As I’ve already said, the sentence must also make sense.
If I replace the ‘x’ – pronounced ‘gs/ks’ – with an ‘s’, I end up with Latin, written flawlessly in keywords.
Meaning in German according to the dictionary, in order:
‘you are, Bock, perish/die, power/strength, exalted, Mary.’
In one sentence:
Bock, perish with the power of the Holy Mary.
Whereby ‘sublime’ is a step above ‘of noble birth’.
And it means ‘dabas’, you sacrifice. Also according to the dictionary. (olla dabas) Only ‘olla’ has two ‘L’s.

A curse that makes sense, and one I can understand.
That’s why I stick to it, and I won’t put up with any nonsense.
And it’s pronounced “so nim-tzas mich o” and has nothing to do with goat’s milk.
It means, watch out, the curse could also fall on me.
That’s the story.

‘Bock’ is a synonym here, not an animal.
‘Do host aber n'Bock gschossn’ – You’ve really made a mess of things now.

(Yesterday, 07:13 AM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Didn't Koen have an expert on charms on his YouTube channel confirm this was in fact a typical charm?

She confirmed that it is absolutely certainly a charm, and agreed with me that lack of meaning was the point. That is to say, charms can be part of a series of instructions, but they don't need to contain any meaningful words themselves.

For example: write "abracadabra + rex + nax + hax" on a piece of paper and put it against the patient's forehead. The meaning of the section with crosses is irrelevant to the instructions, even in cases where it contains meaning. For example, there are common charms involving the magi, but these are still magic formulae. The phrases about the magi have no relation to the instructions outside of the charm.

So in that sense, the words with crosses are exactly what we'd expect from a charm. Attempts to read You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as a continuous text are deeply misguided, because the two lines with crosses have all the appearance of nonsense magic words. We have to allow them to be meaningless because they're supposed to be meaningless.

That said, many charms fall into familiar categories. You can say ah, this is a variation of the three magi charm. The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. charm appears related to those that use short words ending in -x, but it's not very close to a known archetype.

Every curse has two basic principles.
What is to be cursed? A person or an object. To be removed, summoned, altered… whatever.
And how is it to be done?
A spell, burning, burial, and if necessary, haunting it.
It’s all there in the VM. Now you just have to understand it.

(Yesterday, 09:07 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.She confirmed that it is absolutely certainly a charm, and agreed with me that lack of meaning was the point. That is to say, charms can be part of a series of instructions, but they don't need to contain any meaningful words themselves.

And that, at least in my opinion, is a counterargument to Stolfi's theory that a scribe tried to reconstruct some Voynichese here.

Sorry, Stolfi

(Yesterday, 06:25 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Who says charms have to mean anything? They’re often strings of invocations of saints or angels, references to remedies—because people thought that alone would help—and magical words that can no longer be reconstructed. Here’s below an example from an English book (B. L. Sloane 3160) that also contains some errors in the Latin words.

What’s particularly nice about this charm is: REX + AREX + RYMEX (this is essentially the same as “six marix morix vix” because the endings in “x”—see also “max pax brax”—are very typical of charms.) ... Then the typical magical words: six = six (also in German), marix morix vix (quickly).

Yes, yes, ... but again: the bloke saw a couple of smudges in the second line that looked like crosses, and since there is no letter in that script that looks like a cross, he concluded (like everybody has been doing for the last 100 years) that the line was a charm.  And thus he "reconstructed" it as a charm. 

Do you realize that you are admitting that it is a waste of time to try to get the meaning of the text, because it is just a bunch of "magical" words with no meaning?  Which is a major consequence of the Big Wipe theory...

Quote:The charm 116v invokes “maria,” specifically the most significant relic in the 15th century at Aachen Cathedral in Germany, which—according to the beliefs of the time—promised powerful healing simply through touch.

There is no reason to think of Aachen specifically.  "Maria" would be just as likely to be invoked in a charm from Galicia as in one from Edessa.

Quote:It is Mary’s undergarment the one she is said to have worn at the birth of Jesus = mchiton.

Except that the word is "anchiton", and anyway it cannot be "mchiton" because a charm is meant to be read aloud.  

And "chiton" in Latin meant specifically a Greek-style tunic.  Is there any text anywhere that says that Mary was wearing a chiton (or any specific clothing) under her garment when she birthed Jesus?

Quote:“Alada” refers to hellebore (a remedy); “bas” means “better” (there is an effective form of hellebore and a less effective one).

But the first letter is definitely "o", not "a", and, even if we concede that the last letter is "s", it would be a single word "oladabas".

Quote:“Multos” is used for emphasis, meaning “many.”

Emphasis of what?  Many hellebores?  And what is that "bowtie" under the "o"?

Quote:A candle or wax (cere) is to be carried.

The word "cere" does not mean "wax candle" in Latin.  That would be "candela".  Or "candela cerea", if one really wanted to be redundantly redundant.  

According to the lalamo at hand, "cere" could legitimately be only the imperative of the verb "cerare" = "to wax", like "Miss Smith, please wax the floor right now!" 

Quote:“N” stands for an invocation of Christ, or for the name of the person in question.

Yes, that is probably what the bloke thought that the smudge in that corner was.  Although it is not a capital N -- only a big lowercase "n".

Quote:“abia” can have many meanings—it could simply be a misspelled Latin word, as in the text from the English book, or “avia” (Christ’s grandmother, Anna), or the name “abia,” or something else.

Said more simply, "it has no meaning".

Quote:Maria is invoked again.

Why "again"? There is only one occurrence of "maria" on that page.

If that word was the name of Mary, one would expect the "m" to be capitalized.  With lowercase "m", "maria" is a perfectly correct Latin word that means "seas", as in "per maria et terras".  Why wouldn't that be the intended meaning of that "maria" on f116v?

Quote:“balsam” (palsen)

For that reading you must assume that the big "8" is an "s", even though "s" is supposed to be written as a small "8" only at the end of words.

Quote:possibly in the form of a paste (pbrey)

My faithful lalamo indeed confirmed that "pbrey" is a Medieval spelling of "brei" which means "paste", "porridge" etc.  

... but, when asked about the source, it said that the only Medieval document where that spelling occurs is ... drum roll ... the Voynich Manuscript.

So, no, sorry -- "pbrey" is not "in the form of a paste".  Even because a balsam is a liquid...

Quote:and then it says, “so nim es af mich,” which means something like, “so take it from me” (the illness).

It says "so nim gas mich o" or "so nim gaf mich o".  The parsing of the "g" as "es" would require introducing a third variant of the letter "s", which AFAIK would have been very rare in manuscripts of the time.

Quote:these interpretations ... still illustrate the underlying principle.

The "underlying principle" is that, on f116v,

• there are a bunch of signs, most of which (but not all) can be identified as Latin letters in bad handwriting.
  
• more than half of the words formed by those letters are not valid words of Latin, German, or any known language.
  
• the few words that can be identified with valid Latin or German words do not make meaningful sentences.
  

All the best, --stolfi

@Stofi

I think we agree to disagree.

I’ve already cited the evidence, reasoning, and examples; I don’t want to repeat them again. It seems you haven’t read some of them, but that’s not really important. Let’s leave it at that—otherwise this will go on forever

   
At this point, we have to assume that the author isn’t too particular about double letters, or that it was spelled differently 500 years ago.
But ‘cere’ means (wax) candle
And it does appear in other curses as well.

(07-08-2026, 11:32 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.and, most importantly, you must assume that it was OK to write final-"s" with a full "h"-height, instead of a minim height (as in the example alphabet you showed). I ask again: is there any manuscript from the time that has final-"s" that big?

The person who wrote the marginalia on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. used a fine‑point pen. Perhaps he was not used to writing with it and didn’t know how to write final‑s with a fine‑point pen (since before that he had always used a broad pen, the kind used for manuscripts). This may be the reason for the unusual shape of the text.

(Yesterday, 10:49 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Do you realize that you are admitting that it is a waste of time to try to get the meaning of the text, because it is just a bunch of "magical" words with no meaning? Which is a major consequence of the Big Wipe theory...

A German spell to make a fugitive return (I’m not sure which fugitive it is, and I heard it a long time ago; this is what it sounds like):
Peda inpeda. Prepeda. Conpeda prepedias inpediae. Conpedia
The words have no meaning, but they are similar in sound to the Latin words impedio and prepedio.
An English spell against snakes:
Porro porro poto zelo zelo zebeta arra array paraclitus.
The last word can be translated as “defender.”

Stolfi: if the four lines of text belong together, then the two middle lines are meaningless, but the top and bottom line shouldn't be. 

If the four lines are not connected, then two charm lines could be surrounded by anything, even probatio pennae.