I suppose a large proportion of the ‘charms’ and ‘spells’ have been lost over the centuries. That’s why we shouldn’t expect to find a similar spell. Charm were often passed down orally and learnt, and then someone wrote them down. In the process, a great deal of information may well have been lost over the course of several hundred years. There are well-known charms that sound the same but have been written down differently.

Some of the charms are realy strange…

Here’s an example of an incomprehensible charm: It begins with the German instructions:  ‘Whoever is afflicted by the evil enemy, let them speak these words with a priest in that ear, and he will respond when asked.’

And then the charm begins (black lines) – there isn’t a single coherent sentence to be made out over four lines. Most of the words are not even legible.

   

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Amara Tonta Tyra post hos firabis ficaliri
Elypolis starras poly polyque lique linarras
buccabor uel barton vel Titram celi massis Me-
tumbor o priczoni Jordan Ciriacus Valentinus.

The similarities with 116v

Latin morphology/disguise. ‘firabis’ has the form of a future tense, 2nd person singular (like ‘amabis’), ‘buccabor’ that of a future passive, 1st person singular (like ‘vocabor’), and ‘Titram’ an accusative ending. The words are formed in the Latin manner, without actually being Latin. This is not random letter noise, but neither are they genuine words.

Here, too, we see ‘phonetic’ pair formation: starras / linarras – buccabor / Metumbor – polyque / lique.

There are rhyming and assonant pairs. The text is structured phonetically – which fits with a formula intended to be spoken aloud.

‘priczoni’ is interesting. The letter sequence ‘cz’ is a German spelling convention, not a Latin one. So here, a German-speaking scribe has written down a ‘heard text’ which he cannot have recognised as words.

This is therefore also direct evidence of the copying mechanism I wrote about above.

So what we do is try to make sense of these words; you can do that, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to anything, as this charm illustrates.

---------------
PS: As I’ve just come across this by chance:
a version of it dating back 250/270 years spells it as follows:

Amara tanta tyri pastos sycalos sycaliri
Ellivoli scarras polili posylique lyvarras
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (last Sentence on the page)


Comparison:

Amara       Amara
tanta        Tonta
tyri            Tyra
pastos       post hos 
sycalos       firabis
sycaliri       ficaliri
Ellivoli       Elypolis
scarras       starras
polili posylique lyvarras    poly polyque lique linarras

I think that shows where the problem lies

(17-08-2026, 06:59 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Here’s an example of an incomprehensible charm: ... there isn’t a single coherent sentence to be made out over four lines. Most of the words are not even legible.  So what we do is try to make sense of these words; you can do that, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to anything, as this charm illustrates.

Again, again, again: I am NOT asking for the words of the charm to make sense.  I understand that charms typically use nonsense words, and may not have a single word that is valid in any language. 

Your theory for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (the "standard" one) is that the text is a recipe in some Germanic dialect plus a pseudo-Latin charm or spell, that someone decided to write on an area that had nothing written on it. 

So I am asking only for a example of a charm somewhere else that uses at least ONE of the words "anchiton", "ola8aba8", "multos", "ctcr", "cere", "porta8", "six", "marix", "morix", "vix", or "abia".  

If you can't do that, that is bad news for your theory.  It would require that the person who wrote You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. either invented a new charm with all new words, or chose a pseudo-Latin charm that was entirely unlike all the charms that we have samples of.  Either alternative is rather unlikely, don't you agree?

Quote:PS: As I’ve just come across this by chance: a version of it dating back 250/270 years spells it as follows:

So, you see, your first example was not an original creation.  It was circulating in the 1400s and was still being used 200 years later -- with changes, but still quite recognizable.  Which is my point.

All the best, --stolfi

That’s a curse, too.

Himmel + Arsch + Zwirn
Himmel + Arsch + zugenäht
Himmel + Arsch + Wolkenbruch. Der Teufel soll Dich holen wenn Du weiter so einen Blödsinn schreibst.
Das ist auch ein Fluch

Perhaps it’s not a curse after all, but a prayer.
Dear Christ Child, make my kilos disappear and my bank balance go up.
And please don’t get them mixed up again like last year

You can find some words of the charm here and there, but nothing too spectacular. For example, I found "abia" in bee-related charms, but the rest of them wasn't very illuminating. Here's an example.

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These may also have something about a substance called "cera punica".

There should be room for nuance in this discussion. Yes, the section with crosses doesn't need to make any sense. People who try to translate every word into a coherent whole are missing the point. BUT the VM charm is particularly opaque and hard to link to existing strains.

It's part of an ancient tradition of not making sense, but even within that tradition, it looks like an outlier.

(17-08-2026, 01:37 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.These may also have something about a substance called "cera punica".

I looked it up
‘punica’ adjective ‘originating from them’
‘cera punica’ wax originating from them

"punica" Adjektiv "von ihnen stammend"
"cera punica" Wachs von ihnen stammend

It's Punic wax, a product made of beeswax.

(17-08-2026, 07:13 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There’s nothing wrong with the fact that we can’t find an equivalent to the spell. Given the specifics of VMS, it is possible that this spell was known to some conditional Chinese Nestorian who passed it on to the author, who then recorded it.

But the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is not just the pseudo-Latin spell/charm.  There is also the recipe with German-sounding words, which has the same problems as the spell: distorted letters, unrecognizable words, invalid grammar.  Would that "Chinese" Nestorian be German?  Why would the Author write it down with distorted letters? 

Quote:Stolfi’s criticism seems to me to be aimed at refutation, because everything boils down to confirming Big Spill. Good criticism should refute the statement in and of itself...

Sorry, I did not understand this comment.

The Big Wipe theory depends on two assumptions. The first one is

• (1) Originally there was a three-line paragraph of Voynichese text on f116v, written by the same Scribe(s) who wrote the rest of the book.
  

This assumption is at least possible.  The UV images show a big water spill on f116v, and the stains on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. show that the VMS ink was not waterproof.  That would explain how that text disappeared.  

In fact, the two Voynichese words at the start of the last line -- written in the same clear and firm handwriting as the rest of the book -- are evidence that supports this assumption.   By their position, they could easily have been missed by the spill.

If we make assumption (1), then the fact that there are only two words of Voynichese left implies that most of that Voynichese parag was erased and replaced by the "anchiton" text that we see today.  Here the Big Wipe theory needs a second assumption:

• (2) The person who wrote the current text of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (except the two Voynichese words) intended to restore the lost text, based on the scattered bits of glyphs that had survived the erasure.
  

I already explained why this assumption is plausible, and even likely.  

Call this person the "Repairman".  From the result of his efforts we can tell that he did not understand Voynichese, did not know the Voynichese alphabet, and was not aware that the lost text had to be entirely in Voynichese script.
This is quite possible, since it takes a lot of study of the VMS to acquire that knowledge.  

Moreover, we can see that he guessed that the lost text was a recipe in some Germanic dialect that included a Latin-based charm.  Which means that, probably, he spoke some Germanic dialect.

We can see also that he tried to use a style of letters that was current in Central Europe roughly between 1400 and 1500.  That reinforces the deduction that he was a "Germanisch" speaker.  (But it is not possible to conclude that the repair happened in that time frame, since the Repairman may have intentionally used an "old" letter style because he knew that the book was old.)

However, the bits of Voynichese that remained forced him to "reconstruct" many words that were not valid in Latin or any Germanic dialect (like "potpfer" and "pbrey"), and did not occur in any existing charm.  And the few reconstructed words that were sort of valid "Germanisch" did not make up any meaningful sentence.

All the best, --stolfi

(17-08-2026, 01:37 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You can find some words of the charm here and there, but nothing too spectacular. For example, I found "abia" in bee-related charms, but the rest of them wasn't very illuminating.

My faithful Lalamo says that "abia" could be a spelling variation of "bee" in the singular vocative case, that is, "apia".  Since the verb "facis" is also in singular third person, that sentence would translate as "O bee, bee that makes punic wax!" 

All the best, --stolfi