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Some suggestions and theories
- Some suggestions and theories
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Some suggestions and theories
SpamBot > 11-06-2026, 12:56 PM
I am just a passerby with some mild curiosity about the manuscript. Bellow are some suggestion and hypotheses (for which I have nor competencies, nor resources [nor willingness] to check them by myself), some might be obvious or stated elsewhere, some might be new and can, hopefully, if not help to uncover the mystery directly, then, at least, lead to some new insights (mainly the reason why I am writing this).
0.Based on the pictures alone, I make the assumption that it is some work of science (lecture notes, textbook, research etc.)
1.Since there are suggestions that the manuscript was used often, I make the following proposition: manuscript is not "cyphered", it is written in its own language. Otherwise you would need to decypher it every time you need it and it wouldn't practical (especially if the "cypher" doesn't have a simple solution).
1.1 Who wrote it: some private society (masons, their subgroup, the Order of Dagon or whatever).
1.2 Why own language: my grandma speaks Polish whenever she doesn't wants others to listen to her phone conversations. Here the reason might be similar: if you are a secret society, then with a language known only to the initiated, you can hold conversations anywhere without eavesdrop. As a bonus, if you have members from different countries (speaking different languages), then you have universal communication tool.
2.Why plants look exotic (and not like their real counterparts): the manuscript was dictated by someone (for ex. professor to a student), thus the one who draw them didn't saw the actual plants, he only had the word descriptions of them. This also explains why there are several handwrites (1 student writes the book, while others do some other tasks, then rotate)
3.If geometry books taught me anything, then it's that shitty drawings are always accompanied by a textual explanation. Thus it's reasonable to assume that the plant pages of the manuscript contain words for leaves, root, flower etc. We (and by that I mean You, the researcher) can extract words common for all the plant pages and try simple substitutions (X is "root", Y is "leaf") until we get a meaningful sentences, the rest of the words (from the plant section) can be picked logically. But it should be kept in mind that some words most likely are written with mistakes.
4.Additionally, with the help of a Botanical Expert, we can pinpoint (a biome) the location where the manuscript was written (since it's unlikely that the author was a traveler). Studying the history of the place may give hints about the order (maybe other similar works could be discovered there, maybe even the order itself) -
RE: Some suggestions and theories
ololololo > 12-06-2026, 08:48 PM
I advise us to get more insight into this topic, for you do not know much yet. In fact, such conclusions are as simple as possible (for obvious), but hollow and empty.
(11-06-2026, 12:56 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Based on the pictures alone, I make the assumption that it is some work of science
Naturally. We can even identify the theme - it's most likely medicine in general, not just medicinal herbs.
(11-06-2026, 12:56 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.manuscript is not "cyphered", it is written in its own language.
Voynichese itself is not a full-fledged language. The theory of an artificial language also falls away - it is too redundant. However, it can still be a modified language (German, Occitan, Bavarian, Chinese, etc.).
(11-06-2026, 12:56 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Otherwise you would need to decypher it every time you need it and it wouldn't practical (especially if the "cypher" doesn't have a simple solution).
If you know what you're writing about, even an encrypted text will make sense to you, because you'll remember what it says.
If you know how it's encrypted and use it frequently, you'll start to remember what you need over time.
(11-06-2026, 12:56 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Why own language: my grandma speaks Polish whenever she doesn't wants others to listen to her phone conversations. Here the reason might be similar: if you are a secret society, then with a language known only to the initiated, you can hold conversations anywhere without eavesdrop.
You might as well use a local, little-known language, or a language whose speakers are not in your usual environment. I don't know of any examples where secret societies created their own language, ciphers were always preferred.
(11-06-2026, 12:56 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.the manuscript was dictated by someone (for ex. professor to a student), thus the one who draw them didn't saw the actual plants, he only had the word descriptions of them.
Some of the plants are probably redrawn, or at least real, which means that the author had the opportunity to learn what a particular plant looks like. However, I am unable to explain why the plants are modified or unclear.
(11-06-2026, 12:56 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thus it's reasonable to assume that the plant pages of the manuscript contain words for leaves, root, flower etc.
There are no such patterns. And there is no place for them there - we are presented with a drawing of a plant, and with good eyesight, we should not have any problems perceiving how it looks. For a healer, the external characteristics of a plant are not as important as its functionality and healing properties.
(11-06-2026, 12:56 PM)SpamBot Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.with the help of a Botanical Expert, we can pinpoint (a biome) the location where the manuscript was written
The place of writing is somewhere in the Alps (of course, they are talking about Northern Italy, but the author could have been somewhere else).
The plants were examined. She didn't find anything extraordinary.
I had a similar opinion at the very beginning of my own research. You should delve deeper into the information about the Voynich manuscript. You can read this forum, websites voynich.nu and ciphermysteries.com, and other sources. -
RE: Some suggestions and theories
Stefan Wirtz_2 > 12-06-2026, 08:56 PM
(12-06-2026, 08:48 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..]
The place of writing is somewhere in the Alps[..]
Stop spreading that. There is not a trace of proof for that. VMS could as well be from Novgorod.
(12-06-2026, 08:48 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The plants were examined. She didn't find anything extraordinary.
Who? -
RE: Some suggestions and theories
ololololo > 12-06-2026, 09:11 PM
(12-06-2026, 08:56 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.VMS could as well be from Novgorod.
Or maybe on another planet? You can prove that it's from Northern Italy by comparing its style to books from there. I don't know of any refutations to this. If you do, let me know.
(12-06-2026, 08:56 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Who?
I know that the plants described Gheuens and Rapaport, and identified by O'Neil (at least, this is stated on voynich.nu).
P.S. I'm sorry, the translator missed a word. I've corrected it. -
RE: Some suggestions and theories
Stefan Wirtz_2 > 12-06-2026, 10:37 PM
(12-06-2026, 09:11 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..] You can prove that it's from Northern Italy by comparing its style to books from there.
[..]
And exactly this never happened convincingly.
The „style“ can also be compared to Swedish drawings, or English, or …. without being any sure proof. -
RE: Some suggestions and theories
Jorge_Stolfi > 13-06-2026, 04:44 AM
(12-06-2026, 09:11 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You can prove that it's from Northern Italy by comparing its style to books from there. I don't know of any refutations to this. If you do, let me know.
All we can conclude is that the Scribe who put the text to vellum had access to a bunch of books from North Italy and Central Europe.
But he could be a boy from Madagascar who alone survived the shipwreck of an Arab merchant ship on a deserted island south of Borneo, and while waiting to be rescued found on the beach a large waterproofed trunk full of books and blank parchment that had belonged to John Dee but had accidentally fallen overboard when the good Doctor was crossing the Channel back home from Europe, and had been carried by sea currents down the Atlantic and across the Indian Ocean in a mere fifty years, which made it possible for the boy to kill time by creating a weird book full of bizarre drawings and reports of his erotic dreams in Malgasy but written in a simplified form of the Malayalam script, a book which he brought with him to Europe when he was finally rescued by Malaspina but lost it somewhere in Rome during a visit to Villa Torlonia.
We may never know.
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: Some suggestions and theories
JoJo_Jost > 13-06-2026, 06:03 AM
@ Stefan
We all know by now that you're absolutely convinced it comes from the East and that you categorically reject anything that doesn't fit your theory. But where can one actually find information about the background of your theory? -
RE: Some suggestions and theories
JustAnotherTheory > 13-06-2026, 10:01 AM
(13-06-2026, 04:44 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But he could be a boy from Madagascar who alone survived the shipwreck of an Arab merchant ship on a deserted island south of Borneo, and while waiting to be rescued found on the beach a large waterproofed trunk full of books and blank parchment that had belonged to John Dee but had accidentally fallen overboard when the good Doctor was crossing the Channel back home from Europe, and had been carried by sea currents down the Atlantic and across the Indian Ocean in a mere fifty years, which made it possible for the boy to kill time by creating a weird book full of bizarre drawings and reports of his erotic dreams in Malgasy but written in a simplified form of the Malayalam script, a book which he brought with him to Europe when he was finally rescued by Malaspina but lost it somewhere in Rome during a visit to Villa Torlonia.
And by a stroke of unimaginable luck, happened to come back with the book to the exact same Nothern Italian/Bohemian region where the parchment was fabricated so that we have no reason to think he was a shipwrecked Indian writing in Malahayam.
(not to mention that he had a magic box full of Taccola, Kyeser and Duc de Berry manuscripts which he copied during his erotic daydreaming)
Yeah, no. -
RE: Some suggestions and theories
ololololo > 13-06-2026, 12:53 PM
(13-06-2026, 04:44 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
This is the best theory at the moment!(12-06-2026, 09:11 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You can prove that it's from Northern Italy by comparing its style to books from there. I don't know of any refutations to this. If you do, let me know.
All we can conclude is that the Scribe who put the text to vellum had access to a bunch of books from North Italy and Central Europe.
But he could be a boy from Madagascar who alone survived the shipwreck of an Arab merchant ship on a deserted island south of Borneo, and while waiting to be rescued found on the beach a large waterproofed trunk full of books and blank parchment that had belonged to John Dee but had accidentally fallen overboard when the good Doctor was crossing the Channel back home from Europe, and had been carried by sea currents down the Atlantic and across the Indian Ocean in a mere fifty years, which made it possible for the boy to kill time by creating a weird book full of bizarre drawings and reports of his erotic dreams in Malgasy but written in a simplified form of the Malayalam script, a book which he brought with him to Europe when he was finally rescued by Malaspina but lost it somewhere in Rome during a visit to Villa Torlonia.
We may never know.
All the best, --stolfi
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RE: Some suggestions and theories
Rafal > 13-06-2026, 01:45 PM
Quote:I am just a passerby with some mild curiosity about the manuscript
Hi!
Many of your observations are quite rational but unfortunately it doesn't help us much
Some stuff is impossible like Freemasons who didn't exist yet in the 1400s but these are details.
Another things seem quite logical like "Thus it's reasonable to assume that the plant pages of the manuscript contain words for leaves, root, flower etc.". However they just don't work in this case
Don't you think people tried it before?
Voynich Manuscript is bizarre. Don't listen to people saying that it is standard medieval manuscript, just written in unknown script. It is weird.
The images are weird but you have to get some experience and see a lot of other manuscripts to notice that
And the text is weird too. You just don't have good candidates for "leaf", "root" and "flower" words. You also don't have good candidates for the most common words like "and", "so", "with" etc.
If you ever get interested in Voynich Manuscript more, you will start to discover these weird things.