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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 - -JKP- - 25-01-2020
There are a couple of talismanic characters that are similar to EVA-k and EVA-t (ones that are related to incantations about demons) but in general, the VMS glyphs (or their positions) do not seem related to talismanic scripts.
At one point (years ago), I learned to read some of these talismanic characters, but if you don't use a new skill regularly it tends to fade and I would have to refresh my memory.
The problem with the talismanic glyphs is they do not match up with the VMS in terms of position. So, the similarity may be coincidental, or perhaps the VMS designer saw them in a manuscript or on an amulet and simply borrowed the shapes for some other purpose.
Whether there is "magic" in the VMS is, I believe, a separate question. Certainly it's possible that there might be. Magic and reality were pretty intimately entwined in the medieval mind.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 26-01-2020
There are two powerful reasons to think that we are facing a book with a magical component:
First, we see above all stars and herbs and a weird script whose function seems to be to channel the hidden powers of the stars to the herbs. It's like a spell.
And second, no equal document has survived, which is very rare and leads us to think that other identical books ended up at the stake of the inquisitors.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 31-01-2020
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This is the magic lantern of Giovanni Fontana and the projection of a devil. As Nick Pelling once wrote: there are plenty of similarities between Fontana’s enciphered book of secrets and the Voynich Manuscript.
Fontana, an engineer, imitates the power the magicians. He takes pride in being able to do what they do, make demons appear for example. But it is an ambivalent game. He shows the mechanism of his artifacts, wants not to be confused with a magician. This confusion is dangerous. It's what explains that he uses a cipher that doesn't hide anything. He just wants to imitate magic writing, but with intelligible meaning. He invents characters with lines and small circles that look like the signs we see in astral magic. But they are characters that are easily replaced by Latin letters.
The VM breathes the same cultural environment. The author has made a science book using natural magic and he uses a magical script to invoke the astral spirits. Maybe he too, like Fontana, doesn't want to be confused with a magician and he makes a script that resembles ordinary writing with glyphs that look like letters.
It could be an explanation to what we see. For me, the meaning of the VM script is almost as intelligible as Fontana's. It's so obvious that it doesn't look. One c is a position of the Moon, two cc is another position and three ccc another. It's that simple. The script is a combination of astronomical symbols that work as a spell.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Aga Tentakulus - 01-02-2020
Is it really that simple?
Maybe you're right about c cc ccc as moon phases.
But the moon also has the other possibility.
( (( ((( O ))) )) ).
Why don't I see that, and what about the other glyphs ?
RE: No text, but a visual code - RenegadeHealer - 02-02-2020
(01-02-2020, 04:45 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Is it really that simple?
Maybe you're right about c cc ccc as moon phases.
But the moon also has the other possibility.
( (( ((( O ))) )) ).
Why don't I see that, and what about the other glyphs ?
You post gave me a sudden fleeting urge to put on my finest tinfoil hat and start talking about how Stolfi’s terms “core, mantle, and crust” are originally planetological terms.
@Antonio, several VMS researchers have come up with flowcharts for building a valid Voynichese word. It would be interesting to see a comparison of all the Build-a-Vord algorithms devised thus far, to see which of them is capable of generating A) the greatest number of unique types in the manuscript, and B) the largest fraction of VMS text, taking type-token ratio into account.
If we had a set of rules that accounted for >95% of types and/or tokens, it would seem to me one could calculate a reasonable estimate for the number of possible states, for each sequential step in the vord-building process, and for the system as a whole. By way of comparison, each of the four components of an IP address has 256 possible values, so 256*256*256*256 is the number of possible unique IP addresses. I’d be interested in seeing what factors make up this number in the best Build-a-Vord algorithm we’ve got.
If Voynichese is a conlang directly expressing meaning (rather than vocal sounds), or as you put it a visual code, breaking the system down into component degrees of freedom and the number of possible values for each, might give us a clue as to what sorts of information packets the system would be ideal for recording. If the VMS is meaningful but not linguistic, then given the small glyph inventory, rigid glyph positioning, and low Shannon entropy, a reasonable assumption is that it is practically and parsimoniously tailored to the type of data documentation it was designed for.
RE: No text, but a visual code - ReneZ - 02-02-2020
(02-02-2020, 03:45 AM)RenegadeHealer Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.256*256*256*256
It is not exactly the same point, but note that there are some 8000+ different Voynich words (word types).
Now 24*24*24 is 13,824 which is clearly more than the different number of Voynich word types, so they can be easily represented by three Greek letters.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 02-02-2020
I think statistics can help but honestly I don't think it's the fundamental thing. There is too much current science in an object that belongs to another mental orbit. The VM, with weird plants, weird astronomical and cosmological illustrations and more rare illustrations of naked ladies that actually represent zodiac stars, is almost certainly a treatise on astrological magic and therefore our way of reasoning is of little use.
Just to start, it's just an assumption that the script is an alphabet or any linguistic system. From the moment you replace the glyphs with letters you are adulterating the script and it prevents you from seeing its internal logic. The glyph with the shape of half moon represent for me the Moon, and also two cc and three ccc. The benches with two cc connected are also other positions of the Moon. All have the same shape. And also the c behaves just like the glyph that looks like an i. There is an i, two ii and three iii which are actually marks in the sphere as we see in the astronomical clock of the Rosettes folio.
The 'vords' of the VM or string of astronomical symbols have a rigid structure but not the sequence of strings. The author composed the script with at least three rotating disks containing the rigid structure of glyphs, but how he moved the disks to make the symbol chains might be something belonging to some magical rite.
RE: No text, but a visual code - davidjackson - 02-02-2020
(02-02-2020, 07:29 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.From the moment you replace the glyphs with letters you are adulterating the script and it prevents you from seeing its internal logic.I most certainly agree with that!
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 08-02-2020
Sorry for talking about imagery, but in my theory script and images are strongly related. The understanding of the images helps to understand the iconic script.
Look at theses images
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The first image shows an thurifer with a censer. This container resembles some we see in the pharmaceutical section of the VM. The second image is a painting of Salomon and the queen of Saba by Konrad Witz. The queen offers the king a container that looks like some we see in the Rosettes. Probably this container is also a censer, which has to do with the characters, both considered magicians.
What these images show is the internal relationship of the Rosettes folio, which is a cosmological diagram, with the folios of herbs. It is the stars that give their properties to medicinal aromatic herbs.
It is essential to understand the Rosettes folio, since it is a representation of the celestial influence on Earth. Next to a T-O map there is a castle or city that is a representation of Arin (also written Aren, Arim, Aryn), the city in the center of the Earth, the Dome of the World, as medieval astronomers and geographers believed.
RE: No text, but a visual code - -JKP- - 12-02-2020
Westerners generally considered Jerusalem as the center of the world. Sometimes the "new Jerusalem" (a mythical place of precious stones and 15 gates) was depicted as the spiritual center.
I think Arim (cupola of the earth) was the middle-eastern center of the world. It doesn't seem likely that middle-eastern towers would be drawing western castles unless it was a westerner who was trying to draw something middle-eastern using western attributes.
The Indians had Ujjaim ("heaven on earth") which is actually at 0° longitude. It also doesn't seem likely that Indian towers would be drawn as western castles.