John Dee Exhibit 2016

[-JKP-]

Another figure that might have come in contact with the Voynich Manuscript or a remote chance Authored it was John Dee.  In fact, he was born to Welsh man, Roland Dee and perhaps new the Welsh Language.  John Dee was an Astrologer, Numerologist, Alchemist, Scientist and involved with the Occult.  Below is a doodle by Dee's hand and what is interesting is the two Voynich glyph's at the end of two words.  Dee and Kelly were welcomed into Rudolf the II court.



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The shapes at the ends of the words were ubiquitous in Gothic scripts of the late 14th, 15th and early 16th centuries and some of these shapes, especially those common to Gothic cursiva, continued to be used for quite some time into the Renaissance and beyond.

In the late middle ages, European handwriting that didn't have these abbreviations and flourishes was actually less common than hands that did.


Even in modern scripts, we still sometimes see "w" with a tail over it (or a line over it) to represent the word "with", which is just one example of a hold-over from medieval abbreviations.

Then why does the two words express Class and Navigate? If so would it read, "Class with Navigation, navigate with"?

Tom, I didn't say the word in Dee's writing was "with". Read my post again. It was an example.


I said that these forms of abbreviations were ubiquitous in the middle ages and that we continue to use some of them up until the present time. The word "with" illustrates how we still use a line or swooped-back tail to indicate that letters are missing (as was common in medieval abbreviations).

The tails that swoop up mean something different in each language but they are all used in roughly the same way. They mean that the ending letters are missing (as in "w" with a line for "with") or that the letters just before the last letters are missing. In some cases, they are merely flourishes.


You cannot assume that John Dee's writing matches or looks like the VMS script simply because Dee used common flourishes and abbreviation conventions that existed in the 15th century and continued to be used, in a more limited way, in succeeding centuries. Handwriting has to be studied and compared in much more depth and preferably with additional samples. The similarities you pointed out are superficial. They are not "Voynich glyphs" they are 15th-, 16th-, and sometimes 17th-century glyphs.