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Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript
- Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript
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RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript
ReneZ > 26-12-2025, 10:37 AM
(26-12-2025, 09:54 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.a genuine, well-documented medieval text genre can quite naturally produce precisely those features that are often considered ‘difficult’ in the Voynich manuscript – dense repetitions, minimal internal variations and sound-oriented sequencing.
What I meant is:
the main issue (*) is the word structure of Voynichese, which is not found in such 'dialectal' variations, even when combined with poetry or other style forms.
Note (*): there are still other major issues. -
RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript
JoJo_Jost > 26-12-2025, 11:46 AM
Okay, that may be true, I think you're much more knowledgeable than I am. But I'm very persistent and have lots of strange ideas – and I'm sure you need unusual ideas to decipher VMS nowadays, otherwise it would already have been deciphered. I'll test a little further – I have a few approaches that unfortunately lean a bit towards ‘crazy author’. Let's see if anything comes of it – probably not, as is so often the case with VMS
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RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript
ReneZ > 26-12-2025, 12:32 PM
It's a (long) learning curve, and the things that you see for yourself have much greater meaning than the things that others (try to) convince you of. -
RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript
JoJo_Jost > 26-12-2025, 04:02 PM
The attempt to create a personality profile of the author.
Perhaps it would be appropriate at this point to proceed more like a profiler rather than continuing to discuss the nature of the text. In the following text, I will therefore not concern myself with what the Voynich text is, but rather with who could have written something like this in the first place. If one seriously puts oneself in the shoes of the person who produced such a uniform text over 200 pages, one might just find the keys one needs.
There are many explanations for the Voynich manuscript: pure hoax, hoax based on a complex system, highly complex cipher, sophisticated language, foreign languages, phonological constructions, and so on. Even the idea of ‘a madman writing nonsense’ has been discussed – and then rejected because the text is statistically far too consistent for that. That is also correct.
But what strikes me more and more is that the less the text is understood despite all the research, the more the discussion slips in the direction of ‘it must be something complex’. And that is precisely what I consider to be a fallacy. ‘Not random’ does not automatically imply ‘highly complex’ – we should be aware of that.
The Voynich text does not have to be brilliant to seem extremely strange. On the contrary, it may have been created in a frighteningly simple way.
So: who could have written something like this?
At first, one quickly arrives at pathological explanations: schizophrenia, delusion, compulsion. But the longer one thinks about it, the less it fits. The text is too calm, too stable, too uniform for that. Rather, everything points to a completely different type of person.
One can imagine someone who, inspired by spiritual belief, writes down page after page of ritual formulas. This does not require a creative explosion, but rather monothematic concentration – a skill that was by no means rare in the Middle Ages. This is not a diffuse zeal, but a calm, long-lasting fixation on a very limited formal space. Such people can remain in the same semantic and formal cosmos for months or years without feeling fatigue. On the contrary: it is precisely the repetition and the narrow structure that have a stabilising effect. Order does not arise from diversity, but from reduction.
If we transfer this to a ritual context, it becomes clear that repetition is not a means to an end here, but the actual vehicle of the effect. This has less to do with compulsion than with religious practice. Security arises from the correct reproduction of effective patterns, not from variation or originality.
This is also consistent with a low need for social feedback. The text is not intended to be understood, admired or discussed. Its motivation would be intrinsic and transcendent: for God, for effectiveness, for order. In this light, abbreviations, codes or peculiar symbols would not be a mystery, but simply part of a private, functional practice.
And here, for me, comes the crucial point: the writer most likely did not have access to comprehensive knowledge. No deep understanding of the actual structures of litanies, incantations or theological systems. Rather, a limited horizon: a few books, a limited education, perhaps a small monastery, perhaps marginal knowledge.
When someone like this tries to devise magic formulas or spiritual incantations – firmly believing that they are doing the right thing – they inevitably fall back on the same things over and over again. On the few patterns, words and functions that they are familiar with. And they would slightly change and adapt these again and again. This would explain the extreme uniformity. Not chaos, but reuse. The same building blocks over and over again.
This is not nonsense. It is ritual. And the problem would be that statistical systems and other attempts at decryption would fail with something like this.
Statistics refute coincidence, yes. But they do not refute monotonous, formulaic production. On the contrary: this is exactly how stable Zipf curves, strong repetitions and this strange inner coherence of the Voynich text arise.
And now the uncomfortable thought: such texts arise more from limited knowledge than from deep understanding. Anyone who truly mastered the spiritual system would have varied it. Anyone who only knows it partially can only repeat themselves, over and over again, and very consistently.
Maybe we are looking for something that isn't there. Not because the text is too difficult, but because we assume it has more depth than it perhaps does. -
RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript
Kutlu Kaan > 26-12-2025, 04:18 PM
"Bu metnin yazarı Anadolu coğrafyasında yaşamış bir bilgedir. 1402 Ankara savaşı sonrası oluşan kargaşada Eski Türk inançlarına (gök tengri inancına) bağlı Arap alfabesiyle Türkçe yazmak yerine Latin harfleri benzeri bir alfabe oluşturmuş bir aydındır. Çağının kaosunda; örfüne, adetine sahip çıkmak isteyen, atalarına dinine övgü dizen, ölmüş askerleri taktir eden, Ülke birliğini sağlamak isteyen bir kişidir. "
The author of this text is a wise man who lived in the Anatolian region. In the chaos that followed the Battle of Ankara in 1402, he was an intellectual who, instead of writing Turkish using the Arabic alphabet based on ancient Turkic beliefs (the Tengri belief), created an alphabet similar to Latin letters. In the midst of his time, he was a person who wanted to uphold his customs and traditions, praised his ancestors and religion, honored fallen soldiers, and sought to ensure national unity. -
RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript
Kutlu Kaan > 26-12-2025, 04:22 PM
"Metnin Eski Anadolu Türkçesi olduğuna yönelik teorilerimi sitenizde yayınladım. görüşlerime yorumlarınızı rica ederim."
I have published my theories on your site regarding the text being in Old Anatolian Turkish. I would appreciate your comments on my views. -
RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript
JoJo_Jost > 26-12-2025, 05:07 PM
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RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript
Jorge_Stolfi > 26-12-2025, 06:06 PM
(26-12-2025, 04:02 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The attempt to create a personality profile of the author.
That is indeed an important goal!
Quote:But what strikes me more and more is that the less the text is understood despite all the research, the more the discussion slips in the direction of ‘it must be something complex’. And that is precisely what I consider to be a fallacy. ‘Not random’ does not automatically imply ‘highly complex’ – we should be aware of that.
I would say that it is the assumption that the language must be "European" that necessarily leads to that conclusion.
But I am still quite sure that the assumption is false. The evidence that is offered for that assumption simply does not support it.
Quote:At first, one quickly arrives at pathological explanations: schizophrenia, delusion, compulsion. But the longer one thinks about it, the less it fits. The text is too calm, too stable, too uniform for that. Rather, everything points to a completely different type of person. One can imagine someone who ... writes down page after page of ritual formulas. This does not require a creative explosion, but rather monothematic concentration – a skill that was by no means rare in the Middle Ages. This is not a diffuse zeal, but a calm, long-lasting fixation on a very limited formal space. Such people can remain in the same semantic and formal cosmos for months or years without feeling fatigue. On the contrary: it is precisely the repetition and the narrow structure that have a stabilising effect. Order does not arise from diversity, but from reduction.
Agreed. The examples are not confined to the Middle Ages. Check the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or James Hampton's You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or the Rohonc Codex...
The (very low) quality of the vellum and the (lack of) skill of the Scribe tell me that the Author was not a rich man, and the writing of the VMS put some strain on his purse. But obviously he was convinced that it was worth it, and was worth setting it down in a way that (supposedly) would last for many decades.
Perhaps he hoped to sell the book eventually to some doctor or scholar. But I would guess that he kept the book for himself (as a stack of lose bifolia, according to some evidence) until he died; and whoever inherited it could not read it.
But I disagree with the rest of your theory. The only part of the book that looks like a charm is the "vaguely European" writing on f116v; and I don't believe that the writing is original. Most of the text seems to be running prose. The Starred Parags do not look like charms. The structure of the Herbal parags look very much like that of the text on Medieval herbals, alchemical or not...
And I see vidence of a broad range of topics with specialized non-trivial "knowledge" in each topic. Which to me means that the contents was not created by the Author, but was largely compiled from other sources.
Quote:If one seriously puts oneself in the shoes of the person who produced such a uniform text over 200 pages, one might just find the keys one needs.
There is a short story by Argentinian SF/surreal writer Jorge Luis Borges, about a young scholar who set out to understand and recreate the creative process by which Cervantes wrote Don Quixote.
The easiest way, of course, would be for the guy to isolate himself from the present world and immerse himself in the cultural word of 16th century Spain, shaping his own knowledge, beliefs, values, and sentiments until they matched those of Cervantes. And then set out to write a novel.
But that would be cheating. Instead the lad decided that he would retain his 20th-century mind etc, and reconstruct Cervantes's creative process by pure logical deduction. "If a person like Cervantes, living in that time and environment, decided to write a novel, what would be the theme? What would the characters be like, and how would he name them? What would be the most likely opening line? Which word would he probably use in that spot?" And so on. All of that a priori, by logical inference that did not depend in any way on the actual text.
Alas, Borges tells us that the young hero died tragically after he had reconstructed only two chapters of the novel. Which, amazingly, were found to be identical to the real ones, word for word. What a loss to the world it was...
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript
JoJo_Jost > 26-12-2025, 06:30 PM
@ stolfi
Ah, I see, I assumed something that I didn't explicitly write: a profile in the sense of this theory that I am trying to present here, that these are magical, possibly phonetic spells, possibly with a Bavarian background.
For an author who had been in China, for example, this profile would look very different.
And to the other point: yes, that's exactly what I'm doing right now. Based on this thesis, I am making assumptions that, with a lot of luck, can be traced back to a kind of text. With a very uncertain outcome.
But let me make this clear: many people think the writer was some kind of genius because he managed to create such an encryption. I think he was something else entirely, something more normal, too. Many people won't like that.
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RE: Could incantations explain some of the problems of the Voynich Manuscript
Jorge_Stolfi > 26-12-2025, 07:41 PM
(26-12-2025, 06:30 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But let me make this clear: many people think the writer was some kind of genius because he managed to create such an encryption. I think he was something else entirely, something more normal
, too. Many people won't like that.
And I agree with that, too.
All the best, --stolfi