Though many people with an interest in the Voynich Manuscript will have vaguely heard of Steve Ekwall and his claims that, back in June 2000, an Excitant Spirit showed him how to make a “Folding Key” to help disentangle the Voynich’s knotted ciphertext, very few have any real idea what he’s talking about. In fact, I might just be the only one. And so I thought it might be good to YouTube-ify a short film explaining what Steve Ekwall was saying. (Specifically, how his “Folding Key” works).
As far as what you’re supposed to do with it… he believes that a Voynichese gallows character tells the decipherer to fold / flip the device to that state, an EVA ‘e’ character says to advance the device to the next state, while an EVA ‘ch’ glyph says to ‘flip’ the device to the opposite state (i.e. state 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 <–> state 5 / 6 / 7 / 8). Make of all that what you will!
If you want to print out your very own folding key, there’s a Folding Key PDF on my Compelling Press website: and for those who have yet to experience Steve’s original webpages, here are links to my copy of his main web-page, and to his additional “Folding KEY 101” page (though apologies for all the dead links there!)
One thing I wondered about this… does Ekwall himself really believe in the “Excitant Spirit”? It’s interesting how we occasionally have flashes of inspiration without entirely knowing where they came from.
Thanks for the understandable description of the folding key… if Ekwall’s really onto something and this helps to solve the Voynich cipher, we may be faced with an even bigger mystery. It certainly strikes me as more plausible than Newbold’s micro-shorthand, or anything involving alien technology for transforming DNA with sound.
Hi Emily,
Having spoken with Steve Ekwall a number of times over the last decade, I can say that he honestly believes that he experienced something distinctly unnerving, and that he was somehow in the presence of a thing which he called an “Excitant Spirit” for no better reason than it ought to have a name. As I mentioned in the video, you can construct any number of rational explanations (a mini-stroke, an epileptic fit, a weird hacker prank, etc) to explain: but regardless, the folding key is still there at the end of it all, and without any explanation.
Even if you’ve heard just about every manner of Voynich theory going, Steve’s account is really something else entirely… genuinely mysterious.
Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….
I have watched the videos a couple of times, but I still cannot see how the folding key does anything but assign an arbitrary number from 1 to 8 to each gallows character. I do know how cryptographic cipher key states work, but I can’t see how the order he puts them in has any meaning.
And I must say that I agree with Emily in that, no matter how weird this key is, it’s still more likely than alien DNA-audiotransformation!
Hi Christopher,
My suspicion is that even though the Voynich cipher system contains a number of static elements (such as EVA qo, dy, ain, aiin, probably am, etc) that are constant across all states, most of the rest of it changes according to the state of the associated ciphering device – whether that’s a cipher wheel, an Ekwall “folding key”, or whatever.
To my eyes, then, the cipher “statefulness” in the VMs appears to be intended not to mathematically flatten the overall distribution, but rather to confound the statistics within that distribution. Imagine, for example, a simple cipher where you sequentially rotated the five vowels within a sentence, but kept all the consonants intact: “somathang luki this”. Now, this on its own is trivial: but if you put a few small cipher components like that together to create a composite cipher system, that really would be hard to crack.
What Steve Ekwall is claiming is that each of the eight states contains a 3×3 grid (though the central square is empty): and so only eight cipher letters dynamically change according to the state, while the rest remain constant. Cryptographically, this is an extraordinarily sophisticated match for what we see in the Voynich Manuscript’s language. And so I ask again: how on earth did Steve make that step?
Chapter 12 of my book (specifically p.215) suggests how the 3×3 grid might be mapped onto letter pairs: or, s, ar / om, m , am / ol, l, al. I suspect that these dynamically permute the most common consonants, while e / ee / eee / ch / sh statically represent the vowels, and with rarer consonants represented by air, aiir, am, etc.
Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….
Wow, I just read p.215 (I feel like a cheater for starting at the end of the book!) and I must say that seeing that pattern which somewhat reads [2|3|4] at the top sent some shivers down MY spine as well.
Thanks for the great explanation,
Christopher.
Hi Christopher,
I’m sure you’ll like the rest of the book, too! 🙂
Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….
Fell over yr vid on YTube today – I’m so behind everyone else – and since of course my focus is now on the Indian ocean trade routes, it occurs to me that one might add sound values to such a grid by reference to the conventional 3×3 grid of the planetary deities. Conventional in India, that is.
I have a picture of one. The sun is in the centre.. no, it would take too long. I’ll put something on my blog.
I’ve only been looking at this mystery for a day or so, very interesting. My first thoughts; Do these letters have any similarities to any other languages (ancient or modern)? Do the images contain any content similar to other cultures (ancient or modern)? Was the author a native speaker or not? Was the author trying to recreate or rediscover an ancient language?
I think the images content will provide the most revealing information to narrowing this mystery down.
Unfortunately for me there was some issue trying to view the Yale MS-408 images from their site. I could only view the first 6 out of 11 groups of images. 🙁
Tibet, IMO, is a highly probable source for the written language. The text appears to be a mixture of ancient and more modern Tibetan script, corrected in a European idea of Latin construction in form. Example, In Tibetan script a line is drawn across the top of letters, in the Latin languages a line is drawn under the letters, the script being corrected towards the European idea. Some of the letters appear to be rotated or mirrored Tibetan script. Search for ‘images’ using terms “ancient tibetan letters” to see what I dug up.
Of course a mystery like this won’t be solved in 24 hours, :D.
Regards,
Deepthinks
Deepthinks: we now have access to so many scripts that it would surely be next to impossible to construct an alphabet that doesn’t in some way remind erudite onlookers of numerous other ones. However, some of the usage patterns (aiir, aiiv, etc, and even ‘4o’) are quintessentially medieval European (roughly 14th century), so it seems highly unlikely to me that we would need to look any further afield than that. I’ve studied the Voynich Manuscript’s image content for some years too: but for all its strangeness, parallels (often striking ones) to individual drawings can be found in existing documents. The more productive questions are less to do with individual details and more to do with system – why are things arranged in the way that they are? It’s a fascinating challenge to get interested in, but try not to fixate on details! 🙂
“(=nickpelling) we now have access to so many scripts that it would surely be next to impossible to construct an alphabet that doesn’t in some way remind erudite onlookers of numerous other ones. However, some of the usage patterns (aiir, aiiv, etc, and even ’4o’) are quintessentially medieval European (roughly 14th century), so it seems highly unlikely to me that we would need to look any further afield than that.”
I don’t disagree with the points that a Medieval European author created this book. I am not good a ciphers and statistics and leave the associations to representations which pertain to hidden content to those experts.
Have anyone found any logograms that represent numbers?
Understanding the authors reason for choosing the images and logograms will lead to the process of creation. Have you seen hand written Tibetan v. typographic Tibetan?
Did you know that Tibetan is written left to right?
Have you seen Tibetan logogram numbers?
Please see: http://www.ancientscripts.com/modi.html
Areas of search for similar logograms should include India, Vietnam, Thailand, Tibet and their logogram relations to Brahmi scripts.
“(=nickpelling) I’ve studied the Voynich Manuscript’s image content for some years too: but for all its strangeness, parallels (often striking ones) to individual drawings can be found in existing documents. The more productive questions are less to do with individual details and more to do with system – why are things arranged in the way that they are? It’s a fascinating challenge to get interested in, but try not to fixate on details!”
Here are a few details:
Please see image 1006187
http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/SetsSearchExecXC.asp?srchtype=ITEM&curpage=6
Numbering the rings from inside to outside, 1-4, ring 1 contains a lot of numbers. Ring 3 also contains a lot of numbers. Ring 2 contains words with some numbers. Ring 4 contains mostly words.
Determining which logogram systems numbers match best will require a much deeper research than the cursory review I have given it. 😀
Regards,
Deepthinks
Deepthinks: please don’t let me stop you from looking for a match with Tibetan or similar scripts – it’s just that if the Voynich Manuscript is as quintessentially medieval European as I think, the chances of there being a causal (rather than coincidental) link is dwindlingly small. As for numbers… plenty of people have searched for numbers in the Voynich, all in vain: yet the text is – I think – likely to be full of numbers.
The page you mention (f57v) is something I have analyzed and written about many times: the 17-long repeating sequence is, in my opinion, most likely to be an 18-long sequence where the first two symbols have been joined together, and probably depicts an astrolabe, a nocturnal, or a similar 15th century device. See my post here:
http://ciphermysteries.com/2010/07/01/astrolabes-nocturnals-and-voynich-manuscript-page-f57v
nickpelling> I can see your suggestion of similarity to astrolabes, the eliptical side is not a good match though. 😉
http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/astrolabe/exhibition/images/45127_closeup.jpg
Here a few more similarity details for comparison to the VM:
This picture contains a familiar image from the VM with the 8 pointed flower/star in circle.
http://nasrani.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/syriac.JPG
Tibetan Numbers.
http://www.nalanda-university.com/buddhist-ayurveda-encylopedia/tibet_language_tibetan_num.gif
This picture shows Tibetan Uchen, Ume and their transliterations.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/%D0%A3%D0%BC%D0%B5-%D1%82%D0%B1%D1%8222.png/300px-%D0%A3%D0%BC%D0%B5-%D1%82%D0%B1%D1%8222.png
Ayurveda drawings of medicinal plants.
http://www.artandayurveda.com/1/images/280_0_2046932_36847.jpg
http://s4.hubimg.com/u/281515_f260.jpg
http://www.kailashcentre.org/tl_files/images/thankas_smaller/tibet116.jpg
An Arabic botanical book from the 15th century.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DTM0Cfw8HyM/TatDMxPiREI/AAAAAAAABVM/9EIrP_3g8lc/s320/1911%252C+Champane.jpg
The Portuguese began making their presence known in India in the 1400’s with Jesuits attempting to influence christian growth in the country. There is the link for Rudolf II and India through Charles V and Isabella of Portugal.
Certainly an enigmatic document however the seemingly endless use of the same words in a sentence suggest in some ways to be a distraction or more interestingly, over complicated ways to express a pheonetic structure.
Is this the language of the birds or the language of a bird brain? Honestly, i don’t doubt your abilities however without some sort of key, you are far from home deciphering it.
Hang on a minute, On the left of every pages is a progression of the letters used within the language, could this be your key but in a more complicated way than a 3 x 3.
Has anyone bothered to create a table with those letters as they are written down on the page?
I have looked carefully at the text and it raises more questions than it could possibly answer, but the most important relates to it’s status as a real text or not. I am not convinced it is something that can be translated as it has no rlelation to any real or forgotten language, moreover it uses the same word in order up to 3 times in a sentence.
What could it be?
1. A fanciful work for younger people to realise a world of fantasy. If you were to offer this to a wealthy family as a gift for an imaginative 11 year old it would take them to a world of wonder.
2. As a hoax to a wealthy or influential person as proof of a journey to a far off and unknown land for profit or legitimacy of a claim that he had indeed travelled to the other side of the world.
3. An esoteric realisation of a language long forgotten or perhaps an attempt at decoding a much older language.
4 An Alchemist text.
As it stands it does not comply to the rules or structure of any known language or for that matter the methodology of human communication. Humans as a whole do not communicate this way, either written or spoken so it begs the question, is it real?
Perhapst the key lies on not what the words are but in their relation to a situatuin or circumstance of the author’s mind, anyway about it we are lost without another example to reference it against.
Best of luck figuring it all out, the world is waiting for an answer
Hi Nick,
Thanks for showing how Steve’s folding key works. I’m looking for his backstory of discovery of this, but your links to his site are dead, dead, dead. Let me know if he is hosted somewhere anew, as I can’t find a link anywhere. And for a possible explanation to your question of how he could have been given information he seemingly has no right to have, read The Daemon by Anthony Peake: http://www.anthonypeake.com/
Nick,
The map on f.86v (or Beinecke foliation 85v and 86r) offers a natural 9, and maps are commonly folded like that, aren’t they?
– I suppose someone has already tried that, have they?
What I wonder is – if that was the key, why hasn’t it unlocked the text yet?
Diane: what has always struck me as most uncanny about Steve Ekwall – and this is something that almost nobody understands – is not that he was able to come up with something that approximated an answer, but instead that he was able to reshape the whole matter into a question that needed that kind of answer.
– and I’ve lived too long, read and witnessed too much evidence of it, not to believe that such things occur sometimes.
In my experience it is rarer to find a rationalist who can accept information which doesn’t conform to the rationalist view of how things should work. 🙂
Are Ekwall’s original revelations still available anywhere online?
Hi,
Are Ekwall’s original revelations still available anywhere online?
Errol Cartwright: it turns out that they had got lost from my website, but here they are once more…
http://nickpelling.com/-%20Ekwall's%20VMS%20~Folding%20KEY%20101~%20-.htm
http://nickpelling.com/A%20VOYNICH%20MS%20KEY.htm
None of the links work, but these are exactly as Steve Ekwall originally posted them.