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Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript - JoJo_Jost - 21-12-2025
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....
RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript - oshfdk - 21-12-2025
To me it sounds a bit like the glossolalia explanation with extra steps. But then if only part of the text are magic incantations and the rest is some meaningful text, this is for all practical purposes a verbose null-heavy cipher, like what Mark Knowles is investigating.
For me the main problem with this is that the text appears mostly uniform, I see no obvious way to split it into "gibberish-like" and "meaningful-like" parts.
RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript - Rafal - 21-12-2025
Actually magic incantations like "marix morix vix fix" are almost the same as gibberish.
And yes, if you ask me, they would fit the structure of VM text.
You may check the thread below. This solution has several weak points but I like the fake Latin he generates. Our incantations could
be something like that:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
PAICAS.CUNNULIS.ATER.UMUM.INALIS.INORUS.MINIRIS.CUM.NATUR.INOTTUS
SORUS.FINIATER.ATUR.CUM.NUL.IMUM.INATER.ARI.MINIATER.MINIATER.SAD
I could even find an explanation with someone write all book with such "trash". He could believe that some divine power assisted him
when he generated that and later when he repeats it over some normal tincture from valerian, it suddenly gets the power of curing cancer.
Or he could be a charlatan which is almost the same
RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript - JoJo_Jost - 21-12-2025
(21-12-2025, 07:30 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I could even find an explanation with someone write all book with such "trash". He could believe that some divine power assisted him when he generated that...
Yes, I've thought about that too – neither a hoax nor a text, but someone who thinks he has received divine wisdom and writes pages of magic spells that are quasi ‘inspired’ to him. Perhaps he even unconsciously uses some of the usual names from common texts. There are striking similarities to some ‘real’ incantations (which, from today's perspective, were probably also just the product of imagination). The problem is that the structure of the VMS texts is almost nearly always the same. If that were the case, we would never find a translation, nor be able to prove that it is fantasy / hoax.
Example text:
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
aiam: three vowels, one consonant, slightly variable: (aiam / ayam / ayan / aion)
This is reminiscent of aiin, also three vowels and variations: aiin daiin otaiin okaiin
eley
Reminiscent of Voynich
Cheey, sheey, keey yteol, sheol
and hyy
barely a language, just a breath sound and vowel (hii or hueue)
reminiscent of y, dy, shy oty – typical Voynich endings.
(of course, this is not proof, nor is it intended to be, it is merely to show that there are certain similarities.)
But at the moment, I still hope that with such a basic idea, one might still find meaning in VMS.
RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript - JoJo_Jost - 22-12-2025
Deleted post.
Luckily, I had specifically written that it was created with Chat GPT, and indeed it is incorrect. So that you don't have to read it first, I have now edited and deleted it. Sorry.
I will now check it manually, which will take some time.
RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript - JoJo_Jost - 22-12-2025
Sorry, I made a mistake when doing the same analysis for the rest of the text. The underlying file had incorrect paragraph marks. (Rezipes Part
) I'll have to do it again later...
RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript - nablator - 22-12-2025
(22-12-2025, 07:46 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have listed them here:
ChatGPT got bored after the first 5 lines and decided to hallucinate the rest of the list .
RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript - JoJo_Jost - 22-12-2025
(22-12-2025, 11:47 AM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.ChatGPT got bored after the first 5 lines and decided to hallucinate the rest of the list .
How annoying that is. I always say never trust Chat GPT. I checked the first ones, great... then I told Chat GPT he had made a mistake – that's actually a trick to get him to check everything again.
Okay, sorry. My mistake, I should have checked that better.
RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript - nablator - 22-12-2025
I checked some patterns in paragraphs like: 4 consecutive words, all starting with the 3 same EVA characters. The list starts with 3 lines that are 3rd from the last line of the paragraph so I thought I had something... but no.
f30r.11 (3rd from last line of paragraph) qotchor cheor chey cheor chey soeeb ydey sor daiin
f38v.6 (3rd from last line of paragraph) sho keeey key tey daiin daiiin dain dain
f42r.13 (3rd from last line of paragraph) qopor shol shot shol shol daiin dain s cheam
f47r.7 schesy kchor cthaiin chol chol chol chor ckhhey
f66r.54 (3rd from last line of paragraph) qokeeody qokeody qokeody qokar sheky qokeeody okedy kodary
f75r.13 pchedy keedy qokedy qokedy qokedy qokedy qokain olshedy
f75r.38 qokeedy qokeedy qokedy qokedy qokeedy ldy
f76r.34 chear shey qoalkal shedy shedy shey shedy ollchy shlches shcthy sain oly
f77r.19 qokeedy lchey lsheey qokeedy qokeedy qokar qokeey laiin chey
f86v6.30 polkeey tshed qopchey paroiin chefchy qopar qopchedy qopydaiin qopary
f101r.6 okeeol sho shody sho shol okeeeol cheas sheokeey sheeor chchy chodaiin cheeckhey teeol s cheol sar oeeor
f103r.37 (3rd from last line of paragraph) pchedy qokeey qokeodair qokshy qokeedy qokeedy chsty shey shalky
f111r.42 qokeol qokal qokeeol cholkedy l chedy chedy chedyteakain chedy lkam am
RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript - JoJo_Jost - 22-12-2025
Weird lines in the VMS
So now, without ChatGPT, I examined everything manually myself.
Building on the Charms hypothesis outlined above, I was interested in how this could be verified using the manuscript layout itself. To do this, I wanted to know where the most extreme of these weird lines actually occur.
By ‘weird lines’ I mean lines that are dominated by repetitions, minimal letter shifts and derived word chains, whereby semantic differentiation seems to be secondary to phonetic and rhythmic variations.
If such lines function as incantations in the sense of voces magicae, one would expect them not to be distributed randomly. As in some charms, they would probably appear at the end of a text unit, where the spoken formula completes the potentially descriptive text.
And indeed, in the Herbal section, many of these weird lines are found at the end of the page (i.e. in the last or penultimate line).
This supports the thesis that they could be charms, litanies or spells.
If this is the case, it could mean the following: Since the words often appear more frequently in the overall text, the entire text would probably be interspersed with such spells, which would explain the many repetitions and similar words.
They are probably spells that invoke the power of plants so that they do not have to be used materially, and then in the later parts, the power of the planets, spells for strange vessels (I do not yet know what is to be conjured with the nymphs, and perhaps I do not want to know
) would be conceivable.This, in turn, would perfectly explain why the VMS has not yet been deciphered and why there are such strange, seemingly contradictory statistical results. Whether such a text, riddled with magical phrases, could really reflect these statistical results perfectly would probably have to be clarified by the researchers who carried out these tests. I am not familiar enough with this area.
The worst thing about it would be that, if a coherent translation were found, the texts could look like strong ‘eisegesis’ – a terrible thought.
For how could one then prove that it is the correct translation?
As I said, many of these weird lines actually appear at the end of a page (last or penultimate line). I have highlighted the pages where this is the case with an orange background. The weird lines themselves are marked in green. (Otherwise, you can still see where words are repeated directly (red) and where words appear next to each other that differ by only one letter). Please excuse the long image, but I cannot display it any other way.
But first, here is a list of the weird lines i found, then you can help decide whether they belong or not (if two lines are next to each other, they should be read together)[and sorry for the long image, I don't know how else to display it.]
<f1v 8> okolshol kol kechy chol kychol cthol chody chol daiin
<f1r 27> ?eo? chol chok choty chotey
<f3r 4> schey chor chal chag cham cho
<f4r 8> shor shol shol cthy cpholdy
<f4r 12> soiin chaiin chain
<f5r 6> sho cheor chey qoeeey qoykeeey qoeor cthy shotshy
<f8r 18> okar cfhaiin chaiin cldaiin chor cha rchealcham
<f13r 3> s y dchor shaiin oeees ykor chor ytshy ykchy kchy dar
<f15v 9> otchol octhol chol chol chody kan
<f16v 9> dshy okaiin okaiin chol chor cthor ty chody
<f19r 11> qotchy qolody choldy cthyd
<f19v 13> yees ykchol oty ytor ytar ytchor ytaiin
<f20r 9> fchodees shody qotchey qokchey qocphy chokoldy
<f21r 6> dchor y kol y ky chol kol qokeol chol ol qoteeol dady
<f21r 11> shol chol shol tchol chcthy otyky shey yteol shody
<f25r 5> qotcheaiin dchain cthain daiin daiin cthain qotaiin <f25r 6> okal chotaiin
<f25v 6> qokcho r ochy qotchy qotoralcho @147; chain deeaiir s
<f26r 9> tcheoshy dchdy okedy chckhy sdydyykeechy okeedy cheky
<f26v 5> deeol cheody qoteedy qokody qotedy qotedy opchedy ofchy chs ar
<f27r 4> qokey chor char chy dchy keeychos cthody
<f27v 2> dchy chkar otchy shy shy dchy dshy kchy cheo daidy dchy
<f30r 11> qotchor cheor chey cheor chey so[eeb:een]ydeysor daiin
<f31r 10> tol shso okedy okedy qokedy qokeedy dar shedshey
<f31r 11> olsheol qokchy dal chey deey kchy keey okaiiin ykeey
<f33r 4> taiin chekey or al aiiin saiin okaiin dar cheedy chkeey far aiin s
<f33r 6> yteey shody kchedy dy chekar okaiin okaiin daiin okal
<f34v 1> k[e': s]chdy chdy chefchy shdy qopchdy shdydy chdalchdy ypchdy chcthdy spaiin
<f37v 4> dshor dytory dshor daiin <f37v 5> dchor qotol ykchon dain <f37v 6> yokor ytchor saiin oty
<f38v 6> sho keeey key tey daiin daiiin dain dain
<f40r 9> taiin ol olaiin ordain okaiin okaiin okaiin daram
<f42r 10> choty dol ksheo cthor otol cthol cholshol dain
<f42r 13> qopor shol shot shol shol daiin dain scheam
<f42r 20> shol chol shoky okol sho chol shol chal <f42r 21> shol chol chol shol ctoiin c'os odan
<f42v 3> sho chotody chotol oky chol choldl chcthy otoy
<f43r 3> yty yty oty she ody shy olor yteedy kaiin chky qotydy dar aiin ykam
<f43r 12> dor shol qokol shedy qotedy qokeedy qokody okeedy otedy shedy oty yty dy saiin
<f44r 9> otchol ol dchckhy qoky qotchy qokchy qokyd <f44r 10> qokchor okchy qoto ykol choky choky chol dam
<f44v 11> okal chol chol choky okaiin cthy otal
<f47r 6> folr chey so chol shol aiin shol shol chdy cholol
<f49v 40 > oaiin chy daiin chol chaiin kshardychokchy
<f54r 10> tor ol dol or chol chol ckhol okol okyytchor ol koldy
<f55v 5> qokaiin chaiin ykain ykan odydaiin chedy talam
<f56r 1> o@167;chal chchs@168;y oty esedy chy ychocphy chorchy chy
<f56r 4> qot chor chor chokor chkor chyokar chdy
<f56v 14> chol cheo kchol chol choky chotor
<f56v 15> otchol chol chol daiin chotaiin
<f57r 3> qokeeody cheooky qokeody sheey okeody cheody cheeody cheekeody <f57r 4> dchos cheocthy cheody qot[ee:ch]ody octhody okeeody chteody cheody s
<f65v 5> dshedy okeody qokdshckhy choky chokeody okey dy
<f66r 5> qokeeody qokeody qokeody qokar sheky qokeeody okedy kodary <f66r 6> ykeeody choekeey okeody chekeody qokeey dyky chctho rotaiin