Category Archives: Voynich Manuscript

Elmar Vogt just posted up some nice statistical analyses of the Voynich Manuscript’s language, looking particularly at the problematic issue of line-related structure.

You see, if Voynichese is no more than a ‘simple language’ (however lost, obscure and/or artificial), there would surely be no obvious reason for words at the beginning or end of any line to show any significant differences from words in the middle of the line. And yet they do: line-initial words are slightly longer (about a character), second words are slightly shorter, while line-terminal words are slightly shorter than the average (though some of Elmar’s graphs get a bit snarled up in noise mapping this last case).

The things I infer from such line-structure observations are
(a) any fundamental asymmetry means that Voynichese can’t be a simple language, because simple languages are uniform & symmetrical
(b) it’s very probably not a complex language either, because no complex language I’ve ever seen has done this kind of thing either
(c) the first “extra” letter on the first word is either a null or performs some kind of additional function (such as a vertical “Neal key”, a notion suggested by Philip Neal many years ago)
(d) the missing letter in the second word is probably removed to balance the extra letter in the first word, i.e. to retain the original text layout, while
(e) the last word has its own statistics completely because words in the plaintext were probably split across line-ends.

In Voynichese, we see the EVA letter combination ‘-am’ predominantly at the right-hand end of lines, which has given rise to the long-standing suspicion that this might encipher a hyphen character, or a rare character (say ‘X’) appropriated to use as a hyphen character. For what conceivable kind of character would have a preference for appearing at the end of a line? In fact, the more you think about this, the stronger the likelihood that this is indeed a hyphen becomes.

But there’s an extraordinary bit of misinformation you have to dodge here: the Wikipedia page on the hyphen asserts (wrongly) that the first noted use of a hyphen in this way was with Johannes Gutenberg in 1455 with his 42-line-per-page Bible. According to this nice post, “Gutenberg’s hyphen was a short, double line, inclined to the right at a sixty degree angle”, like this:-

In fact, Gutenberg was straightforwardly emulating existing scribal practices: according to this lengthy online discussion, the double stroke hyphen was most common in the 15th century, single-stroke hyphens were certainly in use in 13th century French manuscripts (if not earlier), and that both ultimately derive from the maqaf in Hebrew manuscripts that was in use “by the end of the first millennium AD”.

So if you think Voynichese line-terminal ‘-am’ does encipher a hyphen, the original glyph as written was probably a double-stroke hyphen: moreover, I’d predict that Voynich pages containing many ‘-am’s were probably enciphered from pages that had a ruled right-hand line that the plaintext’s scribe kept bumping into! Something to think about! 🙂

Just when I thought it was safe to pack my mallet away for the Olympics, a whole load more Voynich moles popped up (if you remember the arcade game Whac-a-Mole, it’s a lot like that). I go through all this stuff so that you don’t have to…

(1) Tom O’Neill claims in a YouTube video that the Voynich Manuscript is written in a polyalphabetic cipher that, after three and a half years of exhausting labour, he has finally cracked. His decrypt of the first paragraph of f1r goes something like this (I’ve had to guess at a few words, but I think it’s generally pretty close):-

Woman, this mouth sense in the daytime, Lisa do you taste on the side of rich lips, bias corely that away from love dies from will. Nymph, nymph, know this male, he adores for company. My estate because of a lover, mistress of a house, say this or mouth our love between one another, that our faith on the side of a mountain. Would that destroy this cord asunder?

Personally, I prefer his YouTube videos where he dresses up in army fatigues, calls himself Commander or Admiral Mansfield, proclaims his desire that we should all fight the New World Order, and recites his own rather gory poetry. But taste is a subjective thing, I guess.

(2) Algorithmic music programmer “Dan of Earth” has released a noise thing called Voynich Was Here, self-described on archive.org as “algorithmic composition as applied to horrible noise”. Even what appears to be its biggest fan on the Internet has trouble seeing its positives:-

“Some might find Voynich Was Here more interesting to read about than it is to listen to, but that would be factoring out the small, subtle nuances that are difficult to pick up on. The intent listener will be focused on hearing those shifts in sound, however small they are.“

(3) Here’s a quicky link to an upcoming unsolved mystery comic book thing called Hic + Hoc, that’s going to be covering the Voynich Manuscript (along with a load of other stuff) fairly soon, I guess.

(4) And lastly – inevitably, it would seem – comes a Voynich theory proposing not only that the Olympic stadium in Stratford is a pagan altar, but that the blueprints for it might well be in the Voynich Manuscript’s nine-rosette page. Shocking stuff, but very possibly not entirely true, it has to be said. 🙂

Given that (a) I’m somewhat overstretched right now (imagine Doctor Who fighting Daleks and Cybermen with the Tardis and his underpants on fire, and you’re 10% of the way there) and (b) I’ve got a whole heap of Voynich-related bits to work through, it’s time for another Voynich miscellany post. Yes, just like last year’s one. Only better! 🙂

Firstly, the Voynich theories

Don’t inhale too deeply!

* If you first read about the Voynich too late at night through a haze of smoke, you can end up with some pretty hazy theories. Like this one, where the nine-rosette page is “a map of the general functioning of the multiverse. If you look closely, you can see eyeballs. This represents the observer effect, and the craziest part of all.” Moreover, “the manuscript is a guide for how to extract entheogenic substances or mixtures from plants, or to graft them together to create novel substances. I believe the author learned the theory of everything from a psychedelic trip, and that’s why there’s a clear galaxy picture.” Like, yeah, it all makes sense now, cool.

* The Federation of Light would like to let us know that the Voynich Manuscript was accidentally lost by “a child from Orion ( peacefull breed ) in training as a botanist“. Which is, of course, a great weight off all our minds. 🙂

* Here’s a channelling session with an entity called “Master Ruanel” who gets asked about the Voynich Manuscript. He thinks it’s nonsense! That was easy… now to solve the Euro crisis. 🙂

* Oh, and there’s a claimed Voynich decryption (“BE A RAS RABBLE”, really) on YouTube, if you like that kind of thing. Not my bag, sorry!

* Might the Voynich Manuscript actually be visual music? Composer and sonic contemplator Dan Wilson wonders so… it’s true that projecting cymatics back into the Quattrocento seems a bit of a stretch to me, but you may have a different opinion!

…and now all the other Voynichiana:

* Here’s a nicely composed photograph by Espen Gleditsch entitled “Voynich Manuscript 2009”, which basically looks like my own desk half the time (except I haven’t got a copy of Levitov’s book here).

* Pineal’s “A Key To Voynich” MP3 is available for download on Amazon. £0.89 buys you over 7 minutes of pulsing electronic dance stuff!

* However, that’s as nothing compared to “Manuscript 408”, the first track on Ice Dragon’s “Tome of the Future Ancients”, whose meatily metallic slice of bass-heavy doom rrrrock weighs in at over 10 minutes, and at whatever price you name. Basically, if you have long enough hair to flick and a virtual plectrum to air-guitar with, this could well be The Ultimate Voynich SoundTrack For Your Life:-

Words written down so long ago / In a language already gone
From hand of scribe / Down through the pen / And marked into vellum
Cloaked in darkness / The secret remains / Hidden from us for all time
The ravings of a madman / Or learned scholar / We may never know why
Brought forth while in possession / Of knowledge from other realms
Through supernatural process / One may obtain / That which is withheld
The scryer, the seer / Can talk to beings / Who remember the ancient days
When men were more / When they weren’t lost / In their mathematical ways
32 gone, 240 remain / Torn out by a dark mage
Who knew of the power / Held within / They are in use to this day
Herbal / Astronomical / Biological / Cosmological / Pharmaceutical
When all combine / Madness of the mind / Destroy all life / And reset time
When all combine / Madness of the mind / Destroy all life / And reset time

* E6 Town Hall Hoursong has released Volume 8 Voynich Manuscript, containing a number of Voynich-themed tracks. It’s all a bit experimental, you might like it, who knows?

* Here’s a nice picture by artist Barbara Suckfüll, more than a tad reminiscent of the Voynich’s nine-rosette page. (Click on it to see more detail).

* My favourite link of the day is to Rigid Hips Stockholm Motorcycle Space Sect (I kid you not), who writes that “The herbal, medical, astronomical/astrological, balneological and mechanical secrets of the Voynich Manuscript is basicly what keeps me going, and ofcourse the live albums the Ramones did in the late 70’s. […] The Ramones didn’t play all downstrokes, that’s a myth, if you analyse most their live albums Johnny and DeeDee goes 16 downstrokes / 4 up and down / 16 downstrokes / 4 up and down, and for some reason that is really important to me.” Now that’s someone with a finger on their own pulse, which I can really admire. But the real question is: would Rigid Hips like Ice Dragon? 🙂

A few days ago, Diane O’Donovan asked if there was a good place online to ask me questions about “The Curse of the Voynich”: but because I’m not a part of the main Voynich mailing list (sadly, I don’t have nearly enough spare time to sift through all that chaff), the answer was a no.

However, I’ve just now added in a “Tal.ki” forum plugin to the Cipher Mysteries WordPress install, which you can get to easily here. I don’t know how it’s going to work out, nor what open topics people would like to have there: but it’s up and working so let’s find out!

The most immediate limitation is that it uses Facebook for logging in (and I don’t like Facebook much). Still, it is what it is (both easy to install and free), so we shall see…