Even at the best of times, cipher mysteries are unruly little buggers to work with: never mind being surrounded by a Churchillian “bodyguard of lies”, some seem to have whole brigades of apologists, treasure hunters, theorists, cultural appropriators, postmodernists, alt-historians, Redditors, YouTube opinionators, and the rest. It can often feel as though the bare truth of these artifacts are lost below swirls of (essentially useless) commentary.
Yet more recently, I have been getting the feeling that whole swathes of longstanding cipher mysteries are close to toppling. While nobody should need reminding of the recent marvellous crack of the Zodiac Killer cipher, the forensic analysis of the Somerton Man’s remains that began earlier this year (2021) must surely be getting close to producing real results – and there’s similarly no good reason why DNA shouldn’t also soon solve the mystery of Henri Debosnys’ concealed identity. Behind the scenes, various other famous cipher mysteries also now seem to be moving forward towards their long, slow conclusions (but more on those as they happen).
And so for much of this year, the combination of these two factors – the deafening online commentariat & the impending closure of famous cipher mysteries – has given the whole area a fin-de-siecle vibe. Might, putting the splendidly enraging Voynich Manuscript to one side, my Cipher Mysteries research programme now be close to over?
A New Japanese Cipher Mystery
However, the big news of the week is that I now have two gigantic new cipher mysteries to work on.
The first of these is (to probably nobody’s surprise) the 1947 Roswell Incident, despite the likelihood that many CM readers still have their doubts that this will turn out to have been the kind of cipher mystery I suspect.
Of course, Francis Bacon wrote (and this was a favourite of Tim Rayhel, as I recall):
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
In short, the presence of doubt (and please be clear that I have plenty of doubts myself) shouldn’t mean investigative paralysis: even if we have unclear / unsure evidence and unreliable / compromised witnesses, we must continue to make the best judgment calls we can, while still ploughing on forward relentlessly. And it seems that there’s still plenty of ploughing to be done here.
My second new cipher mystery relates to a large and complicated set of documents that was first openly disclosed in Japan only in 2019, and remains very poorly understood. Future blog posts here should make it clear what is going on, but I want to make sure I post good quality images, as well as place those images within their proper historical context.
It’s likely that getting hold of scans (and then annotating them and making them properly available for everyone to see) will take a little bit of time, so I’m very open to collaborating with any Japanese-speaking historians with an interest in code-breaking (even though I studied Japanese at night school many years ago, this is out of my range).
Please email me (nickpelling at nickpelling dot com etc) if you’re interested in contributing, thanks!
Quite exciting, particularly the Japanese one, do tell us more !
Like Nick I undertook the journey to the Japanese language years ago, making as good progress as the worthless books from Tuttle publishing would allow. For those undertaking the journey now, a tremendous Japanese language learning resource has arisen on YouTube amidst the tons of worthless detritus. Search for videos and exhortations from one “Cure Dolly” regarding learning REAL Japanese.
You will not be disappointed. And no, I have no connection to her other than having posted several comments of thanks to her. I do not know her real name or anything about her other than I wish I had her lectures years ago.
That first paragraph — it took me a second to realize you were talking about cipher problems and not the news. Happy New Year, keep digging!
James Pannozzi: thanks for the Cure Dolly tip – my somewhat creaky business Japanese may well need a refresher before very long. Cipher-wise, rest assured I’ll be posting what I can onto here just as soon as I can. 🙂
Jim Shilliday: there is indeed no shortage of empty commentary these days, to the point that you can start to wonder if there is any actual non-empty commentary anywhere. My son only recently twigged that the #1 reason why I don’t do YouTube videos on ciphers is that I know what I’m talking about. :-p
Nick: Well then, you will just have to devote all your energies to the Voynich manuscript. I, for one, would certainly view your effort in positive terms.
Mark: well, it would certainly be nice to have an excuse to do the kind of basic codicological tests I was flagging 15 years ago but which nobody has attempted.
Sadly these days it seems you need a TV crew on your shoulder to pull off a stunt like that.
If you’re looking for a Japanese native speaker interested in historical cryptography, I’d think of S. Tomokiyo: https://cryptiana.blogspot.com/
Nick: Personally, if I wasn’t heavily embroiled in my current line of research I would do the following:
Find a specific topic within the large range of research areas and aspects pertaining to the Voynich manuscript and really focus on that one area and take it about as far as one reasonably can. I find that often Voynich researchers flit from one area to another, never staying on a topic for long enough to get absorbed. Obviously, this is a generalisation, but it does seem to be the way. This also means that many researchers are repeatedly covering the same ground. My research approach, by contrast, is clearly very narrow. I am very ignorant of many aspects of the Voynich manuscript, though I don’t view that as problematic for my research.
So I would, for example, try to track down all the Herbal manuscripts of the period. For those that are not available online I would probably request a couple of photoreproductions of individual pages, if not possible to view them in person. (If those pages are particularly of interest I would request more). Hopefully from a couple of plant pages you can get a good idea of the style of the manuscript and how it might fit into the scheme of other herbal manuscripts; hopefully realising which herbal manuscripts are closest to the Voynich. Now I know quite a bit of this kind of work has already been done by people like yourself. However I get the impression it hasn’t been taken as far as it can realistically be taken. It is a subject that I am only vaguely familiar with, so I can’t be very specific.
I can see why it might be attractive for a researcher to move from topic to topic as there are so many interesting aspects to the Voynich, whereas focusing narrowly may seem rather dull by comparison, however I think Voynich studies as a whole would really benefit from researchers taking on specific topics and following them through as far as they can be.
I am curious, for example, about which specific herbal manuscripts are most similar to the Voynich and where those manuscripts originate from. I wonder how well the Voynich fits into the tradition of herbal manuscripts or to what extent it is an outlier with many unique features. If the Voynich is very closely related to one or two other herbal manuscripts of the time that should be very helpful. If it is a real outlier then it will further support that idea that the author(s) were very original in their work. Unless there are so many herbals lost to history that we can not say anything about where the Voynich lies, although we should do the best with what we can. Pinning down the Voynich’s closest herbal relatives could obviously, as you know well, help with plant identification in the Voynich and potentially finding or constructing one of your block-paradigm.
I would undertake this line of research except for the fact that I already have my own very narrow focus on collecting all the ciphers of the time that I can find, as you know.
Nevertheless, I am sure that there are other areas of Voynich research which would benefit from such a focus. I am not sure which are most likely to be fruitful, but I would pick whichever one that I thought was and for which nobody else has done the work already.
Nick: Another thing that I have noticed from Ninja is that researchers will often search/scour the internet for images that somewhat resemble whatever picture in the Voynich that they are interested at the moment post a few and move on; never looking further into what can be found in books or archives and also never making contact with specialists outside the Voynich world in that area of study. I worry that this kind of approach is unlikely to bring about tangible progress, although there is always the chance of stumbling upon something highly significant.
To be fair to Koen he seems to have undertaken systematic projects such as his recent attempt to identify places with swallow tail battlements from the period. Systematic projects are what is need.
Now, I know that for some it is all about the journey not about the destination. So for some they may much prefer the unfocused approach even if it doesn’t produce results. For me I find that unsatisfying, but then that is probably a function of temperament.
Nick: I suppose I favour a goal oriented approach. If for example one were to make an exhaustive study and comparison with each other and the Voynich of herbal manuscripts of the period, one can ask what goals that might achieve. One might decide that actually another line of investigation will provide better insights to the Voynich overall, though getting to grip with herbals resonates with me though it is true that I have not studied this area. If a research project will tell you, even if successful, little more about the Voynich then one can question whether that is where one’s energies are best applied.
Generally one thing I have liked about your research approach is that you have defined clear goals and strategies, rather than the scattershot approach of some researchers. For example the idea of looking for a “block-paradigm” as you term it is a very sensible strategy from my perspective given the possibilities it presents for making a major breakthrough in Voynich research. You are someone who has undertaken serious projects. I also like that you are bold, ambitious and willing to go against conventional opinion in the Voynich world. “The Curse” was an interesting and ambitious endeavour, people may disagree with its conclusions, but where it is right or wrong it is right and wrong in interesting ways. We need more interesting and challenging theories in Voynich research. We need people who are not so afraid to be wrong that they don’t bother to say anything interesting or controversial.
Dear Mark. You work on the manuscript like a diligent bee. (Note that I don’t write an ant. You don’t like that, as you once wrote me). You write here about how other ants should work on the manuscript. I’m in your place, so I’ll let them work as they want. You also write something about the herbarium, etc. Dear Mark, of course everything is different than it seems to you personally. Voynich is no herbarium. Of course, you as a good scientist should also know what is called Image Suggestion. I can also write about what it is about here. The author of the manuscript (our dear Elizabeth of Rosenberg) was obviously clever and well aware that when he drew some plants in the manuscript. So everyone will look for plants and possibly a herbarium. This is called “Image Suggestion”. Every hundred years have been looking for some Hebrews and trying to give the drawings a name. Of course, the same goes for others, such as “Zodiac”, Pharmacopoeia, etc. So study what Image Suggestion means. Then study what the “Kabbalistic Numerology System of Gematria” means. Also get acquainted with how it was written in Bohemia in the Middle Ages. And then you will have a chance to read something from the manuscript. Happy New Year and patience.
PS. that Koen ant doesn’t work well either, so you’re not alone.
Mark, Your previous remark was addressed to Nick, but it’s such an interesting and relevant point that I hope you’ll allow me to respond.
I did, at one time, attempt to invite discussion of this issue of methods and methodologies in voynich forum, but the ‘backroom boys’ immediately lobbied to prevent any such discussion – why, I’m not sure. The moderator amiably agreed to lock the thread and prohibit any such conversation, regardless of whether members wished to discuss it.
What you mean by a ‘scattergun’ approach I’m not sure, but one difficulty is that defining goals before you know what you’re dealing with can be counterproductive. Take the ‘herbals’ idea. The Friedman groups spent altogether almost thirty years trying to identify some western Christian manuscript which seemed ‘like’ the Voynich, and that included the fairly limited number of illustrated herbal manuscripts. The end result was a conclusion that the Voynich plant-pictures aren’t part of that tradition. A conclusion I agree with, wholeheartedly. Point was, they wasted so much time – and their time was valuable – because they defined a goal without first checking that the assumptions informing that goal were well-founded.
When it comes to the pictures, especially, amateurs constantly hunt for ‘something like’ and look only within the parameters of some theory they’ve invented, or taken on faith. The result has been (for example) dozens of ‘match the zodiac’ essays – and not only have they ignored all the rest of a given diagram, but failed to understand, or explain – often being unable to “see” the fact that the calendar centres don’t form ‘a zodiac’, or to appreciate enough about ancient and medieval custom to understand that representations of the ecliptic constellations wasn’t always or solely done in service to astrology.
The method I’ve found most helpful, and which I think has proven most productive over the past century is to (1) identify your own limits and skills (2) concentrate on addressing a question (and then another, and another) which lies within your own skill-set and keep in mind the example of Lieutenant Currier, who delivered a single paper on his observations about Voynichese, but made a lasting and rock-solid contribution to the study. Similarly, Philip Neal who has Latin, chose to translate the seventeenth-century correspondence and this too as become a constant and vital resource.
My area his iconological analysis, which involves more reading and consideration of historical, technical and even archaeological matter than it does ‘looking for likes’, and as one issue after another is addressed, the process of research shifts its focus from one image or section, or related historical or technical question to another, cross-referencing all the time. Its ‘goal’ is simple enough; to establish where, and when, the images in a given section were first enunciated, and within what cultural environment, and to track evidence of the material’s being affected over time by redactions and by changes in the environment of use.
What I find most irritating is attitudes to images which suppose that ‘pictures are easy’ and, as a result, to approaches ill-informed by anything but some preferred theory. One very fine exception was when Koen stopped guessing what the pictures might mean and did some very solid historical investigation of the dissemination of the ‘deformed lobster’ image, within Europe, after about the twelfth century. That was a ‘goal oriented’ approach with clearly defined limits and so objective in its methods that neither theorising or imaginings could de-rail it.
Pick your problem. Examine like a prosecuting counsel anything you suppose ‘a given’, and having made sure the ground is solid… away you go. 🙂
Nick..”looking forward, ahead and up” sez you…I have an ominous feeling that you’ll soon see this as being not so much in accordance with the thread title but, more like a giant leap forward into an unfathomable quagmire of your own sorry invention…Look out Wacko Jacko, Diane & Mark are back in town, they’ve an unwitting allie in Pelling and you are in their sights ‘old fella me lad’..
dear Diane. You speak to me from the heart. Only a large caliber scientist should work on the manuscript. Something like you or some other well-calibrated scientist. And not an amateur who doesn’t have the right education to understand what a manuscript is. Like Friedman, who spent 30 years before finding out that his knowledge was insufficient, so he quit. You have the necessary education and this is certainly good for all amateurs, because you also help them with the research of the manuscript. And quite selflessly, without claiming any fee. Which every amateur should welcome, and write it for you on your blog, which of course I also know. And so I know that you also work for a long time to understand the manuscript. About 10 years. From this it can be concluded that he has a lot of time. And time is quite important for manuscript research. In recent years, you have been trying to include Jewish Jews in your research. You can see that you appreciate what I wrote to you about the manuscript. And that’s good. It shows that you are using your brain and you can thus put together a few contexts. So try to include Czech Jews in your research. I can write to you that there were also a lot of Jews in Bohemia in the Middle Ages, ie clouds of Jews.
The longer you comment about your friend Koen, who has some deformed crabs. As I know what you write. So, of course, I also know what scientist Koen writes on many Ninja threads. Of course, Koen should also add in research and not look for deformed crabs. He should study what I’ve already written to everyone about the manuscript. Then he would certainly move forward, like you.
If, as a scientist, you are interested in finding out what drawing a cancer means, don’t worry and write. I will be happy to tell you and write scientifically what drawing a crab in a manuscript means. Of course, it’s not that hard when you can read that damn text. Happy New Year and hold on.
I have to say that I am quite disappointed with the DNA analysis of the Somerton Man’s remains. Why is it taking so long? Overcooked food is never good.
Mark: looking for herbals to compare the Voynich Manuscript with is a waste of time. The Voynich Herbal is not a herbal: the plants depicted there show multiple impossible features, something that in the Middle Ages, when farmers were 99% of the population and the other 1% were landowners, would have been obvious to everybody.
Diane: even negative results are, nonetheless, results.
Stefano goodonya, a waste of time no bones about it, quite literally truth be known. Don’t know where Mark’s been hiding this decade past, but, those most
unlikely herbals have out performed all but the gibberish glyph texts in my view. Anyhow after Alain Touwaide gives us his long anticipated thumbs down on authenticity, we’ll just wait for Beneike library to put their ex mystery VM (imposter) on the market. Should get a few quid more than the zero original purchase price of course which may then be split amongst the Voynicheero losers for all their wasted time and efforts.
Stefano: With all due respect you are clearly not familiar with herbal manuscripts of the time. They often have “impossible features” it was the style of representation.
M R Knowles: Looks like the worm’s turned over at Ninja old chap. Latest from a pair of 15th century slalwarts vis., Anton and R. Sale is that, first in line has a Voynichees duck that doesn’t quack and the second now has some reservations apropos the G.reg/Rene C14 set in stone dating age (fiasco). Who’s next to spit the dummy I wonder; surely not Stefano, Nick, Diane or your good self ?
Mark: there is a fine line between exceptional, or bizarre, or abstract, or decorative features on one side, and impossible, senseless features on the other side. The Voynich seats lonely on the other side. Plants in medieval herbals, once you remove embellishments when they are there, make sense as plants, those in the VM do not. That is it.
Stefano Guidoni: surely the “Alchemical Herbals” as famously collected by Aldrovandi disprove your assertion? These date from close to the generally accepted time frame of the Voynich Manuscript, and feature a large yet oddly coherent set of “impossible, senseless features” (as you put it).
The top two Google search results (for ‘Aldrovandi alchemical herbal’) are:
* https://ciphermysteries.com/2019/06/16/links-to-scans-of-alchemical-herbals
* http://philipneal.net/voynichsources/alchemical/
Those are a perfect example of what I mean. The appearance of plants has its origin in some strict mathematical rules. Alchemical herbals generally obey to these rules (obviously by having observed real plants), regarding symmetry, regularity, the golden ratio, the Fibonacci sequence and so on. The so called plants from the Voynich are not symmetrical, not regular, and their numbers and proportions are all over the place. Someone who is familiar with plants can still recognize a plant in a mandrake painted as a little human figure. That is simply not true for most plants in the Voynich.
Stefano Guidoni: actually, there have been several papers written about the inverse hyperbolic spiral in the plant of f56r. Similarly, heads in roots are visible on f33r, as I’m sure you know, though J.K.Petersen (and possibly others?) does also argue for a mandrake-like body in the roots on f89r:
* https://voynichportal.com/2020/10/24/hidden-in-plain-sight/
So… I’m not at all sure what you’re actually trying to argue here.
Yes, some drawings are orderly and some are disorderly, and many of these drawings are more like late 15th century naturalistic herbal drawings than 14th century medieval herbal drawings. But my own strong suspicion is that Voynich Herbal-A and Herbal-B pages are two entirely different kinds of manuscripts that have ended up interleaved with each other, which is why I think attempts to understand what they are in their jumbled form are largely doomed to end in confusion.
As I have been writing to you for ten years, manuscript is not a herbarium. It’s a big waste of time. Look somewhere for some resemblance to any other herbarium or book. You must read the text. And then, of course, you’ll find out what I found out. So don’t look for plants and herbs. But try to find out what the image means. A very nice example is the “MANDRAG” plant already mentioned here. Ask yourself a very important question: Who was MAN DRAG. Then you will find out what is written in the text. My help is: Study the history of the Luxembourg family. Then you have to find out which monarch and king is written in the text. And thirdly, I can also write to you that it says about the Czech king and the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Of course, everything is written in the Czech language. Encrypted by Jewish substitution. Which our clever Eliška mastered perfectly. Just like I control her. So study MAN-DRAG. (Our very skilful Eliška knew the history of her country. She even had the opportunity to read our oldest chronicle. Written by Decanus Cosma. Which I am currently working on).
MAN-DRAG = Man = dragon.
NP: your insistance that the alchemical herbals depicted in the Aldrovandi MS 153, cat. Segra Rutze’s indirect tradition, “dates close to the generally accepted time frame of the Voynich Manuscript” is so glaringly out of proportion as to merit censure in the most strident terms. This baring in mind of course that the ‘generally accepted time frame’ for B 408 of 1404/32 is a century before Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522/1605) was even born; A fact that Stefano Guidoni would not have overlooked. Sorry.
I see numeracy and literacy combined in a part tabulated, part worded format which encaptulates a form of trans illiterate alternating script using parts of a known language form. Created by and known to but a select few members of a single familial diety, duly Sworn to secrecy for so long as it’s assigned purpose decried. B 408 was likely compiled in a period around the turn of the twentieth century, sole aim being to baffle intellectual boorish snobs of that era, who by their privilage and upbringing claimed status way and above the rest. By their stubbornly refusal to show due respect towards their equally learned but not so highly qualified peers, they naturally drew the ire of the fairer sex, in this case George Boole’s vengful widow Mary along with her duty bound and rather clever fair haired daughters.
Sure. The time frame that your colleague Greg.H. at university is bad. He had the wrong carbon. And so he slashed for a few years. When it is written at the beginning of the manuscript. I was born in 1466. So it is clear to all scientists that the test is bad. Eliška was born in 1466. Then, of course, it is also necessary to add time before she learned to speak and write. That’s fifteen years, I think. And then it could be the correct enrollment date. Otherwise, Eliška went to Italy quite often. Her grandfather Oldřich II. from Rožmberk tried to unite his family. With the Italian genus Orsini. (Oldrich II was a very capable ruler and, of course, also forged a lot of important documents).
My point of view:
alchemical herbals: plants with some features depicted as something else.
Voynich herbal(s): something else depicted using herbal features.
Let’s use as an example f89r and its man-root. It is the only exemplar, that I know, featuring two twigs on the top of its head: traditionally the head of the mandrake is the real twig or bundle of twigs at the top of the root. Hence you usually can see the stalks of the leaves directly attached to the head, like hair. The picture from f89r may be informed by traditional mandrake representations, but it is distinct. It is more like a man depicted as a mandrake root, than the other way around.
The plants from the Voynich show some extreme asymmetries (f31r, f31v, f46r, f46v, f49r, f56r) that are unlikely to appear in traditional herbals. The plants from the Voynich feature loops (e.g. f17v, f22r, f52r etc.) that are unlikely to be present in other herbals. The plants from the Voynich often sprout individually from the same root (e.g. f23r, f43r etc.), while in other herbals that is very rare: sometimes in those herbals the stalks of leaves and fruits are directly attached to the root, but that is something different (and maybe absent from the Voynich).
Finally, the plants from the Voynich are more likely to be positively identified with some object than with some plant: menorahs (as Koen suggested, convincingly in my opinion), a galley ship (f46r).
I’ll add a statistics about the number of flowers at the top of the Voynich plants and at the top of the plants from the Aldrovandi mss. It may be interesting.
Yeah, and more. Orsini went to Rosenberg Castle, where it was nice at the time. And Eliška’s family went to Italy again. Just friends. Great friends. Like I’m your friend and you’re my friend ants and scientists. I’m just not going anywhere anymore, I’m as old as Kladno coal. And now the flu is rampant and I don’t like to wear a muzzle on xsicht. Then I have trouble breathing.
Josef Z. Prof: yep sure, I can see how Eliska of ‘Rosenberg’s own works may well have been used to make fair copy of the Boole VM centuries later. What you say about mandrake as man dragon also rings a bell in that Wilfrid came up with the most unlikely location for his Bacon aquisition vis. Mondragon palace. Not to mention his quite likely association with one Manuel Mondragone a Nahuatl collector, a fellow guest at Manhatten Hotel NY on his way into exile prior to WW1. Stranger things have happened. NB. Sensa was the name used by Voynich for his business, that also an historic arts & crafts centre on the outskirts of Mondragon Italy…..ps. admittedly it was also the name of a publishing house in the north with similar cat & rat emblem for it’s logo, but who cares?
…if it’s of interest, Mexican Manny exhiled in the Basque resort ville of San Sabastian not far from the fair sized Pyranese town of Mondragon (now something else) and died there in 1922. My understanding is that they speak a host of separate archaic languages up that way and their writing is attrocious, not similar to anything apart from ancient Hebrew and cryptic Voynichese.
And now something to laugh about. Believe me. don’t believe. Recently, an Italian colleague, scientist Stefano C, appeared at the University of Prague … So what will he do there? :-))))) He will be researching a mysterious MS 408 there for a total of 3 years :-)))
You can see he has nothing important to do. And so he will teach students here. How to Find Out What a Voynich Manipcript Means
So how do I see it? Stefano will research and research and research for 3 years. And after three years of research. his conclusion will be: Unfortunately, I don’t know enough to tell you. Who is the author of the manuscript and of course I also do not know what is written in it.
john sanders. not some nahuatl- or whatever it’s called- A scientist here demonstrated this years ago: the blue eye. Then he disappeared. Not some Wifida-Boule’s wife. Certainly not. Although she studied Slavic languages. She didn’t have the manuscript, like many scientists in Britain. And elsewhere in the world. South America – no. That’s very bad. (that’s why the blue eye probably hid). After all, it is very simple. At the beginning of the manuscript. It is written who is the author. You must know. Each character, ie a letter, has its own numeric value. And not just the number 8.2 you see in the manuscript.
Otherwise, Wifrid found out after 13 years of research. That the manuscript is Czech. As written in the letter at Yale. So not Nahuatl, Boule and other nonsense. MAN-DRAGON. Man – Dragon. You have to study the history of the Luxembourg family. Then you will find out more. And you will also find out why he was in the manuscripts. Where it is written about Luxembourgers, some Dragon is painted.
Joseph Z. Prof: hang on sport, what Luxembourg family? Far as I can make out your Rozmberke lass Eliska had no ancestral links to original Luxembourg rulers the Habsbergs. Liz married some lightweight name of Hank Pruschenko who had a title and a dragon logo on like most Krauts with a castle and little else… I’m thinking we might pay greater attention to what’s trending now at Voynich Ninja what may have greater baring for our mutual interests than, who owns title to the Beineke worthless copy of 408 manuscript; your Liz Rottenegg [sick] or my Mary Boule [sic]. Also seems that we are in for a bout of ‘Spacial Spread and Conditional Entropy Reduction’ of which if aloud to gain hold could put the credibility apropos eg., C14 dating and presence or not of swallow tail merlons under enormous pressure.
Stefano Guidoni.
The whole corpus of western (‘Latin European’) herbals has been done to death, all flesh removed from the bones, and still people try to make soup from them.
There is nothing there which wasn’t known half a century ago when it comes to Voynich studies. Even efforts to use the idea of mnemonic devices fail to do the necessary study to understand what is implied by that term in the context of medieval approaches to memory.
And even if you reduce the range still further to just that group of herbals for which Aldrovandi coined the term ‘herbals of the alchemists’ (NOT ‘alchemical herbals’), that subject was dispatched years ago by Philip Neal who points out that such herbals may use apparently ‘mnemonic’ details at the root, but the list of plants in them in pretty much the same set number and list, and these are not how the Voynich plants are drawn, and no obvious correspondence has ever been found about descriptions for those plants, and the Voynichese text.
I understand you may find one or another subjective interpretation persuasive, but what should ‘convince’ is solid historical evidence and solid evidence of serious study of primary sources and secondary scholarship. Whether the ideas offered by Koen or anyone else are persuasive is quite a separate question from whether the people who made those images meant to convey such ideas. As scholars and researchers, our aim is surely to try to know, not to reach a point at which all enquiry ceases to be replaced by a simple ‘I believe’. Credo is not only the root of ‘credence’ and ‘credibility’; but also of ‘credulous’. Always test the quality of any evidence adduced.
In my opinion, when it comes to the “subliminal” transmission of illustrations from the Voynich Manuscript, it has one essential feature in common with the two gold-plated plates placed on the American space probes Pionieer 10 and 11. As you know, these plates are engraved with information for their potential finders.
It is obvious that not a few lines, some balls and some two “unknown” figures have been engraved on the plate – this is the message. If, hypothetically, these gilded plates see some creatures that are just crawling in their evolution, or if their evolution causes their bodies to consist only of heads and have forty pairs of eyes, it will be incomprehensible to them. However, for intelligent beings it will be important and in a specific way encrypted information.
A similar situation is with the Voynich Manuscript – it is not a herbarium, or a balneological tutorial, but very precisely encrypted information, similar to the one from Pioneer.
Therefore, I think that Stefano Guidoni is closer to the truth in his statement that “the Voynich Herbal is not a herbal” than those for whom the plants of the first part of the Manuscript are only medicinal herbs, because for their authors illustrations ” Herbs “were to constitute a specific modus operandi of the semiotic encoding of information of a type similar to that of the latent plates from Pionieer’s space probes.
For most Manuscript decoders, the herbs in the first part of the Manuscript are just herbs. They are similar to those potential primitive beings who, when looking at the gilded plate from the Pioneer space probe, see only a few dashes, some spheres, and some two undefined figures.
john sanders.You ask a colleague what kind of Luxembourgers? Indeed, monarchs and kings. Eliška describes = history in her manuscript !!! And certain events from the time of Charles IV. Each member of the Luxembourg clan had an animal name. This can be seen, for example, in “The Bestiary”, (Aberden).
Eliška describes history. And not that she married a Luxembourg woman.
Grzegorz Ostrowski: your 10:10 and 7:15 balls and all timing logic is 5 X 5 with me for one. However, laughter is probably not the best non herbal medicine when dealing with those having no sense of humour. I see it as part of the ‘Voynich Curse’ when attempting mirthful example of its meaning to those that don’t see the joke. Case in point being when a donkey’s nuts are shoved aside in order to tell the time on yon old town clock.
Voynich minnows caught off guard by the speed with which ‘spacial spread’ and ‘conditional entropy reduction’ have taken root on Shintaro blog, might make preparations for a dramatic switch to the even more disconcerting effects of ‘Intra-bigram positional rigidity’. According to a VM heir and successor however, any geek thinks they can tap into origins through decipherment of the text and or pictogram identificataion, have another ‘think’ coming.