26-12-2025, 04:02 PM
The attempt to create a personality profile of the author.
Perhaps it would be appropriate at this point to proceed more like a profiler rather than continuing to discuss the nature of the text. In the following text, I will therefore not concern myself with what the Voynich text is, but rather with who could have written something like this in the first place. If one seriously puts oneself in the shoes of the person who produced such a uniform text over 200 pages, one might just find the keys one needs.
There are many explanations for the Voynich manuscript: pure hoax, hoax based on a complex system, highly complex cipher, sophisticated language, foreign languages, phonological constructions, and so on. Even the idea of ‘a madman writing nonsense’ has been discussed – and then rejected because the text is statistically far too consistent for that. That is also correct.
But what strikes me more and more is that the less the text is understood despite all the research, the more the discussion slips in the direction of ‘it must be something complex’. And that is precisely what I consider to be a fallacy. ‘Not random’ does not automatically imply ‘highly complex’ – we should be aware of that.
The Voynich text does not have to be brilliant to seem extremely strange. On the contrary, it may have been created in a frighteningly simple way.
So: who could have written something like this?
At first, one quickly arrives at pathological explanations: schizophrenia, delusion, compulsion. But the longer one thinks about it, the less it fits. The text is too calm, too stable, too uniform for that. Rather, everything points to a completely different type of person.
One can imagine someone who, inspired by spiritual belief, writes down page after page of ritual formulas. This does not require a creative explosion, but rather monothematic concentration – a skill that was by no means rare in the Middle Ages. This is not a diffuse zeal, but a calm, long-lasting fixation on a very limited formal space. Such people can remain in the same semantic and formal cosmos for months or years without feeling fatigue. On the contrary: it is precisely the repetition and the narrow structure that have a stabilising effect. Order does not arise from diversity, but from reduction.
If we transfer this to a ritual context, it becomes clear that repetition is not a means to an end here, but the actual vehicle of the effect. This has less to do with compulsion than with religious practice. Security arises from the correct reproduction of effective patterns, not from variation or originality.
This is also consistent with a low need for social feedback. The text is not intended to be understood, admired or discussed. Its motivation would be intrinsic and transcendent: for God, for effectiveness, for order. In this light, abbreviations, codes or peculiar symbols would not be a mystery, but simply part of a private, functional practice.
And here, for me, comes the crucial point: the writer most likely did not have access to comprehensive knowledge. No deep understanding of the actual structures of litanies, incantations or theological systems. Rather, a limited horizon: a few books, a limited education, perhaps a small monastery, perhaps marginal knowledge.
When someone like this tries to devise magic formulas or spiritual incantations – firmly believing that they are doing the right thing – they inevitably fall back on the same things over and over again. On the few patterns, words and functions that they are familiar with. And they would slightly change and adapt these again and again. This would explain the extreme uniformity. Not chaos, but reuse. The same building blocks over and over again.
This is not nonsense. It is ritual. And the problem would be that statistical systems and other attempts at decryption would fail with something like this.
Statistics refute coincidence, yes. But they do not refute monotonous, formulaic production. On the contrary: this is exactly how stable Zipf curves, strong repetitions and this strange inner coherence of the Voynich text arise.
And now the uncomfortable thought: such texts arise more from limited knowledge than from deep understanding. Anyone who truly mastered the spiritual system would have varied it. Anyone who only knows it partially can only repeat themselves, over and over again, and very consistently.
Maybe we are looking for something that isn't there. Not because the text is too difficult, but because we assume it has more depth than it perhaps does.
Perhaps it would be appropriate at this point to proceed more like a profiler rather than continuing to discuss the nature of the text. In the following text, I will therefore not concern myself with what the Voynich text is, but rather with who could have written something like this in the first place. If one seriously puts oneself in the shoes of the person who produced such a uniform text over 200 pages, one might just find the keys one needs.
There are many explanations for the Voynich manuscript: pure hoax, hoax based on a complex system, highly complex cipher, sophisticated language, foreign languages, phonological constructions, and so on. Even the idea of ‘a madman writing nonsense’ has been discussed – and then rejected because the text is statistically far too consistent for that. That is also correct.
But what strikes me more and more is that the less the text is understood despite all the research, the more the discussion slips in the direction of ‘it must be something complex’. And that is precisely what I consider to be a fallacy. ‘Not random’ does not automatically imply ‘highly complex’ – we should be aware of that.
The Voynich text does not have to be brilliant to seem extremely strange. On the contrary, it may have been created in a frighteningly simple way.
So: who could have written something like this?
At first, one quickly arrives at pathological explanations: schizophrenia, delusion, compulsion. But the longer one thinks about it, the less it fits. The text is too calm, too stable, too uniform for that. Rather, everything points to a completely different type of person.
One can imagine someone who, inspired by spiritual belief, writes down page after page of ritual formulas. This does not require a creative explosion, but rather monothematic concentration – a skill that was by no means rare in the Middle Ages. This is not a diffuse zeal, but a calm, long-lasting fixation on a very limited formal space. Such people can remain in the same semantic and formal cosmos for months or years without feeling fatigue. On the contrary: it is precisely the repetition and the narrow structure that have a stabilising effect. Order does not arise from diversity, but from reduction.
If we transfer this to a ritual context, it becomes clear that repetition is not a means to an end here, but the actual vehicle of the effect. This has less to do with compulsion than with religious practice. Security arises from the correct reproduction of effective patterns, not from variation or originality.
This is also consistent with a low need for social feedback. The text is not intended to be understood, admired or discussed. Its motivation would be intrinsic and transcendent: for God, for effectiveness, for order. In this light, abbreviations, codes or peculiar symbols would not be a mystery, but simply part of a private, functional practice.
And here, for me, comes the crucial point: the writer most likely did not have access to comprehensive knowledge. No deep understanding of the actual structures of litanies, incantations or theological systems. Rather, a limited horizon: a few books, a limited education, perhaps a small monastery, perhaps marginal knowledge.
When someone like this tries to devise magic formulas or spiritual incantations – firmly believing that they are doing the right thing – they inevitably fall back on the same things over and over again. On the few patterns, words and functions that they are familiar with. And they would slightly change and adapt these again and again. This would explain the extreme uniformity. Not chaos, but reuse. The same building blocks over and over again.
This is not nonsense. It is ritual. And the problem would be that statistical systems and other attempts at decryption would fail with something like this.
Statistics refute coincidence, yes. But they do not refute monotonous, formulaic production. On the contrary: this is exactly how stable Zipf curves, strong repetitions and this strange inner coherence of the Voynich text arise.
And now the uncomfortable thought: such texts arise more from limited knowledge than from deep understanding. Anyone who truly mastered the spiritual system would have varied it. Anyone who only knows it partially can only repeat themselves, over and over again, and very consistently.
Maybe we are looking for something that isn't there. Not because the text is too difficult, but because we assume it has more depth than it perhaps does.