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+--- Thread: First thought (/thread-6110.html)
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First thought - Joerg Fuchs - 23-09-2026
My first thought when floating over the symbols and pictures was: I´ve seen similar things before. In books and museums regarding to Outsider Art or known as art of people with mental diseases. In Heidelberg / Germany is a very well known museum with art produced by mental disordererd people collected since the 1920s.
Many of those artists were not accepted as artist because they were mentioned as lunatics, crazy ones etc.
But if you take a closer look at certain cases (Heinrich Grebing, Franz-Karl Buehler, Josef Forster et al) you´ll find cryptographed information and drawings of another reality. So what if the Voynich was created by a person with mental illness? I wouldn´t wonder if something like that has happened - and it would make sense because those persons work very detailed and have no limitations in their fantasy. Even if it´s just a thought of mine, you can visit the PRinzhorn Sammlung online You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as well as you can read a lot of books and articles about it all over the world.
RE: First thought - ololololo - 23-09-2026
Wow! Finally, this theory is being discussed here!
But the only thing is that it doesn’t work out with a few scribes. Moreover, I think these scribes were also artists in their respective fields. In other words, either one crazy person hired the scribes, or they’re all crazy…
The nuance of this theory also lies in what we mean by the concept of a madman. How crazy was he? How did this manifest itself? As I recall, the first researchers on this topic wrote that VMS could have been written under the influence of something like “voices in the head,” but I don’t think that voices in the head alone bothered people in the Middle Ages. It could be some kind of graphomania, a form of epilepsy, problems with learning or perception (e.g., the astrological section. It’s quite possible that this is simply reference material, copied by the author in a way similar to “from a textbook into a notebook,” but “from another manuscript into one’s own manuscript.” Look at f68v3 and f67r2).
It would be nice if you could demonstrate a few examples of such art that you find interesting. Personally, I know very little about this kind of thing.
But for now, in the form of an assumption (i.e., if we don’t go into too much detail), it can explain everything. And it’s quite unconventional...
RE: First thought - DG97EEB - 23-09-2026
My own research on Geheimschrift in the 1400s suggests that this was perfectly normal... I'm yet to find the exact alphabet, but there was a significant seam of Southern Germans writing in made up alphabets at the time. I'm not sure you need to go as far as to have a mental illness to validate the script...
RE: First thought - ololololo - 23-09-2026
(23-09-2026, 09:14 PM)DG97EEB wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm yet to find the exact alphabet, but there was a significant seam of Southern Germans writing in made up alphabets at the time.Are there any examples other than runic alphabets?
(23-09-2026, 09:14 PM)DG97EEB wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm not sure you need to go as far as to have a mental illness to validate the script...This is an oversimplification. It’s one thing to “write in a non‑standard alphabet,” and quite another to “write a non‑standard book.” In the case of VMS, it’s not just about the alphabet.
RE: First thought - DG97EEB - 23-09-2026
(23-09-2026, 09:34 PM)ololololo wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(23-09-2026, 09:14 PM)DG97EEB wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm yet to find the exact alphabet, but there was a significant seam of Southern Germans writing in made up alphabets at the time.Are there any examples other than runic alphabets?
(23-09-2026, 09:14 PM)DG97EEB wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm not sure you need to go as far as to have a mental illness to validate the script...This is an oversimplification. It’s one thing to “write in a non‑standard alphabet,” and quite another to “write a non‑standard book.” In the case of VMS, it’s not just about the alphabet.
Here's one.. mid 15th I think...
Read the Geheimschrift project documents.. I posted the link on JOjO's Bavarian thread.. I think that's a failure of imagination, honestly.. I'm personally getting to a point after almost a year day in, day out where nothing about this book is actually unusual... It's so very obviously of its time and place (by which I infer Germany/northern Italy) that the only thing we lack is the person that wrote it and what if anything it says... But we may never ever know, because so few manuscripts still exist... I love the mystery, but I no longer look at it and find it strange..
RE: First thought - DG97EEB - 23-09-2026
And this is second half of the 15th century in Bavaria... Have a look at the gallows.. not encrypted at all - in fact the word is "item", but note how it's slightly different each time, quite naturally.. and what do we see in Voynich? Gallows some closed, some open, some full, some half... Turns out that is pretty normal...https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb00122140?page=132 - what's less normal is they're in the middle of words in Voynich..
RE: First thought - tavie - 23-09-2026
Outsider art (not necessarily of the mentally ill) was also discussed on the forum You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
RE: First thought - Linda - 24-09-2026
(23-09-2026, 11:13 PM)DG97EEB wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - in fact the word it item
It=is for anyone else whose brain tripped over that and kept wondering how you read that word.
I actually feel like the vms text could be based on such handwriting, where they pondered over what the word says. So for instance at first glance I called the resulting gallows looking thing an H in my head.(i thought someone was writing a story about a guy named Hans) Hence my own vms writing might encode "It" by writing "H", no matter where it might be, just because it becomes a mnemonic for future recognition of such writing, including my own copy of it. ShH. Except Sh would probably be its own glyph too.
RE: First thought - JustAnotherTheory - 24-09-2026
Wow, nice find with the gallows @You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. In the last paragraph to the right you also have "so nim", that somewhat ressembles f116v.
EDIT: the last page of this MS also seems to have a charm and a (Jewish?) incantation:
This MS is starting to look interesting.
RE: First thought - DG97EEB - 24-09-2026
Cheers.. I also add a so nym and geys milch here You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.