The yellow/blue cube in f102v2

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There are a number of similarities between the VMS script and alchemical symbols, for example. I've included a table excerpted from M.E. D'Imperio's The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma (p.120). The source of this appears to be "Die Geheimsymbole der Alchymie, Arzneikunde und Astrologie des Mittelalters" by G.W.Gessmann, 1922.

The most notable similarities being the EVA:k and EVA:t symbols meaning "to prepare" and "urine" respectively. (The symbol for "month" also looks like the symbol found on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. : You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

When this was posted in 2016, I downloaded two different editions of Die Geheimsymbole der Alchymie, Arzneikunde und Astrologie des Mittelalters and went through them several times.

It's called symbols of the "Mittelalters" but there are actually very few symbols from the Middle Ages. Most of them are what we would now consider to be Renaissance-age symbols and some of them are post-Renaissance. Since that time I have kept my eyes open for these symbols in manuscripts and relatively few can be found in early 15th-century manuscripts and they are usually not the ones that look like VMS glyphs.


Alchemy symbols are like talismanic symbols. They are very numerous and diverse. Even so, and even though I have tried to locate them in early codexes, I have not found very much overlap between the early alchemical symbols and VMS symbols. In fact, it's difficult to find alchemical symbols from the late 1300s and very early 1400s, compared to the many that appeared in the very late 1400s, 1500s and 1600s when alchemy was popular and was evolving into early modern chemistry.


If you look at the 48 references at the end of Die Geheimsymbole der Alchymie, Arzneikunde und Astrologie des Mittelalters (what is called a list of relevant works), the dates range from 1597 to 1832, with no mention of any 14th or 15th-century manuscripts.


Internet Archive has a catalog of the James Kelley collection of alchemical books (quite extensive), some of which are earlier than those in the previous reference. It was published in 1906:

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This Rylands manuscript is quite interesting You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. but it too is from the 1600s.