(12-12-2025, 07:51 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think it's key for all of us (which includes myself) to not lock anything down until this makes sense.

I must say I have kind of moved away from this approach. It's interesting to find out where the inspirations for the VM came from and how it was created, but I'm increasingly pessimistic about anything regarding 'making sense'.
Id like to again point out the eerie similarity between 'Voynichese', Imagery and Marginalia. All looks somewhat familiar and is definitely rooted in contemporary works of literature. None of the building blocks are alien. But the way they are arranged is profoundly odd and, at least until now, we cannot make any sense of it.

(12-12-2025, 07:51 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.On that multispectral image, the supposed "e" in "pinen" or "umen" or whatever looks weird. Shaped kind of like ç. I can't tell what that's supposed to be.

Yes, I agree that's a weird 'e' just like so many marginalia letters, including the use of Voynichese glyphs. I have 3 hypotheses, maybe you have another:

1) The author was - for whatever reason - unable to write coherent German / Latin text in a Latin script
2) The author was - for a more obvious reason - unwilling to write decipherable text
3) The author had originally written legible text but either he himself or someone else has later mangled the letters making them unreadable.

I really can't say. The author had obviously been taught to draw Latin letters at some time and probably spoke some form of German. He was also able to draw some Voynichese glyphs without issues. This however does not automatically mean he was able to form coherent words or sentences in either German or Latin.

This leads us to an interesting question: Why did someone write this gibberish into an unreadable manuscript? Why is there not a single meaningful sentence?
If the marginalia author was able to encode meaningful information into Voynichese, why not use this instead? I think time-line wise it is hard to argue that the marginalia could pre-date the Voynichese text as some sort of encipherment. Either they were created at a later time where the ability to create Voynichese was already lost, or the author was not able to use Voynichese to the same extent as the scribe who wrote the VM text. To me it seems the marginalia author could neither write meaningful text in Voynichese nor Latin script.

Or this indeed are just nonsensical pen-trials without meaning. But then why make such odd letters or even overwrite them?

My inclination Bernd, is that the marginalia writer liked playing with words, or maybe just didn't have a very good grasp of language. I think we see this in "pox" (we think maybe "pocks").
A thought I have is that "p den muss (d)mel" might be something like "p" - A reference to something (maybe this poxleber line? - stretching probably) "den" (then) "Mandelmúsß" (muss mdel - switched places) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Which if you scroll, look a fair bit like the things drawn, and the smear on the belly might indicate food. 

As you say though, this is just trying to make sense of things that seemingly make no sense.. and the fact "plain-text" makes no sense is probably the most baffling thing about the manuscript for me.. and that's in a very big pool of "weird" to pick from!

(26-08-2025, 05:29 PM)sempervirentz Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi, I read the blog post about the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by Koen today, including the comments. I am asking myself if there was progress in the meantime?

This was Koen's final version:



I want to suggest this variation:

poxleber pinen p?tpfer
+ anchiton oladabad + maltos + te + cere + povtas + n +
six + marix + morix + vix + abia + maria +
palden pbren so nim gasmich

maltos ≈ malt
cere ≈ wax
povtas ≈ potash

As others have pointed out at least some words root (presumably) in medieval German:

poxleber ≈ Bocksleber (male goat’s liver)
so nim ≈ so nimm (so take)
gasmich ≈ Geißmilch (goat's milk)

So what do we have? A list of ingredients, a reference to a blessing (Maria) and instructions for use. This is quite something, I think. I hope others can fill the empty spaces.

I think the correct transcription of the top line might be poxleber umen mit pfer (Bocksleber-Omen mit Pferd). The way I see it, it relates somehow to the practice of haruspicy (divination with animal entrails), specifically hepatomancy, using a goat and a horse.

(07-12-2025, 11:01 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yeah, I kept this video "short" on purpose and decided to focus on one approach. It's mostly meant as a basis for the next video, a primer for casual enthusiasts and (as always), a warning against quick and easy "solutions".

I could have easily made it 10 times longer, but you have to make choices if you want to keep it watchable. Every side note you include adds minutes to the video and has the chance to drain people's attention span. 

Things I omitted are the images, the details of any stains, possibility of overwriting, breakdown of proposed readings (and why they're no good), the once-popular reading of poxleber as a swearword (and why that's no good), etc... I also glossed over everything having to do with charms, but that's because I'll focus on that later.

The stain you point out is certainly interesting and would have made for a good visual though.

Just wanted to add that I could watch hours of your videos . But then again I’ve consumed everything that is presented with measurable info and you do a great job
Of explaining some very hard concepts. Not trying to flatter just saying there might be an audience here that nerds out to these videos. And I am not saying it’s only
You- I love watching the voynich day videos over and over.

(13-12-2025, 04:15 AM)anyasophira Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Just wanted to add that I could watch hours of your videos . But then again I’ve consumed everything that is presented with measurable info and you do a great job
Of explaining some very hard concepts. Not trying to flatter just saying there might be an audience here that nerds out to these videos. And I am not saying it’s only
You- I love watching the voynich day videos over and over.

Thanks! The fact that people find these useful is a good motivation to keep going.


Bernd: I agree we shouldn't necessarily expect to find a clean solution, or any solution for that matter. What I meant to say is that many of these forms are so unclear that we can't be sure of their reading without an understanding of what they're supposed to say. Kind of a catch 22. And if the inscription has no coherent meaning, then we're simply not able to determine the reading of the unclear letters.

As for the reason why, my guess is as good as yours. Some scenarios would have potential implications for the way we look at the manuscript itself. But we don't want to compound speculation.

(13-12-2025, 02:05 AM)taukon Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think the correct transcription of the top line might be poxleber umen mit pfer (Bocksleber-Omen mit Pferd). The way I see it, it relates somehow to the practice of haruspicy (divination with animal entrails), specifically hepatomancy, using a goat and a horse.

Some words in the second line incantation sound like transliterated Hebrew to me: 'āḇas (אָבַס) - to feed or fatten an animal; alternatively it can be understood as its past participle ('fattened').

EDIT:
Found the following appearance of the word anchiton in a commentary of Alexander Romances inside an article about The Wall of Gog and Magog by M. J. van Goeje. Supposedly it is a fire resistant material of some sort.

Quote:Het verhaal in de Historia de praeliis sluit zich het naast aan bij de tweede redactie. 't Wordt ingeleid met de woorden: »Et deambulans ultra Sithiam in partibus Orientis invenit gentem inmundam et aspectu orribilem". Alexander van al hunne gruwelen hoorende, laat ze allen met vrouwen en kinderen bijeenbrengen en naar het Noorden voeren. De Μαζοὶ τοῦ Βορρᾶ heeten hier promunctorium boreum (in de Hebreeuwsche vertaling zijn uit dezen naam twee gemaakt en heet de eene berg Practanicon, de andere Boreon), en de stof, die vuur en ijzer weerstaat en waarmede hij de ijzeren poorten omgiet: antichiton en anchiton. De ware schrijfweijze van dit woord is onzeker. Müller meent dat asbest bedoeld wordt.

Further discussion of the word's etymology.

Quote:De heeren Naber en Cornelissen gaven bij de discussie ἀνικητοι in overweging. Later is de heer Cornelissen daarop teruggekomer en ried mij van Herwerden te raadplegen over de vraag, of het niet misschien uit ἀσινητον (van σινέομαι = σίνομαι) kan ontstan zijn. De heer van Herwerden schrijft mij dat dit inderdaad om palaeographische redenen waarschijnlijker is.

EDIT 2:
Reading about Gog and Magog's wall, it occurred to me there is a small chance this may bear some relation with the Rosettes page… Very strong apocalyptic themes, both in Western Christian and Muslim traditions.

Anchiton, Gog and Magog, this and following comments:

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(12-12-2025, 05:40 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Noctifer   Bringing night

mortifer (“bringing death”)

English Wiktionary glosses noctifer as “the Evening Star”. I can definitely see this word in the fourth scribbling more easily than most other proposed possibilities, with the possible exception of mortifer. While this would certainly fit the theme of charms and of the apparent astrological imagery throughout the manuscript, I’m not sure that it brings us any closer to the 116v marginalia making sense, without at least a few more breakthroughs. Good thought, though.

(13-12-2025, 06:28 PM)RenegadeHealer Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.English Wiktionary glosses noctifer as “the Evening Star”. I can definitely see this word in the fourth scribbling more easily than most other proposed possibilities, with the possible exception of mortifer. While this would certainly fit the theme of charms and of the apparent astrological imagery throughout the manuscript, I’m not sure that it brings us any closer to the 116v marginalia making sense, without at least a few more breakthroughs. Good thought, though.

Thx RenegadedeHealer: 
That's right, now that you mention it, it does fit litlle better. On the other hand, it's a rather rare word in Latin: there is one instance of it in Catullus 62, verse 7

videtur in summo fulgens noctifer Olympo
(The shining night‑star appears high above Olympus) 

and another source that refers to Cactullus.

One must then ask how it got into the Voynich manuscript—but who knows ?

I went through the variants with “p” again, which I hadn't done yet—unfortunately, that slipped through the cracks. And then it actually appears right away:

putrifer = putrefactive / causing rot/decay (but the r is still strange)

However, that is also a rather rare word in latin.

If it were putrifer, then the second word would have to be

prnsn / pmsm / pinsn due to the letter similarity. With a little goodwill, pinsn could be the short form of the word pinsere = to pound, which would fit with putrifer.

So: to pound (while) putrefactive / to pound putrefactive material

But putrifer fits quite well in the “p” version (if u read the last three letters as fer).

((very speculatively, the word polcber, in one of its possible variants (puleber/pulever), could mean something like the german “pulver” (powder) phonetically written vernacular = pound the putrefactive powder ))