Ramon Llull’s combinatorial wheels or George Ripley’s alchemical scrolls—texts that weren’t about reading words but about moving through processes.
Seen that way, and as others here have argued, it’s basically a set of operators—symbols standing for transformations or phases—kind of like math signs or computer commands, just older and wrapped in alchemical art. The drawings back this up: plants don’t look like real species so much as variations, the naked figures are showing cycles of water or energy, and the circles look like flowcharts of operations. Other manuscripts from the 15th century did the same thing, like the Rosarium Philosophorum with its symbolic stages or the Ripley Scrolls with dragons and kings showing chemical changes. So instead of being an encrypted diary or secret herbal, the Voynich is more like a symbolic toolkit—meant for insiders who knew the system, not casual readers.
What if the Rosarium Philosophorum was a copy, made to be readable, by one of the holders / keepers of the Voynich through its journey to today?