For decades (at least!), groups of like-minded people have got together to discuss the VMs: even the various 17th century letters written to Athanasius Kircher (all apparently discussing the same manuscript) came from individuals within some kind of loose grouping – it’s not all lone gunmen theorists in the VMs world, I assure you. 🙂
Fast forward to the 20th century, and you find William Friedman forming and running the FSG (the “First Study Group”) in 1944-1946, followed (unsurprisingly) by the Second Study Group in 1962-1963. Incidentally, I don’t know if there is any connection between the Dr. Robert A. Caldwell who was part of the FSG and Ian Caldwell (co-author of the Rule of Four), but it would be elegant if so… just a thought! As always, there’s more (OK: much more) on the modern history of the VMs on Rene Zandbergen’s excellent VMs site.
In the Internet age, mailing lists have picked up this collaborative baton, and run with it in countless new directions. I couldn’t see any page that described these lists in an accessible way, which is why I’m posting about them here…
(1) The Voynich Mailing List – the daddy (if not granddaddy) of all modern VMS lists – started life hosted at rand.org (Jim Gillogly’s employer at the time) back in 1991, but has relatively recently moved to its own domain, voynich.net Lots of old-timers there, and its old list archives hold an amazing collection of ideas, observations and notions, from a diverse group of contributors: virtually everything you can think about the VMs has been posted there (I search them with grep, but you may prefer other tools). Of late, I think it’s fair to say that the discourse there hasn’t been quite so good (and it’s far from obvious why this should be the case): but it can be an excellent place to start. Recommended.
(2) The Journal of Voynich Studies (2007 list archive here, cumulative file and HTML archive here) is a newish mailing list, run by Berj N. Ensanian and Greg Stachowski. This set out to be more openly academic than the main voynich.net mailing list, but it unfortunately (I think it’s fair to say) still falls well short of the high academic ideals to which it initially aspired. The reason for this is obvious: there are, to my knowledge, no ‘true’ academics (in the ‘scarily and unchallengeably erudite academic‘ sense, how I imagine Panofsky or Grafton) out there studying the VMs. Really, the basic art history still hasn’t been done: Voynichology remains an amateur science at best.
(3) Quiet-ish groups, such as thevoynichmanuscript Yahoo Group may well be good in a different way. I’m not a member there, but it might be just right for you.
(4) Transient mailing lists (such as GC’s Strong Solution group from 2006, or the Voynich Forum) come and go, ebb and flow: this is inevitable on the Internet.
(5) Non-English mailing lists have started to appear in recent years: I’m thinking in particular of the German Yahoo Group voynich.de. I have a vague memory of Jan Hurych starting up a Czech-language mailing list at one point, though I don’t know if that is still going: his current Voynich blog is here. Similarly, there was a Spanish-language MS408 list back in 2003, and I half-remember a French-language mailing list flickering into existence too.
Doubtless there are/were/will be more: but that should be enough to get you started. 😉
This is a message for all Voynich Manuscript scholar and enthusiasts.
I solved the code in May 2017 and have now finished writing an academic paper titled: Instruction in Decrypting, Translating and Transliterating the Voynich Manuscript (MS 408).
This is not a claim, but a statement, as my paper explains everything and includes many translated excerpts from the manuscript to demonstrate that the solution is correct, and that it has uniform application.
The paper will be available to download at my website – http://www.sciencesurvey.link – once I know that enough people are aware, so please let me know that you can access the website, by emailing me: [email protected]
Many thanks for your interest.
Gerard Cheshire. PhD Student, University of Bristol.
Gerard: thanks for leaving a comment on Cipher Mysteries, I am always eager to blog about any meritorious Voynich-related writing, whether proposed solutions or otherwise. Where do you plan to have your paper published?
Gerard, looking forward to reading your paper.
@Nick
What you have written about “German Yahoo Group voynich.de” is nice, but it is also only a web corpse. I pushed the last report in 2014. Today are all where it is still interested in me on Facebook.
I try to keep it running with new ones, sometimes funny.
It is also nice when I visit well-known people from the Voynich family. There is always something new to see. 🙂
@Gerard Cheshire
I am also already curious what I will read there.
Nick: Do you know anyone else who has explored 15th century diplomatic ciphers as they may relate to the Voynich? I feel like you and I are the only ones to have made some effort in this area.
Mark, since you know I have a somewhat pricey paid-for facsimile of the Tranchedino codes that I purchased quite some time ago, you can assume I have been looking into this for a number of years.
It is very difficult to know what has been done in the past. I know for a fact that Jim Reeds has looked at this very intensively. This may not be documented anywhere.
This problem about absence of documentation is clearly highlighted by D’Imperio, writing two decades before the ‘WWW age’. Still, she also addresses this topic.
People who understand the statistics of the Voynich MS text will see immediately that the method of encryption used in these diplomatic ciphers is inconsistent with the Voynich MS text.
What may still be interesting is to see if the choice of the character set in the MS can be related to any particular historical cipher. This is also what Jim Reeds looked at, and D’Imperio mentioned. My understanding is that this is the main purpose of what you are doing. Not much of that has been documented.
JKP: I didn’t know that you had purchased the facsimile as you did not say. You said you had looked at it, but this could have been in a library.
Great, so do you have any specific suggestions as to where to find enciphered letters or ciphers keys from the Milanese Chancellery for the years between 1415 and 1440 during the reign of Filippo Maria Visconti in the light of the fact that the Castello di Porta Giova was burned down in 1447 and most of the records destroyed. I am already investigating the State Archives of Milan and I know there is Ducal Correspondence in the Archives of Pavia. It is possible that there is intercepted correspondence in the archives of Sienna, Venice, Mantua and possibly others. Nick found a reference to a letter in the Homeland Archive of Genoa, unfortunately that is not accessible at this time.
Have you looked at “Die Anfange…” and “Die Geheimgeschrift…” by Meister?
Have you explored the cipher records of any of the Italian archives yourself?
Rene: Thanks.
Do you have an email address for Jim Reeds. Yes I have seen D’Imperio. I am aware that the method of encryption used in the diplomatic ciphers are inconsistent with the Voynich MS text, however there may be some commonality between the two even if they are not the same. Anyway at the moment I am just focussing on the commonality of symbols.
I will send you an email with an image attached showing the commonality that I have already found.
Archivio di Stato di Milano are due to email me a scan of an enciphered letter that I have requested so I can look at the cipher symbols used. They emailed me to say that they have received my request, which I made over 6 weeks ago, and they tell me that after I create an account on their online payments system, which I have now done, they can create my order on the system and once I have made a payment online they will email the scans. I will request scans of other enciphered letters from from the Milan State Archive once I have received the scan that I have requested. The wheels turn slowly with these institutions so I just have to be patient.
Probably I am at or moving towards a stage where I have done more work in this area than other Voynich researchers, at least that is my guess.
Nick and Others: Does anyone have an email address or other means of contacting for Berj Ensanian? I have looked, but now the “Journal of Voynich Studies” appears to be defunct he doesn’t appear to be active in Voynich research. I will google more, but if anyone knows it will save some time. I have already seen the mailing list that you refer to in this blog post, but I can’t seem to find his exact address and even if I do it may not be up to date.
I have sent an email to [email protected] as that was the reply email address listed, but I don’t know if I will get a reply to that.
I want to contact Berj as I know he and I have had some overlap in ideas, though coming from very different angles, and I thought it might be useful to discuss my thoughts with him and see what he thinks and if he has some ideas as to what he thinks might be the best way to pursue my ideas further. This may be a useful for me, but it depends on the extent of the assistance he can be.