RE: Friend "deciphers" Voynich manuscript.
Magical Raven > 07-10-2025, 03:45 PM
Thank you very much for the help, I think that information is more than enough.I want to clarify that parts of my original post are "fictional" but the main idea is the same.I have a friend who thinks he has solved the Voynich mystery and I don't believe him.
He also said something about the botany section at the beginning of the manuscript, but I didn't give it much importance. The plants he describes are called "chimera plants" and they function as a mnemonic trick to quickly remember what is being prepared. That the plants are symbolic, a set of parts of different plants that will include the final recipe. It also talks about how the first two words of each paragraph in the botanical section talk about the recipe that is going to be prepared.That's why those words hardly appear in other parts of the manuscript. And that is how he was able to deduce the rest of the text, at least in the botany section, because the words that appear are also seen as "chimera words", A compound of different processes, plant parts and alchemical procedures. He also added that the language is useless in other areas, as it was specifically created to pack a lot of alchemical information into short words.
Finally, he said there are different scribes in the manuscript: one from Italy, another French, one German, and others he couldn't recognize. He jokingly called them "chimera scribes."He also added that the Italian likes to draw, the Frenchman likes astrology, and the German likes to write, although the latter didn't write everything.
All of this is a summary of a PDF he sent me with the explanation of each section and the translation method for each word.Although he also clarifies that words make sense with context, words alone are semantic chaos.
My personal opinion is that my friend has a lot of free time and a great imagination, but everything he wrote in that PDF is false. Thanks for the help, everyone!
Edit: I thought it was important to clarify about several scribes from different kingdoms. I told my friend that it sounds like the joke "an Italian, a Frenchman and a German walk into a bar", and they wouldn't understand each other.He told me I was a fool to think that. He said the German had an idea and a nobleman promoted the project, bringing together those different people.He added that they understood each other in Latin.