Morten St George Theory

[Morten St. George]

You still haven't explained the one that is clearly 8 letters and you seem to be selectively ignoring the first one which is one letter and explaining it with a different explanation, which is a questionable way to do it.

You were referring to the following sequence:

• t • oexoraba •

As we saw on the Sigillum Doornenburgensis, the first "t" gets changed into a "h". So that explains it: the "oexoraba" are static letters and the "t" is momentarily separated from them awaiting transition to a "h" which will then merge with "oexoraba" to form "hoexoraba", that is, the first of 8 sets of 9 letters. More crucial at the moment is determining whether or not we need to make use of those sets such as, for example, in a polygonal rearrangement of the order of the Latin letters that were initially extracted.

In an earlier post, I theorized that the glyphs f and p are connected with the Latin letters "u" and "h". It is therefore rather intriguing that the 72-letter name now begins with the letter "h". As you know, a great many of the paragraphs in quire 20 begin with the p glyph. Thus, one can imagine a link between the beginning of the great name and the beginning of paragraphs, whereby the paragraphs of glyphs beginning with p (along with the four groups of 17 glyphs) run around the circle of 72 Latin letters starting with its first letter (the "h").

In other words, the f and p may be position markers reigning over the entire paragraph, and each time one of those glyphs is reached in the first line, the rest of the paragraph might shift to the beginning of the circle accordingly. Thus, depending upon where you place a f or p, you can pretty much make any glyph in quire 20 convert into any Latin letter you so wish as long as a) the respective glyph can be found in the sequences of 17 and b) the letter can be found among the 72 letters of the divine name. Those 72 happen to include all Latin letters except for the "u" (but the "v" can probably substitute for that) and the "h" which can be deemed silent and not needed ("But the Records write it, as it is spoken").

In view of the failure of the great cryptographers of the 20th century to decode the VMS, it seems many people have assumed that VMS encoding must be extremely complex. But that might not be the case. Do you know if any of those cryptographers considered utilizing the divine name of 72 letters in their decoding efforts? Without the divine name, so it seems, it would be virtually impossible to decode the VMS.

My guess is that many of the cryptographers believed the VMS was largely a botanical catalogue and never realized that it could be attempting to depict the mystical plants of King Solomon ("To conclude this point, the example of Salomon is before the rest, and greater, whose wisdome and knowledge was such, that he was able to set out the nature of all plantes"), thereby making little or no effort to study the Solomonic grimoires that were popular in Europe during the late Middle Ages. But John Dee was familiar with those grimoires and surely that could explain why they succeeded in decoding the VMS.

Note that if you were to ask someone to draw mystical plants, he or she would almost certainly be influenced by plants seen in his or her past life. Thus, it is inevitable that some of the VMS plants would wholly or partly resemble real plants but that does not change the fact that those plants are mystical (my recent research leads me to that conclusion). In other words, people hoping for the recovery of secret cooking recipes from the Middle Ages are likely to be disappointed. For the plants depicted in the pharmaceutical section, however, the verdict is still out.

Note that as an excuse for the modern decoding failure, the existence of a missing code book containing thousands of tokens is sometimes postulated. But thousands of tokens are not needed. With the wheels on f57v, all that is needed is a code book (a sigillum dei) containing a mere 72 letters!

While I'm here, I have two more questions for you:



In the top image, you see the second word of marginalia on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (the quite visible "17" is still another pointer to the sigillum dei on f57v). In the lower image, you see a section of the list of divine names from the Summa Sacrae Magicae of AD 1346. Do you see any possibility of a connection between the two?

The "allar" on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is followed by:



Easiest to distinguish seem to be the Latin "u" in the middle of the first word and the Latin "h" at the beginning of the next word. As you know, the "u" and "h" are all-crucial because they cannot be found among the 72 Latin letters of the divine name.

Do you think the first character (just to left of the "u") could be an alternative way of writing the glyph k ? The reason I ask is because when a quire 20 paragraph does not begin with a f or a p, it tends to begin with a k or a t. Unlike the f and p, however, the k and t appear on all four sets of 17 glyphs.

Conclusion: The four "tower" glyphs (f k p t) may have some connection with the Latin letters "h" and "u" and may play a critical role in positioning the lines of quire 20 glyphs around the circles of the sigillum dei.

The possibilities seem endless and time is scarce, but still I remain optimistic of becoming able to repeat some of the 16th-century decoding within the next five or six months.