Search Results: Voynich

Logistically, it might be just too late for Santa to swoosh these under your Christmas tree, but I found out yesterday that Italian perfume house Pinalli has just started selling a range of perfumes and related products under the brand “Voynich Botanica 1-66“.

If you hadn’t already guessed (and I must admit it wasn’t immediately obvious to me), the “1-66” in the name actually refers to the folios of the Voynich Manuscript containing the first large herbal section (well… Herbal A and Herbal B, to be precise). Here’s what their fragrant PR flacks have to say about it (translated from the Italian):

Voynich is an advanced cosmetic brand that combines naturalness with high performance to bring to life formulations strictly free of Silicones, Parabens, Peg, Sles, Mineral Oils, Artificial Colors, with over 98% of natural ingredients. Voynich uses a scientific laboratory that for over 30 years has been studying, developing and producing cutting-edge formulas using the most advanced technologies and the highest quality standards.

The Voynich manuscript is an ancient illustrated code from the fifteenth century. Section I (folios 1-66) called “Botanica” contains countless illustrations of plants and flowers. Voynich products are inspired by the charm that surrounds this book, the passion for botanical research and respect for what Nature gives us.

So what do these look like? There are currently three to choose from:

You can even buy them all in a nice Christmas gift box:

Obviously they’re leaving the plants in the Pharma section for next year’s wave of products, and maybe the bathing nymphs of Q13 for a future spa range of shower and bath products. 😉

Well, they are what they are, I guess. But regardless, may Father Christmas fill your stockings with fine mysteries this year!

Every couple of years, I wake up in the middle of the night with an all-new version of The Big Idea – you know, the one that’s finally going to unlock the Voynich Manuscript’s secrets. These unstoppable small-hours plans are normally formed from the soup of things slooshing around in my head, but arranged in a pincer movement attacking the problem on two fronts (i.e. with the idea of trapping it in the middle).

As an aside, it would be a bit of a shock to me if the Voynich Manuscript’s contents turn out to be something wildly unexpected, like a 200-page Swahili ant-summoning ritual, or a book about various weird vegetables that magically cure diabetes (as if anyone would randomly send emails about that, ho hum). :-/ Similarly, I would find it a big surprise if the writing / enciphering system were to turn out to be something we hadn’t collectively considered at length and in detail already, though in some cunning combination that we hadn’t quite grasped.

More generally, I would summarize my overall position as being that, without much doubt, there is a high probability that we are much closer than we think to the Voynichian chequered flag. Even though there are many nuttier-than-a-fruitcake researchers out there (no, I’m not referring to you, dear reader, that would be quite absurd), a huge amount of excellent research has been done, a very large part of which will almost certainly be correct.

And so, swimming against the pessimistic epistemological tide that seems to prevail these days, my overall judgement is that we shouldn’t – very probably – need to know much more than we already do in order to crack through the Voynich’s walls: just a little more may well do the trick. In fact, it may even be that a single solid fact might be enough to open the floodgates. 🙂

This Week’s Big Idea

And so it was that I woke up at 2am a few nights ago with (inevitably) a new Big Idea for cracking the Voynich. And given that my last post was about the diffusion of vernacular Cisiojanus mnemonics, I guess few readers here will be surprised that the main part of the idea was that the 30-odd labels per zodiac sign might well be the syllables of a vernacular Cisiojanus.

Why vernacular? Well, even though Latin Cisiojani had been known since the 12th century or so, vernacular Cisiojani were novel and unknown even in the mid-fifteenth century, and so one might well be a good candidate for something someone compiling a book of secrets might well want to conceal / hide / obfuscate / encrypt (delete as appropriate).

At the same time, I don’t believe that Voynichese can be enciphered or obfuscated Latin, because the way Voynichese seems abbreviated / truncated seems incompatible with Latin (where endings contain so much of the meaning). But if we are instead looking at a linguistically diffused Cisiojanus (such as Italian or French), it’s perhaps a different kettle of (cray)fish.

In parallel, the Voynich zodiac section offers us numerous more interesting clues to work with: for instance, the three crowned nymphs, of which the red-crowned nymph on the Leo page is arguably the earliest.

I’ve previously proposed that one or more of these crowns might be flagging a feast day with personal significance to the author. (For example, for a Florentine such as Antonio Averlino, the most important day in the calendar was the Festa di San Giovanni, the Feast of St John the Baptist.) As such, we might also look at the Voynich zodiac page for Cancer, which also has a crowned nymph, but where the crown looks to have been added later:

I previously mused whether this Cancer crown might have been a fake, designed to draw attention away from the real crown in Leo, but in retrospect this was a bit too harsh and reductive, even if the codicology is sound. Rather, these two crowns (and indeed the crowned nymph in Libra) may well have had different types of significance, added in separate codicological layers for separate reasons. Even if the idea of Antonio Averlino’s connection to Firenze is too strong for some of you, the connection between Italian Cisiojani and St John the Baptist may still be worth pursuing, as we’ll see next.

Nicola De Nisco’s Cisiojanus

In the same way that Jesus’ birthday is celebrated near the Winter Solstice (the shortest day of the year), St John the Baptist’s birthday is celebrated near the Summer Solstice (the longest day). And so it has been widely suggested that both attributed birthdays offered Christian hooks to hang pagan festivals from (and there seems to be no obvious reason in the Bible why John’s birthday should be celebrated then). Hence in many places in Europe (not just Firenze), the Feast of St John the Baptist was a three- or four-day long affair, arguably more akin to a pagan summer festival.

Hence if we suspect that the labelese text in the Voynich’s zodiac section is some kind of vernacular Cisiojanus, there should be plenty of good reasons why we should look for the Feast of St John the Baptist.

For June (which German calendars typically link with Cancer), De Nisco transcribes one 15th century Italian Cisiojanus as follows:

Nic.mar.cel.qui.bo.ni.dat.me.pri.mi.bar.na.an.ton.
Vi.ti.que.mar.pro.ta.si.san.ctus.io.bap.io.do.le.pe.pau

If we add in De Nisco’s corrections in square brackets, plus additional saints’ names courtesy of that most indispensable of publications, The American Ecclsiastical Review (1901), Vol. 24, plus an 1886 French book which gave me St Dorothy of Prussia), we get:

1. Nic — Nicomedes [original document has “Vic”]
2/3. mar.cel — Marcellus / Marcellinus
4. qui — St Quirino, Bishop of Sisak
5/6. bo.ni — Bonifacius
7. dat — ???
8. me — Medardus
9/10. pri.mi — Primus
11/12. bar.na — Barnabas
13/14. an.ton — Sant’Antonio da Padova
15/16. Vi.ti — Vitus
17. que —
18. mar — Marcus et Marcellianus [original document has “Nar”]
19/20/21. pro.ta.si — Protasius (et Gervasius)
22/23/24/25. san.ctus.io.bap — St John the Baptist
26. io — Johannes (et Paulus)
27. do — (if this isn’t St Dorothy of Montau (Prussia), patron saint of the Teutonic Knights (from 1390) whose actual feast day should be 25th June, who was it? Thanks Helmut Winkler for pointing this out.)
28. le — Leo
29. pe — Petrus et Paulus
30. pau — Commemoratio Pauli

The presence of the much-contested St Dorothy of Prussia (a chronically-self-harming widow from near Gdansk, who was adopted in the 20th century by Catholics for Hitler, if you really want to know) gives us a hint not only to the German origins of this particular Cisiojanus, but also an earliest date (1390). Yet the presence of St Quirino perhaps hints at an itinerary via Hungary (the St Quirino with a 4th June feast died in Szombathely, whereas the St Quirino of Rome had an entirely different feast day): while, as De Nisco points out, the presence of the Feast of Sant’Antonio da Padova points very strongly to a Paduan Ciosiojanus adapter.

More importantly, you can see “san.ctus.io.bap” taking up four consecutive syllables in the Cisiojanus, a fragment of (almost-)plain text peeking through the jumble of syllable fragments that make up the rest. Moreover, the next syllable along is also “io” (for the feast of St John and St Paul), which might also be there for the finding.

All of which could offer an excellent crib for the plaintext lurking somewhere beneath Voynich’s labelese: so might we be able to find some echo of this in the Cancer labelese? Even more remarkably, might we be able to line up this phrase’s syllables with the labelese close to the crowned nymph in Cancer?

(As an aside, I hope you can see that this is the kind of connection that not only wakes Voynich researchers up in the night but also stops them from getting back to sleep.)

The “san.ctus.io.bap” Crib

Firstly, I offer up my own EVA transcription of the Voynich Cancer labels:

Outer ring (from 10:00 clockwise, just around from a gap at the left)

ykalairol
olkylaiin
olalsy
or.aiin.am
os.as.sheeen
otosaiin
opoiinoin.al.ain
ypaiin.aloly
oteey.daiin
oeeodaiin
ofsholdy
opoeey.okaiin

Central ring (from 10:00 clockwise)

olfsheoral
or.alkam
ytairal
oeeesaiin
ory
ochey.fydy
ofais.oeeesaly
ykairaiin.airal
okalar
orary
olaiin.olackhy

Inner ring (from 09:00 clockwise)

oletal
opalal
yfary
osaiisal
ytoar.shar
actho
aral

And then I offer up my thoughts: much as this whole idea got between me and my comfortable bed, I just can’t construct a sensible mapping (even with verbose cipher) between these labels and any of the Cisiojani I’ve seen, whether Latin, Italian, French or whatever.

But then again, I can’t sensibly map these labels to just about anything, language-wise: there’s no structure, or grammar, or variational consistency that offers a way of systematically parsing these labels into a system, let alone reading them. Even the characteristically labelese-like “oletal” / “opalal” / “okalar” / “olalsy” words (I’d perhaps also include “osaiisal”, “otosaiin”, “oeeesaiin” and “ytairal” in this group, and maybe even “ykalairol” and “olkylaiin” too) are only a minority of the thirty labels.

All of which isn’t to imply (as Richard SantaColoma is wont to say) that ‘this can only be a hoax’ (*sigh*), but rather that I think we’re missing something really big here, a rational connecting principle that would give these kind of labels a mutual structure and explanatory context that our theoretical crossbow bolts are flying a mile both over and past. For example, what is the way that we see “es” (411) much more than “er” (28), or “ir” (724) much more than “is” (62) really telling us? Why is almost every single instance of “ssh” not only at the start of a word, but also either at the start of a line or immediately to the right of an illustration in the text?

“Among other revelations, he discovers it was a treatise on Spacesynth“, says the author of the following video, Hagar Hogan. I’m not sure if that actually helps explain it, but it may possibly be some kind of starting point. For some people.

This has taught me a lot about the relationship between Mario and Luigi and the Voynich Manuscript. But probably more about where the volume dial is on my speakers.

Of course, readers might consider that the above is a waste of time, and that I should instead use my blog as a platform for discussing serious-minded Voynich videos by earnest researchers.

Here, it has to be said that I’m specifically thinking of “Mystical Voynich Manuscript Interpretation – Part 1” on the ‘High Elven Wisdom And Love’ YouTube channel. Its author is “an empath […] an elvenkin […] a soul that expresses themself as an elf in this lifetime”, and who wants to post 45-minute videos on the powerful energy behind the Voynich Manuscript.

Me, I’ll stick with Mario, if that’s ok with you. 😉

It is both interesting and intriguing that Voynich f116v – the final page of the Voynich Manuscript – contains several lines of as-yet-unaccounted-for text. What is interesting is that these lines are almost entirely unlike the “Voynichese” text that fills the rest of the manuscript, and are written in a recognizably European gothic hand typical of the 14th, 15th and indeed early 16th century. Hence they really ought to be easily readable – but what is intriguing is that this seems not to be the case at all.

As with all cipher mysteries, their unreadability has spawned a myriad of dubious readings, starting in the 1920s with Newbold’s “Michiton oladabas multos te tccr cerc portas” (which he squinterpreted as “Michi dabas multas portas”), through the 1970s with Brumbaugh’s “MICHI CON OLADA BA” (which Brumbaugh thought somehow referred to Roger BACON, *sigh*), and onwards and downwards from there. Even Rene Zandbergen, tongue firmly in cheek, once proposed that because the main f116v text block begins with “mich” and ends with “nich”, it can surely only be a veiled reference to Mich[ael Voy]nich himself. (As if Rich SantaColoma needs any more hoaxoline to hurl on his fire, *sigh*.)

Objectively, though, the text on f116v really ought to be the most obvious ‘way in’ to understanding the Voynich Manuscript’s physical history, simply because there’s no obvious reason why it would be enciphered or encoded: and hence careful codicological examination should normally be sufficient to work out not only what was originally written here, but also – as I carefully described back in 2006 – what emendations later owners made (presumably in the name of ‘preservation’) to leave it in such a parlously unreadable state.

Some multispectral imaging has been carried out at the Beinecke, but (unless you know better) only low-quality images leaked out and no paper was ever written. Here’s what the f116v text looks like at (“MB570AM_027_F”), which – I think – shows that there were at least two codicological layers that need to be separated:

Yet here we are, more than a decade after “The Curse of the Voynich” and not obviously any further forward. 🙁 But perhaps there are ways we can make progress… 🙂

A Closer Look At The Top Line

Rather than getting hung up on the bottom three lines, I’d like to focus purely on the top line.

I’ve previously proposed (in 2009) that the ‘^’ shape at the beginning of two of the words might be an ‘s’ shape, e.g. “simon sint (something)”:

Looking at this line in one of the multispectral scans (“MB625RD_006_F”), we can see that there is also evidence of emendation in the letters, but that the base codicological layer is different to that of the “a+hia + maria” layer (which I suspect was the earliest layer):

I think this provides strong evidence – though far from definitive, of course, because of the low quality of the images – that we are looking at at least three codicological layers of text on this page.

What Is That ^ Shape?

Over the last decade, I’ve looked at loads of palaeography books; I’ve read Derolez’s “The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books”; and I just haven’t founf anything that looks like the ‘^’ shape on this line.

I’m not really comfortable with J.K.Petersen’s 2013 claim that “The first letter might be a ‘u'”. And similarly, though I understand where he’s coming from, David Jackson’s reading of this whole line as “Por seber vm cn autentico afecto” seems a little premature, given the codicological difficulties I think we continue to face with almost every letter.

I happily concede that it is possible (as Anton Alipov suggested in a 2015 comment, and also in a post on his blog) the two ^ shapes are the heads of two ‘p’ shape, where the descenders have disappeared. However, given that there seems to be not a hint of this in the multispectral scans, it is far from my preferred explanation. Johannes Albus’ rendering of this line as “poxleber umen[do] putriter” is an example of a reading that requires the second ^ shape to have been a ‘p’.

The alternative remains that this ^ shape is a rare way of writing a Gothic ‘s’ shape, albeit one I’ve not yet managed to find anywhere. But if someone does, I suspect that it will probably be in a mid-fifteenth century document that was written not too far from Konstanz, just so you know. 😉

Has any Voynich researcher already tried hunting for this particular Gothic letter shape in the archives? If yes, then did you find anything? (I know about CSG 754 that Anton mentioned in the context of its spell blocks.)

I’m cautiously optimistic that a breakthrough has just emerged to do with the Art History origins of the Voynich Manuscript’s puzzling zodiac pages, that would appear to connect them with Diebold Lauber’s fifteenth century manuscript copying house. Errrm… who he? I’ll explain…

The Voynich Zodiac section

Even though we cannot decrypt the Voynich Manuscript’s text, researchers have long noted that its illustrations strongly suggest that the manuscript isn’t just random, but is instead composed of a number of thematically-connected sections.

The Voynich zodiac section contains a series of roundels depicting the signs of the zodiac (though the folio at the end containing Capricorn and Aquarius has without any real doubt been removed). Each roundel is surrounded by 15 or 30 small naked women (‘zodiac nymphs’, though Pisces has only 29) posed somewhat awkwardly, each of whom is linked to a small fragment of text (‘zodiac labels’). Here’s Pisces:

[Note that one early owner seems to have added month names to its roundels (e.g. March to Pisces, April to Aries, etc) in a somewhat rough and ready hand, but that’s another matter entirely.]

I’ve argued for years (and the idea certainly wasn’t mine) that the central drawings were probably loosely copied from an astronomical calendar or hausbuch, of the type entirely typical of late 14th or early 15th century Germany, a good number of which had strikingly similar circular astrological or astronomical roundels.

But despite Voynich researchers’ Herculean efforts in recent years to cross-reference these medical/astronomical hausbuch drawings to the Voynich’s zodiac drawings, results have been mixed at best: a zodiac sequence with a good Pisces or Sagittarius match would for the other zodiac signs typically be accompanied by drawings that shared practically no similarities with the Voynich’s roundels. And so things, after a huge burst of collective enthusiasm a couple of years back, stalled somewhat.

Enter Koen Gheuens

In 2016, researcher Koen Gheuens was looking at the Voynich zodiac Gemini roundel drawing, and wondered what the curious double-handed handshake gesture depicted there might signify or mean.

After the usual long sequence of dead-ends, he discovered that in fact it was a pose used in some medieval weddings, and that it even had its own literature. He describes it as follows:

The type of medieval marriage we’re interested in is as follows: the man and woman hold one hand (in cross, so left to left or right to right) and with his free hand, the man puts a ring on a finger of the woman’s free hand. This results in the “double handshake” look. The “passive” set of hands is usually pictured below, while the putting on of the ring is above.

Koen found a number of depictions of the double-handed marriage – very ably documented on his Voynich Temple website – which progressively led him to the manuscript workshop of Diebold Lauber.

Diebold Lauber

In the days before printing, manuscript workshops had to find ways of churning out work for clients that was cost-effective: drawings in particular were time-consuming. The particular ‘hack’ Diebold Lauber’s workshop seems to have made most use of was to have a set of pre-drawn generic exemplar poses which were then lightly adapted (presumably by less skilled illustrators) multiple times. In this way, drawings were reused and recycled multiple times: the connections between these recycled drawings gives plenty of grist for Art Historians’ mills to grind.

Koen put forward the idea that there seems to be a connection between a particular Diebold Lauber crossed-hands-marriage drawing dated to 1448 and the Voynich zodiac crossed-hands Gemini roundel:

And once you see how the details parallel each other, it is indeed a very persuasive visual argument (Koen’s composite image):

Putting all the pieces of the historical puzzle together, it would therefore seem a perfectly reasonable inference that the Voynich zodiac roundel drawings were roughly copied from a zodiac sequence that appeared in an medical-astronomical hausbuch commissioned from Diebold Lauber’s manuscript workshop, where the Gemini pose had been recycled from an earlier Diebold Lauber crossed-hands marriage stock drawing exemplar.

Diebold Lauber References

For a German-language description of Lauber’s prolific workshop in Hagenau (just North of Strasbourg), the Ruprecht-Karls University of Heidelberg has put together a nice page here. From this we learn that researchers have collected together about 80 examples of the workshop’s output dating from 1427 to 1467 (lists here): and that the illustrators worked as long-standing teams, with the so-called “Gruppe A” active from about 1425 to 1450. Lauber was effectively a bookseller, and even included a handwritten advertisement in some of his manuscripts, such as this one (from Cod. Pal. germ. 314, fol. 4ar) from 1443-1449:

A transcription and translation of this would be much appreciated! 🙂

A Diebold Lauber Calendar

What might a Diebold Lauber medical/astronomical calendar look like? Luckily, we don’t need to wonder: there was one in the library of Colonel David McCandless McKell in Lexington, Kentucky, that Rosy Schilling wrote two short books about (one a facsimile of the MS, the other a transcription and English translation).

* Rosy Schilling: A facsimile of an Astronomical medical calendar in German (Studio of Diebolt Lauber at Hagenau, about 1430 – 1450): from the Library of Colonel David McC. McKell, Lexington, Ky., 1958
* Rosy Schilling: Astronomical medical calendar: German, studio of Diebolt Lauber at Hagenau, 15th century, c. 1430 – 50, Lexington, 1958

Here’s what January looks like (i.e. Aquarius):

And – because I know you’re going to ask – here are all twelve zodiac signs from the McKell Ms (click for a larger version):

McKell’s extensive library was bequeathed to the Ross County Historical Society, though according to the Handschriftcensus entry, it was sold by Bloomsbury Auctions (8th July 2015, Sale No. 36180) to Dr. Jörn Günther Rare Books AG. So anyone suitably rich who wants to own this can very probably do so. Which is nice.

So… What Next?

Personally, I’m not convinced every extant Diebold Lauber workshop drawing has been collected together yet. For example, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 1370 has been mentioned before by Voynich researchers on one of Stephen Bax’s pages (it was written in Strasbourg in the mid-15th century, certainly before 1467): and I would be unsurprised if it was connected with Lauber. Here is its Sagittarius roundel:

I’m also far from convinced – given that medical/astronomical hausbuchen don’t have a huge literature – that there aren’t other Diebold Lauber calendars out there that haven’t yet been recognized for what they are. Perhaps this should be a good direction to pursue next? Something to consider, anyway.

In the somewhat 2d world of anime fandom, fans (whether Weeaboo or Wapanese) express their like / preference / undying love for a specific female character within a given anime / show / political party / whatever by describing them as their ‘best girl‘, e.g. “Kim Pine = Totally. Best. Girl. Ever.”, or “Angela Merkel ist meine Best Girl” (possibly, though perhaps only if you happen to think German politics is a bit two-dimensional).

Are Voynich researchers as shallow as this? I wouldn’t like to say. But if you asked me for my personal vote for Voynich best girl (ok, “best nymph”), it would have to go to one of the three crowned zodiac nymphs.

There’s Miss Cancer (where I think the crown is clearly a later addition)…

…Miss Leo (where the crown seems original)…

…and Miss Libra (where I think the crown is also a later addition)…

Of the three, Miss Leo would appear to be the real deal, a specific ‘red letter’ day within the zodiac calendar that the author was so strongly attached to that he/she felt compelled to mark its date with a crown while composing the page (as if to prove my point, you can even see the red paint within the crown). And who, later, then also felt compelled to try to visually conceal its presence (to a certain degree, admittedly) by adding two spurious crowns to other non-red-letter day zodiac nymphs.

Hence Miss Leo is my Voynich best girl, original crown and all. And why ever would anyone think a different nymph could be better than that? I mean, what kind of Voyanese loser would say that one of those poxy balneo nymphs was his/her Voynich best girl? Now that would be completely insane, right? :-p

I recently had a nice day out in Whitstable (marred only by a little light rain and a touch overhoneyed squid tempura dipping sauce, upstairs at the otherwise excellent Crab & Winkle Restaurant). I only mention this because Whitstable’s Wetherspoons – The Peter Cushing – is named after the famous British horror actor (who had a house in the town for many years), famous for playing Grand Moff Tarkin and vampire hunter Van Helsing. And so some people might suspect Cushing’s Syndrome to be a condition involving, say, irrational fear of vampires.

Alas no! In 1912, the same year that Wilfrid Voynich was (supposedly) buying his now eponymous manuscript, it was American brain surgeon Harvey Williams Cushing (1869-1939) who described his patient Minnie as suffering from hypercorticism, though he originally assumed that this was some kind of polyglandular disorder. By 1943, this was known to be “an endocrinological syndrome caused by malfunction of the pituitary gland”, and was named Cushing’s Syndrome in H. W. Cushing’s honour.

So: all distracting mentions of sanguivoriphobia aside, how does Cushing’s Syndrome present? “Symptoms include rapid weight gain, particularly of the trunk and face with sparing of the limbs (central obesity). Common signs include the growth of fat pads along the collarbone, on the back of the neck (“buffalo hump” or lipodystrophy), and on the face (“moon face”).” It is also far more common in adult women than in adult men.

This should be just about enough of a trigger for long-suffering Voynich researchers to work out precisely where this is all leading…

Alexander N. Gabrovsky, Ph.D

It is a certain Alexander N. Gabrovsky, who styles himself as a “Medieval Consultant“, who is about to have a paper published in the Spring 2018 issue of “Source: Notes in the History of Art” (Vol. 37 No. 3). This paper – “Galenic Humoral Theory and Amenorrhea: Cushingoid Phenotype in a Fifteenth Century Illustrated Cipher Manuscript,” – which he asserts will be “one of the first peer-reviewed art historical perspectives on the Voynich Manuscript” will surely link the Voynich Manuscript (specifically its preponderance of Voynich nymphs, almost certainly) to the way Cushing’s Syndrome typically presents.

With my Art History hat on, I’ll be interested to see whether or not the whole “Cushingoid Phenotype” was ever depicted in a recognisable way in the centuries before 1912: it would be a strange paper were it not to even pose that question.

Gabrovsky describes himself as…

“[…]an American medievalist and hold a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (England), specializing in medieval literature, alchemical manuscripts, paleopathology (study of ancient diseases), history of art, Chaucer, and history of the occult sciences from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.”

Just a short note to let you know that Cipher Mysteries’ website’ comment facility is (hopefully) now working again. I had configured it to use an anti-spam WordPress plugin called Mollom, which had its support withdrawn on 2nd April 2018: and so since then all comments to the site had been mysteriously rejected. Thanks to Mark, Rene and others for flagging this issue to me.

More generally, since early least month I’ve been tied up trying to resolve a number of non-crypto (i.e. real-life) issues, so please accept my apologies if you have found both the website and me to have been less responsive than normal. =:-o

Pameo Pose’s Voynich apparel

In the meantime, here is a selection of Voynich apparel from Japanese company Pameo Pose.

Firstly, a Voynich EVA ‘P’ themed beret, which comes in cream and tan (though both variants are sold out). Note that they have chosen the crossed-through single leg gallows from the EVA alphabet, which (of course) means that the ‘c’ and ‘h’ either side are missing:

Secondly, a Voynich lace collar, though I guess you would only be able to tell that it is EVA close-up. It also comes in two colours, and is sold out (I prefer the funky ear-rings, myself):

Thirdly, a Voynich lace dress, a snip at 33480 yen:

Finally (and my favourite of the lot) is the Voynich dance team top, which uses the well-formed EVA ‘cPh’ as its logo:

Here’s the challenge: explaining what the Voynich Manuscript is usually involves explaining what it isn’t. However, this is so boring that anyone listening would rather disembowel themselves and eat their own entrails. But perhaps Internet memes will be able to achieve the impossible…

Thanks to a nice post on Marco Ponzi’s website, a new block paradigm candidate has presented itself: the short “Liber de Angelis”, the first eleven paragraphs of Cambridge University Library MS Dd.xi.45.

As Marco notes, this was transcribed and translated by Juris G. Lidaka in a chapter in Claire Fanger’s (1998) “Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Late Medieval Ritual Magic“. (The full treatise, which is undoubtedly a collection of smaller treatises, is called “Liber de Angelis, Annulis, Karecteribus et Ymaginibus Planetarum”.)

“The Experiment”

Incidentally, this collection has the distinction of having been mentioned by the writer M.R.James in his story “The Experiment: A New Year’s Eve Ghost Story“, first published in the Morning Post, December 31, 1931 (as discussed here). Republished in “A Pleasing Terror”, p.402 refers to “Bishop Moore’s book of recipes”
James’ story concludes:

Bishop Moore’s book of recipes is now in the University Library at Cambridge, marked Dd 11, 45, and on the leaf numbered 144 this is written:

An experiment most ofte proved true, to find out tresure hidden in the ground, theft, manslaughter, or anie other thynge. Go to the grave of a ded man, and three tymes call hym by his nam at the hed of the grave, and say. Thou, N., N., N., I coniure the, I require the, and I charge the, by thi Christendome that thou takest leave of the Lord Raffael and Nares and then askest leave this night to come and tell me trewlie of the tresure that lyith hid in such a place. Then take of the earth of the grave at the dead bodyes hed and knitt it in a lynnen clothe and put itt under thi right eare and sleape theruppon: and wheresoever thou lyest or slepest, that night he will corn and tell thee trewlie in waking or sleping.

However, given that we are not presently concerned with asking the dead for advice about treasure hunting, I leave this merely as an aside / exercise for the reader. 😉

What we are actually concerned with is whether the eleven paragraphs of the Liber de Angelis might somehow be the plaintext of a section of the Voynich Manuscript: so, without any further ado, here they are (as transcribed by Lidaka)…

Liber de Angelis

[1] Signum admirabile experimentorum dixit Messayaac & incipit cum adiuncto Altissimi & est mirabile signum & ualde admirandum in quo sunt secreta Altissimi. Per illud autem ludei operabantur, Caldei, Egipcij, & prudentes Babilonici. Cum igitur operare uolueris, fiat annulus Solis, ex auro fiat, in quo scribantur carecter & nomen angeli solis. & hoc annulus habeatur in omni sacrificio super minore digito sinister manus. Cartam itaque cum mente curiose & studiose custodire in loco mundissimo, & inuolue in rubeo serico.
[2] & hec sunt opera annulus Solis. Cum itaque secundum annulum Solis die dominice ieiunes usque ad noctem, nocte autem facies sacrificium de quada aue non domestica prope litus aque decurrentis, & cum eiusdem auis sanguine scribe carecter & nomen angeli Solis in carta uirginea, & hanc tecum porta. Et cum uolueris transire de vna terra in alteram, depinge in terra carecter Solis & nomen angeli eius, & statim veniet equus niger qui portabit te vbicumque uolueris. Tene tamen cartam in manu dextera & annulum in manu sinistra.
[3] Sicus prius, habeas carecter & nomen angeli eius & scribantur in annulo, & ieiunes in die Lune quo fit annulus Lune, sicud fecisti in annulo Solis, in quo si operare uolueris continuo, sacrificabis anguillam flumalem, cuius sanguine scribe carecter Lune & nomen angeli eius in pelle tue, & inuolue in pelle anguille & reserua vt cum volueris ut appareat flumen uel arbor cum fructu, scribe in terra nomen angeli & nomen fructus, & uoca angelum carta aperta, & apparebit, Si uis ut non appareat, claude cartam.
[4] De annulo Martis. Fiat sacrificium de aue rapaci intra domum ad ignem, et scribe cum eiusdem sanguine in pelle eiusdem nomen angeli & carecteris. Et cum uolueris ut appareant milites armati uel castella uel lubricus ludus, uel ut vincas in prelio, fac caracterem & nomen angeli in terra & appari cartam & apparebit & faciet que preceperis, & cum clauditur carta recedet & cessabit.
[5] Totum fac ut de alijs, sacrificium fiat de uulpe uel de cato in loco deserto, scribe careterem et nomen angeli in fronte – vinces in omni placito. Tene cartam in manu.
[6] Fac sacrificium de gallo, karetter & nomen angeli scribe in pelle, intelligi, in quo inuoluas denarium, & qociens ipsum donaueris reuertetur.
[7] Fac sacrificium de columba alba viuente, carecterem & nomen angeli eius scribe in pelle leporis, quod si mulieri ostenderis sequentur te uelociter.
[8] Totum ut supra. [Damage to leaf has left a small section unreadable here.] Sacrificium de capra inter vepres, carecterem & nomen angeli scribe in percameno veteri. Cum uolueris inter duos odium mittere, eorum nomina in percameno, codem carecterem & nomen angeli in pelle capre, ut predicatur. Cum uolueris aliquem intoxicare, in eius potu intinge annulum Saturni: cum idem potauerit intoxicabitur.
[9] Nunc de generalibus mandatis restat docere. Annulus Solis in omni sacrificio habeatur, & annulus Febe, in quo nomen angeli ipsius; Febe tam in memoria habeatur quam in opera. & fiat sacrificium in circulo infundali, prius scriptus carecter, & in medio magister dicat: ‘Oya, sacrificium tue laudis suscipe’, proiciens carnes extra circulum. In qualibet autem operacione, nomen angeli inuocetur & annulus in digito habeatur. Carte uero mundissime reseruentur, nec in noctis tenebris aperiantur nisi operis necessario ingrauerit.
[10] Nunc de annulis. Annulus Solis ad equum & fiet de auro. Annulus Lune ex argento ad fluuium. Annulus Martis ex ere ad uictoriam in bello. Annulus Mercurij ex cupro ad scienciam. Annulus Iouis ex electro ad denarium. Annulus Veneris ex plumbo ad amorem. Annulus Saturni ex ferre ad odium. Annulus Capitis Draconis ex calibe ad toxicandum.
[11] Hox signum mirabile est experimentum magistri Messayaac de secretis spirituum planetis, secundum mencionem, & sumitur sic. Omitto nomina angelorum cum carecteribus suis (que incipiunt sic: Storax, Abamecta, Paymon, cum ceteris) propter certam causam hic scribenda.

It’s Not by Osbern Bokenham

Though it was once thought to have been written down by Augustinian poet-monk Osbern Bokenham, Lidaka dismisses this quickly. But as a nice point of history, Osbern Bokenham did once conceal his identity in the chapter initial letters (much as in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili) as discussed here:

On 1st May 1456 he wrote Dialogue betwixt a secular asking and a Frere (friar) answering at the grave of Dame Joan of Acre. This is a very important source for the history of Clare Priory. This manuscript, which still exists, is written in both Latin and English, and richly decorated on parchment. Another of his works was called Mappula Anglicae, which covered the rhymed lives of English saints such as Cedde, Felix and Oswald.

It contained seventeen chapters, and was anonymous, except that Bokenham stated that, if taken in sequence, the first letter in each chapter spelt out the name of the author. It reads OSBERNUS BOKEN_HAM. Chapter 15 is missing.

[Yes, it does indeed look from that as though it was actually Chapter 14 that was missing, but let’s not quibble.]

It’s Actually by William Bokenham

Though the surname of the Liber de Angelis writer was clearly Bokenham, Lidaka points out that the author’s first name was William, and that he was copying various small treatises, not composing them. Moreover, given that two works dealing with urine (that most multispectral of medieval medical staples) by a William Bokenham are in Wellcome MS 408, and that in them he claimed to be “a doctor with a degree from Bologna” as well as “a monk at Norwich Holy Trinity (or St Giles)”, we would seem to have our copyist locked down quite solidly.

From internal evidence (the ‘Oya’ in paragraph #9), Lidaka suggests that the Liber de Angelis version being copied may well have been derived from an earlier French language version: and separately that the ultimate source of at least some of the tracts could perhaps be Arabic. In which case, it might be a good idea to get acquainted with David Pingree’s “The Diffusion of Arabic Magical Texts in Western Europe” (Ladaka’s note #14). [Jim Reeds is also mentioned in note #20, crypto-history fans.]

Personally, I’m also a little suspicious of the “karetter” in paragraph #6 as being a possible linguistic tell.

And Now We’ve Done All That…

…I’ll compare this with the Voynich Manuscript’s planets in a follow-on post, 1300 words is quite enough for the moment. 🙂