https://www.voynich.ninja/ Fri, 01 May 2026 17:31:01 +0000 MyBB https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5666.html Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:08:34 +0000 pieterneyer@yahoo.com]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5666.html Register or Login to view.

Since the VM was connected to Pierleone Leoni of Spoleto he was working for Lorenzo de Medici, but they all fall under a Philosophical umbrella of Neoplatism and translations of Byzantine Greek manuscripts. This lead back to the Plato Society formed by Marsilo Ficino who translated the Corpus Hermeticum commissioned by Cosmio de Medici. Ficino,wrote The Vita Libres Tres and this health book when interpreted correctly translates to the VM data and How glyphs work. I am also defending another user here and her work (Christine) who got kicked off here. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Christine worked out the glyphs based of Ficino's philosophical work and astrological timing.She is currently translating pages and could get some help and small support. The VM is not a phonetic system or a language it is based of astrological timing and drawing of energies during specific period of the day that aligns with Greek thought and Medici/Florentine thought.

I'am not starting a fight here. Just thought I would help someone I have been learning alot from. And Yes I know about the dating of the VM, Ficino mentions this in his book that writing on older material captures energies.   s .Instruccusdf

  24.jpg (Size: 401.95 KB / Downloads: 58) ]]> Register or Login to view.

Since the VM was connected to Pierleone Leoni of Spoleto he was working for Lorenzo de Medici, but they all fall under a Philosophical umbrella of Neoplatism and translations of Byzantine Greek manuscripts. This lead back to the Plato Society formed by Marsilo Ficino who translated the Corpus Hermeticum commissioned by Cosmio de Medici. Ficino,wrote The Vita Libres Tres and this health book when interpreted correctly translates to the VM data and How glyphs work. I am also defending another user here and her work (Christine) who got kicked off here. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Christine worked out the glyphs based of Ficino's philosophical work and astrological timing.She is currently translating pages and could get some help and small support. The VM is not a phonetic system or a language it is based of astrological timing and drawing of energies during specific period of the day that aligns with Greek thought and Medici/Florentine thought.

I'am not starting a fight here. Just thought I would help someone I have been learning alot from. And Yes I know about the dating of the VM, Ficino mentions this in his book that writing on older material captures energies.   s .Instruccusdf

  24.jpg (Size: 401.95 KB / Downloads: 58) ]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5585.html Sun, 12 Apr 2026 20:13:11 +0000 CorwinFr]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5585.html   Voynich_Forum_Visual.pdf (Size: 360.12 KB / Downloads: 20)

I ran a computational parse of the full ZL v3b text and found something I'd like expert eyes on.

Each herbal folio starts with a unique word (f26v = `pched`, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. = `pcheod`, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. = `foch`). These same roots reappear embedded inside pharma compound words:

```
Herbal f26v:  pched              (standalone, the plant's code)
Pharma:        o.pched.y          (prefix + root + suffix)
              pched.al          (root + suffix)
```

53% of pharma openers (154/286) contain a herbal root. Compounds decompose as prefix (logogram) + root (content) + suffix (grammar). This is ID-agnostic: the pattern holds regardless of which plant is which.

I'm aware of King-Andrisani, Lunazzi's brachigraphy, and Stolfi's PAAFU. This seems to go beyond paragraph-initial position since it links two sections structurally, but I may be missing something obvious.

Has this herbal-pharma substring link been discussed before? Does it hold up?]]>   Voynich_Forum_Visual.pdf (Size: 360.12 KB / Downloads: 20)

I ran a computational parse of the full ZL v3b text and found something I'd like expert eyes on.

Each herbal folio starts with a unique word (f26v = `pched`, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. = `pcheod`, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. = `foch`). These same roots reappear embedded inside pharma compound words:

```
Herbal f26v:  pched              (standalone, the plant's code)
Pharma:        o.pched.y          (prefix + root + suffix)
              pched.al          (root + suffix)
```

53% of pharma openers (154/286) contain a herbal root. Compounds decompose as prefix (logogram) + root (content) + suffix (grammar). This is ID-agnostic: the pattern holds regardless of which plant is which.

I'm aware of King-Andrisani, Lunazzi's brachigraphy, and Stolfi's PAAFU. This seems to go beyond paragraph-initial position since it links two sections structurally, but I may be missing something obvious.

Has this herbal-pharma substring link been discussed before? Does it hold up?]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5570.html Sat, 11 Apr 2026 19:25:24 +0000 R. Sale]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5570.html
One example is the use of historical heraldry on VMs White Aries (f71r). The structural duality based on radial versus non-radial interpretations of the orientation of the two blue-striped tub patterns is a clear indication that this is intentional duplicity.

Does the reader know the armorial insignia of the Roman Catholic pope who instituted the tradition of the cardinal's red galero?]]>
One example is the use of historical heraldry on VMs White Aries (f71r). The structural duality based on radial versus non-radial interpretations of the orientation of the two blue-striped tub patterns is a clear indication that this is intentional duplicity.

Does the reader know the armorial insignia of the Roman Catholic pope who instituted the tradition of the cardinal's red galero?]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5568.html Sat, 11 Apr 2026 15:05:04 +0000 Tanay_alias_CG]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5568.html Some analyses suggest that certain visual features in the plant drawings (like root structure) might correlate with patterns in the text. That got me thinking about whether the different sections of the manuscript are more connected than they first appear.
What if the plant drawings aren’t meant to represent real plants, but instead combinations of different parts (like roots, stems, leaves) that stand for ingredients or categories?
Then the section with the women in liquid could be related to how those things affect the body, possibly something to do with reproduction or internal processes (not necessarily literal bathing).
And the zodiac diagrams might act as a timing system, since astrology was often linked to medicine back then.
So instead of separate sections, it could be one system where plants, the body, and astrology all interact.
I might be completely off, but I’m curious:
has anyone looked at whether these visual patterns (like root types or other structures) connect to specific kinds of outcomes in the biological or zodiac sections?
Just trying to see if linking these parts together leads anywhere.]]> Some analyses suggest that certain visual features in the plant drawings (like root structure) might correlate with patterns in the text. That got me thinking about whether the different sections of the manuscript are more connected than they first appear.
What if the plant drawings aren’t meant to represent real plants, but instead combinations of different parts (like roots, stems, leaves) that stand for ingredients or categories?
Then the section with the women in liquid could be related to how those things affect the body, possibly something to do with reproduction or internal processes (not necessarily literal bathing).
And the zodiac diagrams might act as a timing system, since astrology was often linked to medicine back then.
So instead of separate sections, it could be one system where plants, the body, and astrology all interact.
I might be completely off, but I’m curious:
has anyone looked at whether these visual patterns (like root types or other structures) connect to specific kinds of outcomes in the biological or zodiac sections?
Just trying to see if linking these parts together leads anywhere.]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5562.html Sat, 11 Apr 2026 05:18:39 +0000 oeesordy]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5562.html Register or Login to view. would appear only in a constructed language for a Glossolalia.  So just looking at these vords brings up a Glossolalia.  What is interesting is the number 8 corresponds to n meaning that the frequency hit is the same for the Glyph the number 8, d in eva and n in Latin.  So simply substituting Latin for eva than you can pronounce the word that was a Glossolalia dictionary term.  Latin used You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.!  I think the 8 was important, because it was matching frequencies of highest to lowest from both voynich glyph's and Latin Letters to show you the language to use.  N happens happens to be the 8th highest Latin letter pointing to Latin.  

So lets try daiin?  It would be pronounced "Octessr" when spoken in tongues.  So why did I not use n as in nessr.  Not only does Octessr sound like professor and its in Latin, it has 3 syllables.  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. happens to be about the same frequency area as "n" in Latin.  I believe it pointing as a straight across substitution all along and even though the words don't make sense, it's because it's a Glossolalia.

There is also one small word in Latin You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and it means "apart from".  It could be apart from the language!

I appreciate your attention on this matter.

daiin  "Octessr"

1) chpeeeey
oeeees becomes "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.uuuub"
(2) dydydy  before you write this off ntntnt listen to latin ntntnt
(1) qoqokeey -->"kwat-too-or" e "kwat-too-or" e L uu te
(1) oeeees
(1) deeeese
(1) keeees
(1) doeeeesm
(1) ykeeeedaiir
(1) okeeees
(1) orokeeeey
(1) qoeeeety
(1) eeeey
(1) odeeeeodl
(1) odeeeey
(1) qeeeear
(1) qoeeeey
(2) dydydy
(1) diiiin

(1) oiiiin

(1) qooto

(1) ootady


  Eva-Latin.JPG (Size: 49.46 KB / Downloads: 306) ]]> Register or Login to view. would appear only in a constructed language for a Glossolalia.  So just looking at these vords brings up a Glossolalia.  What is interesting is the number 8 corresponds to n meaning that the frequency hit is the same for the Glyph the number 8, d in eva and n in Latin.  So simply substituting Latin for eva than you can pronounce the word that was a Glossolalia dictionary term.  Latin used You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.!  I think the 8 was important, because it was matching frequencies of highest to lowest from both voynich glyph's and Latin Letters to show you the language to use.  N happens happens to be the 8th highest Latin letter pointing to Latin.  

So lets try daiin?  It would be pronounced "Octessr" when spoken in tongues.  So why did I not use n as in nessr.  Not only does Octessr sound like professor and its in Latin, it has 3 syllables.  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. happens to be about the same frequency area as "n" in Latin.  I believe it pointing as a straight across substitution all along and even though the words don't make sense, it's because it's a Glossolalia.

There is also one small word in Latin You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and it means "apart from".  It could be apart from the language!

I appreciate your attention on this matter.

daiin  "Octessr"

1) chpeeeey
oeeees becomes "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.uuuub"
(2) dydydy  before you write this off ntntnt listen to latin ntntnt
(1) qoqokeey -->"kwat-too-or" e "kwat-too-or" e L uu te
(1) oeeees
(1) deeeese
(1) keeees
(1) doeeeesm
(1) ykeeeedaiir
(1) okeeees
(1) orokeeeey
(1) qoeeeety
(1) eeeey
(1) odeeeeodl
(1) odeeeey
(1) qeeeear
(1) qoeeeey
(2) dydydy
(1) diiiin

(1) oiiiin

(1) qooto

(1) ootady


  Eva-Latin.JPG (Size: 49.46 KB / Downloads: 306) ]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5553.html Thu, 09 Apr 2026 13:25:52 +0000 CorwinFr]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5553.html
I'm a CTO at a tech company. I build AI agents for businesses. Not a medievalist, not a cryptographer, not a Latinist.

Like many of you, the Voynich became an obsession. I spent weeks building a pipeline that tests the King-Andrisani transliteration hypothesis by checking every decoded word against the Perseus Latin Dictionary (265,419 attested forms). Not interpretation, code. Four versions thrown away before anything worked.

The key breakthrough: the scribe appears to glue prepositions to the following word, like Arabic proclitics. When I coded that rule, validation jumped from 74% to 89% in one pass, and four-word matches against pharmaceutical corpora went from 1 to 19.

What I find hardest to dismiss as artifact:

On f103r, the word "coque" (cook) appears 17 times in 5 conjugated forms: coque, coquas, coquere, coquendo, coquant. A random mapping does not produce a Latin morphological paradigm.

On f33r, the pipeline decodes INELIODE. The illustration on the same page shows an Asteraceae. The pipeline cannot see the illustration. Two independent channels pointing to Inula helenium.

The astronomical pages (f67r) decode to pharmaceutical vocabulary: spikenard, cinnamon, celery, wine. Nobody expected recipes hidden in star diagrams.

What doesn't work: 3,421 words are opaque. Zodiac labels are uncracked. Never found 5 consecutive words in a known text. 4 Aurea Alexandrina ingredients are missing. Short Latin words can match Perseus by chance, and I honestly cannot separate signal from noise in the 89%.

I don't have the medieval Latin expertise to evaluate grammar coherence. A Latinist would see in minutes what I can't see in weeks.

I've pushed this as far as I can. Everything is open source. My goal is to transmit this to someone with the right skills.

Pipeline + all 226 folios decoded: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Visual summary (22 pages): in the docs/conference folder
Paper: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Guillaume
  Voynich_Visual_Summary.pdf (Size: 88.75 KB / Downloads: 10) ]]>
I'm a CTO at a tech company. I build AI agents for businesses. Not a medievalist, not a cryptographer, not a Latinist.

Like many of you, the Voynich became an obsession. I spent weeks building a pipeline that tests the King-Andrisani transliteration hypothesis by checking every decoded word against the Perseus Latin Dictionary (265,419 attested forms). Not interpretation, code. Four versions thrown away before anything worked.

The key breakthrough: the scribe appears to glue prepositions to the following word, like Arabic proclitics. When I coded that rule, validation jumped from 74% to 89% in one pass, and four-word matches against pharmaceutical corpora went from 1 to 19.

What I find hardest to dismiss as artifact:

On f103r, the word "coque" (cook) appears 17 times in 5 conjugated forms: coque, coquas, coquere, coquendo, coquant. A random mapping does not produce a Latin morphological paradigm.

On f33r, the pipeline decodes INELIODE. The illustration on the same page shows an Asteraceae. The pipeline cannot see the illustration. Two independent channels pointing to Inula helenium.

The astronomical pages (f67r) decode to pharmaceutical vocabulary: spikenard, cinnamon, celery, wine. Nobody expected recipes hidden in star diagrams.

What doesn't work: 3,421 words are opaque. Zodiac labels are uncracked. Never found 5 consecutive words in a known text. 4 Aurea Alexandrina ingredients are missing. Short Latin words can match Perseus by chance, and I honestly cannot separate signal from noise in the 89%.

I don't have the medieval Latin expertise to evaluate grammar coherence. A Latinist would see in minutes what I can't see in weeks.

I've pushed this as far as I can. Everything is open source. My goal is to transmit this to someone with the right skills.

Pipeline + all 226 folios decoded: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Visual summary (22 pages): in the docs/conference folder
Paper: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Guillaume
  Voynich_Visual_Summary.pdf (Size: 88.75 KB / Downloads: 10) ]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5548.html Thu, 09 Apr 2026 03:48:15 +0000 BessAgritianin]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5548.html The interpretation is made with the help of Moravian language. 
This provides an agreement with my prior interpretation of foil 116v as Moravian text. 
 The text contains strict medicinal uses of the plant. 
It does not start with the herb's name- as some researchers had tried in the past to read the first words from the herbals as plants' names. 

There is another very interesting finding at the end row of the text- the plant name provided has meaning in Hindu!
In the article there is an explanation for the reason of the Hindu name.

The link to Academia for the interested:
 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.]]> The interpretation is made with the help of Moravian language. 
This provides an agreement with my prior interpretation of foil 116v as Moravian text. 
 The text contains strict medicinal uses of the plant. 
It does not start with the herb's name- as some researchers had tried in the past to read the first words from the herbals as plants' names. 

There is another very interesting finding at the end row of the text- the plant name provided has meaning in Hindu!
In the article there is an explanation for the reason of the Hindu name.

The link to Academia for the interested:
 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5534.html Wed, 08 Apr 2026 02:04:28 +0000 oeesordy]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5534.html   aqua vitae rosettes.JPG (Size: 65.07 KB / Downloads: 160)




  symbol.JPG (Size: 3.77 KB / Downloads: 175)
I don't know if anyone else has attached the same meaning to this symbol of the Rosettes section?  The artist made sure the symbol would stand out.  Apparently this symbol with 90 degrees or forty five degrees with 3 circles has been around since the 12th century for aqua vitae.  There is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in the circle next to it, fountain of life maybe, have fun 

Latin meaning- Aqua Vitae; Water of Life, distilled alcohol or spirits used medicinally.

Spirit of wine (concentrated ethanol; called You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or spiritus vini) ? (), S.V. or ? ()Spirit of wine (concentrated ethanol; called aqua vitae or spiritus vini) ? (), S.V. or ? ()
  symbol.JPG (Size: 3.77 KB / Downloads: 175)


I wanted to mention #230 for a reference:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.]]>   aqua vitae rosettes.JPG (Size: 65.07 KB / Downloads: 160)




  symbol.JPG (Size: 3.77 KB / Downloads: 175)
I don't know if anyone else has attached the same meaning to this symbol of the Rosettes section?  The artist made sure the symbol would stand out.  Apparently this symbol with 90 degrees or forty five degrees with 3 circles has been around since the 12th century for aqua vitae.  There is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in the circle next to it, fountain of life maybe, have fun 

Latin meaning- Aqua Vitae; Water of Life, distilled alcohol or spirits used medicinally.

Spirit of wine (concentrated ethanol; called You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or spiritus vini) ? (), S.V. or ? ()Spirit of wine (concentrated ethanol; called aqua vitae or spiritus vini) ? (), S.V. or ? ()
  symbol.JPG (Size: 3.77 KB / Downloads: 175)


I wanted to mention #230 for a reference:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5516.html Sun, 05 Apr 2026 08:34:56 +0000 008348dc760f858fd668476b75fb6f]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5516.html Register or Login to view. and the manuscript as Arabic (with Syriac inflections). The glyph-to-phoneme mapping was produced by cross-referencing Maimonides' Medical Glossary and Paul Sbath's translation of the Kitāb al-Azmina (Book of Times) by Ibn Māsawayh against the MS. A majority of findings came from treating the manuscript's sections as transformative "gates", mapping token transitions and noting Galenic quality changes.

This framework suggests the manuscript was written by an East Syriac (Church of the East) physician-monk from the Mosul–Alqosh corridor, c. 1400–1440, using a purpose-built phonemic cipher to encode Arabic pharmaceutical content within a Syriac liturgical framework. My assumption is that the folio is a colophon, an introductory text for the MS. Its token structure is different to anything in the other sections.

I have rendered You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. into phonemes. If anyone here can lend an eye and ear and sound out the phonemes, I would appreciate a "reading" and interpretation if there is one to be had. Specifically:

  • Do the voiced phonemes sound like recognisable Arabic or Syriac words?
  • Are the proposed readings phonetically plausible given the encoding rules?
  • Can you identify words I have marked as unknown (marked ___)?
  • Does the colophon structure match known East Syriac manuscript conventions?


ENCODING RULES & PHONEME MAPPINGS

The script encodes phonemes (sounds), not a one-to-one letter substitution.

  Glyph    Phoneme      Notes
  ─────    ───────      ─────
  d        /d/          dāl — also covers dhāl (d/dh merged)
  r        /r/          rāʾ
  l        /l/          lām
  k        /k/          kāf — also covers qāf (q/k merged)
  m        /m/          mīm
  s        /s/          sīn — also covers zāy (z/s merged). Standalone s = bi- particle
  t        /tˤ/        ṭāʾ — also covers tāʾ (ṭ/t merged)
  p        /b/          bāʾ
  f        /f/          fāʾ
  y        /j/          yāʾ
  n        /n/          nūn (97.7% follows i — degree counter terminator)
  a        /a, aː/      fatḥa / alif — moisture degree counter
  e        /a/ (short)  thermal degree counter: e=°1, ee=°2, eee=°3
  o        /ʕ/ or /uː/ ʿayn (initial) or wāw (medial)
  i        /iː/        kasra / yāʾ vocalic — degree counter stroke
  g        —            word-final marker only (possibly tanwīn)
  ch      /ħ, x/      ḥāʾ/khāʾ merged (bracket glyph)
  sh      /ʃ/          shīn (bracket glyph with curl)
  cth      /θ/          thāʾ (t inside bracket)
  ckh      /dʒ/        jīm (k inside bracket)
  cph      /sˤ/        ṣād (p inside bracket)
  cfh      /dˤ/        ḍād (f inside bracket)

Informal Arabic shorthand rules:
  – Gemination (shaddah) is never marked: khall → khal, ʿaṭṭār → ʿaṭār
  – Hamza is elided: dāʾira → dāira, maʾ → ma
  – Hāʾ is dropped in unstressed positions
  – Tāʾ marbūṭa dots absent
  – Accusative case endings absent (colloquial register)
  – Writing direction reversed: left-to-right (not right-to-left)


THE TEXT

Each line shows:
  (1) EVA glyphs
  (2) Voiced phonemes
  (3) Arabic / Syriac identifications
  (4) Proposed reading
Unknowns are marked ___.

LINE 1
  EVA:    fachys  ykal  ar  ataiin  shol  shory  ses  y  kor  sholdy
  Voiced:  faḥyṣ  ykāl  ʿar  ʿaṭāʾīn  šūl  šūry  ses  y  kūr  šūldy
  Arabic:  فحص  يقال  عر  عطائين  —  —  —  —  كورة  —
  Syriac:  —  —  —  —  ܫܐܠܐ  ܫܘܪܝܐ  —  —  —  ܫܐܠܬܐ
  Read:    faḥṣ  yukāl  ʿar  ʿaṭāʾīn  sheʾlā  shūrāyā  asās  —  kūra  sheʾltā

LINE 2
  EVA:    sory  ckhar  or  kair  chtaiin  shar  ois  cthar  cthar  dan
  Voiced:  ṣūry  ǧār  ʿr  kāyr  ḥṭāyīn  šār  āys  θār  θār  dān
  Arabic:  صورة  جار  عرض  خير  خطّاين  شرح  ايش  ثروة  ثروة  —
  Syriac:  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  ܕܝܢ
  Read:    ṣūra  jār  ʿarḍ  khayr  khaṭṭāyin  sharḥ  aysh  tharwa  tharwa  dēn

LINE 3
  EVA:    syaiir  sheky  or  ykaiin  shod  cthoary  cthes  daraiin  sa
  Voiced:  syāʾīr  šeky  ʿr  ykāʾīn  šūd  θūāry  θes  dārāyīn  sā
  Arabic:  سيّارة?  —  عرض  —  —  ثوري  ثمن?  داراين  —
  Syriac:  —  ܫܟܝܚ?  —  ܟܝܢܐ?  ܫܘܕ  —  —  —  —
  Read:    sayyāra?  shkīḥ?  ʿarḍ  kyānā?  shōd  thawrī  thaman?  dārayn  sā

LINE 4
  EVA:    ooiin  oteey  oteos  roloty  cthar  daiin  otaiin  or  okan
  Voiced:  ʿūʿīn  ʿṭeey  ʿṭeūs  rūlūṭy  θār  dāʾīmān  ʿṭāʾīn  ʿr  ʿkān
  Arabic:  عيون  عطيّة  ___  ___  ثروة  دائماً  عطائين  عرض  ___
  Read:    ʿuyūn  ʿaṭīyya  ___  ___  tharwa  dāʾimān  ʿaṭāʾīn  ʿarḍ  ___

LINE 5
  EVA:    dair  chear  cthaiin  cphar  cfhaiin  ydaraishy
  Voiced:  dāyr  ḥeʿar  θāʾīn  ṣār  ḍāʾīn  ydārāyšy
  Arabic:  دير  خير  ثاني  صبّار  —  —
  Syriac:  ܕܝܪܐ  —  —  —  —  ܝܕܪܫ?
  Read:    dayr  khayr  thānī  ṣabbār  [ḍād demo]  yadrusī?

LINE 6
  EVA:    odar  shol  cphoy  oydar  s  cfhoaiin  shodary
  Voiced:  ʿudār  šūl  ṣūy  ʿydār  s  ḍūʿāyīn  šūdāry
  Syriac:  ܥܘܕܪܢܐ  ܫܐܠܐ  ܨܒܝܢܐ  ܥܕܪܐ  ܘ  —  ܫܕܪ
  Read:    ʿudrānā  sheʾlā  ṣebyānā  ʿeḏrā  w-  ___  shdārā

LINE 7
  EVA:    yshey  shody  okchoy  otchol  chocthy  oschy  dain  chor  kos
  Voiced:  yšey  šūdy  ʿkḥūy  ʿṭḥūl  ḥūθy  ʿsḥy  dāʾīm  ḥūr  kūs
  Arabic:  يشير  —  —  عطول?  —  —  دائم  حور  —
  Syriac:  —  ܫܘܕܝܐ  ܥܘܩܒܐ?  —  ܚܘܬܐ?  ܥܫܝܢ?  —  —  ܟܣܐ
  Read:    yushīr  shōdāyā  ʿuqbā?  ʿuṭūl?  ḥōthā?  ʿeshyānā?  dāʾim  ḥawr  kāsā

LINE 8
  EVA:    daiin  shos  cfhol  shody  dain  os  teody
  Voiced:  dāʾīmān  šūs  ḍūl  šūdy  dāʾīm  ʿs  ṭeūdy
  Arabic:  دائماً  شروط?  ظلّ?  —  دائم  —  —
  Syriac:  —  —  —  ܫܘܕܝܐ  —  ܐܬ?  ܬܘܕܝܬܐ
  Read:    dāʾimān  shurūṭ?  ḍill?  shōdāyā  dāʾim  ōthā?  tōdīthā

LINE 9
  EVA:    ydain  cphesaiin  ol  cphey  ytain  shoshy  cphodales  es
  Voiced:  ydāʾīm  ṣesāʾīn  ʿl  ṣey  yṭāʾīn  šūšy  ṣūdāles  es
  Arabic:  يدوم  صفات?  على  صفاء?  —  —  صيدلة  —
  Syriac:  —  —  —  —  —  ܫܘܫܦܐ?  —  ܐܝܬ?
  Read:    yadūm  ṣifāt?  ʿalā  ṣafā?  ___  shōshēp̄ā?  ṣaydala  ʾīth?

LINE 10
  EVA:    oksho  kshoy  otairin  oteol  okan  shodain  sckhey  daiin
  Voiced:  ʿkšū  kšūy  ʿṭāʾīrīn  ʿṭeūl  ʿkān  šūdāʾīn  sǧey  dāʾīmān
  Read:    ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  dāʾimān

LINE 11
  EVA:    shoy  ckhey  kodaiin  cphy  cphodaiils  cthey  she  oldain  d
  Voiced:  šūy  ǧey  kūdāʾīmān  ṣy  ṣūdāʾīīls  θey  šē  ʿldāʾīn  d
  Read:    ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  shē  ___  d-

LINE 12
  EVA:    dain  oiin  chol  odaiin  chodain  chdy  okain  dan  cthy  kod
  Voiced:  dāʾīm  ʿūyīn  ḥūl  ʿūdāʾīmān  ḥūdāʾīn  ḥdy  ʿkāʾīn  dān  θy  kūd
  Read:    dāʾim  ʿuyūn  ḥawl  ___  ___  ___  ___  dēn  ___  ___

LINE 13
  EVA:    daiin  shckhey  ckeor  chor  shey  chol  chol  kor  chal
  Voiced:  dāʾīmān  šǧey  keūr  ḥūr  šey  ḥūl  ḥūl  kūr  ḥāl
  Read:    dāʾimān  ___  ___  ḥawr  ___  ḥawl  ḥawl  kūra  khall

LINE 14
  EVA:    sho  chol  shodan  kshy  kchy  dor  chodaiin  sho  keeap
  Voiced:  šū  ḥūl  šūdān  kšy  kḥy  dūr  ḥūdāʾīmān  šū  keeāb
  Read:    ___  ḥawl  ___  ___  ___  dawr  ___  ___  ___

LINE 15
  EVA:    ycho  tchey  chokain  pshol  dydyd  cthy  daicthy
  Voiced:  yḥū  ṭḥey  ḥūkāʾīn  bšūl  dydyd  θy  dāyθy
  Arabic:  —  تحيّة  —  —  —  —  —
  Syriac:  ܘܗܘ  —  ܚܘܟܡܐ  ܒܫܐܠܐ  ܕܝܕܝ ܕ  ܬܝ?  ܕܐܝܬܝ
  Read:    wa-hū  taḥīyya  ḥūkkāmā  b-sheʾlā  dīdī-d  thī?  d-āythī

LINE 16 ★ KEY LINE
  EVA:    yto  shol  she  kodshey  cphealy  dar  dasain  dain  ckhyds
  Voiced:  yṭū  šūl  šē  kūdšey  ṣeāly  dār  dāsāʾīn  dāʾīm  ǧyds
  Syriac:  ܝܬ  ܫܐܠܐ  ܫܐ  ܩܘܕܫܐ  ܨܠܘܬܐ  —  ܕܐܣ̈ܝܐ  —  —
  Arabic:  —  —  —  —  —  دار  —  دائم  جيّدين?
  Read:    yāt  sheʾlā  shē  qudshā  ṣlōtā  dār  d-āsāyē  dāʾim  jayyidīn?

LINE 17 ★ KEY LINE
  EVA:    dchar  shcthaiin  okaiir  chey  rchy  potol  cthols  dlocta
  Voiced:  dḥār  šθāʾīn  ʿkāʾīr  ḥey  rḥy  bṭūl  θūls  dlūktā
  Arabic:  ذخيرة  ___  —  —  —  —  —  —
  Syriac:  —  —  ܥܩܪܐ  ܚܝܠܐ  ܪ̈ܚܡܐ  ܒܬܘܠܬܐ  ܬܠܝܬܝܘܬܐ  ܕܘܟܬܐ
  Read:    dhakhīra  ___  ʿaqqārā  ḥaylā  raḥmē  btūltā  tlītāyūtā  duktā

LINE 18
  EVA:    shok  chor  chey  dain  ckhey  otol  daiiin
  Voiced:  šūk  ḥūr  ḥey  dāʾīm  ǧey  ʿṭūl  dāʾīmīn
  Arabic:  شكر  حور  —  دائم  —  عطا?  دائمين
  Syriac:  —  —  ܚܝܠܐ  —  ܓܠܐ?  —  —
  Read:    shukr  ḥawr  ḥaylā  dāʾim  gālē?  ʿaṭā?  dāʾimīn

LINE 19
  EVA:    cpho  shaiin  shokcheey  chol  tshodeesy  shey  pydeey  chy  ro  dar
  Voiced:  ṣū  šāʾīn  šūkḥeey  ḥūl  ṭšūdeesy  šey  bydeey  ḥy  rū  dār
  Read:    ___  ___  ___  ḥawl  tashkhīṣī?  ___  ___  ___  ___  dār

LINE 20
  EVA:    doin  chol  dain  cthal  dar  shear  kaiin  dar  shey  cthar
  Voiced:  dūn  ḥūl  dāʾīm  θāl  dār  šeʿar  kāʾīn  dār  šey  θār
  Read:    dēn  ḥawl  dāʾim  thālith?  dār  shaʿāʾir?  kāʾīn  dār  ___  tharwa

LINE 21
  EVA:    choo  kaiin  shoaiin  okol  daiin  far  cthol  daiin  ctholdar
  Voiced:  ḥūū  kāʾīn  šūʿāʾīn  ʿkūl  dāʾīmān  fār  θūl  dāʾīmān  θūldār
  Read:    ___  kāʾīn  shuʿāʿīn?  ʿuqūl  dāʾimān  farr/farḍ?  thaqīl  dāʾimān  thaqīl-dār?

LINE 22
  EVA:    ycheey  okay  oky  daiin  okchey  kokaiin  chol  kchy  dal
  Voiced:  yḥeey  ʿkāy  ʿky  dāʾīmān  ʿkḥey  kūkāʾīn  ḥūl  kḥy  dāl
  Read:    yuḥyī?  ʿaqqār?  ___  dāʾimān  ___  ___  ḥawl  ___  dāll

LINE 23
  EVA:    deeo  shody  koshey  cthy  okchey  keey  keey  dal  chtor
  Voiced:  deeū  šūdy  kūšey  θy  ʿkḥey  keey  keey  dāl  ḥṭūr
  Syriac:  —  ܫܘܕܝܐ  ܟܘܫܝܐ?  —  —  —  —  —  —
  Arabic:  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  دالّ  خطور?
  Read:    ___  shōdāyā  kūshāyā?  ___  ___  hot°2  hot°2  dāll  khuṭūr?

LINE 24
  EVA:    chol  chok  choty  chotey  dchaiin
  Voiced:  ḥūl  ḥūk  ḥūṭy  ḥūṭey  dḥāʾīn
  Arabic:  حول  حكّ  خطا  خطط  —
  Syriac:  —  —  —  —  ܕܟܐܐܝܢ
  Read:    ḥawl  ḥakk  khuṭā  khuṭāṭ  d-kāʾīn

Unknowns (___) are the primary targets for review. All feedback welcome.]]> Register or Login to view. and the manuscript as Arabic (with Syriac inflections). The glyph-to-phoneme mapping was produced by cross-referencing Maimonides' Medical Glossary and Paul Sbath's translation of the Kitāb al-Azmina (Book of Times) by Ibn Māsawayh against the MS. A majority of findings came from treating the manuscript's sections as transformative "gates", mapping token transitions and noting Galenic quality changes.

This framework suggests the manuscript was written by an East Syriac (Church of the East) physician-monk from the Mosul–Alqosh corridor, c. 1400–1440, using a purpose-built phonemic cipher to encode Arabic pharmaceutical content within a Syriac liturgical framework. My assumption is that the folio is a colophon, an introductory text for the MS. Its token structure is different to anything in the other sections.

I have rendered You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. into phonemes. If anyone here can lend an eye and ear and sound out the phonemes, I would appreciate a "reading" and interpretation if there is one to be had. Specifically:

  • Do the voiced phonemes sound like recognisable Arabic or Syriac words?
  • Are the proposed readings phonetically plausible given the encoding rules?
  • Can you identify words I have marked as unknown (marked ___)?
  • Does the colophon structure match known East Syriac manuscript conventions?


ENCODING RULES & PHONEME MAPPINGS

The script encodes phonemes (sounds), not a one-to-one letter substitution.

  Glyph    Phoneme      Notes
  ─────    ───────      ─────
  d        /d/          dāl — also covers dhāl (d/dh merged)
  r        /r/          rāʾ
  l        /l/          lām
  k        /k/          kāf — also covers qāf (q/k merged)
  m        /m/          mīm
  s        /s/          sīn — also covers zāy (z/s merged). Standalone s = bi- particle
  t        /tˤ/        ṭāʾ — also covers tāʾ (ṭ/t merged)
  p        /b/          bāʾ
  f        /f/          fāʾ
  y        /j/          yāʾ
  n        /n/          nūn (97.7% follows i — degree counter terminator)
  a        /a, aː/      fatḥa / alif — moisture degree counter
  e        /a/ (short)  thermal degree counter: e=°1, ee=°2, eee=°3
  o        /ʕ/ or /uː/ ʿayn (initial) or wāw (medial)
  i        /iː/        kasra / yāʾ vocalic — degree counter stroke
  g        —            word-final marker only (possibly tanwīn)
  ch      /ħ, x/      ḥāʾ/khāʾ merged (bracket glyph)
  sh      /ʃ/          shīn (bracket glyph with curl)
  cth      /θ/          thāʾ (t inside bracket)
  ckh      /dʒ/        jīm (k inside bracket)
  cph      /sˤ/        ṣād (p inside bracket)
  cfh      /dˤ/        ḍād (f inside bracket)

Informal Arabic shorthand rules:
  – Gemination (shaddah) is never marked: khall → khal, ʿaṭṭār → ʿaṭār
  – Hamza is elided: dāʾira → dāira, maʾ → ma
  – Hāʾ is dropped in unstressed positions
  – Tāʾ marbūṭa dots absent
  – Accusative case endings absent (colloquial register)
  – Writing direction reversed: left-to-right (not right-to-left)


THE TEXT

Each line shows:
  (1) EVA glyphs
  (2) Voiced phonemes
  (3) Arabic / Syriac identifications
  (4) Proposed reading
Unknowns are marked ___.

LINE 1
  EVA:    fachys  ykal  ar  ataiin  shol  shory  ses  y  kor  sholdy
  Voiced:  faḥyṣ  ykāl  ʿar  ʿaṭāʾīn  šūl  šūry  ses  y  kūr  šūldy
  Arabic:  فحص  يقال  عر  عطائين  —  —  —  —  كورة  —
  Syriac:  —  —  —  —  ܫܐܠܐ  ܫܘܪܝܐ  —  —  —  ܫܐܠܬܐ
  Read:    faḥṣ  yukāl  ʿar  ʿaṭāʾīn  sheʾlā  shūrāyā  asās  —  kūra  sheʾltā

LINE 2
  EVA:    sory  ckhar  or  kair  chtaiin  shar  ois  cthar  cthar  dan
  Voiced:  ṣūry  ǧār  ʿr  kāyr  ḥṭāyīn  šār  āys  θār  θār  dān
  Arabic:  صورة  جار  عرض  خير  خطّاين  شرح  ايش  ثروة  ثروة  —
  Syriac:  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  ܕܝܢ
  Read:    ṣūra  jār  ʿarḍ  khayr  khaṭṭāyin  sharḥ  aysh  tharwa  tharwa  dēn

LINE 3
  EVA:    syaiir  sheky  or  ykaiin  shod  cthoary  cthes  daraiin  sa
  Voiced:  syāʾīr  šeky  ʿr  ykāʾīn  šūd  θūāry  θes  dārāyīn  sā
  Arabic:  سيّارة?  —  عرض  —  —  ثوري  ثمن?  داراين  —
  Syriac:  —  ܫܟܝܚ?  —  ܟܝܢܐ?  ܫܘܕ  —  —  —  —
  Read:    sayyāra?  shkīḥ?  ʿarḍ  kyānā?  shōd  thawrī  thaman?  dārayn  sā

LINE 4
  EVA:    ooiin  oteey  oteos  roloty  cthar  daiin  otaiin  or  okan
  Voiced:  ʿūʿīn  ʿṭeey  ʿṭeūs  rūlūṭy  θār  dāʾīmān  ʿṭāʾīn  ʿr  ʿkān
  Arabic:  عيون  عطيّة  ___  ___  ثروة  دائماً  عطائين  عرض  ___
  Read:    ʿuyūn  ʿaṭīyya  ___  ___  tharwa  dāʾimān  ʿaṭāʾīn  ʿarḍ  ___

LINE 5
  EVA:    dair  chear  cthaiin  cphar  cfhaiin  ydaraishy
  Voiced:  dāyr  ḥeʿar  θāʾīn  ṣār  ḍāʾīn  ydārāyšy
  Arabic:  دير  خير  ثاني  صبّار  —  —
  Syriac:  ܕܝܪܐ  —  —  —  —  ܝܕܪܫ?
  Read:    dayr  khayr  thānī  ṣabbār  [ḍād demo]  yadrusī?

LINE 6
  EVA:    odar  shol  cphoy  oydar  s  cfhoaiin  shodary
  Voiced:  ʿudār  šūl  ṣūy  ʿydār  s  ḍūʿāyīn  šūdāry
  Syriac:  ܥܘܕܪܢܐ  ܫܐܠܐ  ܨܒܝܢܐ  ܥܕܪܐ  ܘ  —  ܫܕܪ
  Read:    ʿudrānā  sheʾlā  ṣebyānā  ʿeḏrā  w-  ___  shdārā

LINE 7
  EVA:    yshey  shody  okchoy  otchol  chocthy  oschy  dain  chor  kos
  Voiced:  yšey  šūdy  ʿkḥūy  ʿṭḥūl  ḥūθy  ʿsḥy  dāʾīm  ḥūr  kūs
  Arabic:  يشير  —  —  عطول?  —  —  دائم  حور  —
  Syriac:  —  ܫܘܕܝܐ  ܥܘܩܒܐ?  —  ܚܘܬܐ?  ܥܫܝܢ?  —  —  ܟܣܐ
  Read:    yushīr  shōdāyā  ʿuqbā?  ʿuṭūl?  ḥōthā?  ʿeshyānā?  dāʾim  ḥawr  kāsā

LINE 8
  EVA:    daiin  shos  cfhol  shody  dain  os  teody
  Voiced:  dāʾīmān  šūs  ḍūl  šūdy  dāʾīm  ʿs  ṭeūdy
  Arabic:  دائماً  شروط?  ظلّ?  —  دائم  —  —
  Syriac:  —  —  —  ܫܘܕܝܐ  —  ܐܬ?  ܬܘܕܝܬܐ
  Read:    dāʾimān  shurūṭ?  ḍill?  shōdāyā  dāʾim  ōthā?  tōdīthā

LINE 9
  EVA:    ydain  cphesaiin  ol  cphey  ytain  shoshy  cphodales  es
  Voiced:  ydāʾīm  ṣesāʾīn  ʿl  ṣey  yṭāʾīn  šūšy  ṣūdāles  es
  Arabic:  يدوم  صفات?  على  صفاء?  —  —  صيدلة  —
  Syriac:  —  —  —  —  —  ܫܘܫܦܐ?  —  ܐܝܬ?
  Read:    yadūm  ṣifāt?  ʿalā  ṣafā?  ___  shōshēp̄ā?  ṣaydala  ʾīth?

LINE 10
  EVA:    oksho  kshoy  otairin  oteol  okan  shodain  sckhey  daiin
  Voiced:  ʿkšū  kšūy  ʿṭāʾīrīn  ʿṭeūl  ʿkān  šūdāʾīn  sǧey  dāʾīmān
  Read:    ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  dāʾimān

LINE 11
  EVA:    shoy  ckhey  kodaiin  cphy  cphodaiils  cthey  she  oldain  d
  Voiced:  šūy  ǧey  kūdāʾīmān  ṣy  ṣūdāʾīīls  θey  šē  ʿldāʾīn  d
  Read:    ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  shē  ___  d-

LINE 12
  EVA:    dain  oiin  chol  odaiin  chodain  chdy  okain  dan  cthy  kod
  Voiced:  dāʾīm  ʿūyīn  ḥūl  ʿūdāʾīmān  ḥūdāʾīn  ḥdy  ʿkāʾīn  dān  θy  kūd
  Read:    dāʾim  ʿuyūn  ḥawl  ___  ___  ___  ___  dēn  ___  ___

LINE 13
  EVA:    daiin  shckhey  ckeor  chor  shey  chol  chol  kor  chal
  Voiced:  dāʾīmān  šǧey  keūr  ḥūr  šey  ḥūl  ḥūl  kūr  ḥāl
  Read:    dāʾimān  ___  ___  ḥawr  ___  ḥawl  ḥawl  kūra  khall

LINE 14
  EVA:    sho  chol  shodan  kshy  kchy  dor  chodaiin  sho  keeap
  Voiced:  šū  ḥūl  šūdān  kšy  kḥy  dūr  ḥūdāʾīmān  šū  keeāb
  Read:    ___  ḥawl  ___  ___  ___  dawr  ___  ___  ___

LINE 15
  EVA:    ycho  tchey  chokain  pshol  dydyd  cthy  daicthy
  Voiced:  yḥū  ṭḥey  ḥūkāʾīn  bšūl  dydyd  θy  dāyθy
  Arabic:  —  تحيّة  —  —  —  —  —
  Syriac:  ܘܗܘ  —  ܚܘܟܡܐ  ܒܫܐܠܐ  ܕܝܕܝ ܕ  ܬܝ?  ܕܐܝܬܝ
  Read:    wa-hū  taḥīyya  ḥūkkāmā  b-sheʾlā  dīdī-d  thī?  d-āythī

LINE 16 ★ KEY LINE
  EVA:    yto  shol  she  kodshey  cphealy  dar  dasain  dain  ckhyds
  Voiced:  yṭū  šūl  šē  kūdšey  ṣeāly  dār  dāsāʾīn  dāʾīm  ǧyds
  Syriac:  ܝܬ  ܫܐܠܐ  ܫܐ  ܩܘܕܫܐ  ܨܠܘܬܐ  —  ܕܐܣ̈ܝܐ  —  —
  Arabic:  —  —  —  —  —  دار  —  دائم  جيّدين?
  Read:    yāt  sheʾlā  shē  qudshā  ṣlōtā  dār  d-āsāyē  dāʾim  jayyidīn?

LINE 17 ★ KEY LINE
  EVA:    dchar  shcthaiin  okaiir  chey  rchy  potol  cthols  dlocta
  Voiced:  dḥār  šθāʾīn  ʿkāʾīr  ḥey  rḥy  bṭūl  θūls  dlūktā
  Arabic:  ذخيرة  ___  —  —  —  —  —  —
  Syriac:  —  —  ܥܩܪܐ  ܚܝܠܐ  ܪ̈ܚܡܐ  ܒܬܘܠܬܐ  ܬܠܝܬܝܘܬܐ  ܕܘܟܬܐ
  Read:    dhakhīra  ___  ʿaqqārā  ḥaylā  raḥmē  btūltā  tlītāyūtā  duktā

LINE 18
  EVA:    shok  chor  chey  dain  ckhey  otol  daiiin
  Voiced:  šūk  ḥūr  ḥey  dāʾīm  ǧey  ʿṭūl  dāʾīmīn
  Arabic:  شكر  حور  —  دائم  —  عطا?  دائمين
  Syriac:  —  —  ܚܝܠܐ  —  ܓܠܐ?  —  —
  Read:    shukr  ḥawr  ḥaylā  dāʾim  gālē?  ʿaṭā?  dāʾimīn

LINE 19
  EVA:    cpho  shaiin  shokcheey  chol  tshodeesy  shey  pydeey  chy  ro  dar
  Voiced:  ṣū  šāʾīn  šūkḥeey  ḥūl  ṭšūdeesy  šey  bydeey  ḥy  rū  dār
  Read:    ___  ___  ___  ḥawl  tashkhīṣī?  ___  ___  ___  ___  dār

LINE 20
  EVA:    doin  chol  dain  cthal  dar  shear  kaiin  dar  shey  cthar
  Voiced:  dūn  ḥūl  dāʾīm  θāl  dār  šeʿar  kāʾīn  dār  šey  θār
  Read:    dēn  ḥawl  dāʾim  thālith?  dār  shaʿāʾir?  kāʾīn  dār  ___  tharwa

LINE 21
  EVA:    choo  kaiin  shoaiin  okol  daiin  far  cthol  daiin  ctholdar
  Voiced:  ḥūū  kāʾīn  šūʿāʾīn  ʿkūl  dāʾīmān  fār  θūl  dāʾīmān  θūldār
  Read:    ___  kāʾīn  shuʿāʿīn?  ʿuqūl  dāʾimān  farr/farḍ?  thaqīl  dāʾimān  thaqīl-dār?

LINE 22
  EVA:    ycheey  okay  oky  daiin  okchey  kokaiin  chol  kchy  dal
  Voiced:  yḥeey  ʿkāy  ʿky  dāʾīmān  ʿkḥey  kūkāʾīn  ḥūl  kḥy  dāl
  Read:    yuḥyī?  ʿaqqār?  ___  dāʾimān  ___  ___  ḥawl  ___  dāll

LINE 23
  EVA:    deeo  shody  koshey  cthy  okchey  keey  keey  dal  chtor
  Voiced:  deeū  šūdy  kūšey  θy  ʿkḥey  keey  keey  dāl  ḥṭūr
  Syriac:  —  ܫܘܕܝܐ  ܟܘܫܝܐ?  —  —  —  —  —  —
  Arabic:  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  دالّ  خطور?
  Read:    ___  shōdāyā  kūshāyā?  ___  ___  hot°2  hot°2  dāll  khuṭūr?

LINE 24
  EVA:    chol  chok  choty  chotey  dchaiin
  Voiced:  ḥūl  ḥūk  ḥūṭy  ḥūṭey  dḥāʾīn
  Arabic:  حول  حكّ  خطا  خطط  —
  Syriac:  —  —  —  —  ܕܟܐܐܝܢ
  Read:    ḥawl  ḥakk  khuṭā  khuṭāṭ  d-kāʾīn

Unknowns (___) are the primary targets for review. All feedback welcome.]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5505.html Thu, 02 Apr 2026 07:59:16 +0000 hatoncat]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5505.html Register or Login to view. 

"The situation is much more complex than just an overenthusiastic blue painter:

• there is also too much white (blank)
  
• frequent, seemingly intentional combination of blue and blank elements
  
• there is too much yellow in the stems, a color notably lacking from the flowers
  
• calyxes in other manuscripts are green as a rule. While almost every large-plant page has green available to it (for the leaves), a disproportionate amount of other colors is preferred for calyxes."
  

After reading this post, I wondered if perhaps the blue flowers in the manuscript might have actually appeared green to the drawer. This might not have made a lot of sense, but according to a google search "what do color blind people see blue as": 

"People with blue-yellow color blindness (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view./You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) generally see blue as green, light blue as grey, or find that blues appear much darker and less vibrant. While rare, this type of deficiency specifically makes it difficult to differentiate blue from green and yellow from violet or pink." 

Could this explain why they thought they were including pink when they were using a yellow pigment, or a green ink when it was actually blue?]]> Register or Login to view. 

"The situation is much more complex than just an overenthusiastic blue painter:

• there is also too much white (blank)
  
• frequent, seemingly intentional combination of blue and blank elements
  
• there is too much yellow in the stems, a color notably lacking from the flowers
  
• calyxes in other manuscripts are green as a rule. While almost every large-plant page has green available to it (for the leaves), a disproportionate amount of other colors is preferred for calyxes."
  

After reading this post, I wondered if perhaps the blue flowers in the manuscript might have actually appeared green to the drawer. This might not have made a lot of sense, but according to a google search "what do color blind people see blue as": 

"People with blue-yellow color blindness (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view./You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) generally see blue as green, light blue as grey, or find that blues appear much darker and less vibrant. While rare, this type of deficiency specifically makes it difficult to differentiate blue from green and yellow from violet or pink." 

Could this explain why they thought they were including pink when they were using a yellow pigment, or a green ink when it was actually blue?]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5496.html Wed, 01 Apr 2026 02:39:40 +0000 Tessa9]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5496.html I was just thinking, is Voynichese a character system or a letter system? Sorry if my terms aren't correct, but here's an example
In languages like Latin, English, German, etc., we have the alphabet (ABCD...), such that it creates letters, whereas in languages like Chinese, Japanese, Thai, etc., there is one character or more (你, 我, 对。。。) for one word.
Sorry if this doesn't make sense; I can elaborate, but if you understand and can give me an answer, please do. Thank you!]]> I was just thinking, is Voynichese a character system or a letter system? Sorry if my terms aren't correct, but here's an example
In languages like Latin, English, German, etc., we have the alphabet (ABCD...), such that it creates letters, whereas in languages like Chinese, Japanese, Thai, etc., there is one character or more (你, 我, 对。。。) for one word.
Sorry if this doesn't make sense; I can elaborate, but if you understand and can give me an answer, please do. Thank you!]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5491.html Tue, 31 Mar 2026 11:57:03 +0000 oeesordy]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5491.html
This is a mini cipher per word based on i,q,d and y, they are numbers.

Inside each is a tiny Latin anagram.

A) Start at last eva word "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view." You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in voynich manuscript, 
count letters backwards 1 one from list at bottom: e becomes a, i becomes t, r becomes n, y becomes u. anangram
then Latin natu

backwards 1 each against eva frequency then check latin frequency lists,
for digit sum method , because 1 and 9 = 1

B) Next is word "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.", because 1 + 1 is 2 and "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view." is combined to get 2 with 9 then it = 2

This is a mini cipher per word based on i,q,d and y, they are numbers.
Inside each is a tiny Latin anagram.

If you have any questions let me know this is preliminary:  The last word on the voynich manuscript is as "ary" on voychinese.  Jason Davies looks like it could be "eiry".

eva-latin-english

eiry = eiry = natu = to be born, derive origin:  count back 1
ain = ain = uno = one  :count back 2
qol = qol = tue = behold, watch: forward 4, eva l is e in latin
chckhy =chckhy = dia = Godlike: back 9
chcthy = edi = declare:foward 9, eva ch is a in Latin
al = al = me =I: forward 8 eva l is e in Latin

This Latin sentence reads:
"Me edi, Dia, tue uno natu".

"I declare, Godlike, behold one to be born or You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.".

Use Frequency List for counting forward or backward:


  Eva-Latin.JPG (Size: 49.46 KB / Downloads: 252)

What locked me on to Latin was You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. shows "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view." and its Latin.  I suppose other languages could use the same word.]]>
This is a mini cipher per word based on i,q,d and y, they are numbers.

Inside each is a tiny Latin anagram.

A) Start at last eva word "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view." You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in voynich manuscript, 
count letters backwards 1 one from list at bottom: e becomes a, i becomes t, r becomes n, y becomes u. anangram
then Latin natu

backwards 1 each against eva frequency then check latin frequency lists,
for digit sum method , because 1 and 9 = 1

B) Next is word "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.", because 1 + 1 is 2 and "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view." is combined to get 2 with 9 then it = 2

This is a mini cipher per word based on i,q,d and y, they are numbers.
Inside each is a tiny Latin anagram.

If you have any questions let me know this is preliminary:  The last word on the voynich manuscript is as "ary" on voychinese.  Jason Davies looks like it could be "eiry".

eva-latin-english

eiry = eiry = natu = to be born, derive origin:  count back 1
ain = ain = uno = one  :count back 2
qol = qol = tue = behold, watch: forward 4, eva l is e in latin
chckhy =chckhy = dia = Godlike: back 9
chcthy = edi = declare:foward 9, eva ch is a in Latin
al = al = me =I: forward 8 eva l is e in Latin

This Latin sentence reads:
"Me edi, Dia, tue uno natu".

"I declare, Godlike, behold one to be born or You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.".

Use Frequency List for counting forward or backward:


  Eva-Latin.JPG (Size: 49.46 KB / Downloads: 252)

What locked me on to Latin was You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. shows "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view." and its Latin.  I suppose other languages could use the same word.]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5482.html Thu, 26 Mar 2026 18:23:15 +0000 asteckley]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5482.html        
GRIN FIENDISH BEAST - INTO BLIGHTED TINGLED TATTER

(There are a couple of people who should not comment -- you know who you are and why  )]]>        
GRIN FIENDISH BEAST - INTO BLIGHTED TINGLED TATTER

(There are a couple of people who should not comment -- you know who you are and why  )]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5474.html Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:55:23 +0000 Jimmy123]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5474.html
I apologise for bad english. My theory is this.  We know that the MS was written with multiple scribes.  Therefore,  I assume,  that all the scribes were fluent in "Voynichese" language. If this is not the case,  I would be surprised because scribes that are unfamiliar with the Voynchese script would make errors.  They would have many corrections.  But the MS has no errors and no corrections.  Or just a few. 

Therefore I believe,  that everyone who was involved with the MS, was a part of the same group of people who could write Voynichese. 

Maybe this group is only two people,  father and son,  or maybe a big organisation.  Anyway  thank to researchers we know that more than one person wrote the MS.

So let's call this group of people the "Society of the Voynich MS" or SVMS.

Who were the SVMS, and why did they create this MS?

I will go a step further, and please ignore my opinions if you want. I would like to apply the René Zandbergen method,  which means that instead of making a hypothesis about something,  we rather remove an impossible hypothesis.  Therefore,  we are left with facts only. 

Therefore I propose that the Society of the VMS were people who must have had very good access to popular books.  Therefore I remove peasants from the equation.  Many pictures are like Bellifortis , and some roots and gallows are like the grimoire of Honorius.  Therefore I will say that the society of VMS were learned people with access to libraries. 

I will also say that the society of VMS had a very specific goal in mind.  The goal of every cipher script is to enable the unambiguous translation by the selected people.  So if there is a meaning, and it is intended to be read,  unambiguously  then some people could read it. Therefore maybe we can read it. 

Thank you,  from Jimmy]]>
I apologise for bad english. My theory is this.  We know that the MS was written with multiple scribes.  Therefore,  I assume,  that all the scribes were fluent in "Voynichese" language. If this is not the case,  I would be surprised because scribes that are unfamiliar with the Voynchese script would make errors.  They would have many corrections.  But the MS has no errors and no corrections.  Or just a few. 

Therefore I believe,  that everyone who was involved with the MS, was a part of the same group of people who could write Voynichese. 

Maybe this group is only two people,  father and son,  or maybe a big organisation.  Anyway  thank to researchers we know that more than one person wrote the MS.

So let's call this group of people the "Society of the Voynich MS" or SVMS.

Who were the SVMS, and why did they create this MS?

I will go a step further, and please ignore my opinions if you want. I would like to apply the René Zandbergen method,  which means that instead of making a hypothesis about something,  we rather remove an impossible hypothesis.  Therefore,  we are left with facts only. 

Therefore I propose that the Society of the VMS were people who must have had very good access to popular books.  Therefore I remove peasants from the equation.  Many pictures are like Bellifortis , and some roots and gallows are like the grimoire of Honorius.  Therefore I will say that the society of VMS were learned people with access to libraries. 

I will also say that the society of VMS had a very specific goal in mind.  The goal of every cipher script is to enable the unambiguous translation by the selected people.  So if there is a meaning, and it is intended to be read,  unambiguously  then some people could read it. Therefore maybe we can read it. 

Thank you,  from Jimmy]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5466.html Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:44:31 +0000 Walter Mandron]]> https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-5466.html
What follows is an attempt to write down an insight before it dissolves back into the diffuse mass of speculation from which it came. I make no claim to completeness. But I do claim that what I present here is more coherent than anything I have read about this text in recent years — and that is saying something.

The Problem Nobody Will Admit, really?

If you are honest — really honest, without the reflexive modesty that passes for good manners in academic circles (haha) — then you have to admit: we have no idea. After more than a hundred years of intense engagement, after Friedman's anagram excesses in the 1940s, after Feistely's Middle Eastern theories, after Stolfi's China stumble, Zandbergen, Montemurro, after Cheshire, who sent the world into uproar for about two weeks in 2019 before his approach crumbled apart at a leisurely pace like a stale cake — after all of that, the research stands roughly where it stood in 1912, when Wilfrid Voynich pulled the thing from a dusty box at the Villa Mondragone — well, or traded it with some Jesuits for cake for the abbot.

That is not nothing. Although one has also learned a great deal. We know that the vellum carrier was in all likelihood killed between 1404 and 1438. The hotly debated ink will presumably date from the same period. We know that a common typeface in the 1970s correctly identified two distinct writing styles, which he called 'Language A' and 'Language B'. We know that the statistical distribution of the words follows a Zipf curve — one of the few things that actually bothers me about my own theory — roughly as real languages are distributed. We know that certain words cluster in certain sections — differently in the herbal part than in the astronomical part, differently than in the bathtub part — it must be a language, surely.

What we do not know, however, is what any of it means. And that is where the real problem begins: most attempts at explanation implicitly assume that the manuscript contains a message. A content. A recipient. A key. One searches for a language because one believes there must be one. And when you cannot find it, when you have had enough of the endless failing, you arrive at the only conclusion that remains — the whole thing must be a hoax. And if not, you suddenly find yourself examining marginal annotations, because those can apparently be read, which is amusing: if scholars need years to decipher words written in Latin letters, should it surprise anyone that the main text has not been cracked? And the dedicated long-term student of Voynich turns to crowns, noble marks, cloud bands and page numbers; letters are folded in public to present evidence; YouTube videos are produced and forgotten. Every week countless (well, between one and five) AI theories appear, from which one can learn how AI is getting ever better at being bad.

The long story, which is itself only a brief glimpse into the cruelty of being a Voynich student, cut short:

What if the wrong question has been at the root of all of this?

Ramon Llull and the Wheel That Connects Everything

To understand what I mean, one must briefly travel to Mallorca — specifically to the thirteenth century. Ramon Llull, born 1232 or 1233, died 1316, is one of the strangest figures in European medieval history. Troubadour, mystic, missionary, philosopher, possibly stoned to death on a voyage to North Africa (are ladies present?), possibly also simply dead of old age, or done in by exasperated contemporaries — the sources contradict each other. What is beyond dispute: he developed a system he called the Ars Magna, the Great Art, which had an intellectually explosive effect for the following two centuries — much like AI today — or as one tends to say, the LLMs — which already bear a curious resemblance in name alone, and one wonders why nobody made that connection sooner — but I digress.

The core idea was strikingly simple. Llull believed that all truth — theological, philosophical, natural — could be derived from a finite set of divine attributes. Goodness, Greatness, Eternity, Power, Wisdom, Will, Virtue, Truth, Glory — nine fundamental properties of God, which he designated with the letters B through K (for reasons best known to himself). These attributes could now be mechanically combined by arranging them on concentric discs of parchment or wood and rotating these discs against each other. Each position of the wheel generated a new combination, a new theological statement, a new question. One no longer needed to think, in the sense that no creative inspiration was required — one turned, and the system thought for you.

That sounds simple to the computer-accustomed, light-switch-softened, civilisation-sick Voynich student. It is not. What Llull had actually built was one of the first fully mechanical combination machines in history. A system that could generate a potentially infinite corpus of text from a defined vocabulary and defined combination rules. Every phrase the wheel produced was grammatically correct within the system — it followed the rules — but its semantic content was not determined by the author, but by the position of the wheel.

Lullism in the Early Fifteenth Century

Llull was dead in 1316, stone dead, but his ideas were not. Quite the contrary. Lullism (would not LLMism be a fine term?) — the reception, further development and occasional condemnation of his method — experienced a flowering in the fourteenth and early fifteenth century that remains vastly underestimated in the literature. Paris had a chair for Lullism! That alone is strange enough. Padua and Bologna discussed his method within the framework of scholasticism (hear, hear!). In Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands, it was simply part of the intellectual basic equipment of any scholar who thought more of himself than Cacofonix.

Particularly interesting: Nicholas of Cusa — surely known to all of you — Cusanus, 1401–1464, one of the most important thinkers of the fifteenth century full stop — was demonstrably a Lullist. He not only owned several Llull manuscripts, he studied and annotated them. These manuscripts are held today in the Hospital Library in Kues and have been subjected to intensive investigation, which has been about as successful as Voynich investigations generally. Because nobody understands them — but that is an entirely different story. Why I mention Cusanus is important: he was not sitting on a small stool at the margins of the scholarly world watching the sky. He was a Cardinal (!), a papal legate, at the centre of intellectual Europe in the 1430s through 1460s — precisely the period to which the VMS is dated — interesting, or? Fine, then not.

Still, one must be clear: whoever produced the Voynich Manuscript around 1420 lived in an intellectual world in which Lullian combinatorics was not an esoteric niche phenomenon. It was a tool. It was a method. It was the horizon of thought — it was state of the art.

The wheels, nobody revcognized as wheels

This is where it gets interesting. And I do not mean that in the sense of the academic courtesy filler, but actually physically interesting — so: try to follow me.

The Voynich Manuscript contains several large, multi-page fold-out sheets — so-called foldouts — with circular diagrams. (Do not say you did not know that.) One of those at which every Voynich student, at least once in their Voynich-ruined life, wants to see a cipher key, is Folio 57v: four concentric rings of words and symbols, arranged around a centre with four naked female figures, 17 signs, and much else. Astrology? Horoscopes? Code?

But look at the structure more carefully. They are not horoscopes. Horoscopes of the fifteenth century have a very specific iconographic grammar — twelve houses, zodiac signs, planetary positions. The diagrams in the VMS do not follow this grammar.

What they do have are concentric rings with segmented text divided into sectors. That is exactly the visual structure of a Lullian combination wheel. Exactly. Down to the radial segmentation and the arrangement of units at equal intervals on each ring.

I have spent many hours comparing this and the other circles with the representation of the Ars Magna from. The structural similarity is not coincidental. It is too systematic to be coincidental.

The decisive difference: the Llull wheels are recognisable as what they are. The VMS wheels are in disguise. They are embedded in a botanical, astrological, balneological context that makes them superficially resemble something else. If that was intentional — and I believe it was — then the creator was someone who knew very precisely what he was doing and why he wanted to hide it.

The Statistics That Arise by Themselves

This brings me to the point that has occupied me longest and which in my opinion is the key to everything. Why does the VMS look statistically like language, if it is not one?

The usual answer is: well, it is one — we just have not found the key yet. Or: it is a hitherto unknown natural language. Or, in the more desperate variant: it is meaningless scribble deliberately designed to look like language — a forgery. The forgery argument is interesting, but breaks precisely because the statistical properties of the VMS show things that a forger of the early fifteenth century simply could not have known — that languages follow a Zipf distribution. That knowledge was still a few centuries away (1935). No medieval forger could have replicated that intentionally.

This is where the combinatorial explanation comes in, and it is mathematically elegant. If you assemble a finite vocabulary — say 40 to 60 basic units — into sequences according to fixed combination rules, the language-like statistical properties arise automatically. Not because they were intended. But because they are a mathematical consequence of the rule structure.
Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrated this in a mathematical analysis in 1953: a Zipf-like distribution arises not only in natural languages, but in any rule-governed combinatorial system with certain basic properties. A Lullian wheel with a medium vocabulary and hierarchical combination rules would generate exactly these properties — including the differences between 'Language A' and 'Language B', which could be explained by different wheel configurations or different sets of combination rules.

And most importantly: the scribe would not have needed to plan this. He turns the wheel. He writes down what the wheel shows. The statistics happen to him — as accidentally as a cell that suddenly defined itself as a cell. It is not his work. It is the work of the combinatorics itself — nothing more.

Apophatic Theology as Context

Now the question that many interpreters skip over, because they cannot grasp it, so foreign is medieval thinking to us today — although large parts of our brain are still fighting over the base instincts of millions of years ago.

Why, why and for what purpose would someone around 1420 disguise a Lullian combination machine as a herbal?

The answer lies, I believe, in apophatic theology — negative theology — as it was intensively discussed in the fourteenth and early fifteenth century especially in mystical circles in northern Europe and Italy. The core idea: God is not knowable through positive thinking, through statements like 'God is good' or 'God is wise'. Because every such statement limits. God transcends all categories. The mind reaches the highest knowledge — or at least the closest approach to it — not in the moment of understanding, but in the moment of failure. When thought encounters its own boundary and recognises it.

Meister Eckhart had taught this even before Llull's death. Tauler, Seuse, the Frankfurter Mystik of the fourteenth century — all of that still lived in the libraries and minds of monasteries in 1420. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the principal witness of the apophatic tradition, was standard reading. Nicholas of Cusa, our Lullist, developed from this his concept of docta ignorantia — learned ignorance, knowledge through deliberate not-knowing.

A meditation tool built on these foundations would do the following: it would present the observer with sequences that look meaning-like — that activate all the cognitive patterns that normally signal meaning. Word lengths, word repetitions, sentence structures. But it would deliver no meaning. The mind would run against a wall again and again. And that wall, not despite but because of its impenetrability, would be the point.

The manuscript is not a message. It is an experience ex machina (quite the comparison) — it is a vision of failure at form. It served — today we would say — to meditate on the being of failure. Read the lines, try to understand them, drive your mind to its limits in order to know God. From today's perspective this sounds like madness. It is not.

The Illustrations as Lullian Combination Domains

What then about the plants? The naked women in the bathtubs? The astronomical diagrams?
In the Lullian Ars Magna, the combination wheels do not operate in a vacuum. Each wheel belongs to a subject area — a domain in which the combinations apply. Llull developed wheels for medicine, for theology, for law, for natural science. The illustrations in the VMS could be read as visual labelling of these domains. The herbal section not as a herbal, but as a marker: here the wheel operates in the domain of the natural, of plants, of healing. Which is why the roots and the blossoms and the stems are all mixed up. The astronomical section: the wheel in the domain of cosmology, of stars and of depth. The balneological section — the women in the pools — without question the strangest part, but even in the Lullian tradition there are wheels that treat the human, the bodily, the living as a domain.

The plants do not need to be identifiable. That is not a bug, it is a feature. Were they identifiable, the manuscript would be readable as a herbal — and with that, the disguise of the wheels would unravel. Only non-identifiable plants fulfil their function completely: they mark the domain without anchoring it to real objects that would invite comparisons and thereby questions.

Who Could This Have Been?

This is the question at which I am most cautious, because it is the most speculative. I will name no names I cannot substantiate; I have an idea, but no. But I can describe the frame.

The creator must have been: firstly, a trained Lullist who not only knew the Ars Magna but had applied it practically. That considerably narrows the circle of candidates. Secondly, someone with access to the apophatic mystical literature — Pseudo-Dionysius, Eckhart, possibly Cusanus, whose early writings were circulating from the 1420s onward. Thirdly, someone with a reason to hide it. Lullism was not without danger everywhere. The University of Paris had condemned Llull's teachings in 1374. Anyone using a Lullian system as a meditation tool for mystical purposes was operating in territory that could attract ecclesiastical attention.

Northern Italy, first third of the fifteenth century: that is the place of origin most frequently proposed on palaeographic and codicological grounds. Zandbergen and others have argued this convincingly. In northern Italy — Venice, Padua, Milan — Lullism was alive, mystical currents were active, and learned men existed who knew and combined both.
I will not speculate further here. Not because it is impossible, but because any specification at this point weakens the theory without strengthening it.

Why It Cannot Be Deciphered — and Why That Is Not an Objection

The obvious criticism of what I describe here: if that is true, why has nobody found the combination wheel? Why can the mechanism not be reconstructed?

The answer is simple: because it was not written down. In the logic of this project — building a meditation tool deliberately designed to be undecipherable — it would be self-defeating to include the key. The wheel perhaps existed physically, as a real object of parchment or wood. Or it existed in the head of the scribe, who moved through the combinations by routine. After his death: gone. No key, no wheel, no context. Only the product.

This is not a special case. There are medieval documents whose production mechanism could be reconstructed because accompanying documents survive. There are others where this is not possible because the entire production context was lost. The VMS has no known provenance before the early seventeenth century — the first secure evidence is the letter from Georg Baresch to Athanasius Kircher in 1639, in which Baresch describes the manuscript and asks for help with decipherment. Everything before that is hypothesis.

And here is the decisive point I want to emphasise: the absence of a reconstructable key is not evidence against this theory. It is consistent with it. A system designed to prevent the mind from understanding leaves, by definition, no trace of its mechanism. Undecipherability is not the symptom of a lost language. It is the result of a successful construction.

What Remains

I have no illusions. This is not provable. None of the theories about the Voynich Manuscript are provable, as long as no document from the fifteenth century surfaces that explicitly describes the context of its creation — and even then doubts would be possible. I have learned to live with this state. One must, if one engages with the VMS for any length of time — otherwise one ends up making pointless VMS YouTube videos, abandoning one's blog in disappointment, arguing about colours and plants, or defending hoax theories with the most baroque sophistry.

What I do claim: this explanation is more coherent than its alternatives. It requires no unknown language. It requires no anachronistic assumptions about how people thought in the early fifteenth century. It explains the statistical properties of the text without magic. It explains the structure of the diagrams. It explains the non-identifiability of the plants. It explains why the manuscript falls into several thematically distinct sections. And it explains why nobody has deciphered it in 600 years.
Not because it is too hard. But because there is nothing to decipher.

The manuscript is finished. It has served its purpose. Somewhere, sometime, someone opened this book, looked at the pages, let their mind drift across the words, and ran into the wall. Again and again. And in doing so, perhaps, briefly touched something larger than what words can say.

Whether that is theology or madness, I leave open.

In my own case, I know: it is madness.]]>
What follows is an attempt to write down an insight before it dissolves back into the diffuse mass of speculation from which it came. I make no claim to completeness. But I do claim that what I present here is more coherent than anything I have read about this text in recent years — and that is saying something.

The Problem Nobody Will Admit, really?

If you are honest — really honest, without the reflexive modesty that passes for good manners in academic circles (haha) — then you have to admit: we have no idea. After more than a hundred years of intense engagement, after Friedman's anagram excesses in the 1940s, after Feistely's Middle Eastern theories, after Stolfi's China stumble, Zandbergen, Montemurro, after Cheshire, who sent the world into uproar for about two weeks in 2019 before his approach crumbled apart at a leisurely pace like a stale cake — after all of that, the research stands roughly where it stood in 1912, when Wilfrid Voynich pulled the thing from a dusty box at the Villa Mondragone — well, or traded it with some Jesuits for cake for the abbot.

That is not nothing. Although one has also learned a great deal. We know that the vellum carrier was in all likelihood killed between 1404 and 1438. The hotly debated ink will presumably date from the same period. We know that a common typeface in the 1970s correctly identified two distinct writing styles, which he called 'Language A' and 'Language B'. We know that the statistical distribution of the words follows a Zipf curve — one of the few things that actually bothers me about my own theory — roughly as real languages are distributed. We know that certain words cluster in certain sections — differently in the herbal part than in the astronomical part, differently than in the bathtub part — it must be a language, surely.

What we do not know, however, is what any of it means. And that is where the real problem begins: most attempts at explanation implicitly assume that the manuscript contains a message. A content. A recipient. A key. One searches for a language because one believes there must be one. And when you cannot find it, when you have had enough of the endless failing, you arrive at the only conclusion that remains — the whole thing must be a hoax. And if not, you suddenly find yourself examining marginal annotations, because those can apparently be read, which is amusing: if scholars need years to decipher words written in Latin letters, should it surprise anyone that the main text has not been cracked? And the dedicated long-term student of Voynich turns to crowns, noble marks, cloud bands and page numbers; letters are folded in public to present evidence; YouTube videos are produced and forgotten. Every week countless (well, between one and five) AI theories appear, from which one can learn how AI is getting ever better at being bad.

The long story, which is itself only a brief glimpse into the cruelty of being a Voynich student, cut short:

What if the wrong question has been at the root of all of this?

Ramon Llull and the Wheel That Connects Everything

To understand what I mean, one must briefly travel to Mallorca — specifically to the thirteenth century. Ramon Llull, born 1232 or 1233, died 1316, is one of the strangest figures in European medieval history. Troubadour, mystic, missionary, philosopher, possibly stoned to death on a voyage to North Africa (are ladies present?), possibly also simply dead of old age, or done in by exasperated contemporaries — the sources contradict each other. What is beyond dispute: he developed a system he called the Ars Magna, the Great Art, which had an intellectually explosive effect for the following two centuries — much like AI today — or as one tends to say, the LLMs — which already bear a curious resemblance in name alone, and one wonders why nobody made that connection sooner — but I digress.

The core idea was strikingly simple. Llull believed that all truth — theological, philosophical, natural — could be derived from a finite set of divine attributes. Goodness, Greatness, Eternity, Power, Wisdom, Will, Virtue, Truth, Glory — nine fundamental properties of God, which he designated with the letters B through K (for reasons best known to himself). These attributes could now be mechanically combined by arranging them on concentric discs of parchment or wood and rotating these discs against each other. Each position of the wheel generated a new combination, a new theological statement, a new question. One no longer needed to think, in the sense that no creative inspiration was required — one turned, and the system thought for you.

That sounds simple to the computer-accustomed, light-switch-softened, civilisation-sick Voynich student. It is not. What Llull had actually built was one of the first fully mechanical combination machines in history. A system that could generate a potentially infinite corpus of text from a defined vocabulary and defined combination rules. Every phrase the wheel produced was grammatically correct within the system — it followed the rules — but its semantic content was not determined by the author, but by the position of the wheel.

Lullism in the Early Fifteenth Century

Llull was dead in 1316, stone dead, but his ideas were not. Quite the contrary. Lullism (would not LLMism be a fine term?) — the reception, further development and occasional condemnation of his method — experienced a flowering in the fourteenth and early fifteenth century that remains vastly underestimated in the literature. Paris had a chair for Lullism! That alone is strange enough. Padua and Bologna discussed his method within the framework of scholasticism (hear, hear!). In Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands, it was simply part of the intellectual basic equipment of any scholar who thought more of himself than Cacofonix.

Particularly interesting: Nicholas of Cusa — surely known to all of you — Cusanus, 1401–1464, one of the most important thinkers of the fifteenth century full stop — was demonstrably a Lullist. He not only owned several Llull manuscripts, he studied and annotated them. These manuscripts are held today in the Hospital Library in Kues and have been subjected to intensive investigation, which has been about as successful as Voynich investigations generally. Because nobody understands them — but that is an entirely different story. Why I mention Cusanus is important: he was not sitting on a small stool at the margins of the scholarly world watching the sky. He was a Cardinal (!), a papal legate, at the centre of intellectual Europe in the 1430s through 1460s — precisely the period to which the VMS is dated — interesting, or? Fine, then not.

Still, one must be clear: whoever produced the Voynich Manuscript around 1420 lived in an intellectual world in which Lullian combinatorics was not an esoteric niche phenomenon. It was a tool. It was a method. It was the horizon of thought — it was state of the art.

The wheels, nobody revcognized as wheels

This is where it gets interesting. And I do not mean that in the sense of the academic courtesy filler, but actually physically interesting — so: try to follow me.

The Voynich Manuscript contains several large, multi-page fold-out sheets — so-called foldouts — with circular diagrams. (Do not say you did not know that.) One of those at which every Voynich student, at least once in their Voynich-ruined life, wants to see a cipher key, is Folio 57v: four concentric rings of words and symbols, arranged around a centre with four naked female figures, 17 signs, and much else. Astrology? Horoscopes? Code?

But look at the structure more carefully. They are not horoscopes. Horoscopes of the fifteenth century have a very specific iconographic grammar — twelve houses, zodiac signs, planetary positions. The diagrams in the VMS do not follow this grammar.

What they do have are concentric rings with segmented text divided into sectors. That is exactly the visual structure of a Lullian combination wheel. Exactly. Down to the radial segmentation and the arrangement of units at equal intervals on each ring.

I have spent many hours comparing this and the other circles with the representation of the Ars Magna from. The structural similarity is not coincidental. It is too systematic to be coincidental.

The decisive difference: the Llull wheels are recognisable as what they are. The VMS wheels are in disguise. They are embedded in a botanical, astrological, balneological context that makes them superficially resemble something else. If that was intentional — and I believe it was — then the creator was someone who knew very precisely what he was doing and why he wanted to hide it.

The Statistics That Arise by Themselves

This brings me to the point that has occupied me longest and which in my opinion is the key to everything. Why does the VMS look statistically like language, if it is not one?

The usual answer is: well, it is one — we just have not found the key yet. Or: it is a hitherto unknown natural language. Or, in the more desperate variant: it is meaningless scribble deliberately designed to look like language — a forgery. The forgery argument is interesting, but breaks precisely because the statistical properties of the VMS show things that a forger of the early fifteenth century simply could not have known — that languages follow a Zipf distribution. That knowledge was still a few centuries away (1935). No medieval forger could have replicated that intentionally.

This is where the combinatorial explanation comes in, and it is mathematically elegant. If you assemble a finite vocabulary — say 40 to 60 basic units — into sequences according to fixed combination rules, the language-like statistical properties arise automatically. Not because they were intended. But because they are a mathematical consequence of the rule structure.
Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrated this in a mathematical analysis in 1953: a Zipf-like distribution arises not only in natural languages, but in any rule-governed combinatorial system with certain basic properties. A Lullian wheel with a medium vocabulary and hierarchical combination rules would generate exactly these properties — including the differences between 'Language A' and 'Language B', which could be explained by different wheel configurations or different sets of combination rules.

And most importantly: the scribe would not have needed to plan this. He turns the wheel. He writes down what the wheel shows. The statistics happen to him — as accidentally as a cell that suddenly defined itself as a cell. It is not his work. It is the work of the combinatorics itself — nothing more.

Apophatic Theology as Context

Now the question that many interpreters skip over, because they cannot grasp it, so foreign is medieval thinking to us today — although large parts of our brain are still fighting over the base instincts of millions of years ago.

Why, why and for what purpose would someone around 1420 disguise a Lullian combination machine as a herbal?

The answer lies, I believe, in apophatic theology — negative theology — as it was intensively discussed in the fourteenth and early fifteenth century especially in mystical circles in northern Europe and Italy. The core idea: God is not knowable through positive thinking, through statements like 'God is good' or 'God is wise'. Because every such statement limits. God transcends all categories. The mind reaches the highest knowledge — or at least the closest approach to it — not in the moment of understanding, but in the moment of failure. When thought encounters its own boundary and recognises it.

Meister Eckhart had taught this even before Llull's death. Tauler, Seuse, the Frankfurter Mystik of the fourteenth century — all of that still lived in the libraries and minds of monasteries in 1420. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the principal witness of the apophatic tradition, was standard reading. Nicholas of Cusa, our Lullist, developed from this his concept of docta ignorantia — learned ignorance, knowledge through deliberate not-knowing.

A meditation tool built on these foundations would do the following: it would present the observer with sequences that look meaning-like — that activate all the cognitive patterns that normally signal meaning. Word lengths, word repetitions, sentence structures. But it would deliver no meaning. The mind would run against a wall again and again. And that wall, not despite but because of its impenetrability, would be the point.

The manuscript is not a message. It is an experience ex machina (quite the comparison) — it is a vision of failure at form. It served — today we would say — to meditate on the being of failure. Read the lines, try to understand them, drive your mind to its limits in order to know God. From today's perspective this sounds like madness. It is not.

The Illustrations as Lullian Combination Domains

What then about the plants? The naked women in the bathtubs? The astronomical diagrams?
In the Lullian Ars Magna, the combination wheels do not operate in a vacuum. Each wheel belongs to a subject area — a domain in which the combinations apply. Llull developed wheels for medicine, for theology, for law, for natural science. The illustrations in the VMS could be read as visual labelling of these domains. The herbal section not as a herbal, but as a marker: here the wheel operates in the domain of the natural, of plants, of healing. Which is why the roots and the blossoms and the stems are all mixed up. The astronomical section: the wheel in the domain of cosmology, of stars and of depth. The balneological section — the women in the pools — without question the strangest part, but even in the Lullian tradition there are wheels that treat the human, the bodily, the living as a domain.

The plants do not need to be identifiable. That is not a bug, it is a feature. Were they identifiable, the manuscript would be readable as a herbal — and with that, the disguise of the wheels would unravel. Only non-identifiable plants fulfil their function completely: they mark the domain without anchoring it to real objects that would invite comparisons and thereby questions.

Who Could This Have Been?

This is the question at which I am most cautious, because it is the most speculative. I will name no names I cannot substantiate; I have an idea, but no. But I can describe the frame.

The creator must have been: firstly, a trained Lullist who not only knew the Ars Magna but had applied it practically. That considerably narrows the circle of candidates. Secondly, someone with access to the apophatic mystical literature — Pseudo-Dionysius, Eckhart, possibly Cusanus, whose early writings were circulating from the 1420s onward. Thirdly, someone with a reason to hide it. Lullism was not without danger everywhere. The University of Paris had condemned Llull's teachings in 1374. Anyone using a Lullian system as a meditation tool for mystical purposes was operating in territory that could attract ecclesiastical attention.

Northern Italy, first third of the fifteenth century: that is the place of origin most frequently proposed on palaeographic and codicological grounds. Zandbergen and others have argued this convincingly. In northern Italy — Venice, Padua, Milan — Lullism was alive, mystical currents were active, and learned men existed who knew and combined both.
I will not speculate further here. Not because it is impossible, but because any specification at this point weakens the theory without strengthening it.

Why It Cannot Be Deciphered — and Why That Is Not an Objection

The obvious criticism of what I describe here: if that is true, why has nobody found the combination wheel? Why can the mechanism not be reconstructed?

The answer is simple: because it was not written down. In the logic of this project — building a meditation tool deliberately designed to be undecipherable — it would be self-defeating to include the key. The wheel perhaps existed physically, as a real object of parchment or wood. Or it existed in the head of the scribe, who moved through the combinations by routine. After his death: gone. No key, no wheel, no context. Only the product.

This is not a special case. There are medieval documents whose production mechanism could be reconstructed because accompanying documents survive. There are others where this is not possible because the entire production context was lost. The VMS has no known provenance before the early seventeenth century — the first secure evidence is the letter from Georg Baresch to Athanasius Kircher in 1639, in which Baresch describes the manuscript and asks for help with decipherment. Everything before that is hypothesis.

And here is the decisive point I want to emphasise: the absence of a reconstructable key is not evidence against this theory. It is consistent with it. A system designed to prevent the mind from understanding leaves, by definition, no trace of its mechanism. Undecipherability is not the symptom of a lost language. It is the result of a successful construction.

What Remains

I have no illusions. This is not provable. None of the theories about the Voynich Manuscript are provable, as long as no document from the fifteenth century surfaces that explicitly describes the context of its creation — and even then doubts would be possible. I have learned to live with this state. One must, if one engages with the VMS for any length of time — otherwise one ends up making pointless VMS YouTube videos, abandoning one's blog in disappointment, arguing about colours and plants, or defending hoax theories with the most baroque sophistry.

What I do claim: this explanation is more coherent than its alternatives. It requires no unknown language. It requires no anachronistic assumptions about how people thought in the early fifteenth century. It explains the statistical properties of the text without magic. It explains the structure of the diagrams. It explains the non-identifiability of the plants. It explains why the manuscript falls into several thematically distinct sections. And it explains why nobody has deciphered it in 600 years.
Not because it is too hard. But because there is nothing to decipher.

The manuscript is finished. It has served its purpose. Somewhere, sometime, someone opened this book, looked at the pages, let their mind drift across the words, and ran into the wall. Again and again. And in doing so, perhaps, briefly touched something larger than what words can say.

Whether that is theology or madness, I leave open.

In my own case, I know: it is madness.]]>