Subject VMs: List of Subjects for J.VS Vol. I, 2007 Sent Date 01-02-2008 5:53:12 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To For all who are interested, below [1] is the list of subjects in Vol. I (2007) of the Journal of Voynich Studies. This list gives a minimal compact overview of the 2007 proceedings. Subjects of particular interest may well be reflected in the actual J.VS Archive in a range of depths; for example, you may be interested in getting a handle on Schinner's work, but on account of lacking mathematical training hesitate to delve into J.VS communication #72. Whereas #72 is definitely addressed to mathematically trained readers, nevertheless sympathy for the non-mathematical Voynich student is observed via a simple anyone-can-understand-it metaphor describing what Schinner says his analysis of the VMS text shows. And similarly for other subjects: it won't hurt to look, if you are interested, even if the proceeding is likely to be advanced beyond your present VMS capacities. The J.VS Archive web url's are: Front-page http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/ J.VS Formal Rules page http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSFormalRules.htm List of Subjects in all Volumes page http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSCOMsubjlines.htm Vol. I (2007) Archive page http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolI2007.htm Vol. II (2008) Archive page http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm Additional resources are available in the J.VS Library, for example the Voynich interactive Timeline (TL) that is apparently quite popular, is a deposit within the J.VS Library: Index page to the Library of J.VS http://www.as.ap.krakow.pl/jvs/library/ Thank you. Berj / KI3U [1] List of the Subject Lines of Journal Of Voynich Studies communications, Vol. I, 2007: Subject launch-communication number: Subject Line 1: Beginnings 2: Welcoming the Journal 4: Just Latin, or something more? - Marci vs Marcus vs Marcius etc. 10: Letters to Kircher by Baresch and Marci 15: Ligature double-looped symmetric gallows in a Kircher paper 16: CM: New Journal contributor-member 17: official Library 19: 1924 Christian Science Monitor article on Anne Nill 26: possible virus problem in 1999 data file 28: Cosmological dualism / polarity in the zodiac 30: Official Library deposit 33: What happened to Miss Nill's remains? 34: List of Journal communications Subjects 37: Robert Hooke's use of the glyph GC-N 39: CM: the Journal's email address is changing 40: Library deposit 43: Library deposit # 2-4-2007-06-06 45: CM: New contributor-member 48: Images: PM-curve; gallows-letters Christianity symbolism 49: The f67r2 circle-perimeter patterns: are they simple codes? 50: Library deposit # 1-5-2007-06-24 51: Nested shells perspective of VMS physical construction 55: Crisogonus, the Nine Rosettes clockhands, & Hindu-Arabic Numerals in 1469 56: Library deposit #2-5-2007-07-08 - Zodiac reference images etc. 57: Fr. Strickland, S.J. 61: non-western-European influences in VMS origin: Czech Knight Krystof Harant 62: Philosophical math-text versus practical cipher-text 65: Problems with text transcription: variations of a basic glyph 66: Experimental minimal Alphabet for broad phoneme-spectrum transcription 68: announcing Library deposit # 4-4-2007-08-10 69: Jan's THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT - DO WE REALLY HAVE ANY PROVENANCE? 70: Progression of Secret Sisterhood Doctrinal Enlightenment in f81r Bathscene 71: The Hand(s) of the Voynich ms text 72: Notes on Andreas Schinner's April 2007 VMS paper 73: Voynich script fonts 74: The Miss Nill Lone Ranger Mask blinking pictures 76: read this, and think VMs: 77: How many "hands" wrote the VM? -- A new article by Jan Hurych 81: Discussion: Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, Cornelius Drebbel, & Voynich MS 82: Timeline Resource for Voynich Studies 83: Pictures: possible Voynich-alphabet word in Kircher's letter to Schall 84: More on the gallows groups in CUL MS Gg. 5.35 Carmina Cantabrigiensia 85: Pictures of Jan Hurych's find: Marci-to-Kircher-letter arm-star diagram 86: Herbert Hoover's correspondence: " Villalobar, Maquis de-Voynich, W.M., 1916-1920 " 88: VMS Ladies and earrings 89: Generating Strong's 1-3-5-7-9-7-5-3-1-4-7-4 with Christine de Pizan's anagram mathematics 90: Beeckman's 1625 Compound Microscope sketch and VMS pharma section objects 91: Pharmaceutical section objects: Atomizers? 92: Incense Burners and Censers and the Voynich Pharmaceutical Section 96: Survey results: Voynich Astrological-section barrels / cans interpretations 97: Underground and peripheral VMS art: preservation 98: Library search tool 99: "Search for Hidden Numbers in the VM" by Jan Hurych 100: King-in-a-can and Juan de la Cosa's Map of 1500 101: Dialog: possible “masked” key on a Voynich f102v1 “incense burner” 102: Image processing to VMS fingerprints (Was: Dialog: possible "masked" key on a Voynich f102v1 "incense burner") 103: Image Processing challenges: some hidden Voynich "faces" 104: Leodog and The King (Was: Image Processing challenges: some hidden Voynich "faces") 105: Discussion: Master miniature illumination artwork steganographically concealed in low-level art 106: Hypothesis: Voynich MS originates in the Court of Rudolf II 107: The VMS f3v Deathmask, the f76r text-mosaic portrait, The King, Rudolf, and more 108: Faces: a major theme in the Voynich Manuscript, and VMS history considerations 109: New blink pics: hypothetical steganographic handscript mosaic text-art portrait in Vms f76r 110: THE HANDWRITING ANALYSIS OF SOME POSSIBLE AUTHORS OF THE VM 111: off-J discussions 23-29 OCT 2007: various topics 112: Comments: THOU SHALT NOT FEAR THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT 113: Discussion: standard image processing protocols; some technical considerations 114: Preliminary 1st outline for protocols for precision Voynich image processing 115: Image processing protocols; Mnishowsky; steganography; Aldebaran; Alphabet Tables; ENGLAND 116: The Mysterious Dr. Raphael 117: Explanation for inclusion of X in: Experimental minimal Alphabet for broad phoneme-spectrum transcription, and more. 118: Colossus and MD- transcriptions 119: "The Research of the Voynich Manuscript" by Jan Hurych now in the Library 120: Multiple topics off-J discussions since 12 NOV 2007 121: Fr. Theodorus Moretus 122: Fr. Moretus's 22 FEB 1642 letter to Kircher, and more 123: Toward a Version 1 transcription of Fr. Moretus's 22 FEB 1642 letter to Kircher 124: Theodorus Moretus's 22 FEB 1642 letter to Athanasius Kircher: Version 1 Transcription 125: Moretus Letters off-J discussions 5 DEC - 10 DEC 2007 126: Moretus to Kircher Letters of 8 JAN 1639 and 22 FEB 1642, T&T&T Library files 128: Moretus-to-Kircher Letters off-J discussions 11 DEC - 20 DEC 2007 129: New article by Jan Hurych: More about Dr. Raphael Mnishowsky 130: Analysis of Baresch's manu propria 132: The Nine Schnazbrothers of Voynich f24v 133: Moretus-Kircher letters, Baresch, Wilfrid, Miss Nill, Horczicky's title & signature, f24v, & more off-J discussions -end of Vol. I list of subjects ################################### Subject Re: VMs: Pleiades Sent Date 01-08-2008 10:54:13 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To David Suter wrote Tue, 8 Jan 2008 11:21:06 EST: " One problem with the "PM" curve was, regardless of its potential, few of us (as the author stated) had the science and math to follow into advanced astronomy to discuss it usefully. This exclusionary approach left some feeling unable to comment; thus it languished as a topic. If he had waited until he had a developed theory, simplified enough to be explicable across disciplines and thinking styles, we might still be investigating it. " Hello David I have posted to J.VS as communication #138 "J.VS: Comments on the Voynich f68r3 PM-curve question": http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm which begins as follows: * * * * * * * Dear Colleagues Below I make some general comments on the “PM-curve” of Voynich panel f68r3. I hope my comments are helpful to newcomers interested in an overview of this. Mostly I will confine myself to my own perspective of the subject, based on my 2006-2007 PM-curve work. [1] 1.) The PM-curve question divides into two versions that are somewhat subtly differentiated according to: 1-1.) The curve on Voynich panel f68r3 linking the “moon” and a distinct group of 7 stars, is meant to link the moon and the Pleiades star cluster to present some kind of astronomy-information. 1-2.) The curve on Voynich panel f68r3 linking the “moon” and a distinct group of 7 stars, may or may not be meant to link the moon and the Pleiades star cluster specifically, but nevertheless it is some kind of astronomy-information curve. My own PM-curve work has focused on 1-2.), i.e. it avoids the more comprehensive problem of the intended meaning of the 7 stars. My work did not even require that the object in the center of the f68r3 diagram be the moon. * * * * * * * If I have succeeded with comm. #138, then there will be, for those who are interested, at least some material to "discuss it usefully" even on a non-technical level, since the subject does have some interesting non-mathematical aspects. Now, as to developing a full theory, that is I think a matter of viewpoint. My main concern in the PM-curve work was to produce data, data from the primary source of concern: the VMS. Once we have data, we can build theories and modify them, or start over. In one sense, I think there are already pretty complete theories in the PM-curve efforts. Robert Teague produced his own data, and he has his angle on the PM-curve as a component of f68r3. And I have mine. I attempt to compare them in comm. #138. The technical details (which I avoid as much as possible in comm. #138) may require mathematics and astronomy to understand, but the essential differences between the two theories can, I think, be appreciated generally. On a different note, I am awaiting an opportunity for high-bandwidth so that I can have a close look at your .mov works. Berj ######################################### Subject VMs: "Voynichino" Sent Date 01-12-2008 5:15:08 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To I suppose that if one spends enough time in Voynichville to appreciate a little humor now and then, it may occur to ponder if the gradually evolving dictionary of coined words and phrases in the Voynich world may one day reach sufficiency so as to allow to glue together into phrases that begin to resemble the properties of blocks of Voynich ms text. In another thread on this list larrygrant44 just mentioned "Voynichino", a word that seems, to me, to group with some related coined words that I have personal ideas of: Voynicher - suggests an adventurer / traveller in the Voynich landscape. Voynichero - wears a Sombrero, bullet bandoliers, and two revolvers, speaks Nahuatl fluently, and is always serious about the VMS. Voynichvillian - generic resident of Voynichville, could be any personality from a Type 1 Schnaz to a Type 9. [1] Voynichino - mystically inclined Voynichvillian. I take it "Voynichino" rhymes with "neutrino"? Perhaps a member of the same zoo could be coined: Voynichon - more substantial than a Voynichino, and therefore more easily tracked. The Voynichino suggests to me also: Nillino - the perpetual Heisenberg uncertainty in Voynichville, emblematic of the mystery. Voynicher Wilfrid Voynich ventured to verify to Voynicheros, Voynichvillians, Voynichinos, and Voynichons: Bacon did it, no Nillino! Berj / KI3U [1] see image Nrg1xcVMSf24v.jpg in J.VS Library deposit #12-1-2007-10-12 : http://www.as.ap.krakow.pl/jvs/library/12-1-2007-10-12/ ************************* Subject [RE]VMs: RE: Voynichettes too! Sent Date 01-12-2008 7:25:06 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Lets see, I'd like to get this all in one list for the Voynichville lingua franca dictionary: Voynichistas - those who make the Voynich a more-or-less full-time occupation. Voynichiados - Voynich aficionados. Voynichissimos - those--supposing any such creatures to exist--who would seek to have their view of the Voynich triumph and reign supreme over all other views. Voynichettes - female Voynicheros? Voynicher - adventurer / traveller in the Voynich landscape. Voynichero - wears a Sombrero, bullet bandoliers, and two revolvers, speaks Nahuatl fluently, and is always serious about the VMS. Voynichvillian - generic resident of Voynichville. Voynichino - mystically inclined Voynichvillian. Voynichon - more substantial than a Voynichino, and therefore more easily tracked. Nillino - the perpetual Heisenberg uncertainty in Voynichville, emblematic of the mystery. And to Larry - if you've read any of my stuff, you know I take filters, goggles, and color theory optics quite seriously in connection with VMS illustrations. Also, I think it was in 2006, I spent some posts on video or tv analogs in the VMS. Presently I don't have high bandwidth, so I can't see your latest animation yet. " ... keep an open mind and turn over and microscopically examine every single clue, bar none. " Yup! It's always possible that the VMS is a source-book of one-liner jokes, for a travelling stand-up comic of the age, written in a lost east Asian dialect, in the VMS's western-based alphabet. And every time Kircher tried to write about it, he wound up rolling on the floor, and so his VMS stuff was never lost - he just never got around to being able to write it. Berj ---------[ Received Mail Content ]---------- Subject : VMs: RE: Voynichettes too! Date : Sat, 12 Jan 2008 18:17:38 -0500 From : "Reynolds, John \(USPC.PCT.Hopewell\)" Let us not forget to pay tribute to all the Voynichistas (those who make the Voynich a more-or-less full-time occupation) and to all the Voynichiados (Voynich aficionados), as well. Concerning the Voynichissimos (those--supposing any such creatures to exist--who would seek to have their view of the Voynich triumph and reign supreme over all other views), I will not comment. --John R -----Original Message----- From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net [mailto:owner-vms-list@voynich.net] On Behalf Of Larrygrant44 Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2008 5:31 PM To: vms-list@voynich.net Subject: VMs: Voynichettes too! In a previous e-mail I suggested that cipher searchers limit their search to the areas with apparent motion, especially the upper right hand corner of the foldout. Obviously it's better stated to say they might want to begin their search there as that area has lots of gold/blue oscillation when you 2 frame it, or to give it a bit of special attention, which I'm sure they're doing. The point about the Voynicheros and Voynichettes is that under duress, fire, brimstone, raging crowds with pitchforks and torches, hurled rocks and insults, all manner of natural and unnatural calamity they keep an open mind and turn over and microscopically examine every single clue, bar none. No casual dismissal of any approach or any idea from people who are trying to help. Just careful, thoughtful, patient, surgical jackhammering, brushing and screening day and night. Magnifying glasses at the ready. Every next second is always brand new. Larry ************************* Subject Re: [RE]VMs: RE: Voynichettes too! Sent Date 01-12-2008 10:45:39 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Greg Stachowski wrote Sun, 13 Jan 2008 02:43:23 +0100: " The VMS as the Funniest Joke in the World?* Oh dear ... that sounds like it might be worryingly close to the truth. " Some subject-lines anyway. They look like they've been on the receiving end of the pee 'em curve. See - I can laugh at my own VMS stuff too. :) Berj *************************** Subject VMs: Keith's observation Sent Date 01-15-2008 5:49:08 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Hello Keith (kbody) A couple of my recent list posts seem to have lost their way. I replied a couple of days ago to an interesting observation you made on VMS-text labels, in the list-thread "The Voynich Compass": " There are places where you conveniently get a short label in a short space. " It would be most interesting to have a list of some examples of this. Even just a half a dozen clear convincing examples would, I think, make for useful primary-source data. Berj ************************* Subject Re: VMs: Keith's observation Sent Date 01-15-2008 11:25:53 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Knox Mix wrote Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:00:54 -0600: " Here are words that are immediately before an obstacle in the running text and the number of times they are found in that position. Where no number is given, the word appears once in that position. You will find that as tokens they are short. As distinct words in the list, they are not as short and the lengths tend towards a normal curve. I started a Word document of the entire running text with small images inserted at appropriate places that show the words between obstacles in context with the lines above and below. I am not working on it now but I'll be glad to compare notes with anyone doing the same. In the list, two asterisks in succession might represent more than two. Obstacle = usually a plant part. [list of words in EVA] " I'm not exactly clear on some points here. Does " ... the number of times they are found in that position. " mean: " ... the number of times they are found before an obstacle. " ? or: " ... the number of times they are found placed as the same nth word in a line of running text. " ? Either way, if you finish that Word doc, including therein of course some specs like the transcript used, there would be immediate interest in seeing it. From Keith, I was anticipating some examples of labels, isolated words well separate from running text, with his brief arguements why the overall local composition there on the folio suggests that the length of that label, on account of available space, was the first priority in constructing the label. Keith is suspecting that labels have no particular meaning, as if they were decorations - entirely opposite of the analysis Robert Teague is doing in the astro section. Depending on choice of letters, like intruding gallows, there is of course some practical flexibility in the physical length of a label of a given number of characters. Berj ********************* Subject [RE]Re[2]: VMs: Keith's observation > Knox Mix's observations Sent Date 01-16-2008 1:03:47 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Knox Mix wrote 01-16-2008 11:23:35 AM: " >Does the number of times they are found in that position mean the number of times they are found before an obstacle? Yes, immediately before. >if you finish that Word doc, including therein of course some specs like the transcript used, there would be immediate interest in seeing it. I'll post it on a website someday unless I see a better version by someone in the meantime. All I am doing is looking at pages and comparing them to the transcription, cropping out interesting ("suspicious", in this case) parts and pasting them as small images into the Word document below the relevant text, with comment if necessary. Someone else will see other things worthy of comment and it would be good to have several versions. KM " Very well KM. I'm interested in seeing what you produce when you feel ready to show it. The VMS text, I have concluded, is not just text, but at least on some pages serves also, or primarily, as mosaic tiles for steganographic hand-script text art (akin to today's ASCII art), most dramatically in f76r where I see an astonishingly masterful 3D portrait of a man, that I tentatively take to be a self-portrait of the illustrator, and perhaps even the author of the entire VMS. The f76r portrait is the easiest to see, and next after that is what quite clearly appears to me as "The Owl" on the manuscript's last normal page, f116r [1]. These subjective observations are linked with somewhat less subjective observations of more or less well-known odd placements of text elements in the VMS, apparently non-linear scripting, glyphs variations, and incognito symbols. Producing precision-based processed images for more rigorous analysis is a major ongoing concern. Therefore, all in all! , my interest in possibly related data. Berj [1] J.VS Vol. I, comm. #111 http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolI2007.htm ****************************** Subject Re: VMs: Keith's observation Sent Date 01-16-2008 11:16:07 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Keith wrote Wed, 16 Jan 2008 14:15:31 EST: " An easy reference to a small space having a short label is 75v sixth label from the left above the ladies heads. No amount of word length analysis will find this, you have to view the thing. ... In the case of 75v the labels appear to have been written with the nib (or a similar width) that did the drawings, the text using a broader nib. Obviously it would not be sensible to write the labels first, then draw round them. And the drawings appear to have been completed before the body text. " This is good Keith - I see your argument. In fact, one can also conjecture that the length of that label was pre-determined by the design of the scene, which seems to divide the 10 ladies into subgroups of 4,3, and 3. The grouping together of the middle 3 ladies tightens the available space for the labels above their heads. (Yes, in reverse, conceivably that sub-scene was tightened because a short label had already been picked for it.) If you produce a list of even only half a dozen examples like this, across the VMS, it will be valuable reference data, something good to know and have handy. " The other thing I am reasonably sure about is that the Pharma jars are based on blown glass perfume bottles and terra cotta pots. The drawings are not expected to be accurate depictions, but at best the product of a muddled mind. " There is some discussion of the perfume angle, along with incense burners and censers, in connection with the pharma section cylindrical objects, in the J.VS archive [1]. I disagree with the muddled mind. Now, true, much of the pharma section gives a rather rough impression. But I point again to "Miss Pharma" and "Leodog" [2]. Leodog is the more difficult to see and accept, but Miss Pharma, reacting to a shoe-kick to her back, is I think pretty easy to see. The plan and execution of Miss Pharma, with such artistic economy at that, is not what I would associate with a muddled mind. Berj [1] J.VS Vol. I, communications #91, 92, 93, 96: http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolI2007.htm [2] Library of the Journal of Voynich Studies, deposit # 12-1-2007-10-12: http://www.as.ap.krakow.pl/jvs/library/12-1-2007-10-12/ ****************************** Subject [RE]VMs: Scenario 2 Sent Date 01-19-2008 1:02:07 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jeff Haley wrote Sat, 19 Jan 2008 13:07:10 +0000: " Nothing overtly religious can be seen to be present as this would be dangerous to the project. " Hello Jeff As one of my not-so-humble opinions about symbolism in the VMS, and f79v in particular, I posted this not-especially-original observation back in 2006 [1]: " Of course there is the most obvious of all: f79v, where a nymph appears to be blessing the page's first text-paragraph with a cross held out in her hand. " Berj [1] vms-list post: VMs: Christianity symbolism in the VMS; Monday, May 1, 2006 10:11 AM. Preserved complete in J.VS Library deposit # 1-1--2007-05-05, file: 2JVSlibKI3U.htm http://www.as.ap.krakow.pl/jvs/library/1-1-2007-05-05/ ************************************************ Subject Re: VMs: Scenario 2 Sent Date 01-20-2008 2:46:48 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jeff Haley wrote Sun, 20 Jan 2008 18:13:49 +0000: " I wrote this scenario after having seen Dana's work on the rosettes foldout. For the scenario to hold any weight only rarely should we see overt religious symbolism. Which to my knowledge is the case with the VMS. " r Jeff. But I think also the weight of a rare instance of symbolism ought to be taken into account. On f79v, plumbing and Darwinian elements aside, I've opined that the top of the illustration is very, very strong. It seems to proclaim boldly: THIS TEXT IS SACRED IN THE CHRISTIAN SENSE! And the style of this symbolism is quite rare - where else do we see a similar illustration? In addition the blessing is being done by one of the VMS "nymphs" / ladies / women / sisters / Vestal Virgins / nuns etc., consistent with the human figures in the VMS being predominantly women, often suggesting a sisterhood as a central theme in the VMS, something it would seem, any realistic VMS hypothesis ought to address. Berj ************************* Subject Re: VMs: Scenario 2 Sent Date 01-20-2008 4:28:00 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Wayne Durden wrote Sun, 20 Jan 2008 15:33:27 -0500: " I suspect that until it is fully deciphered this is going to be one of those subjective judgment issues that simply cannot be solved to anyone's satisfaction... The item in the nymph's hand certainly looks to be a cross and I certainly understand that point of view, but a cross had symbolic meaning before the rise of Christianity and is depicted in a range of cultures including bronze age use in Scandinavia... Other depictions of the nymphs have items that to me look decidedly more pagan, such as the onion shaped item, the rings, etc. Other than that single image, unless the bathing scenes represent a baptismal, I feel as Jeff does that there appears to my subjective eye a remarkable paucity of the type of religious imagery we tend to see in European creations of the 1400's... ... Some see Christian symbolism, others see pagan folk tradition or Nordic mythology... " Yes, and I have also seen crosses of remarkably "Christian" appearance (basic geometry per the so-called Latin cross) in high quality photographs, of cave paintings done, apparently, 30-50,000 years ago. And so my comments earlier were given as an opinion. A subjective catalog of possible Christian symbolism in the VMS might well make it to the last page, f116v, where in the text we see examples of a "+" symbol, seven instances thereof per line, in two consecutive lines as I count them, this symbol being quite reminiscent of the "+" found at the top of some of Fr. Athanasius Kircher's correspondence. Berj *************************** Subject Re: VMs: Scenario 2 Sent Date 01-20-2008 4:47:08 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jeff Haley wrote Sun, 20 Jan 2008 21:01:32 +0000: " The question is why HIDE more overtly religious symbols elsewhere? " Well, the first part of your Scenario 2 is a plausible answer. Alternatively, or additionally, a philosophy encompassing mysticism uses steganographic devices to create an appropriate atmosphere. Berj ************************ Subject [RE]VMs: Correlation in statistical calculations Sent Date 01-22-2008 11:07:56 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To John Venier wrote Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:19:24 -0800: " I hope you all don't take this as being overly pedantic. " I hope you don't take this as being overly picky, but how about supplying a punchline - a direct Voynich-world analog to that rather elementary, but nevertheless interesting statistics scenario. Berj / KI3U ************************* Subject Re: [RE]VMs: Correlation in statistical calculations Sent Date 01-23-2008 12:21:04 AM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To John Venier wrote Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:31:05 -0800 (PST): ' Well, I wanted to avoid the "blue and white stripes" conflagration but here it is since you asked: ' I didn't ask for THAT. " Some statements were made regarding the probability of a blue and white stripe pattern being drawn at random. Of course, some assumptions must be made in order to calculate this. Nevertheless, it was assumed that a second such design was drawn independently, and the probability of two such drawings was calculated as the square of the probability of one such design being drawn. This low probability was repeatedly cited in discussions about the likelihood of the choice of this pattern being meaningful. I don't think there is any compelling reason to suspect that they were drawn independently. If they were not, then the much touted low probability does not apply. Does this qualify? " Sure. Berj / KI3U ***************************** Subject [RE]VMs: First and last words - on wordlengths Sent Date 01-26-2008 7:00:51 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Ger Hunkerink wrote Sat, 26 Jan 2008 22:43:33 +0100: " Conclusion. The first words on each line in the VMs are on average 0.45 EVA letter longer than words in other positions. " I haven't had time to study in detail what you analyzed, and it deserves time, so please indulge what may be a dumb question: What is the effect on your results of EVA's sometimes deviation from 1:1 correspondence between apparently single "glyphs" as "letters" of a "word", for example: EVA-ch, and in particular what happens when instead of most, or all the VMS text-lines, you look at just the ones, like the first line of f8v, that have a starting word that is very problematic to transcribe? Berj / KI3U **************************** Subject Re: [RE]VMs: First and last words Sent Date 01-27-2008 2:40:43 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Ger wrote 01-27-2008 8:28:43 AM: " A few things remain: First of all, does this effect in the VMs depend on the transcription chosen? I don't think so. It is a matter of space. Think of the words in centimeters. Irrespective of the transcription, a long word in cm's is more likely to have to go to the next line than a short word in cm's. Ofcourse the average wordlength would be different, but still the first words would be about 10% longer. Added: The wordlength would be different, but also the width of spaces with respect to the character width. The final part of the mathematical analyses could easily be adapted to incorporate this. As for your last question: I don't know, someone would have to check that. " Alright, lets be the "someone" and do some checking on the general points I tried to raise. At: http://home.hccnet.nl/ger.hungerink/Voynich/1L-wordlengths.htm you wrote: " The transcription used is EVA, I will deal with other transciptions later. " Lacking more specification than that, I'll assume that you used the 1.6e6 Release of "AN INTERLINEAR ARCHIVE OF VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT TRANSCRIPTIONS IN EVA", specifically its "H" rows that identify Takahashi's transcription. [1] Lets now again look at Voynich ms botanical page f8v. The very first text problem we encounter is the plant cutting through the text. So, what is a single text-line here? One assumption that deals with this problem is that removing the plant, leaves the apparent horizontal lines unaffected. For example: it is not two separate logical lines, rather the intersecting plant just creates two physical lines on the same horizontal parchment line. But this analytic tactic can sometimes also come in for strains - for example in the second "paragraph" of f9r. How do you transcribe text-lines there? Mathematical analysis requires for its input-data the correct identifications of the logical lines. Lets now look at some "words" in f8v. The first one on line 1 is obviously problematic. To where the flower cuts in, one could argue for as many as three words that are ligatured into a group whose letters-count (and therefore the word-lengths from it) is complicated by the non-trivial ligature. Forced to make a decision, Takahashi transcribed, to the flower: EVA-cthod.soocth The immediate question demanded by precision-consciousness is this: If you have never seen f8v, but you do know the EVA alphabet, then, given EVA-cthod.soocth, will what you write down on paper as its reverse transcription in the Voynich glyphs, actually resemble what is there on the f8v parchment, and moreover resemble it well enough to be good data for statistical math analysis? Now, on f8v, lets look at the last three words of line 1. Takahashi transcribes their endings as "aiin". Now lets look at the first word on line 6: it is transcribed as EVA-daiin. In other words, its ending is transcribed the same as the previously mentioned endings. Do all these endinds appear as the same glyphs on the parchment? No. Unfortunately. The high-resolution SID image of f8v is not even necessary to see this. The ending portion of the first word of line 6 only superficially resembles the aforementioned endings. Lets look at the last word of line 2; it might be argued that it could even be two words, the last actual word being just one letter in length, affecting its length in centimeters also, but lets just say it is one word. Takahashi, in EVA, transcribes: EVA-cty When your EVA-transcript parsing-program encounters this, seeking to count the length of this word in letters / glyphs, what does it produce for a count? If you count by eye from the image of the actual f8v, what do you count? Are the counts the same? Yes or no, what are the letters-counting assumptions for this "word"? So far, we've only touched upon the first six lines of f8v, and in these six lines we have not exhausted the cases where subjective transcription decisions must be made. Throughout the VMS text this vexing problem goes on and on and on. Again: Given a transcription, from this or that source in this or that transcription alphabet, will what you write down on paper as its reverse transcription in the Voynich glyphs, actually resemble what is there on the Voynich parchment, resemble it well enough to be good data for statistical math analysis? And with that in mind I asked: what is the effect of these transcription problems on the analytic results? I had the same question in mind when I read Schinner's paper [2]. To answer that question quantitatively would require a tremendous amount of work of course - the possible transcription versions are astronomical. Therefore, I think precision-consciousness would be gracefully served by more precisely stated conclusions. Instead of concluding: " The first words on each line in the VMs are on average 0.45 EVA letter longer than words in other positions. " It would serve precision to write something like: " The first words on each line in the VMs-transcription-such-and-such are on average 0.45 EVA letter longer than words in other positions. " The "text" of the Voynich manuscript is a phenomenon that, aside from its other mysteries, resists straightforward statistical attacks of the broad sweeping kind. We are drawn in to the mathemtical elegance of some of the attack efforts over the years, we want them to represent the reality of what is actually there on the Voynich parchment, but if we want to get at the truth, then we must be more precise. I opine. Now if it turns out that at least partly the VMS author employed the mysterious "script" as hand-script text-art (akin to today's ASCII art) then the whole vexing text problem, its resistance to statistical attacks, is perhaps a little less mysterious. Berj / KI3U [1] http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/98-12-28-interln16e6/ [2] J.VS: Notes on Andreas Schinner's April 2007 VMS paper; Journal of Voynich Studies, Vol. I, communication #72, 23 Aug 2007. Online here: http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolI2007.htm ********************* Subject Re: [RE]VMs: First and last words - on wordlengths Sent Date 01-27-2008 8:57:52 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Ger wrote 01-27-2008 6:10:26 PM: " My assertion is: it does not really matter. ..... averaging .... " Ok then, this leaves me wondering, while also wondering if my wondering really matters, about the curiosity that your conclusion: " The result supports the idea that the VMS is not a hoax. " and Schinner's conclusion: " Thus the hoax hypothesis may provide the most convincing explanation base for the data. " average each other out. Berj **************************** Subject RE: [RE]VMs: First and last words - on wordlengths Sent Date 01-28-2008 12:26:44 AM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To John Reynolds wrote Sun, 27 Jan 2008 23:02:11 -0500: " I think we should all be very grateful to Ger for performing these rigorous statistical analyses even if they do not immediately give us the answers that we may want, or even any answers at all in the short run. " Oh I agree John, and I said Ger's work deserves time (i.e. serious attention). I wouldn't waste ten seconds on it if I didn't think he was trying, with serious methods, to get some insight into the VMS text. You can imagine that my paylod reply to Ger took a whole lot more than ten seconds of my time to compose. But, I press for the habit of precision. I think it is reasonable to point out explicitly that transcripts are being analyzed, and it is transcripts that conclusions are being made upon, and that the making of any transcript of the world's notoriously most mysterious manuscript encounters serious problems in deciding what is a line by itself, and what is a word by itself, and what is a glyph / letter / character / symbol by itself, and even what is a stroke by itself. Serious problems going back all the way to the beginning when Newbold saw three times as many strokes in the same folio item as did Kent. We have not, nearing a century down the road, overcome this problem yet. Also, the quantitative gauging of the effect of transcription versions, is pretty slimly represented in the VMS literature, from what I can tell. Perhaps Ger can run his procedures on all available EVA transcripts, and show a comparison table. That would at least give some valuable data concerning the transcription problem itself. They could all still be marginal in the matter of an acid-test of reverse transcription, but we'd have something quantitative gauging what different efforts come up with when trying to model the Voynich text. Berj ******************** Subject RE: RE: [RE]VMs: First and last words - on wordlengths Sent Date 01-28-2008 11:08:48 AM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To John Reynolds wrote Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:50:28 -0500: " Berj wrote: > Asking for something like "would the first word of a line have fitted into the previous > line" is asking for a lot of work, since to determine that, someone would have to put > geometrical data into the current transcriptions. Yes, I am the one who requested this, and ........ " For the record, that was NOT written by me (Berj). I guess we now have a "transcription problem" :) in this complicated multi-branch thread. I'll move on. Berj / KI3U ******************************** Subject VMs: Some new data on the f76r hypothetical stego picture Sent Date 02-04-2008 1:52:12 AM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To For all who are interested, I have some new data toward the hypothesis of f76r's text containing an embedded steganographic portrait-picture: J.VS: The Voynich hypothetical f76r text-art portrait: how was it done? Communication #156, Vol. II, Journal of Voynich Studies: http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm The best-yet processed image of f76r in this vein is also available online, as detailed in #156. Berj / KI3U ******************************* Subject [RE]VMs: An open challenge to the Voynich Manuscript Mailing list Sent Date 02-17-2008 10:49:32 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jeff Haley wrote 02-17-2008 8:03:30 PM: " ..... answering the evidence of the influences. " Hello Jeff If I have it right, one of the items you gave as influence, in a 2 FEB post [1], was the bath-scene here: http://library.nysoclib.org/record=b1183318 Compare its influence on the VMS, with the influence of the nine sibyls bath-scene from a Christine de Pizan manuscript that I described in some detail, with specific reference to Voynich balneo f78v, back in 2006 [2]. Berj [1] vms-list post: VMs: Paracelsus manuscripts owned by John Dee, Date 02-11-2008 10:10:33 PM. [2] vms-list post: VMs: Christine de Pizan and the Voynich Manuscript, Friday, June 16, 2006 9:59 PM. This post is preserved in the Library of the Journal of Voynich Studies, file 2JVSlibKI3U.htm in Library deposit # 1-1-2007-05-05, available online here: http://www.as.ap.krakow.pl/jvs/library/1-1-2007-05-05/ ************************************* Subject Re: VMs: An open challenge to the Voynich Manuscript Mailing list Sent Date 02-18-2008 10:22:27 AM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jeff Haley wrote Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:19:09 +0000: " Do you have a link to the image of the sibyls bath scene. " The url to f.183 of the Queen's manuscript of Christine de Pizan, British Library Harley MS 4431, is: http://ibs001.colo.firstnet.net.uk/britishlibrary/controller/textsearch?text=Christine&start=6&startid=5763&width=4&height=2&idx=1 A moment ago the server was busy-overloaded, so in the meantime I'll email you off-list a 107 kb jpeg of it. Berj ************************ Subject Re: VMs: An open challenge to the Voynich Manuscript Mailing list Sent Date 02-18-2008 5:50:48 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jeff Haley wrote Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:55:34 +0000: " Are there any other influences that you can see in Christine's work? " Well Jeff as you may recall I've commented profusely, sometimes in great detail including mathematical, on possible connections between Christine de Pizan's material and Voynich material. Just now browsing it at random, I came across an endnote in J.VS comm. #65, where I noted: " As an interesting tangent, arguable exemplars of the box-cross symbol discussed in J. VS comm. #49 can be seen in a miniature illustration of another Christine manuscript: Coronation Book of Charles V of France, British Library Cotton MS Tiberius B. viii, f.55 http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/themes/euromanuscripts/charlesv.html The box-cross is seen in the pattern on the back-wall, and on the bedsheet. " The item that I have consistently referred to as "box-cross" comes in variations throughout the VMS, and most recently on this vms-list it has been part of Richard Sale's exhibits in connection with his ideas of crypto coats-of-arms in Voynich f71r. It would be a major effort for me at this moment to catalog my Christine-Voynich connections materials, but they are easily browsed in both the J.VS Library: http://www.as.ap.krakow.pl/jvs/library/1-1-2007-05-05/ where, especially in file 3JVSlibKI3U.htm the search-phrase "Introduction to Voynich - Christine de Pizan Connections" can be used, although in general just "Christine" is better; and the archive of Vol. I of J.VS: http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolI2007.htm where, for example, in J.VS comm. #89 I show how the mathematical system underlying Christine's anagrams can relatively easily generate, along with a whole host of attendant cryptographic possibilities, the otherwise problematic Voynich-famous integer sequence of Dr. Strong: 1-3-5-7-9-7-5-3-1-4-7-4 In gauging Christine's possible influence on the VMS, compared with say Paracelsus, we must take into account that between them there occurred Gutenberg, and we might expect more people to have had direct access to Paracelsus's work than direct access to Christine's works and the general influences connected with Christine's publishing house. Berj ************************ Subject VMs: Voynich text transcribed to music: Currier A vs Currier B Sent Date 02-22-2008 7:17:01 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To For all who are interested: There are now available two mp3 audio files that you can download and play, and listen to and compare the first paragraphs of Voynich f20r (an herbal Currier language A text block) and f95r2 (herbal Currier B) experimentally transcribed as music. Each piece is about one minute in duration. Complete details, including limitations of the experiments are available. The experiments proceed from an attempt to involve and utilize the auditory intelligence faculty in Voynich research, a principle that is entirely independent from whether or not any portions of the Voynich manuscript were intended by its author(s) to record music. There is also provided for those possessing music and / or computer programming skills who become interested in experimenting along these lines, some sufficient get-started information. Here is the entry point to all the above: J.VS: Experimental Piano Concertos of Voynich texts f20rp1 and f95r2p1 in C Major Journal of Voynich Studies communication #170 ( Vol. II ): http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm Berj / KI3U ********************************* Subject VMs: ALCIONE / ALCYONE star label of Voynich f68r3 PM-curve Sent Date 02-25-2008 10:39:08 AM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net For all who are interested in hypothetical Voynich labels decipherments: Using a table in the one and only indispensible Voynich research text, D'Imperio's " The Voynich Manuscript - An Elegant Enigma " it is possible to do a simple and straightforward decipherment of the label underneath the Pleiades - Moon curve in VMS f68r3. The decipherment is obtained according to the long suspected principle that Latin abbreviations are involved in the design of the Voynich text. The result of the decipherment is pointedly consistent with the f68r3 astronomical diagram illustration. Details are here: J.VS: ALCIONE / ALCYONE on astro f68r3 and Voynich-text to speech conversion challenges Journal of Voynich Studies communication #171 (Vol. II) http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm Berj / KI3U ************************************** Subject Re: VMs: Solanum tuberosum Sent Date 02-25-2008 11:56:07 AM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Peter Krause wrote Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:55:31 +0100: " I think that Filipendula matches the flower on f65r much better then potatos. Please heave a look at this: ..... " Excellent! Can you think of a phrase associated with Filipendula, regardless of its original language, that might apply to the little piece of text on Voynich f65r [1] ? Berj / KI3U [1] J.VS comm. #171 ******************************* Subject VMs: Boustrophedon versions of VMS f20r and f95r2 music Sent Date 02-27-2008 12:37:45 AM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net For all who are interested: Boustrophedon versions of the musical transcriptions of the first paragraphs of Voynich f20r and f95r2 are now available for comparison with the straight compositions. To my subjective musical sense, the boustrophedoning of f20rp1 (Currier language A) sounds like a severe disruption of the pleasing flow of the normal f20rp1. In contrast, the boustrophedoning of f95r2p1 (Currier language B) does not make much difference: it sounds about as random (or "bad") as the straight f95r2p1. Full details are here: J.VS: Boustrophedon versions of the Voynich experimental f20r and f95r2 music transcriptions Journal of Voynich Studies communication #172 (Vol. II): http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm Berj / KI3U ****************************** Subject [RE]VMs: Re: Bacon & Bacon, often confused? Sent Date 02-27-2008 3:47:53 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Dana Scott wrote Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:06:03 -0700: " .... while examining the accompanying documents at Beinecke, I came across a note written by Anne Nill concerning her puzzlement as to why WMV had apparently made the same mistake? " Dana, are you sure Miss Nill was thinking of WMV, and not Dr. Strong? There is a similar incident documented, I believe, in the Strong papers. Berj ******************************* Subject RE: [RE]VMs: Re: Bacon & Bacon, often confused? Sent Date 02-28-2008 2:09:16 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Dana wrote Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:52:27 -0700: " What I recall was my surprise that WMV would make such a mistake. " Well that is exactly why you still have me at the edge of my seat. Because, I would say that if Miss Nill thought WMV had made such a mistake, regardless of WMV actually having done so, then this might be some little echo from the very beginning when Wilfrid, perhaps variously aided by Miss Nill, was putting together what is today the standard hypothetical history of the VMS. Or at least it might be some echo of the provenance of the VMS after Wilfried died, and many years later that odd story of where he supposedly really found it, surfaced via that oddball letter produced by ELV and AMN. And so this puzzle would be worth looking into much closer of course. I checked, and Miss Nill did indeed irritate Dr. Strong about Bacon confusion during the time she was resisting Strong's sincere efforts to get more pictures of the ms. In a March 14, 1945 letter to botanist Hugh O'Neill (the only guy in the core VMS picture at the time who Strong was getting cooperation from in his efforts to get more VMS source material), Strong writes: " Miss Nill inferred that I thought Francis Bacon was the author of the manuscript. Where she got this idea I am at a loss to know. It is my honest opinion that the manuscript was actually written before Francis Bacon was born. " [1] Either way, we are back to the most mysterious lady in the story of the world's most mysterious manuscript: Miss Nill. Sometimes I think she is more interesting than the manuscript :) Berj [1] Letters of Dr. Leonell C. Strong, made available online by Glen Claston (GC) here: http://internet.cybermesa.com/~galethog/Voynich/ *************************************************** Subject Re: VMs: Solanum tuberosum Sent Date 02-28-2008 4:08:57 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net John Reynolds wrote Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:17:17 -0500: " The potato is, of course, a plant that was introduced to Europe only after the discovery of the New World. " So, I interpret the potato hypothesis: One potato two potato three potato four, Voynich Manuscript dates from 1492 and more. Is that Currier A or B? ;-) Berj ******************************** Subject VMs: The 600 ducats problem Sent Date 02-28-2008 8:54:15 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net In the vms-list thread " Bacon & Bacon, often confused? " Jan Hurych wrote 02-28-2008 7:10:41 PM: " Would the sale of the VM be such unimportant event that did not deserve any details? " Right Jan. It is curious that only the last "Marci" letter has that 600 ducats mention. And Dr. Raphael. It may not have been a fortune, but apparently it was a considerable amount of money for a little book, an herbal on the face of it at that, and we might reasonably expect further mention of the money someplace somewhere in the records back then. One could approach the problem with this question: what was the going price for Roger Bacon manuscripts back then? If 600 ducats was on the high end, then how come no mentions in the records back then of the "Roger Bacon book that sold for 600 ducats"? I mean, today we are still now and then talking about the $160,000 that Wilfrid, and later H.P. asked for the VMS (and did not get). The $160,000 number is to some extent circulating in modern VMS records. How come we don't see indications of the 600 ducats in the old records, beyond the only mention in Marci's letter? Berj *********************** Subject RE: VMs: The 600 ducats problem Sent Date 02-29-2008 11:58:40 AM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Greg Stachowski wrote Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:06:17 +0100 (CET): " Taking the thought further, the payment could literally have been a 'present', i.e. a gift, given for no reason other than the Princes whim, typical of a Prince to a subject or visitor who pleased him. " I think we've been through this before - Jan Hurych can give us the blow by blow details. A considerable portion of the total ink mass in the last letter of "Marci" is devoted to communicating to "Kircher" that a book attributed to Roger Bacon by Dr. Raphael was owned by Emporer Rudolph, and 600 ducats changed hands. Replace "Marci" with "X" and "Kircher" with "Y" where: X = writer of the letter who wishes to affect the provenance of the subject of the letter. Y = reader of the letter who wishes to learn the provenance of a book that he (Y) believes is Beinecke MS 408. Why is it so important for Y to know about a Prince's whim? What's the real reason so much ink is devoted to statements, that are then at the end of the letter carefully disclaimed with "suspend judgment", after the PSYCHOLOGICAL meta-mechanism of planting in Y's mind 600 ducats blah blah blah has been achieved? All of it together weighing in at about a third of the total ink mass? It is extremely doubtful that that letter was from the hand of Marci - dictated maybe. It also has a problem with its date: it looks like 1665 and 1666 were interchanged, as if the writer, or a later "editor" decided that the period 19 AUG 1665 to 19 AUG 1666 was critical for some reason. That time period is of interest then. And what is the only thing all this 600 ducats ink led to? It led to John Dee's 630 ducats. And John Dee collected Roger Bacon mss. As I say, we've been through this before, and it is mighty convenient that Wilfrid produced the last letter of "Marci", and its translation, all the while he was trying unto the death to connect MS 408 with Roger Bacon. It seems to me far simpler, and perhaps with better chance of getting early unambiguous results, that if Beinecke could be motivated (ref. J.VS comm. #143, Vol. II) to undertake scientific testing, then "Marci's last letter" might come before MS 408. Test the letter's paper - it is on sight different from the type of paper we see in the Kircher APUG correspondence, and test the ink, and maybe lift some fingerprints if possible and try estimate their ages. Of course this testing is wishful thinking until the comm. #143 conditions are met, but my point is that it seems to me the "Marci" letter is the place to make a first scientific breakthrough in VMS history. Berj *************************** Subject Re: VMs: The 600 ducats problem Sent Date 02-29-2008 8:23:51 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Rafal T. Prinke wrote Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:08:15 +0100: " ... I thought I would google for "600 ducats" and here are some of the results :-) " Very good idea. Lets expand on it: 800 ducats: 1270 google hits 800 ducatos: 2 eight hundred ducats: 28 700 ducats: 758 700 ducatos: 1 seven hundred ducats: 22 600 ducats: 3030 600 ducatos: 16 six hundred ducats: 47 hits including Don Quixote 500 ducats: 6890 500 ducatos: 5 five hundred ducats: 6300 400 ducats: 3200 400 ducatos: 3 four hundred ducats: 3180 Too little data of course, but the above suggests a conjecture that in the spectrum of popular-amounts-of-money there is a sub-band that includes 600 ducats, or even abruptly ends around 600 ducats. So, a 600 pieces of gold transaction seems to be more common, or more present in google space anyway, than, say, a 700 transaction. If the Marci letter had read 700 ducats instead of 600, would it be even more, or less curious, that the ducats story only appears in the Marci letter? Interesting that the above data's curve for "ducatos" peaks at 600. Berj ************************* Subject Re: VMs: RE:The Geographeme Sent Date 03-03-2008 10:36:58 AM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net David Suter wrote Sun, 2 Mar 2008 22:42:21 EST: " The "geographeme" is a unit of graphic expression which resembles a letter or symbol. ..... " I continue to be interested in this track - I think these are good ideas David. To me it is reminiscent of the steganographic hand-script text art, notably the hypothetical three-dimensional portrait in f76r, which I perceive as achieving a topographic optical illusion effect. The said f76r object is not the same thing of course as a straight geographeme-text diagramming the map of some area, with the final result appearing as a block or page of text to be read geographemically. However, it seems conceivable to me that geographeme text could also go a next step higher in sophisticated artistic hands, and have the geographemes-block simultaneously project a directly perceivable image, if not a portrait or scene, then perhaps the very terrain that the geographemes are encoding. Berj ********************************** Subject RE: VMs: Microanalysis Transcription to Latin letters, translation from Nahuatl Sent Date 03-10-2008 11:58:00 AM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net In a reply to David Suter on the subject of Nahuatl, Jim Comegys wrote 03-10-2008 4:26:13 AM: " I have been doing this for so many years that I occasionally resort to simplifications of the useful sort, ..... Let me first warn you ..... Maybe you are being cute, I am not. ..... Why not keep an open mind, stay close to the data, and have a look? ..... The data is so very extensive and so very muddy ..... " Nahuatl considerations are, presumably, potentially as interesting as any others in Voynich studies. I have gathered from your posts that you are a teacher, of young minds, a noble profession indeed, as it so very much entails the responsibility of the habit of accurate thinking, and precision in the cataloging of facts. Early in January in a reply post to John Reynolds that you undersigned " Jim Comegys, hardworking school-teacher, Nahuatl Hypothesis " that you began with: " Do me a favor. Tell me who Rugg is and what he said. I do not know, ..... For example, it has escaped the attention of this group ..... " [1] you made the following statement which did not escape my attention: " I wonder how many in the group know that Titian painted for many years in Mexico and trained numerous assistants, Indians! to paint in his style. " And I counted myself among those "in the group" who did not know that. It was all the more eyebrow raising because I began studying fine art at university and in European museums in the 1960's, and Titian has always been one of my favorite painters. Another gentleman "in the group" was apparently as well surprised by your teaching, and he posted a reply to your above Titian "data": " ..... What's your source? " [2] I have been on the lookout ever since for you to post an answer to Tony's question. Perhaps you have, and I missed it. By the way, there was implied by David Suter, when he pointed to the work of B. Traven, a rather important point, in my view, although perhaps a subtle point, as regards analysis of written language, quite a worthy point in considerations of Old World - New World written transliterations. I myself did not at all think that he was being "cute". Berj / KI3U [1] vms-list post: RE: VMs: Rugg rebuttal...; Sent Date 01-03-2008 12:44:52 AM [2] vms-list post by Tony Mann: VMs: Titian in Mexico?; Sent Date 01-03-2008 4:21:02 AM **************************** Subject RE: VMs: Cross staff Sent Date 03-11-2008 7:03:56 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Marke Fincher wrote 03-11-2008 4:04:58 PM: " This mailing list used to be a forum for rational debate and discussion amoung fellow researchers, not an auditorium for zealots to broadcast their quasi-religious nonsense and propaganda. " As to how it got to be like this, I was, coincidentally, just involved in a discussion of the subject. I think the internet explosion of around 1996, coupled with vms-list's optimistic open-door-to-all-comers policy made the current situation inevitable. There were many other contributing factors, but I'd guess those two were the key factors. " And what a surprise that the "message" will come before the technicalities! (which will never follow of course) I am ready to listen to any message that demonstrably comes from the VMs, whatever the content. But I am selective about who else I listen to based on the credibility of the person talking. " Ah, Voynichville's peculiar Crank Street, ever illuminated by a folio moon, where sundry narcissistic specimens of Paranthropus voynichiensis, some even teasingly funny, parade along howling their logic gibberish in search of their very own piece of Voynich cheese. Uuf! I am so cynical at times observing Voynich's world. Often I wonder how H.L. Mencken would opine upon the scene. Elsewhere in a branch of this thread there was a valiant attempt at pondering a defense, that ended in equivocation: " I suppose...... I suppose. " Well, I suppose the VML has morphed into a kind of safety-valve for Voynich psycho-drama that continues to accumulate interesting data for the students of that subject. Meanwhile it helps, I suppose, to maintain a sense of humor. I have indeed, in the private para-channel of a far more restricted Voynich forum than this one, described myself too as an occasional Voynich crank. Remarkably, we have differing opinions on a good definition of "Voynich crank". Berj / KI3U ****************************** Subject [RE]VMs: VMs - Word Structure - Spanish? Sent Date 03-12-2008 9:53:46 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Bobby Lancaster wrote Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:41:21 +1100: " ..... Below is a COMPLETE list of the unique matches I found when compared with Spanish, with translations. ..... " Interesting. I did only a quick read-through. What was the Spanish dictionary you used? I don't know Spanish. How does that dictionary's Spanish compare with Spanish spellings several centuries ago? Berj / KI3U **************************** Subject VMs: test Sent Date 03-13-2008 6:43:58 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net test 1. ****************** Subject Re: [RE]VMs: VMs - Word Structure - Spanish? Sent Date 03-14-2008 11:09:26 AM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net [ note: due to technical difficulties since yesterday, apparently beyond my and VML's control, this is now the 5th attempt to post the following. In the event multiple copies arrive at VML, wasting valuable bandwidth, my sincere apologies to all affected. Now then, lets see if it works this time. It is after all friday piday (3-14), that peculiarly lucky day for overcoming technical problems. ] Bobby Lancaster wrote 03-13-2008 12:50:49 AM: " ..... Many of the words that had one unique match in my findings, may have more matches to other words, which would allow me to narrow down the unique matches and maybe produce a key to the cipher. ...... The beauty of this technique is that with a 200,000 word lexicon, even if only 20,000 words have the same spelling as they did 500 years ago, it could produce 50-100 unique matches. ..... " Hello Bobby The basic analytic technique you are using, centered on the construction of "GenCode" as I understand it, has of course been employed before by several others, both in published and privately circulated material. The problem in searching earlier published literature on this is what keywords do you use to find the earlier work. For example, in my own private stuff it took me about five minutes of searching to find, and remember, that I call it a variation of "equal statistics text analysis". In much earlier published work, if I remember right - but I'd have to check, Jorge Stolfi used the term "density". I do think it is possible that the VMS text is constructed according to a "language of nouns" that might largely disregard familiar norms of grammar [1]. The comments in other branches of this thread are more detailed in describing the mathematical and linguistic stage you are experimenting on. And I concur with them. For example, Marke Fincher noted an example of Latin and military vocabulary. I had a similar experience with this technique where French popped out as having a great affinity with a great many Voynich words. The French trail eventually grew cold, but during the experiments I got new analytical ideas which I am still using, ideas that likely would not have occurred to me without trying this technique. As suggested in another branch of this thread, there is also the question of what was the primary thinking language of the Voynich text designer, and this technique might help get ideas about that. And so altogether that is why I think you are getting encouragement - it is refreshing to see some real nuts and bolts attacks and get some new data, however it turns out in the end. Berj [1] Painting Art with the Script of a Language of Nouns; J.VS communication #148 (Vol. II): http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm *********************************************** Subject Re: VMs: concerning VMs - Word Structure - Spanish? Sent Date 03-14-2008 5:42:50 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Jan Hurych wrote 14 Mar 2008 13:32:59 -0700 (PDT): " I just got this from VML: YAHOO.Shortcuts.hasSensitiveText = true; YAHOO.Shortcuts.sensitivityType = ["sensitive_news_terms"]; " Pretty interesting Jan. As far as I know, yahoo was not involved in the general problem of posting to VML, from Lycos, in the last 17 hours or so. So, somebody thinks we have sensitive news terms when we discuss the world's most mysterious manuscript. Ah yes, one could hardly be surprised that the non-quite-polymathic are put to work writing the boring and annoying snoopy programs. Incidentally and tangentially, this reminds me of an interesting thing from the early days of the net. I was trying out a browser, was it mozilla I think?, and the server was having some difficulty dealing with it. I started getting indications that some glitch was repeating at the server, and by then annoyed, I hit the reload button hard. Well, suddenly the server dowloaded to me its password files. I decided the best thing to do was to erase them immediately and get offline. It was one of those reality demos that the almighty glitch can defeat anything. Anyway, as we were discussing off-J, the best I was able to figure out from all the tests was that for some reason one or more Lycos servers were reacting to "vms" in the header of emails and improperly handling them. Looks like lucky friday piday came through though. I hope we are back to normal now. My encouragement to Bobby to continue his experiments, while remaining cautious with imperfect Voynich text transcripts. Berj ************************* Subject VMs: Voynich f79v experiment: SOL DEUS CHRISTUS Sent Date 03-16-2008 1:14:55 AM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To For all who thought interesting the f68r3 PM-curve label's conversion into the star-name ALCIONE via Latin abbreviations (J.VS comm. #171), I have completed a similar experiment with the first word of f79v. That folio, f79v, is the one that has the strongest / most obvious Christianity symbolism in the manuscript. Full details are here: J.VS: Voynich f79v and SOL DEUS CHRISTUS Journal of Voynich Studies communication #175 (Vol. II): http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm Berj / KI3U *********************************** RE: VMs: VM at WP From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian Sent: Mon 3/17/08 3:55 PM Reply-to: vms-list@voynich.net To: vms-list@voynich.net Jeff Haley, quoting another source, wrote Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:12:20 +0000: " The mysterious writing system known as Hamptonese .... " It would be interesting to see a short concise summary of how it is established that "Hamptonese" is a "writing system". Berj / KI3U ****************** VMs: Hampton's Diary vs Voynich Manuscript From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian Sent: Tue 3/18/08 1:37 PM Reply-to: vms-list@voynich.net To: vms-list@voynich.net In the vms-list thread, VMs: VM at WP, to this comment by myself Mon 3/17/08 3:55 PM: ' It would be interesting to see a short concise summary of how it is established that "Hamptonese" is a "writing system". ' Dennis Stallings replied 03-18-2008 10:07:56 AM: " .... We can't be sure that Hamptonese is a writing system, since we aren't yet sure that it is meaningful in any normal sense. Perhaps this is the same problem one has in "proving" that the VMs is a hoax - .... " Hello Dennis I read all the Hampton material you had online a couple of years ago - impressive, and I again reviewed a couple of pages. Mainly, I made my earlier Hampton statement because of this thought-question: Is it easier to demonstrate, that a true writing system is indicated, in the Hampton diary, compared with the problem of the Voynich "text", or the other way around? Now, in Hampton's book (presumably definitely known to be from his hand, and not a fake by his landlord), there are plain English words, biblical, here and there surrounding the Hampton glyphs. On first seeing a page of Hampton it is quite natural to think: I wonder what he was writing here? It must be commentary on his reaction to biblical text, written in his private alphabet and language. Similarly, we see the VMS text, and it is natural to have an emotional reaction that it must be some kind of "system of wrting". Whereupon, with both manuscripts, start the sophisticated analyses by impressive students, and the original assumption, that there is a writing system, is advanced just as if it were indeed known to be a true writing system. It even gets to the point that vowels and consonants are "identified". Yes I too am guilty along the same lines, most recently with my transforming the first word of f79v into: SOL DEUS CHRISTUS However, as you know, I've also explored, rather extensively, the idea that at least some of the Voynich text is hand-script text art with the text elements employed in the manner of sophisticated mosaics. Mainly because of the existence of labels in the VMS, many of them, I doubt that mosaics are the only meaningful employment of the VMS alphabet elements - I think there are literal messages encoded in the book in some way. When I first read your Hampton materials I had a couple of thoughts along the lines that maybe: a.) Hamptonse records a kind of "trail" Hampton took in his mission: pick up this old lightbulb from that place, glue it into position here, take string from that drawer and affix it in this position, ..... and so on. Or: b.) Hampton believed in a kind of language of God echoing in the Bible, and he was automatic writing in the quest of discovering it. Are these a "system of writing"? With b.) we might, say, consider a poet: she sits down with pencil and paper and starts doodling toward trance automatic writing, and at some point she gets material that she can make literal use of. Now, was the entire written record a "system of writing", or only after the doodles transitioned into text that she could make use of? Just what makes us sure that something strange is a system of writing? I play scenarios in my mind on that question. For example, there is the breakfast cereal "Alpha-bits" that, appropriately, was reborn with no sugar content. Consider a bowl of milk: we pour some Alpha-bits into it, and they float about in there. Occasionally, depending on our rules for transcribing the cereal in the bowl, we can get readable text. So then, is the procedure of pouring Alpha-bits into a bowl of milk a "system of writing"? Does our original motive make the decisive difference: say, we consciously poured the cereal with the experimental hope of obtaining readable text. Consider that with the Voynich text when we transcribe it to music we are able, with at least one Currier-A paragraph anyway, to obtain something that sounds pretty fair to the musical ear, in my opinion anyway. In this case it was the act of imposing a music transcription upon the Voynich text that made it meaningful as a system of musical writing, independently of the VMS text author's intentions. The result even reinforces the assumed possibility that the text was laid down by the VMS author serially and in meaningful fashion. But we still have not got a demonstration that it was indeed originally intended as a system of writing. The Hampton and Voynich manuscripts are both voluminous, but quite different. Even allowing that Hampton's artifacts are the equivalent of the VMS illustrations, there are major differences between the Hampton and Voynich problems, and therefore it seems to me that my original question: is one easier to demonstrate as a system of writing over the other?, is an avenue worth considering. It is a simple question about a deep problem. It does not ask if Hampton or Voynich are writing systems, rather it asks if one, is easier to rule upon as such, than the other. Berj / KI3U ************************************** Subject RE: VMs: Hampton's Diary vs Voynich Manuscript Sent Date 03-19-2008 1:58:05 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Dennis wrote Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:09:40 -0400: " We may be looking with too fine a grain, and distinguishing glyphs that are in fact different alloglyphs of the same glypheme. I have statistics that indicate that at least some of this is going on. " Consistent with that, just from visual inspection, I seem to get an impression that Hampton uses a kind of random in-line boustrophedon switching, observing also the horizontal inversion of the prototype glyphs. It's also interesting how he crowds together some strings, and elsewhere writes with more breathing room. " Finally, note that we have some potential Rosetta stones. Hampton left us other pages aside from the diary pages. We have the Ten Commandments pages, the Dispensations pages, and at least one bilingual Hamptonese/English page. Probably most important of all, he tagged each item of the Throne with a label in English and Hamptonese. " Which makes it all the more remarkable that it is so difficult to decide if yes or no, he's got a system of writing. " Hamptonese has not been nearly as welll studied as Voynichese. " It deserves a lot more study for sure - it is certainly interesting, and a natural companion study to the Voynich. Berj ******************************************* Subject RE: VMs: Balneology Sent Date 03-20-2008 11:48:44 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Dana Scott on Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:39:47 -0700 gave: http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/baths.html That's a handy resource Dana, thank you. I am a bit puzzled though by this: " Chinese historians commented in the third century on the cleanliness of the Japanese (though they made no mention of their nylon towels). So did European travellers when .... " I thought "nylon" was a modern word. Berj ************************************** RE: VMs: Balneology From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian Sent: Thu 3/20/08 4:36 PM Reply-to: vms-list@voynich.net To: vms-list@voynich.net Sarah Goslee wrote Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:34:20 -0400: " That's a quote from an Economist article, and the nylon reference is a joke, referencing the previous paragraph. " I see. It still did not seem funny, but perhaps my sense of humor is quite different from that of The Economist and its normal readership. But is it even certain it was meant as a joke?, considering today's educational background exhibitions in the general media. I may have told this before: around 1992, when it had already been obvious for a couple of decades that there was something going seriously wrong in American education, I heard an oldtimer educator on the radio remark that today's (i.e. 1992's) teenagers couldn't even say when approximately the telephone was invented. I decided to test on that the next group of teenagers I encountered - three young men, who I bumped into about an hour or so later. They couldn't even get the correct century. One had the telephone invented in the 18th century, the other in the 1950's, and the third was so at a loss that he refused to even guess. So, the extent of space-time those fellows were mentally living in was seriously degraded compared to what I considered normal, growing up in the 1950's. It is a sobering thought to realize that those guys are now, 16 years later, "mature" adults participating in who knows what range of responsibilities. Thank you to Gary McDonald for the decoding of "nylon". Berj ********************************** RE: VMs: Balneology From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian Sent: Thu 3/20/08 7:30 PM Reply-to: vms-list@voynich.net To: vms-list@voynich.net Tony Mann wrote Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:09:37 +0000: " I'm sorry, Berj, but I don't agree with your comments in the continuation below. Teenagers in 1992 and now may not know in which century the telephone was invented but they certianly know how to use one effectively, which is surely far more important. ..... " A robot can use a telephone effectively. The point I was attempting to make Tony was the general mental space-time functional capacity of people being graduated from schools. It seems to me important that mentally one knows, at least approximately, where one is in space and time. The telephone is one of the most revolutionary inventions in history impacting people directly and personally (unlike logarithms), being part of or directly following the industrial revolution. Is it too much to expect of "educated" high school students to have some few basic mental reference coordinates like Caesar assassinated in Rome a few decades before the appearance of Christ, Gutenberg's press in Europe in the 15th century, Columbus etc. in the 15th century, and the general explosion of electrical technology in America and Europe in the 19th century? If people cannot orient themselves enough in space and time to have awareness of things like that, can they be expected to think clearly enough to participate in "democracy" and give meaningful input into issues like, say, trends in global climate and economic expansions and their impacts on food production? This is a big subject, and probably OT, but I want to emphasize that I was not concerned with bemoaning students' lack of nitpicky remember-it-items, but an assessment of mental space-time functionality. We could say who cares?, as long as there is an elite who can think, then things will be handled as they should be. But, I am inclined to believe that things in general would be a whole lot better all around the world if the mental space-time functionality of the average youngster were well above just knowing how use some electronics. Berj ********************** RE: VMs: Balneology From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian Sent: Fri 3/21/08 11:17 AM Reply-to: vms-list@voynich.net To: vms-list@voynich.net Tony Mann wrote Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:31:41 +0000: " I want young people to be able to function in today's multicultural society: .... Many very intelligent, successful and functional people have poor "mental space-time functionality" in terms of knowing when past events happened. I really don't think it matters if people know when the telephone was invented - or at least, it's low down my list of priorities. " I should have have mentioned in the original anecdote that the fellow who thought the telephone had been invented in the 18th century thought it was in use during the American revolution, and the other fellow who thought it was invented in the 1950's indicated that he knew about World War II and that it had been fought and ended in the 1940's. So, in my view these fellows had serious fog in their conscious mental space and time orientation, and to the extent they are indicative of what is coming out of the schools I cannot be optimistic like you that they will work effectively within society, say as meaningful voters in critical issues requiring accurate space-time orientation, like the example I mentioned: trends in global climate and economic expansions and their impacts on food production. Not to mention availability of fresh clean water. These things in their proper space-time were routinely drummed into us as schoolkids in the 1950's and early 60's: we were made aware of the environmental issues and in particular the role that oil plays, and again and again and again it was hammered into us that (back then) Americans were just 6% of the world's population but consuming most of the world's resources, and that that was unsustainable and required serious attention because sooner or later everyone is going to be TV'd and Hollywooded and will want to consume like Americans. I still think we might be OT here, but in another branch of this thread David Suter did make a try at a connection to the VMS. I might try opining that poor mental space-time orientation can stimulate VMS crankism. And if that were mixed with media jokes then, well - you see what I am getting at. Finally, you brought up multiculturalism. In the original balneo matter, even after Sarah Goslee explained it was a joke, the thought remained with me: would the Chinese and Japanese readers of that The Economist piece think the nylon statement was funny? What was the purpose of its insertion, especially in a paragraph hinting at how seriously the Japanese take personal cleanliness? I suppose one might comb the reader feedback in subsequent issues to see if there are any comments about it. Berj ************************** RE: VMs: Balneology From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian Sent: Fri 3/21/08 12:58 PM Reply-to: vms-list@voynich.net To: vms-list@voynich.net David Suter wrote Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:39:19 -0400: " Perhaps they anticipate advances in time travel... " Perhaps David, but I'd say they might be less foggy about it if they were able to consider advances in space-time travel. In any case, once again the VMS shows its ready capacity to launch discussions into every which realm! Berj *************************** Subject VMs: Some Eulerian text-circuits in the VMS Sent Date 03-28-2008 9:11:42 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net For all who are interested: I have some modest results on sets of digraphs and unigraphs in Eulerian text-circuits in the VMS, available here: J.VS: Some notes on Eulerian text-circuit analysis for Order Nv = 3 Journal of Voynich Studies communication #178 (Vol. II) http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm Berj / KI3U ************************************ Subject RE: VMs: Some Eulerian text-circuits in the VMS Sent Date 04-01-2008 4:27:02 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Steve Eckwall wrote Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:34:10 -0600: " 'IT IS SIMPLER THAN YOU THINK' J.VS is new to ~me~ / which direction does this /link/path _point_ lay(?). " Hello Steve. Well, simple is relative, isn't it? To wit: how many folks think your descriptions of folding keys are "simple" ? ;) To answer to your interesting question: the path of poetry. That's the way I see Voynich studies: a polymathic anthology of poetry that variously resonates with different appreciators. Berj **************************** Subject RE: VMs: RE: Some Eulerian text-circuits in the VMS Sent Date 04-02-2008 1:10:47 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Marke Fincher wrote 03-29-2008 12:25:54 PM: " In my mind the “written entirely in numbers” theories have always been amoung the front runners, but I would doubt that it would be based on something as simple as base-10, and possibly not any fixed-based system. More likely to me would be a variable-base numerical system, or possibly even a hybrid numerical system that mixes certain bases with aspects of “sign-value notation” (such as Roman Numerals). " Hello Marke Yes a hybrid with the Roman numerals system mixed with base-10 certainly appeals to me as a VMS text-system candidate. " If the VMs was indeed created in the often postulated period then just using a custom numerical system alone would be sufficient encryption to exclude all but a tiny percentage of the population from being able to decode it. " Well of course that depends on the details of the "often postulated period", and who in that period would be likely to encounter the VMS or similarly written text and try to understand it. Greg Stachowski and I just had an exploratory discussion about the VMS genesis period from the perspective of using the possible cosmology indicated by the "Spiral Galaxy" in f68v3 to gauge the genesis period [J.VS comm. #179]. We still wind up with a big range, about 300 years: 15th to 17th centuries. But in that period the base-10 system was well-known by at least a small population of literati, as Fibonacci had long before published his Liber abaci work, dedicated to Scotus, in 1202 in Italy: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Fibonacci.html And one might think that just the learning of this Hindu-Arabic place-valued decimal system would give the cryptographically-oriented reader ideas for constructing hybrid-based systems, which as you point out, would narrow down quite a bit more the possible number of people able to handle it. In other words, the person well versed in both cryptographic principles and number-base + place-value arithmetic would get ideas, and recognize ideas in crypto-text, that a person possessing familiarity with only one of the two disciplines would not. " Incidentally, I strongly suspected at one point a few years ago that it was all written in base-5 numbers, but using several different methods for digit representation.....but when working up this hypothesis it transpired that each VMs word would in general only equate to 3 latin letters, which seemed somewhat unsatisfactory and in the end I moved on. " I am not sure that that is necessarily unsatisfactory. For example, in the f79v SOL DEUS CHRISTUS experiment I went so far as to conjecture that it was the sole literal payload on its line, and the remaining words on that line were filler fluff. That's really just a variation on the idea of nuls, and it was an obvious conjecture to make upon the specifics of that line and the approach to working SOL DEUS CHRISTUS out of it. More importantly, what if your base-5 system works often with logically identifyable text subsets, but does not with the remainder: does that necessarily mean it is wrong? The idea of nuls and filler in a more generalized sense than just letters in words is worth considering I think. " The other thing it occurs to me to say though is that even if the model of a numerical system is perhaps the best match we’ve got for the self-similar words and anagrammability and various other VMs vocabulary features, as soon as you postulate that the numbers are just a means of encoding a normal text then all the constraints, relationships and restrictions of the plaintext language should come through in some form and be present in the numbers that are written. " This seems a bit difficult to think through without a lot of study, but as a simple first thought, if we have a billion or more possible words constructed from base-10 to select for vocabulary mapping, then we have many possible base-10 words for each plaintext word in a total plaintext vocabulary of thousands. So there might be an arithmetic that produces sets of base-n Voynich words for each plaintext word, a simple arithmetic that is nevertheless not obvious when the VMS text is viewed as showing grammar with all instances of a base-n Voynich word mapping to the same plaintext word. In other words, the arithmetic distorts, or more correctly it transforms grammar relations so that they are no longer recognizable in the transformed text when it is studied without knowledge of the transform arithmetic. One would still need identified a starter set, at least partly, to deduce the arithmetic and Voynich letters usage scheme - the VMS labels might work for that. This is just a thought and would require experiments to evaluate, especially concerning transform reversibility and final unambiguous grammar recovery. Berj ****************************************** Subject [RE]VMs: Re: Rules and constraints of Grammar and meaning Sent Date 04-10-2008 5:59:50 PM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Marke Fincher wrote Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:57:29 +0100: ' .... First, clean up a little and remove the spaces: "takingashortenglishplaintextforexampleandencryptingitbythismethod" .... As I mentioned, I dont think this is particularly workable in this form for a number of reasons.... But the point is that a symbol transposition system like this one will_completely_ remove any detectable word adjacency patterns from the plaintext. ' How simple a practical system will do the job of removing word adjacency patterns? Suppose this approach: Source plaintext = taking a short english plaintext for example and encrypting it by this method 1.) Write the word-lengths sequence: 6,1,5,7,9,3,7,3,10,2,2,4,6, 2.) Reverse 1.) : 6,4,2,2,10,3,7,3,9,7,5,1,6, 3.) Rewrite the source with encrypted-word lengths per 2.) : taking asho rt en glishplain tex tforexa mpl eandencry ptingit bythi s method I'd have to do some thinking here to see how well this hides word adjacency patterns on average, but it is quite simple. Berj ******************************** Subject VMs: Voynich words and grammar and meaningfulness Sent Date 04-12-2008 7:47:34 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net In the vms-list thread "Rules and constraints of Grammar and meaning" Marke Fincher wrote 04-11-2008 6:44:18 AM: " Trouble is...a lot of these things which disrupt word adjacency should produce large flat vocabularies with homogenous words with little word-internal structure. Whereas the VMS has a small non-flat vocabulary (some 'words' are very common), and the words have a strong internal structure and predictability. One fairly simple explanation is that the words that appear next to each other in the VMs do not "belong" together because the words have been shuffled around. Or simpler still.....there are no visible contraints of meaning and grammar because the VMs is meaningless! " Hello Marke First I want to comment on "words" in the VMS. In my view it remains, often, a difficult problem deciding where one word ends, and the next one begins. This can be forgotten by those who look only at someone's VMS transcription that shows clean word-breaks according to the transcriber's judgment. But on the actual parchment the problem is quickly realized. For example, let us look at just ten lines of VMS text on the parchment: lets have a look at the first lines of the first ten folios, f1r to f5v. Personally I have no trouble seeing distinct unambiguous word separations only with f2r, f3r, f4r, f4v, and f5v. With the other five lines I have to make decisions about the words, which then affect the number of words in the line, and their individual structures. For example in the first line of f3v, looking at the last 11 glyphs, how will I transcribe them? The experienced transcriber makes decisions along the lines of knowing that the aiin / am group seems to appear often enough throughout the VMS text as the unambiguous ending of a word, so it seems reasonable to proceed to transcribe those 11 glyphs into at least 2 words, if not 3. And so on. But, already in this little sample of just ten lines, I have fully 50% of the lines arriving at transcription with additional ambiguities buried away under assumptions. Fortunately the analytic option of ignoring spaces avoids this problem (although it does not help deciding with non-linearities, like what a line is when plant parts are cutting though the text), but at the cost of throwing out potentially important information. The bottom line in my experience is that the VMS scripter was fully aware of the inter-word spaces dimension as a complicating factor, and was deliberately using it. For example at the end of the first line of f1v a gallows tail is extended backward far enough to connect to the "end of the previous word". We can see that it wasn't at all necessary to script the gallows tail backward that long. So, one word, or two? Indeed, when a gallows tail is clearly connected to another glyph, is the combination now a new distinct glyph? Well of course you and I and a not-large group of people on the planet know this stuff and realize the implications it has for "grammar" no matter how cleverly the Voynich alphabet may have otherwise been employed to transform plaintext in a natural language hypothesis. The VMS text gives the strong visual impression of block-letters hand-printing, but violates that form routinely. I mean: what is the point of printing letters free of connecting ligatures if there still remain lots of ambiguities about what are distinct words? And, no words, no grammar. At least not directly. Now, assuming we have clear words, as to the the-words-are-shuffled possibility, the simplest scheme off the top of my head seems to be boustrophedoning the words as if they were letters. Another simple possibility is re-arrangement by odd / even word-order: Source plain-text with word-order indicated: 1(taking) 2(a) 3(short) 4(english) 5(plaintext) 6(for) 7(example) 8(and) 9(encrypting) 10(it) 11(by) 12(this) 13(method) and shuffled so all odds come first, followed by all evens, in order: taking short plaintext example encrypting a english for and Curiously, this is immediately reminiscent of the old VMS pattern of something starting out to make sense, here the sequence of the first several words, and then abruptly hitting the wall. But again, even a simple scheme like this one requires plenty of investigation to see if it is ultimately promising for VMS analysis. And that brings me to my current view of the VMS text: that perhaps the simplest understanding of it is a highly complicated one. Namely, the author used the Voynich alphabet in multiple ways: sometimes to encode, sometimes to encipher including via abbreviations forms, sometimes to present arithmetic, sometimes to "write in mathematics language" as in "abc cba" = "symmetry", sometimes as graphics elements to make pictures with, sometimes as notes to script music, and so on and so forth. And that some very advanced and thorough familiarity with the possibilities of Voynich letters will permit deciding which scheme is in use in a particular section of text: for example in a paragraph with all its words clear-cut. That is to say, the VMS script author viewed the Voynich alphabet elements in a far more general sense that just literal letters. Presently I don't know of a solid arguement against this highly complex possibility. So, far from Voynich text being meaningless, this view increases, and complicates, the spectrum of meaninfulness, and certainly at the expense of nullifying large-scale statistical text analysis. But, assuming the VMS author was highly philosophical in addition to being extraordinarily intelligent, we can fathom that he / she took "literally" the creation-force notion: "In the Beginning was the word", or perhaps "In the Beginning was the letter", and set out to show it so. Berj ************************************** Subject RE: VMs: RE: Voynich words and grammar and meaningfulness Sent Date 04-14-2008 11:55:31 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net David Suter wrote Mon, 14 Apr 2008 08:50:51 -0400: " ... the general point below pertains to most research (including my own) into concealed information ... " But I suggest, humorously, that the general point is not quite complete. Namely, that in order to make his score, Dupin also relies, critically so, on a very common universal pattern: most people do react to a sudden nearby gunshot by immediately shifting their attention to it, and thus at least partly away from whatever else. So we might say that Dupin hypothesizes brilliantly, but then cracks the case crudely with brute force. Berj ******************************* Subject VMs: Steganographics and the Voynich MS Binding Sent Date 04-16-2008 1:54:45 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net For all who are interested: I have some new data on plausible steganography present in the binding of the VMS: J.VS: Steganography: The Book-covers Binding of the Voynich Manuscript Journal of Voynich Studies communication #182 (Vol. II) http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm There may be some serious clues about the VMS, and its author, to be seen in the book's binding. Berj / KI3U ********************************* RE: VMs: RE: Working backwards with ciphers... From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian Sent: Wed 4/16/08 11:52 AM Reply-to: vms-list@voynich.net To: vms-list@voynich.net Marke Fincher wrote 04-16-2008 8:37:08 AM: " If people want I can make a Windows program available which will take any input text and report the number of wordpair permutations for wordpairs formed at increasing fixed distances based on that sample? ..... " Yes I would be interested for sure. Berj *********************************** Subject RE: VMs: Steganographics and the Voynich MS Binding Sent Date 04-16-2008 11:51:57 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net David Suter wrote 04-16-2008 7:29:26 AM: " ... I don't know how you access the BMp images you mention. ... " Hello David In J.VS comm. #182 I had to give the url for the general J.VS Library index because sometimes there is a lagtime until Librarian Greg gets the material deposited. This morning it was all installed, so here is the specific url for J.VS Library deposit 18-1-2008-04-15 which holds the tif and bmp images: http://www.as.ap.krakow.pl/jvs/library/18-1-2008-04-15/ By the way, when you were examining the VMS at Beinecke, did you have any particular reactions to the binding's boards? Were they stiff, or soft material? Any other observations? I know you posted your findings in detail a couple of years ago, including mention of a golden speckle, but I'd have to hunt down your post in my mountain of not-always well organized VMS materials. Berj *********************************************** RE: VMs: RE: Voynich words and grammar and meaningfulness From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian Sent: Wed 4/16/08 3:52 PM Reply-to: vms-list@voynich.net To: vms-list@voynich.net John Reynolds wrote 04-16-2008 2:25:01 PM: " I shall go ask Alice. " That must be Alice in Voynichland. Where vanishing grins tell of the thriller: Voyzilla meets Cryptopoid. And Voyzilla is still winning. A hundred years and going. Berj ********************************************* Subject RE: VMs: Steganographics and the Voynich MS Binding Sent Date 04-16-2008 4:25:54 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net David Suter wrote Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:23:16 -0400: " Also, I would hope someone has studied the blank or nearly blank last page, which at one point I looked at for evidence that the pages were prepared by "cartographic" embossing first, with the text and illos added to the texture both to interpret and then to conceal underlying details. The "blank" page thus might contain some new information. " There is indeed some steganography in f116v, from my perspective anyway, and I'll publish on it as soon as I have my steganographic survey of the VMS sufficiently evaluated. I have, inspired by your ideas, been on the lookout for cartographics, islands in particular, but it is difficult on account of having to guess what geographic shapes might be a good bet to match up with available "back-then" maps and charts. " Lastly- the "gold speckle" (which I've not seen discussed much here) leapt out when I spotted it; I am pretty sure it was a carefully drawn or gilded extended gallows or fancy ligature in the center of a page, and as such to me throws the VMs into a different dimension - that is, into the realms of intention and description, and perhaps mercantile, religious or alchemical concern. " Drawing on my mineralogy hobby experiences, including finding gold, a speck of gold will sparkle gold from all angles. Not so with, say, a little speck of mica, that from some angles will sparkle indistinguishable from gold, only to vanish when the perspective is shifted. One major problem with the Beinecke SID images is that there is no color reference provided. I don't know how visually dramatic a little speck of gold should appear in a SID image. Presently I don't know of a likely candidate, although I have a couple of items that need rechecking. If I remember right, you examined the VMS well after the SID images were taken. Berj ************************************** RE: VMs: Steganographics and the Voynich MS Binding? From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian Sent: Wed 4/16/08 7:15 PM Reply-to: vms-list@voynich.net To: vms-list@voynich.net Dennis Stallings wrote Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:02:54 -0400: " I looked at some of your enhanced possible stego images. A question: how would one decide that these are indeed images of faces, etc., if one contrasts them with the case of the Face on Mars? I'm not sure what the answer is, but it certainly seems worthy of consideration. No sarcasm intended here. " Hello Dennis Well I'm not sure what the definitive answer is either. Take some of the modern "art" stuff, say Picasso on a hurried day, and put it in front of people who never heard of it all, and ask them: do you think this is an intentionally rendered face? Do you see my point? As I mentioned in J.VS comm. #182 we've extensively debated the problem of: how do you decide that a graphic feature is not accidental, or an optical illusion, but a consciously intended graphic same as we generally perceive it? If you simply search the word "image" in the J.VS archives you can see how much we have struggled with the issue, and it is not resolved. I am careful to state over and over that this matter is: hypothesis. And when I slack in making that clear, you can be sure I get a kick in the po-po from Stachowski. And finally in that vein we must remember one more important item: we are analyzing not the Voynich manuscript, but images of it provided by Beinecke via computer infrastructure, images lacking in ultimate details due to data practicalities, and images the files of which can become corrupted, accidentally or intentionally / maliciously and thereby lose features, or gain features. Of course it is not just faces, anthropomorphic or other. Are those "jars" in the pharma section, for example, or are they something else, say incense burners or perfume dispensers? If they are pharma jars, then how come no pharma baskets too? Fountains versus volcanoes? Stars versus flowers? Glyph versus similar glyph? One word versus two? And on and on. Concerning the easier problem of face or not-face, regardless of whether accidental or intentional, I opined in J.VS comm. #111 that the man in the street is equally competent as a judge as anyone else: " Here is what I am getting at (contrived scenario): 20,000 [scientists and learned scholars] look at f76r and conclude it is just a block of strange hand-script text showing no particular pattern, even accidental, and certainly nothing in the way of an intentional stego picture. 450,000 "man in the street" look at it, and 389,000 of them all say there is a portrait, a fairly 3D one, of a man facing right and tilted up, and with long hair that bulbs out at the sides, and they all sketch roughly similar copies of what they see. So you've got altogether 389,000 face-seers against 81,000 nothing-special-seers. What is the "scientific" conclusion here? " So lets say a hefty majority agrees that the feature on the VMS binding back-cover is indeed a strikingly detailed head-face. The bigger problem is then: was it intentionally rendered? In comm. #182 I wrote my opinion: " ..... but I do think that here the feature is unmistakable: it is a head, plainly so, with the thought-preoccupied face so rendered that its eyes are gazing upwards. Just how the effect of embossing that image onto the leather was achieved I am not prepared to comment on here, but I do believe that it is quite difficult to argue that this face is an accidental artifact, and not the intended conscious work of an artist. " So, I think that with that particular feature it is at least as difficult to argue that it is not an intentional face, as it may be to argue that it is indeed an intentional face, actually in my view a masterfully rendered one. At some point it becomes personal introspection: if I were to entertain that that feature was not an intentionally rendered head-face, then logically I would be forced to call into question my entire life's worth of rules of perception. Thus, having decided that the back-side feature is indeed an intentionally crafted anthropomorphic graphic, I have contextual data, though admittedly not fail-safe, for making a judgment on the features that appear on the binding's front-cover. In comm. #182, as said there, I restricted myself to just three features of the binding. There are many more that I am investigating there, in context with other items throughout the VMS, including possible data on the sexual orientation of the front-face person, who I've opined, within the steganographic hypothesis, is the Voynich manuscript author. I'm considering the possibility that he may have been bisexual. Berj ******************************************** Subject RE: VMs: Steganographics and the Voynich MS Binding Sent Date 04-17-2008 12:52:24 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Dennis Stallings wrote Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:23:31 -0400: " ..... have you compared the magnitude of obviously random creases and the obvious effects of wear with the putative embossed face? If the embossment is of greater magnitude than regular wear, that adds credence. If it's of the same magnitude as regular wear, that doesn't rule it out entirely, but makes it more unlikely. " Well, what is "obviously random" ? About twenty years ago at an antique shop I saw this great old children's buggy that looked, I thought, from the 19th century. I asked the lady about it, and she said Oh, that's a fake. Well, that called for closer examination. It took me several minutes of up-close inspection to finally see it was indeed a carefully done fake. Apparently the job had involved everything from acid dipping to burying in mud, to produce effects like pitted and rusted metal. I found one little spot on an axle that, although appearing quite old, did not appear nearly as old or worn as the rest of it, and from that I gathered what was going on with the buggy. So then, is it plausible that the "obviously random creases" of the binding were also prepared by the VMS author? And / or that natural creases were taken advantage of? How could we really tell without having the actual MS 408 to examine? We've got a feature there, and always allowing ourselves to change our mind later we make a call: on the back-side head-face I definitely am convinced beyond any reservation whatsoever that it was intentionally crafted. Note that the major creases seem to be more prevalent on the right side, where the feature is. But anyway, in comm. #182 I said I was not prepared to comment on the (hypothetical) technique by which the effect was achieved. Unless we have some experience manipulating leather in this way, we are forced to guess about creases and techniques, and cumulative wear and tear. By the way, in regard to the current resurrection of the Wilfrid-did-it hypothesis in the other thread, Baresch is mentioned in one of Marci's books - Jan knows a lot of those details. Berj ************************************ Subject RE: VMs: Steganographics and the Voynich MS Binding Sent Date 04-17-2008 2:52:33 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Dana Scott wrote Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:31:49 -0600: " I have examined creases in the VMs in person and might have made some comment on this list. A couple of possible "man made" creases come to mind. There is at least one instance of parallel creases as though a wallpaper type wooden roller had been run across one of the folios. There is also a curious crease that reminded me of the bottom of a coffee mug. I may be able to find mention of these markings from my notes. " That's great Dana! I am very, very interested, and hope you can dig up those old notes. I know that can be difficult - we all have such huge piles of information that can be a real chore to dig through. In the meantime I've identified another hypothetical steganographic feature on the binding that, even though I should be used to these surprises by now, so startled me when I realized what I was seeing that I exclaimed the same as old Rose Dawson in the beginning of the 1997 Titanic film when on her TV set she sees the recovered 1912 drawing of her wearing the Heart of the Ocean diamond. As soon as I can get a good image of this new binding-feature I'll send it to Greg for J.VS Library deposit, post the information to J.VS, and then make a post here in VML. Berj ************************************** Subject VMs: Similar steganographic scenes in Voynich f76r and Binding front-cover Sent Date 04-18-2008 3:55:51 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net For all who are interested: I have new steganography-hypothesis data in connection with the VMS Binding: J.VS: Similar steganographic Color Physics depictions in Voynich f76r and Binding front-cover Journal of Voynich Studies communication #183 (Vol. II): http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm An excerpt from comm. #183: " ..... that the Voynich MS Binding front-cover holds a steganographic picture of what is essentially the same scene depicted in f76r: a man holding an optical filter plate up to his eyes and looking through it. " Berj / KI3U ********************************** Subject VMs: the wordperms analysis program Sent Date 04-19-2008 2:30:31 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net I've just received from Marke Fincher his wordperms.exe program for analyzing word-pairs in text. Thank you Marke. I ran a quick test using the old teletype test sequence, and then again with "a" replaced with "the". Here are the results: the quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog dist=01, numpairs= 8, reversible= 0, asd= 1.0000, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|quick) dist=02, numpairs= 7, reversible= 0, asd= 1.0000, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|brown) dist=03, numpairs= 6, reversible= 0, asd= 1.0000, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|fox) dist=04, numpairs= 5, reversible= 0, asd= 1.0000, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|jumps) dist=05, numpairs= 4, reversible= 0, asd= 1.0000, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|over) dist=06, numpairs= 3, reversible= 0, asd= 1.0000, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|a) dist=07, numpairs= 2, reversible= 0, asd= 1.0000, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|lazy) dist=08, numpairs= 1, reversible= 0, asd= 1.0000, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|dog) the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog dist=01, numpairs= 8, reversible= 0, asd= 1.0000, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|quick) dist=02, numpairs= 7, reversible= 0, asd= 1.0000, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|brown) dist=03, numpairs= 6, reversible= 2, asd= 0.6667, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|fox) dist=04, numpairs= 5, reversible= 0, asd= 1.0000, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|jumps) dist=05, numpairs= 4, reversible= 0, asd= 1.0000, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|over) dist=06, numpairs= 3, reversible= 1, asd= 0.6667, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|the) dist=07, numpairs= 2, reversible= 0, asd= 1.0000, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|lazy) dist=08, numpairs= 1, reversible= 0, asd= 1.0000, asf= 1.0000 maxfreq=001 (the|dog) The readme.txt is very brief in explaining the selection algorithm and the outputs: KEY TO OUTPUT VALUES: dist : the fixed distance (in words) between words used to make the wordpairs.... 1="natural, adjacent words" numpairs : the number of unique wordpairs formed reversible : the number of the unique wordpairs for which the reverse-order pair also exists asd : the average squared difference in frequency between the forward wordpair and the reverse wordpair asf : the average squared frequency of the wordpairs I am puzzled by some things. Marke, can you comment on the above? Thanks. Berj ******************************************* Subject RE: VMs: Re: the wordperms analysis program Sent Date 04-20-2008 11:41:52 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Marke Fincher wrote Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:54:23 +0100: " As the guys say there is little point in running it on a single sentence..... it needs to be run on a big enough sample for the characteristics of the sample language to be evident. I suggest perhaps something around 50k in size. And I suggest that people run a number of natural language samples through it first to study the effect, before running it on bits of the VMs to compare. " Hello Marke My first goal for the program was to embed the TTY test sequence in a natural language text (say 50k size) other than English which does not contain any of the TTY words. So I thought I'd first run it just on the TTY and a modified TTY to get an idea of the output, so that in the embedded tests I would recognize that an anomaly was being detected. That was the original thought, and I got confused. Berj *********************************************** Subject RE: VMs: Universal Ancient Language? Sent Date 04-21-2008 10:07:33 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Dennis Stallings wrote Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:56:20 -0400: " The script found in Egypt and the Sinai has been extensively and widely studied, and is generally accepted as the ultimate origin of almost every phonemic writing systems in the world, including our alphabet. ..... Here's how I treated it on my website: http://www.geocities.com/ctesibos/alphabet/gpt2pnc.html " Hello Dennis I'd be interested in your opinion on something on the VMS Binding. Coincidentally I've been trying to decide if I am perceiving some faint Greek and Phoenician letters on it. Please have a look at the top quarter of the Binding front-cover (in SID). You may have to push contrast a bit. There is it seems to me a suggestion of about five large letters atop, or across a rough line. The 2nd letter from left looks to me very much like a Greek delta. The 3rd and 5th letters I've been wondering if they are the Phoenician b and a. The 4th is vaguely like a Latin script capital P or J or T maybe. What do you think? I have encountered in my stego survey of the VMS a number of tiny scribbles that suggest Pheonician letters, for instance m, that I have to check more carefully. Berj **************************************** Subject RE: VMs: Universal Ancient Language? Sent Date 04-22-2008 2:09:05 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Dennis Stallings wrote 04-22-2008 9:52:13 AM: " I'm afraid I don't see much of anything. " and Barbara Barrett wrote 04-22-2008 9:28:00 AM: " Frankly I can not see what you see at all; perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place? Which top quarter are you talking about; Right or Left? Are the letters you see vertical or horizontal? Running left to right or the reverse? " I was initially purposely vague so as to make at least some concession to the big problem in cooperative hypothetical steganography research (J.VS comm. #111): the power of suggestion. Merely pointing to a place in the VMS and saying I think there may be steganography in this part of the ms, unavoidably triggers suggestions and reactions to suggestions on the most difficult to rule upon crypto scheme possibility in the context of the VMS: steganography in it, yes or no? Now, many hypothetical stego items I pronounce upon without hesitation, but in this case in the top quarter of the Binding front-cover where I wonder if there may be some letters, and therefore perhaps initials or a even a full name of somebody connected with the manuscript's history, I thought I'd minimalize the power of suggestion at least a bit. That said, I've now sent as an addendum to J.VS Library deposit # 18-1-2008-04-15 the image file c5VMSOFC.jpg of the Binding front-cover with outlines painted in to show the possible letters I am referring to. This image is low-resolution intended only as a guide for inspecting the high-resolution SID; it should be available within a day or so when Librarian Greg Stachowski has a chance to install it. [1] Barbara Barrett wrote: " I would find the presence of Phoenician letters very suspect. There is no evidence they were known in Europe between the end of the Punic Wars and the discovery of cross-lingual grammars in the early 18thC (neatly circumventing the need for decipherment) - indeed a general ignorance of ancient scripts seems to be the rule back then. .... " Well then maybe the VMS is the first evidence for it - anything wrong with that? Have you seen the Kircher document "Catalogus Linguas" in APUG (see discussion in J.VS comm. #125 etc.) ? Unless I am mis-reading, the item "Phoenicia" is clearly listed. The "picnic table" symbol is in the VMS and in some Kircher documents, and rotated it is a good pass for a Phoenician "k". My speculations operate upon a VMS genesis time-frame that goes to the end of the 17th century. " That being said, my first impression, if Phoenician letters are proven to exist in the VMS, is that they'd be evidence of a modern hoax because the knowledge of them was unavailable to Medieval and Renaissance scholars. " A different possibility is that someone with knowledge of Phoenician letters added them later to the non-hoaxed VMS. I am not yet convinced the VMS has stego Phoenician letters, but because I've been wondering about it, I brought up the subject. " My second thought is that "mixed scripts" have historically only ever existed when and where there were two complete systems in simultaneous usage ..... Therefore any "word" with mixed Phoenician and Greek letters in the VMS would be very suspect indeed. " I don't buy that at all - that's just conventional norms applied to the unique VMS, and where has that gotten us altogether in a hundred years? I've been using mixed scripts in my personal notes routinely for decades - it is a very natural thing to do once you are in the polymathic groove, and isn't even necessarily for the purpose of concealing. For example when I want to make a note to myself that I "exchanged an email" with, say Greg, I just jot the 5 letters group: "x", followed by a Greek delta, followed by "eml", and then followed by "Greg". The Greek delta stands for "change" or "changed" for reasons obvious to the scientific-math-educated. It's natural polymathic shorthand. No big deal requiring scholarly okays. " What Chadwick said in the BM's "Reading the Past" series about "mixed language decipherment's" in the section about the infamous Phaistos disk, that once one goes down that path one abandons all possibility of proof is equally true of unjustifiably mixed scripts. Indeed that type of willy nilly script mixing is one of the reasons that reputable scholars have such contempt for the late Barry Fell. " Did Chadwick give his opinion also after "reading" the VMS? I thought your mixed mode Ogham idea in the other thread was a very interesting willy nilly. As for Barry, I was reading him when he was still alive, and I thought he was an extremely interesting guy, whether right or wrong. More interesting to go on a hike with than some of his critics. Berj / KI3U [1] http://www.as.ap.krakow.pl/jvs/library/18-1-2008-04-15/ *************************************************************** Subject VMs: A Voynich MS steganography reference Sent Date 04-29-2008 1:09:49 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net For all who are interested: I have some new data toward a practical VMS steganography reference: J.VS: Voynich steganography reference: f80v CATWOMAN's cat-face versus f1r Tepenece Journal of Voynich Studies communication #185 (Vol. II): http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm Berj / KI3U ******************************************************* Subject RE: VMs: Once An Anarchist Sent Date 05-05-2008 5:57:30 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Dana Scott wrote Sun, 4 May 2008 23:08:58 -0700: " The following newspaper article is quoted from: NewspaperARCHIVE.com http://www.newspaperarchive.com/search keyword 'voynich' file 10479926.pdf THE ARIZONA REPUBLICAN: SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 21, 1902. ...... " Hi Dana Very interesting. Ethel's account reads a bit odd to me: why did the intruder allow himself to be seated etc. by the "nobleman" - why didn't he just grab the papers and run? Berj ***************************** Subject RE: VMs: Write up of wordpair permutation analysis Sent Date 05-05-2008 11:50:42 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Marke Fincher wrote Mon, 5 May 2008 18:42:47 +0100: " For anyone interested I have finally got my finger out and written up my findings and work on "word pair permutation analysis" in a paper ..... " Hello Marke I just had my first readthrough of your excellent paper and my initial impression is that its ideas provide a new platform for gauging " what the hell " is going on with the Voynich script. I need much more study before getting a thorough critical understanding of it all. I did wonder what kinds of curves would result from WPPA analysis of a series of numbers, random in lengths and magnitudes, as generated by some sort of randomizing algorithm. Well done! Thanks for this work. Berj *********************************** Subject VMs: The phenomenon: VMS can be read in language X Sent Date 05-08-2008 12:04:12 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To For all who are interested, I have some observations, that may be useful, on the time-honored phenomenon of the VMS stimulating the belief that it can be read in some language or other: J.VS: Sequence Spectra of text-signals and Equal Statistics Analysis Journal of Voynich Studies communication #189 (Vol. II): http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm Berj / KI3U *********************************** Subject RE: VMs: The phenomenon: VMS can be read in language X Sent Date 05-08-2008 11:25:10 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net GC wrote 8 May 2008 20:58:49 -0600: " I know this is way off topic, but I missed one single question on all my science exams during high school, and that question is indelibly etched in my mind. The question was "Is there intelligent life in our solar system?", to which I answered "NO", not considering the planet Earth in my summary. To this very day, I still ask myself if at least philosophically, I actually got that question right? :-) " Hello Glen It would have been interesting to have Charles Fort in that classroom. I think he'd have given you philosophical backup and pointed out the crux of the question: the word "our". :-) Berj ********************************* Subject RE: VMs: The phenomenon: VMS can be read in language X Sent Date 05-09-2008 1:31:55 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net GC wrote Thu, 8 May 2008 23:50:41 -0600: " Funny you should bring up Charles Fort, ..... Fortean things I still believe in - ..... Small items knowingly left in one place routinely turn up somewhere else, after long search. " Missing VMS pages maybe? I suppose that would start a new round of are-they-fakes? " More than once, a series of in-depth analyses in EVA has fallen simply because the numbers don't add up in any other reasonable transcription scenario. " Hmm. Yes, the ever-present difficult problem of a "reasonable transcription scenario" for the Voynich. Lets see, I'll try a version of sequence spectrum signal transcription (per J.VS comm. #189) on your above statement (ignoring comma etc.): 1234_1234_1234_1_123421_12_1234567_12134565_12_123_123_123345_123456_1234562_123_1234567_1234_122_12_12_123_12345_1234563782_1,2,3,4,5,6,2,7,8,1,7,9,10,_12345678 What was it that Cole says to Bruce Willis's character in Shayamalan's film - I see clusters. Something like that. " And before I hear you actually defend Charles Fort, ..... " You want me to defend my sense of humor? That's funny! Well ok, I'm here talking with you aren't I, "eh?" " I was philosophically correct in the first place, that there actually is no intelligent life in our solar system. " Gee, and I thought that, and the original question, required some intelligence to settle. ;-) Berj ******************************************* Subject RE: VMs: The phenomenon: VMS can be read in language X Sent Date 05-09-2008 5:16:37 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Dennis Stallings wrote Date: Fri, 9 May 2008 15:17:03 -0400: " One might infer that we're missing distinctive features in the glyphs. Or in context. " Well yes, I don't mind admitting that I've always liked some of Newbold's ideas, if that even needs emphasizing given my history with VMS steganographics, incognito symbols and so on. But there's a bunch of possibilities, including non-steganographic. For example, say you've identified a block of VMS text that you are sure is some unified plaintext in some language from somewhere, and this VMS text-block's sequence spectrum goes like this: 12_123_123455453_123_123_1234_........... And so you scan likely literature out there through a sequence spectrum filter, and then you get lucky and find a match: In the Beginning was the Word ........... It remains then to evaluate if the match is the likely one, or if another should be searched for. Berj ****************************************** RE: VMs: Re: The phenomenon: ... (Att. Berj) From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian Sent: Tue 5/13/08 7:59 PM Reply-to: vms-list@voynich.net To: vms-list@voynich.net Knox wrote Tue, 13 May 2008 16:55:19 -0500: " "Di-spectral clusters" and "tri-spectral clusters" can be called "pattern word bigrams" and "pattern word trigrams" (purists may gnash away). " Hello Knox Those are special cases of the general concept I am interested in. In plain street language I tried to express the general concept like this: " The essential simple idea is to focus on the various kinds of orders present within a signal sequence: the are more kinds of sequence orders in a sequence of symbols than just the first symbol at the beginning is the first, the next is the second, the next is the third, and so on. " [1] And to that in [1] I considered the very elementary examples of {5} versus {6}. Also, by "cluster" I referred in general to groups of sequence spectra, or per above groups of pattern word n-grams. And those groups are of course not necessarily restricted to being adjacent. You wrote: " A pen and paper nomenclator that included a few special pattern words with letters and common words (requiring three digits for each substitution) then converting digits to letters or code words in a fractionating process would be difficult to crack. So it seems to me. " Two of the major motivations for sequence spectra analysis that I indicated in [1] are: a.) obtaining a perspective that regards the individual character of a symbol / glyph as noise - regards it like the disguise that the actor is wearing, in a focus where the relationships between actors, regardless of what they are dressed up in, is of interest. This focuses on the possibility that relationships-clusters of one kind or another and the mutual relations of clusters are an embedded code. In [2] in order to illustrate I gave a very simple codebook type example (In the Beginning was the Word ..... ) that entertains the possibility that the plaintext is not directly present in the VMS, but is some standard or at least available-somewhere text. I don't think all of the VMS text is like that, not by a long shot and maybe not even that simple, but I strongly suspect that some short VMS text blocks here and there are indeed something like that. b.) studying the invariances associated with type a.) analytics. In [1] I was also attempting to lay down some notation for this business. I've been writing up more about this business, in particular considering the effects of inter-word spaces, that I hope to communicate to J.VS soon. Berj / KI3U [1] J.VS comm. #189 (Vol. II) http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm [2] vms-list post: RE: VMs: The phenomenon: VMS can be read in language X, 05-09-2008 5:16:37 PM, Berj replying to Dennis Stallings. *************************************************** Subject RE: Re[2]: VMs: Re: The phenomenon: ... (Att. Berj) Sent Date 05-14-2008 2:27:48 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Hello Knox About my statement that there are more kinds of sequence orders in a sequence of symbols than just the first symbol at the beginning is the first, the next is the second, the next is the third, and so on, you wrote Tue, 13 May 2008 22:11:11 -0500: " I am almost, but not quite, certain I know what you intend with this sentence. Would you please rephrase it in case I am mistaken. " Lets try some examples, by no means exhaustive. As I mentioned, I've been writing more comments for a J.VS communication soon, so I'll borrow from it for the following. As I think you have indicated acknowledging along with me, the development of a good vocabularly and notation for this business is something of a challenge. Say we have an ambiguous sequence, this line [1]: {1} okaip 8ap aeap Rewrite it as a contiguous string using "#" for the gaps ( "spaces" ): {2} okaip#8ap#aeap Using previously indicated notations we can sequence spectrum transcribe some possibilities (different choice of sequencing frames) that assume that the signal in {2} sequences from left to right, throughout: {3} 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,3,5,6,3,8,3,5, {4} 12345_123_1213 In {3} the two spaces are treated, identically, as signal components in their own right, same as the other signal components [2]. In {4} an apparent space is just taken as an ordinary space separating sub-sequence frames. [3] Now, if we take {3} seriously, then logical "space(s)" is / are unknown, but if they are assumed to exist in {2}, then, on the condition that no new signal components are introduced into the sequence, any of the source signal characters may be analyzed to be a space that creates a group or word-break. For example, the "a" : {5} ok_ip#8_p#_e_p And this makes possible this sequence spectrum: {6} 12_1234_12_1_1 where in {5} and {6} the n-grams "8ap" and "ea" from {1} have vaporized. But new n-grams may be contemplated, for example "p#". If the line {2} is from a boustrophedon set of lines, and the sequencing in {2} is from right to left, throughout, then for the sake of consistent notation we can write: {7} paea#pa8#piako and start anew: {8} 1,2,3,2,4,1,2,5,4,1,6,2,7,8, and so on. But there are more sequence spectrum possibilities. The sequence in {1} may be regarded as just one display of a ring, (like an 8-track endless loop audio tape) thus introducing the task of simple ring pre-shifting prior to writing possible spectra. Or, it may be only apparently one line, arising from a recording of two intercalated lines, say according to a simple every-other-letter scheme: {9-1} ki#a#ep {9-2} oap8paa Or perhaps we want to explore possible in-line sequence-direction switching [4], and for example rewrite {1} prior to constructing sequence spectra from it, so as to consider a case of alternating-between-gaps sequence directions: {10} okaip pa8 aeap I want to emphasize that I am more interested in analytic possibilities for sequences, than I am in identifying building blocks for practical cipher systems, although of course it is of high interest to find out if VMS text blocks are a cipher of some system, practical or not from one or another viewpoint, say diplomatic communications "back then". I am, as said before, very interested in the invariances and universal rules associated with sequences, for example the universal rule that within-frame, a points-curve plot of the sequence spectrum progresses bounded by y=x, or as I put it in J.VS comm. #189, the simple basic rule governing a symbols-sequence signal spectrum curve is that when we follow the progression of the curve, any rise in the curve reaches at most a point higher than the curve's previous highest peak by exactly the amount 1. Commenting on such you wrote: " I'll have more to say about it in time. " I am interested. Berj [1] Adapted from GC's voyn_101.txt for VMS f65r. [2] Telegraphers, like me, are habituated to regard gaps as signal information components, most especially during personal real-time manual radiotelegraph communications in our "language of telegraphy". [3] Taking the variable spacing between "words" and other script quirks in the VMS text very seriously, I have spent considerable effort showing that, hypothetically, blocks of VMS "text" may be, aside from literal information carriers, employing the VMS alphabet elements like mosaic tiles to make pictures, a hand-script text-art akin to ASCII art, most notably in the portrait in the upper half of f76r: J.VS communications #156, #157, and #163 (Vol. II): The Voynich hypothetical f76r text-art portrait: how was it done? http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm [4] See for example J.VS comm. #165 (Vol. II), J.VS: Crypto-economics of boustrophedon effects; In-line boustrophedon switching. http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm ******************************************************* Subject VMs: Possible versus Impossible Sequences Sent Date 05-22-2008 2:12:09 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net For all who are interested, I have some more comments on sequences, including sequence generating mechanisms: J.VS: Possible versus Impossible Sequence Spectra, and Associated Relations Journal of Voynich Studies communication #191 (Vol. II): http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm Berj / KI3U ************************************** Subject RE: VMs: Possible versus Impossible Sequences Sent Date 05-22-2008 10:30:17 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Knox Mix wrote Thu, 22 May 2008 18:08:56 -0500: " I am covered up with several projects but I read enough to place this in my basic information read-list. It appears to be a well done introduction without extraneous material, while making no assumptions of a reader's prior knowledge. Thanks, " Thanks Knox. I have more to get out on the subject as time permits. By now it is no doubt obvious that I am trying to motivate attention to sequence spectral clusters. With respect to the VMS text this splits the text problem into two problems: the spectral sequences as the more fundamental, and once they are well understood, the problem of how they are dressed with Voynich alphabet letters, spaces, line units, etc. Of course an immediate arguement to this is that the original sequences may have been differentiated and their elements variously reintegrated to become the ones we see, dressed up as the VMS text. But as emphasized, one of the main objectives is to discover invariances, and so also among the integrations we see and transcribe. Familiarity with spectral clusters seems promising for detecting what are jumbled sequences, and besides, it is possible they are the real codes. And also besides, that arguement affects other text attacks also. As I point out, a metric for sequences is ambiguous and must be defined for a particular analytic approach with its own notion of what are neighboring sequences. I do find it it surprising that even with the rather simple system of arithmetic hiearchy neighboring as shown in {5-7}, you can nevertheless quickly dress-map an entire makes-perfect-sense sentence of 8 words where fully 5/8 of it, its inner 5 words, which even map as a sensible phrase without the other three words, are immediate serial neighbors in the n=4 sequence hierarchy. In other words, my first thought was: how readily can language expressions escape the simpler systems that generate the spectral sequences they must use as vehicles? Berj ***************************************** Subject RE: VMs: Possible versus Impossible Sequences Sent Date 05-23-2008 11:55:03 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net Dennis Stallings wrote Fri, 23 May 2008 10:08:04 -0400: " However, ISTM that if you don't identify the correct in the first place, that will seriously compromise your sequence spectrum analyses, certainly if you identify a superset of the correct one. How does that figure in? " Hello Dennis I assume you meant to say: ..... if you don't identify the correct sequences in the first place, that will seriously compromise your sequence spectrum analyses ..... Not at all. Because: the main objective is to discover invariances across all sequences, become familiar with them, and how clusters of sequences and subsequences relate to the invariances, and thereby, hopefully, gain some new insights into the structure of the VMS text in particular. Besides, identifying correct sequences, that is starting with perfect transcriptions, plagues all approaches to the VMS text. The sequence analysis approach has the advantage that useful information can potentially be obtained even at lower and lower glyphs resolutions and other text-device resolutions like variable spaces, where it doesn't even matter if two very similar glyphs are the same, or subtly different symbolic-charge carriers: the elementary example of {3-1} in J.VS comm. #189 illustrates this. Similarly, instead of words, the sequences of lines or portions of lines referenced to paragraphs, or hopscotch word sequences on a page, or the sequences of paragraphs referenced to pages, and so on, are ripe for study, for example: what are the (H1-h2) functions, and what are the WPPA functions of sequence spectra, and sequence spectral clusters, for VMS and non-VMS texts? Does anybody know? Berj ************************************** Subject VMs: Reference data for Signal-Sequence Series Sent Date 06-30-2008 8:46:01 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To vms-list@voynich.net For all who are interested: I have organized some reference data for signal-sequence series analysis work: J.VS: Reference Data for Analysis of Signal Sequence Series Journal of Voynich Studies communication #203 (Vol. II): http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm This is a long one, but is divided into managable sections as follows: I. Using hh Super-spectra to measure transformation effects on series of sequences. II. A simple transformation of a series of sequences all belonging to the same hh-family. III. The simplest invariance of hh-families under transformation. IV. Reverse-direction transformation of a mixed series of ramps. V. Reverse-direction transformation of a Latin text series. VI. Reverse-direction transformation of the Voynich f68v3.1 text series. VII. Reverse-direction transformation of the Voynich f68v3.1 text series with “4o” as a single element. VIII. Reverse-direction transformation of a random numbers series. IX. Comparative pillow ratios and hh ratios of some series. X. The PR-function and HHR-function of unified successive series: Moretus vs Hooke. Introducing the U-function. XI. PR, HHR, and U-functions of Voynich paragraph text-lines in succession. XII. The SQS Computer Program XIII. Comments Berj / KI3U ***************************************** Subject RE: VMs: VMs castle Sent Date 08-24-2008 2:55:04 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Knox Mix wrote Sun, 24 Aug 2008 12:29:01 -0500: " 1) The double spires on ?two of the smaller buildings. Here is a lithography showing something similar (has 3 "antennae"), including the bulbous ends -- for illustration, not as a suggestion it is connected with the VMs. ..... " Hello Knox I perked up when I saw you mention antennas, one of my favorite subjects. And antennas + castles - Well! So I just had to radiate a quick QSL. So, here's an oldy but goody revisited: a 15th c. ? drawing of the St. Moritz Castle I believe: http://www.florin.ms/beth5.html It is Fig. 15, to the right of St. Mary in Fig. 14. We've had some discussions about this interesting drawing in the past. It shows that nice un-inverted-V VHF dipole :) atop the castle tower, or whatever it is - it could be one of the birds, but I lean toward it being something structural, and perhaps also symbolic. But as you see, the drawing is quite interesting for other reasons: overhead 3D view of a castle, bridge, water, walls, walkways, mountains - great comparison possibilities with the VMS nine codewheels, er, I mean nine rosettes, foldout. And for Voynichville's northern Italy faithfull, its location isn't bad at all. You've reminded me: I have to ask Greg if he thinks we can plug that picture into the J.VS Library. I'd hate to see it vanish from the web. Have a good day. Berj **************** Subject VMs: Voynich Gold Sent Date 09-02-2008 1:06:45 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To For all who are interested, and especially for David Suter, I have some new data: J.VS: Are Gold and other metal particles embedded in the Voynich manuscript parchments? Journal of Voynich Studies communication #213 (Vol. II): http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm Berj / KI3U *************************** Subject RE: VMs: Mystery of the Spires, continued Sent Date 09-08-2008 8:34:45 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Knox wrote Mon, 8 Sep 2008 18:37:16 -0500: " ..... which has a picture of the homiest castle I've seen, Karlštejn. It dates back to 1348 and has the projections from the roofs that we see in the VMs and on other real castles. " Yes, agreed: " By the way, the castle-like crown of The King does resemble the Karlstein Castle from the picture of Karlstein that Jan sent. " [1] Berj / KI3U [1] Journal of Voynich Studies, communication #107 (Vol. I): J.VS: The VMS f3v Deathmask, the f76r text-mosaic portrait, The King, Rudolf, and more http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolI2007.htm ***************************************************** Subject VMs: Pairs of nearby Castles, Karlstein, Cartographics, & fantasy vs reality Sent Date 09-09-2008 11:57:40 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To [ Note: I could not get Reply to work with the vms-list post " RE: VMs: Mystery of the Spires, continued " so I launched this new thread. ] Jan Hurych wrote Tue, 9 Sep 2008 04:59:42 -0700: " .... the English webpage of the castle Karlstejn is here: http://www.hradkarlstejn.cz/en/ " Hello Jan That site has some really nice stuff! The birds flying (animation) over the castle adds a nice touch. The site includes a section on nearby castles, and lately I have been thinking it might be good to search for pairs of castles, rather than just trying to match one. The Voynich nine rosettes foldout does after all have in its upper right panel (f86r6) two castles, that are with respect to its rosette located on radials making a right angle. That is, one can think of one castle being "nearby" and southeast to the other, or conversely nearby and northwest - this on the premise that the nine rosettes illustration, whatever else it is, is also to some extent a map or cartographic, either realistic or fantasy. For example, in the book by Gies & Gies [1] on pg. 122 is an illustration with the caption: " World map showing Britain in the lower left hand section and Jerusalem in the center, from a volume of world knowledge, Winchester or Canterbury (11th c.). " The picture credit says British Library, London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library International Ltd. Now, this map has more than a dozen castles sketched on it, crudely, but you can count towers and see some other details in them. This map is therefore at least a primitive resource for contemplating that the f86r6 castles are in some sense in a meanginful geographic relationship, again realistic or fantasy geography. Incidentally, this 11th c. map is I think also a good example for weighing David Suter's idea that some of the VMS botanical illustrations may be cartographically inspired: this map certainly gives me at least a vague impression of basic botanical structures incorporated into its design / execution, either consciously by the artist, or unconsciously. Berj [1] Daily Life in Medieval Times, by Frances & Joseph Gies, orig. publ. by HarperCollins (apparently in separate volumes), Copyright 1969, 1974, 1990. ISBN 0-7607-5913-8, Barnes & Noble Books, NY. ***************************************** Subject RE: VMs: Re:VMs: Pairs of nearby Castles, Karlstein, Cartographics, & fantasy vs reality Sent Date 09-10-2008 2:53:52 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan wrote Tue, 9 Sep 2008 23:27:15 +0200: " I agree / besides I would bet more on Jerusalem than on any Czech castle as the first contender, since the plan of Jerusalem was subject of many medieval studies, from Templars through Masons to present time. After all, what would the unknown castle tell to the reader? And yes, the two castles amy be a real guide. " r Jan. I was also re-reading your paper on the Czech Knight Krystof Harant (1564-1621), and trying to find online pictures of the illustrations from his 1608 book documenting his great and far and wide pilgrimage. As you mentioned, the text of the book is online - in Czech which I cannot read. I could not find any of his illustrations, which surely must be interesting, not just for castles, but there is for example the Labrynth on the Island of Kandia that he describes - did he illustrate it, I would like to know. Surely it is of interest to examine closely the illustrations Harant thought important: they were more or less aimed at the audience in the Rudolphine universe. Berj ********************************************* Subject RE: VMs: Re:VMs: Pairs of nearby Castles, Karlstein, Cartographics, & fantasy vs reality Sent Date 09-10-2008 10:32:57 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan wrote 09-10-2008 6:27:56 PM: " the book is for download at Googlebooks, teh address is http://books.google.com/books?id=JL8bAAAAMAAJ&pg=PT21&dq=krystof+harant&lr=&as _brr=3&ei=AUTISJqGFKWijgGhuIj3Cw#PPT336,M1 and the very last page has his map of Jerusalem. " Excellent Jan - thank you! I wish I could read the Czech - it is quite apparent from the profuse names and numbers that Harant was very well educated, and reported details with enthusiastic precision. Harant's Jerusalem picture-map is, I assume, a depiction of Jerusalem as he saw it at the time. I have been comparing it with the two versions of the Villalpandus maps that we were studying earlier this year - those I think are meant to be reconstructions of ancient Jerusalem; they sometimes juxtapose perspectives of the same object, in particular Solomon's Temple: we see a side of the building face-on, and it connects to a from-top-looking-down view of the temple. It would be very useful to have the numbered identifications in Harant's map - I could not find them - if you can spot them please let us know. In particular the most outstanding object in his map is numbered 22, and resembles a grid of 5 columned squares, suggests that it once may have been 9 squares, and I'm guessing is located just about where Villalpandus has Solomon's Temple located. Now, recently Rich Santa-Coloma has dubbed the oddity in the upper-left panel of the Voynich nine rosettes foldout (f85v2) as the "tower in a hole". I suppose it could be that, if not an ordinary fountain with a crude depiction of its own reflection in the water. But, looking back and forth between the Harant map, and the Villalpandus maps, it struck me that Jerusalem, the city itself, could quite well be represented, on account of its geographic particulars plus symbolic characteristics, as: a tower in a hole. Well, that's stretching it a bit, but really not much, and Jerusalem and biblical themes being somewhere in the nine-rosettes foldout is old hat in Voynichville, and a favorite old hat at that. For example, Dana Scott a while back produced quite a few pointers along this vein with a focus on the lower-right (f86r5) panel. Every picture / map of Jerusalem from "back then", like this Harant map you found, is welcome data. Back to the upper-right (f86r6) panel where our two castles are: there is a thing about this particular rosette that keeps hitting me over and over: the pentagonal spiral of Voynich text around a central void / unknown / unknowable - that is, it strikes me, a truly extraordinary symbol with an immediate biblical suggestion. So it seems to me. I finally decided to turn this problem around by framing it in terms of the consciousness of the author of the VMS / nine rosettes foldout. Here is what I've been thinking: 1.) Lets assume that the VMS / 9RMS author is at least a fairly intelligent and educated person. 2.) Then, is it conceivable / likely / probable, that this person could draw a pentagonal spiral of his / her mysterious text centered on a void, featuring it in one of the panels of the most dramatic portion of the entire manuscript, without ever once consciously realizing that it suggests: Pentateuch ? I keep thinking: how could this guy not have realized that, even if he started out on it with some other idea in mind. There is of course in the Villalpandus maps the pentagonal structure in David's palace, plus some other stuff we found that were consonant with Dana's panel. Berj ******************************* Subject RE: VMs: RE: VMs: Re:VMs: Pairs of nearby Castles, Karlstein, Cartographics, & fantasy vs reality Sent Date 09-12-2008 11:23:49 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan wrote Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:15:59 +0200: " the book is in textual form (no pictures) at http://citanka.cz/tocp1250.en/harant/toc.html That is contrary to Googlebook version, this one can get translated into English by Google translator which is pretty good - of course you have to access each chapter by its link first. " Very good - I'll give it a go. I am first interested in what Harant writes about the labyrinth of Kandia / Candia / Krete / Crete. It seems to me worthwhile to consider parts of the Voynich from the perspective of labyrinth or maze, both macroscopically as for example the nine rosettes, and microscopically: for instance in the socalled "Pisces" panel (f70r or f70v2) the upper half of the inner-circle perimeter has designs that give me the impression that the VMS artist may have been thinking of labyrinths and mazes. Krystof Harant is still I think an under-utilized resource in Voynich studies. I had never heard of him until you brought him into the picture. Blinking his Jerusalem picture against that of Villalpandus turned out to be an excellent exercise. In addition to Pentateuch script, and towers in holes, I got better insights into "from-back-then" illustrations of Utopias to compare with the nine rosettes illustration. " I think rosettes are the most revealing part of the VM. " Yes exactly: I've always said that the nine rosettes are the dramatic climax of the entire VMS, and are the first logical item in any concise description of MS 408. Which is why it is so puzzling that Baresch, and even Marci, in the information they provide about their manuscripts, are completely silent about it. From Baresch writing to Kircher we can even get the strong impression he has Coptic-like script before him - very unlike the Voynich script. The only tentative explanation I can think of for this puzzle is that both Baresch and Marci were totally overwhelmed by the mysterious script, over and above all other features of their book(s), in particular the nine rosettes. So we have the legendary Baresch-Prague manuscript, the legendary Marci-Prague manuscript, and the real Voynich manuscript, and we hope to discover that they really are the same, but the indisputable linking still eludes us. And, what if it turns out that the "last letter of Marci" was written on late 19th century, or early 20th c. paper? What then? I do not believe that the VMS is a fake in any sense of the word: it is a serious effort by a highly complex person. Incidentally, I have never been clear about whether there is a solid consenus on the "M." in M. Georgius Baresch - is it Magister (Professor), or possibly an abbreviated name like: Michael? Wasn't Jeff Haley a while back searching a Michael Baresch? - I may be mis-remembering. Berj ************************************ Subject RE: VMs: RE: VMs: Re:VMs: Pairs of nearby Castles, Karlstein, Cartographics, & fantasy vs reality Sent Date 09-12-2008 9:33:11 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Rene Zandbergen wrote Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:29:22 -0700: " Baresch received his 'Magister's degree from the Clementinum, so it is reasonable that the M means Magister. That makes him "like" M.Sc. rather than professor. " Hello Rene Thanks for addressing that. I should explain that on a wild trajectory I have for quite some time imagined that "M" is important in some way in the VMS, for instance the "M" merlons on the castle-walls and other walls in the foldout. " To me, it is not so obvious at all, that anyone around 1600 would think that the VMs was a cipher MS. Would it not be much more likely to appear like an unknown language? " Yes agreed, and in my own case it was quite a while from first VMS contact before I was seriously considering the writing as possibly cipher. It looks like writing, strange but normal writing, and there could be a bunch of good innocent reasons why it is in individually hand-printed letters, for instance: to project artistic beauty like calligrapy does. (But as you probably know, the f76r has convinced me of even stronger reasons for a careful hand-printing job.) But you said "anyone around 1600". Lets go forward a bit to Baresch's time, 1637 & 1639. He gives an excellent reason for not sending the entire book to Kircher: "dangerous journey". Indeed, the 30 years war is raging. Lets imagine that the "anyone" is a Protestant field commander or official or sympathizer, and Moretus is coming through. I really don't know what the diplomatic protocols were from moment to moment and place to place, but it would seem that with just samples of this script, which has resemblences to known alphabets and numerals in European usage, that if Moretus were shaken down and the VMS script inspected, that even a full reading of Baresch's accompanying, but separate explanatory letter to Kircher suggesting purely academic interest, could nevertheless make the official quite suspicious, and possibly land Moretus in real hot water. This is a real puzzle it seems to me: if Moretus is to transport the strange script-sample through dangerous territory, would it not be safer for him to insist that Baresch copy the script directly into the explanatory letter, and even better with annotations? Is there any possibility whatsoever, that for whatever conceivable reason, the Baresch letter was backdated, from a writing-time a few years later? As Jan can verify, we found no hint at all in Moretus's extant letters to Kircher, from not long after that time, that Baresch was a topic of conversation. Now, if you had the whole book to look through, during war-time, you could I think become suspicious also that there is some cryptography going on, IF, it happened that there was evidence of folios removed and others substituted: you could think: these guys are using a weird herbal as a cover-carrier for transporting cipher-text bearing folios back and forth. I tried Jan's suggestion to use google language tools to translate portions of Harant's chapter 8, those concerned with the labyrinth on Crete. The tanslation is a bit rough, and it is difficult to tell if Harant is just quoting the ancient writers like Pliny, or also verifying as an eyewitness the rock(s) with inscriptions that cannot be read - presumably Linear A? Berj **************************************** Subject RE: VMs: Paging Robert Firth Sent Date 09-22-2008 4:18:30 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To http://www.iss.nus.edu.sg/iss/staff_cv.jsp?type=9&rid=45&pid=45&cid=7&artid=51 > Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:07:53 +0200 > From: elvogt > To: vms-list@voynich.net > Subject: VMs: Paging Robert Firth > > > Hi all, > > Apparently, some time ago one Robert Firth was engaged in Voynich > research and put forth a few interesting theses. > > Does anybody know how to contact him? (Or might he even lurk on this list?) > > Any information welcome! > > Thanks all, > > Elmar > *************************** Subject RE: VMs: Santinus Revisited Sent Date 09-23-2008 10:41:09 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Dana Scott wrote Tue, 23 Sep 2008 01:32:27 -0600: " George Barschius and Santinus were considered close friends by Johannes Marcus Marci. We know what little can be gleaned concerning the identity of Baresch and even less about Marci’s friend Santinus. ..... " Hello Dana We also have available online from APUG correspondence between Martinus Santinus and Kircher. APUG 557, 30r and 30v appear to be carefully scripted copies, by the same hand, recording communications to Kircher, by Santinus (30r) 14 OCT 1645, Prague, and Joannes Gans (30v) 3 FEB 1645, Prague. From an intial glance at the Latin it looks like the Santinus concerns chemical mysteries, and the Gans concerns steganography: http://archimede.imss.fi.it/kircher/557/large/030r.jpg http://archimede.imss.fi.it/kircher/557/large/030v.jpg Berj ****************************************** Subject RE: VMs: RE: Ducats Sent Date 10-10-2008 5:25:48 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Dennis Stallings wrote Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:29:10 -0400: " ..... At least we can understand the numbers we've heard in earlier discussions better! " Hello Dennis You know I've been wondering about those "numbers", the ones in "Marci's" letter. Is it really the number 600, as in six times one-hundred, or could that group stand as a symbol for something else? There is after all quite a difference between the "6" of the ducatos and the two or three 6's in the date. The ducatos "600", if I was told that it was definitely not a number, and asked to guess what it was, my first thought would be: "alchemical". So in other words: " ..... and he presented the bearer who brought him the book alchemical ducats. " Just another wild thought this afternoon. Also as I recall there are a couple of abbreviations in Capelli that incorporate as superscript a "600" quite similar to the ducatos "600". Berj ****************************************** VMs: Invisible Ink Voynich script, or just image artifacts? From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian Sent: Mon 10/13/08 9:11 PM Reply-to: vms-list@voynich.net To: vms-list@voynich.net For all who are interested, I have some new data: Journal of Voynich Studies communication #221 (Vol. II): J.VS: Image artifacts, or obliterated Voynich-similar script? http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm It is long, but is divided into managable sections as follows: I. THE VOYNICH HISTORICAL BLACK HOLE: THE PROBLEM OF MISSING VOYNICH SCRIPT IN KIRCHER's PAPERS II. HYPOTHETICAL INVISIBLE-INK SECRET COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM USED BY KIRCHER ET AL III. PREPARATIONS FOR INVESTIGATING OBLITERATED PATTERNS IN VOYNICH STUDIES DOCUMENTS; THE DOIT INSTRUMENT; CHECKS ON OPTICAL ILLUSIONS IV. SELECTED LETTERS OF MARCI TO KIRCHER FOR STUDY OF POSSIBLE INVISIBLE INK WRITING V. BARESCH'S 1639 LETTER TO KIRCHER: Does it show traces of obliterated Voynich script? VI. SELECTED MORETUS LETTERS TO KIRCHER: Do we have complete Voynich words? VII. LETTERS OF DOBRZENSKY AND KINNER TO KIRCHER VIII. EXAMINING SOME OTHER DOCUMENTS FOR OBLITERATION TRACES IX. COMMENTS: THE INSTITUTIONAL JSS Berj / KI3U ********************************************************************** Subject RE: VMs: Genetic Algorithm Voynich decipher update Sent Date 10-17-2008 3:56:34 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Julian Bunn wrote Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:56:04 -0700: " The Genetic Algorithm (GA) approach I've been adopting is based on the theory that there is an nGram conversion between the text in the VM and the plaintext. ....... In other words, my cautiously held opinion is that the VM text is not a simple nGram mapping from Latin, English, German, French, Spanish (or PinYin). " Well that's good useful work, and summarized plainly and clearly so as to be easy to understand. Berj / KI3U ************************** RE: VMs: Baresch From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian Sent: Sat 10/18/08 12:06 PM Reply-to: vms-list@voynich.net To: vms-list@voynich.net Jeff Haley wrote Sat, 18 Oct 2008 16:11:37 +0100: " .... Jan Brozek's name was latinized as Brocius. Keplers assistant, Jabob Bartsch's name was Latinized Bartschius. Bartsch has been mentioned on the list before in connection with the VMs but was discounted. These connections may warrant further investigation. .... " Hi Jeff Your Barsch-Baresch angle has always seemed interesting to me. In J.VS comm. #221 I mentioned only in passing the "Barsch : Petit" in Marci's 19 March 1649 letter to A.K., APUG 557 118r. Other than to speculate it means Barsch / Baresch the Younger, I've had no time to carefully look at that Latin. It appears among a list of names in the letter. I don't know if it is anything significant or even old hat. Berj ******************* Subject RE: VMs: RE: Genetic Algorithm Voynich decipher update (long/lat) Sent Date 10-19-2008 4:48:12 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To David Suter wrote Sun, 19 Oct 2008 10:56:16 -0400: " Of course, if one accepts the possibility we are looking at cartography, the appearance of a field of similar symbol sequences might comport with longitude/latitude over a small enough area..... " Which reminds me David, have you had a chance to study this map in Kircher's papers, APUG 561 99v : http://archimede.imss.fi.it/kircher/561/large/099v.jpg Now, in this context of your VMS cartographic idea, aside from it reminding us a bit of pictures like VMS f22r, f5v, and f17v, this map has a bunch of those little house-like symbols, with variations. Following your idea, suppose those house-symbols were replaced with Voynich "words" like EVA-daiin and its variations: we'd get, as I understand it, an example from the set of your implications. Quite interesting. Berj ******************************* Subject RE: VMs: Updating Domain Server Plan Sent Date 10-20-2008 10:39:33 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Dana Scott wrote Sun, 19 Oct 2008 21:48:53 -0700: " It appears that the current web server plan for www.voynich.net has not been updated for some time. I am updating the plan with the same Domain Provider (OLM) which will increase the website space from 600MB to 300GB. The current website space is almost depleted. I have FTPed the files from the current server to the newly assigned server. Once the setup is verified by Domain Provider Support the change over will be made, possibly as soon as tomorrow, Monday. After the switch has been completed, I will notify the list that is has been completed. Please let me know if you encounter any problems relating to the vms-list. Thank you for your understanding and patience. " I think you are doing great Dana. Thanks for pulling this heavy load. Berj ************************* Subject VMs: Single-vowel text Sent Date 10-30-2008 7:21:43 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To A book titled "Eunoia" by Canadian author Christian Bok concerns single-vowel text. The BBC article provides examples, which may be enough to do some analytical comparisons with shorter blocks of Voynich text: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7697000/7697762.stm In any case, it is quite interesting. Berj / KI3U ********************************************** Subject RE: VMs: Single-vowel text Sent Date 10-31-2008 5:27:18 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To David Suter wrote Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:01:07 -0400: " As we probably have discussed before, the name of the Deity was in some place to be uttered as a string of the primary vowels: "AEIOU" which may perhaps then have modeled "JEHOVAH"; it would seem that such a locution must be very, very old.... " Hi David. Yes I recall JEHOVA vowel discussions. Interestingly, in the Armenian language "yes" is basically voiced similarly to "AEIOU" and delivers all the vowels, depending on the speaker, and to be precise, also the listener. This single-vowel text material is a bit different, a nice idea worth some comparative analysis. " BTW, the question of Kircher's map- for there is no doubt that it is one- is still interesting. The pointy shapes of course may be a play on his name, or, since we know he was interested in hieroglyphs, may represent the form for Egyptian "to give" (as I recall). " The play on his name - what a clever observation! I hadn't thought of that. Berj ******************************* Subject RE: VMs: Single-vowel text Sent Date 11-01-2008 9:59:54 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Dennis Stallings wrote Sat, 1 Nov 2008 00:34:04 -0400: " This sort of thing is called a univocalic; ..... " Hello Dennis Thanks for the interesting context info. But what I find most interesting from the "Eunoia" reference is this: " Mr Bok believes his book proves that each vowel has its own personality, ..... " An intriguing idea I think, and I wonder if it might lead to some interesting thoughts on the VMS text. I have often thought in terms of some of the VMS characters, especially GC-g / EVA-p as possessing something like a personality, in the sense that that letter, once you are in the familiar habit of writing it, tends to "influence" how you handle it, as if it demanded some sort of extra consideration, something like an elitist among the more pedestrian glyphs. Something like that. The map from the Kircher APUG, 561 99v, is here: http://archimede.imss.fi.it/kircher/561/large/099v.jpg David and I recently briefly commented here on this map serving as a simple example for showing how one of his cartographic ideas might work, specifically the idea that VMS words be viewed as cartographic indicators. To see the idea, I suggested replacing in the APUG map the little house-like symbols with the VMS "daiin" etc. Also David picked up on that this house-symbol is in tune with Kircher's beloved hieroglyphs. So perhaps to Kircher it had a "personality", a cartographic one. Berj ***************************************************** VMs: Toward tower-in-a-hole images collection From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian Sent: Fri 11/21/08 8:58 PM To: vms-list@voynich.net In Madurai there is a temple to the Hindu-mythology Princess Meenakshi. Here is a picture of the temple: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Temple_de_M%C3%AEn%C3%A2ksh%C3%AE01.jpg It seems worth including in any collection for studies of the VMS rosettes-folio "tower-in-a-hole". Berj / KI3U ********************************** RE: VMs: daiin daiin daiin (WAS: "Nagging Sense" in "The Six Unsolved Ciphers") From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian Sent: Fri 11/21/08 9:48 PM To: vms-list@voynich.net John Reynolds wrote Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:17:02 -0500: " Or centimeter centimeter centimeter = cubic centimeter (cc). Or thousand thousand thousand = billion (U.S.) or milliard (British). " hah hah hah = That's funny! Berj ********************** RE: VMs: Toward tower-in-a-hole images collection From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian Sent: Fri 11/21/08 10:08 PM To: vms-list@voynich.net John Reynolds wrote Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:24:14 -0500: " Here is a traditional poem to the Goddess Meenakshi: Shiva wanders through the courtyard of space destroying your work again and again, and then comes before you dancing. You never get angry. Every day, you just pick up the vessels. " Wirklich! Sehr interessant. Es hoehrt sich so an als ob da jemand in der langen Vergangenheit im Unterbewusstsein den Voynich Kampf geahnt hat. Berj ******************************* RE: VMs: Toward tower-in-a-hole images collection From: Berj N. Ensanian Sent: 11-21-08 23:17 To: vms-list (vms-list@voynich.net) Howdy Dennis. You wrote Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:27:39 -0500: " Why in German? I don't speak German and Google gives something like "Really! Very interesting. It seems as though someone in the distant past subconsciously guessed the Voynich question." The simple and undramatic truth is that I happened to be thinking in German at the moment I read John's post, and I just let my reply follow accordingly, knowing already that John commands German probably even better than I do. Should I flatter myself with: gee, I didn't realize anyone else would care what I said :-) The google translation is off a bit. I intended to convey: Really! Very interesting. It sounds as if someone in the distant past subconsciously anticipated the Voynich struggle. So here we are trying to crack the world's most mysterious script, and a little German won't kill us. And we got some info on google's translating performance to boot - seems to need a few more neural nodes, or that new synaptic simulations counter-approach being tried by IBM et al. Further, there must be posts, say technical ones, that mystify some list folks. Seriously, I believe the polymathic-lingual resonance, once in a while, helps keeps the mental wheels rolling in attacks on this polymathic super-challenge. I wouldn't mind at all if you plugged in some French here and there. " Perhaps the VMs was one that floated. " Amazing, isn't it?, how one little picture similarity with a VMS picture element can snowball into further interesting VMS-connectable thoughts. This whole game always seems like a progressing epic poem to me. Berj ********************************************** Subject RE: VMs: The Number 17 Sent Date 11-30-2008 5:20:04 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To GC wrote Sun, 30 Nov 2008 09:55:36 -0700: " I have a few ideas of my own on this number, but I'd like to entertain any ideas, no matter how wild, concerning the number 17. I'm most interested in anything that would relate this number to astrology, astronomy or divination, planetary movements or orbits, etc. Still, anybody have any wild ideas about this number? " Wild eh? Goody! We can have some fun. Well, lets see: after a little brush-up, which includes Capelli's numbers chapter, on the question: Just what is a "standard" form for Roman numerals in location X during time Y in script Z ? we see that it wouldn't be so hard at all, especially first thing in the morning, to cobble together a representation of the number 17 that looks just like ye olde Voynich scribble GC-am, a.k.a. EVA-aiin. Berj / KI3U ************************************ Subject RE: VMs: The Number 17 Sent Date 11-30-2008 6:44:19 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To " .... He said that 17 was an unlucky number and that he learned this in his childhood, the early 1900's. .... " Well, perhaps someone long ago had a Roman numerals representation of seventeen that struck others as resembling a demonic symbol or something. Berj ******************************* Subject RE: VMs: The Number 17 Sent Date 11-30-2008 8:48:52 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To r Blayne and Dana. In more recent times seventeen also figures in some Twilight Zone episodes. I suppose every number has its archetypal tracks, and those of 17 seem, so far anyway, to be on the negative side - maybe that's one datum of use to GC in all this seventeening. Myself I've always liked the number, but then I never met a number I didn't like :-) Berj ************** Subject Re: VMs: Number Theory Sent Date 12-01-2008 11:10:54 AM From Berj Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Greg Stachowski wrote Mon, 1 Dec 2008 15:10:29 +0100 (CET): " So 29, 30 and 59 appearing in folios containing the sun, moon and stars is highly interesting. " Hi Greg. Yes, it would seem to reinforce Robert Teague's longheld principle that the Voynich astro folios contain, and may be mined for precision astronomical data of some kind or another. Berj ************************* Subject RE: VMs: The Number 17 Sent Date 12-02-2008 6:55:13 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jeff Haley wrote 12-02-2008 8:23:55 AM: " And 17 alphabets in the cipher. " Hi Jeff. There is at least one little peculiar relation between the number 17 and Dr. Strong's sequence. For what it's worth lets have a quick look, if for no other reason than to once more bring a little attention to one of the more interesting VMS students of bygone days ( Leonell C. Strong ). Now, Dr. Strong's famous, and otherwise mysterious Voynich-related, sequence of 12 integers, presumably to be taken as cyclic: 1.} 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 7, 5, 3, 1, 4, 7, 4, we already know is not commonly generated. [1] Leaving the generating of the sequence itself aside, but assuming along with him that Strong's sequence has something to do with Voynich text mathematics, and therefore the number 17, we do a little exploring, and unexpectedly quickly find a case where 17 stands out. Lets do it and see: We form the squares of Strong's sequence (or series depending on viewpoint), Strong^2 : 2.} 1, 9, 25, 49, 81, 49, 25, 9, 1, 16, 49, 16, Next we alternate their polarities: 3.} 1, -9, 25, -49, 81, -49, 25, -9, 1, -16, 49, -16, And finally, number by number, obtain the cumulative sums of 3.} : 4.} 1 - 9 = -8 -8 + 25 = 17 17 - 49 = -32 -32 + 81 = 49 49 - 49 = 0 0 + 25 = 25 25 - 9 = 16 16 + 1 = 17 17 - 16 = 1 1 + 49 = 50 50 - 16 = 34 We see that in the series of the cumulative sums, the number 17 is the only prime number, it is the only number that appears more than once, it appears twice, and the final sum is twice 17. The relations are also polarity-symmetric: 5.} -1, 9, -25, 49, -81, 49, -25, 9, -1, 16, -49, 16, -1 + 9 = 8 8 - 25 = -17 -17 + 49 = 32 32 - 81 = -49 -49 + 49 = 0 0 - 25 = -25 -25 + 9 = -16 -16 - 1 = -17 -17 + 16 = -1 -1 - 49 = -50 -50 + 16 = -34 Probably then there are more interesting relations of 17 embedded within Strong's sequence; perhaps one of them in some direct or indirect way led Strong to identify his sequence as Voynich-text significant. Is this "wild" enough for GC? I don't know, but I suppose we could ask 'em ;-) Berj [1] Journal of Voynich Studies communication #89 (24 SEP 2007, Vol. I): J.VS: Generating Strong's 1-3-5-7-9-7-5-3-1-4-7-4 with Christine de Pizan's anagram mathematics; by Berj / KI3U. http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolI2007.htm **************************************************** Subject RE: VMs: The Number 17 Sent Date 12-02-2008 10:36:47 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To GC wrote Tue, 2 Dec 2008 17:57:21 -0700: " Yes Berj, that's definitely wild enough for me, and closer to the topic as well. The significance of the number 17 in the Voynich cannot be understated, and my quest for the source is no joke by any means. Everything else is connected to medical astronomical/astrological mathematics and its associated geometry, everything but the 17. " Hi Glen. Well as you know I'm a great admirer of Dr. Strong and his particular attacks on the VMS problems, and, that thanks mostly to you for making available his papers. Although presently I do not see sufficient convincing evidence to accept his identification of Askham as the VMS author, that matters not: Strong is ever inspiring. The thing is that I see Voynich studies as polymathic far beyond just definitively determining WHO wrote the VMS, and WHY did they write it. Suppose we get the answers, beyond doubt, to those two questions tomorrow morning. There remain a whole bunch of related extremely interesting mysteries. Certainly our dear Miss Nill is an entire suite of interesting mysteries all by herself. But I think an especially curious mathematical mystery is how Strong came up with that sequence of his - what led him to it? What did he see in the VMS text that made him come up with that uncommon set of numbers? Whether he is right or wrong about the Voynich-significance of his sequence, it is of great intellectual worthiness to find out just how he came to it, especially with the limited resources he had to work with, and under bitterly frustrating circumstances - it is no credit to those who played their part in making him withdraw from further VMS publishing. We can't forget that along with Newbold and his copper chemistry discovery, Strong with his contraceptive discovery makes up the pair of early Voynich students, who actually produced something of permanent value with their Voynich work, knowledge that will remain in chemical and medical annals forever, regardless of the reputations of those two great thinkers elsewhere in foggy Voynichland. We are studying the work of the VMS author, and once identified, we will study him / her. But we, at least some of us, are also studying Leonell C. Strong. Because he is one of the great ones in this story. And he, and Newbold, will continue to be studied for as long as there are Voynich studies. Berj *************************** Subject RE: VMs: The Number 17 Sent Date 12-03-2008 2:59:23 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To GC wrote 12-03-2008 1:36:20 AM: " ..... means that even you haven't taken Strong seriously - ..... " Well lets be precise about it Glen: I've clearly demonstrated that I take Dr. Strong very seriously as a great thinker. That does not automatically mean that I follow his conclusions everywhere everytime, for instance in VMS details. Furthermore I cannot assume that were he still with us today, that he would retain unmodified his original views on the VMS. Again I say that what matters to me is inspiration from great minds: they don't have to be right all, or even most of the time, to be inspiring. As I wrote in J.VS comm. #232: " The serious student has the opportunity to observe and study fine thinkers struggling through mistakes that are far more interesting than the best correct efforts of ordinaries, ..... " [1] I am not thereby automatically implying that, say in the case of Dr. Strong, that he is necessarily mistaken. Rather, the operative principle for me is that some thinkers are far more interesting than most, regardless of whether in the end they turn out to be right or wrong. If Strong turns out to be entirely or essentially correct then in my view he becomes even greater, but he is already great no matter how it goes from where he left it. You wrote: " Strong came up with his sequence because it worked - it worked based on his initial cribbing, ..... Before this process of cribbing, Strong went to great lengths to determine the language, and finally settled on English, ..... making educated guesses as to the meaning of a word, ..... It's a "best guess" scenario armed with the glyphs that represent two words. ..... and finally produce some semblance of language from the results. ..... spelling problems. ..... " Yes, well and good, and, neutrally, a matter for debate regarding the level of precision in each step along the way. Now, Strong, privately, comes up with a set of 12 numbers, to be taken as cyclic from what his notes suggest, and he also publishes, but without details, the assertion that portions of the VMS are coded in a "double reverse system of arithmetic progressions of a multiple alphabet". Taking Strong's twelve-numbers sequence as representing his "double reverse system of arithmetic progressions of a multiple alphabet", there is there a mathematical problem in its own right independent of anything VMS. On investigating the mathematical details, at least to some extent, I found that Strong's sequence is quite uncommon, but however that there exists a remarkable coincidence: Strong's sequence is part of a family of sequences that can be generated from algorithms, algorithms that can well be described, at least metaphorically, as a "double reverse system of arithmetic progressions", algorithms that are precisely of the same family of algorithms that rule the anagrams constructed by France's first lady of letters, Christine de Pizan (born ~ 1364)! Wow! I think. How be it so? Is it not clear that this is polymathically quite interesting regardless of whether or not Dr. Strong is correct in identifying his sequence as a key feature of the construction of the Voynich text? One wants to know, with precision, how Strong came to write down on one of his otherwise blank worksheets, in one continuous series: a zero followed by two cycles of his sequence, followed by the first nine terms of the sequence but with its presumed numeral "9" oddly written like a cursive capital "E", and this line of numbers above a crude sketch of a pair of concentric codewheels with a few glyphs, not Voynich, but Latin alphabet glyphs. There is no date on that worksheet, but it seems to be a type of paper he was using in February 1945. Certainly in March 1945, on dated worksheets we can see him noting his sequence in his analysis of the VMS text. What came first - the chicken or the egg? If he had the idea for that specific sequence before he began using it to attack the VMS text, then how did he get the idea for it? Now, lets say that Strong is right about it all, and the spelling problems are eventually resolved. Then in that case the new question arises: how is it that the VMS author chose an algorithm for his text that belongs to the same algorithm family that rules Christine's anagrams? We already know from a few preliminary simple checks that some of her anagram-algorithm-family's anagramming can transform some short Voynich text sequences into other Voynich text sequences. Berj [1] Journal of Voynich Studies communication #232 (17 NOV 2008, Vol. II): J.VS: The Voynich Manuscript: A Teacher's resource for the education of school children; by Berj / KI3U. http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm **************************************************** Subject RE: VMs: The Number 17 Sent Date 12-04-2008 11:00:52 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Arqy0plex wrote Thu, 4 Dec 2008 00:02:52 -0500: " Wheels can be bulky and cramped for filling in information when trying to solve a shifting polyalphabetic cipher (such as those generated using a Porta cipher wheel), ..... " Strong's sketch of the wheel underneath his sequence series contains 5 letters along the perimeter of the inner disk, and five letters on the outer disk, the two sets aligned, like this (outer first): A B C D L A B C D E where the outer "L" may be a letter not Latin-alphabet "L" but something from another alphabet, and the "D on the inner wheel could be an "O". Additionally there is off a little to right of the wheel an "A". Depending on the sheme, many combinations are possible, AA, AB, BA, ABCD, BCDL, ABCDBCDL, BCDLABCD, AE, EA, and so on. Then there is the off-wheel "A", perhaps acting as a wildcard, or instruction to do something special when "A" is absent as in "BCDL", or something. Now suppose that the scheme has it so that 4 clockwise turn-clicks of the inner disk have the lower A undeneath the upper L. If the numbers in Strong's sequence are involved with clicks, then click 5 needs a rule for what to do. Lets say the rule is to reverse. Then the alignment for 5 clicks becomes the lower A underneath the upper D. The highest number in Strong's sequence is 9. It would require two reversals, a "double reverse". And the lower A would wind up underneath the upper B, if I've done it right. This worksheet of Strong's seems to be among a set of sheets that starts with " Harvard Library 2/20/45 ". The sheets contain what look like background research, and we see Causaubon, Dee, Robert Hooke, Greek translations, and other stuff. Less than two weeks later we see him using the sequence to attack the VMS text. Berj ******************************* Subject RE: VMs: RE: VMs: Relationship of Baresch to Horczicky Sent Date 12-05-2008 6:51:57 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan Hurych wrote Fri, 5 Dec 2008 23:59:06 +0100: " On the other hand, he apparently had extensive library which was inherited by Marci and then by Marci's his son Jan - and there is no trace of it today, I pressume. " Hello Jan Is there any indication anywhere that Wilfrid Voynich tried to find Marci's books? It would seem that Wilfrid would have had good reason to. Berj ********************** Subject RE: VMs: RE: VMs: Relationship of Baresch to Horczicky Sent Date 12-06-2008 10:47:13 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan Hurych wrote Sat, 6 Dec 2008 06:24:30 -0800: " Voynich was investigating many things in Bohemia, however the record of his inquiries should be kept in Beinecke. I know that he was mostly getting negative answers from Prague, not that the officials would not be cooperative, there was very few traces. Just to realize how messy the stuation is, we have to consider this: ....... While librarians of all private, government and county libratries have good will and enough skill, in general, looking for originals is still difficult. Of course, the books inherited by family members are almost impossible to trace, too. " r Jan. A messy situation indeed. What I was thinking is that Wilfrid, being the first highly knowledgable person to arrive on the VMS scene, might have picked up important information we still don't know of, and perhaps he had some idea of how and where to search for items surviving from Marci's library. Wilfrid at some point knew about Baresch, but didn't tell. Publicly he directed everyone's attention backward from Marci toward Roger Bacon, the track prominently crossing Rudolf II's court. We have noted that it is odd that Wilfrid alleges that he at first neglected the 1665/66 letter of Marci that Wilfrid says was attached to the VMS when he found it. Maybe there were other items "attached" to the total VMS package that Wilfrid obtained that he was still "neglecting" when he died. I think Wilfrid Voynich was an extraordinarily intelligent man - it is difficult for me to believe that concerning the history of his manuscript he was only searching backward from Marci, and not also forward, especially since in general, searching forward there is also the possibility of finding an item that originated from the backward time: say finding a Marci-family-library item that originally came from Baresch's library, and said Baresch item, say an illustrated alchemy manuscript, bearing a note or two in Baresch's hand comparing some VMS glyphs with alchemical symbols in the alchemy book. It seems to me something like this would have at least crossed Wilfrid's mind. He was legendary in his own lifetime for finding manuscript treasures. So perhaps here and there among his scattered papers, including Beinecke, there are indications of him searching for something, which may appear unrelated to the VMS, but actually reflects Wilfrid searching forward from Marci's time, searching on a hunch that only he, Wilfrid, knew the significance of. This is basically a thought within the general proposition that Wilfrid knew more about the VMS than he was able, or willing, to give out before he died. Berj ********************************************* Subject RE: VMs: RE: VMs: Relationship of Baresch to Horczicky Sent Date 12-06-2008 4:17:32 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan Hurych wrote Sat, 6 Dec 2008 11:39:27 -0800: " ... also, there is something Voynich diud not mention either: in his alt letter, he wrote he was sending to Kircher Baresch's notes with the VM. They were never found (maybe by Voynich, but he did not consider to mention them) but it seems funny Kircher would keep Marci's letter but not the notes, which should have told him about the VM more than Maric's letter, especially as the cracking of the VM is concerned. Also, the notes might have contained even some short VM history, considering Baresch knew that all that would be lost when he would die. " Jan, this gets directly to one of the things I've been wondering about. It seems that Marci would have himself received notes of one kind or another from Baresch, concerning Baresch's Prague ms, over many years, all the way to receiving the ms itself which he then sent to Kircher not too long before Marci died. Marci had gotten Baresch's library, and it is certainly conceivable that in some of Baresch's books he (Baresch) made notes concerning his unflagging toil on the ms. Therefore it seems quite possible that Marci kept, inadvertently in the form of little annotations, some Baresch Prague ms notes, simply because Marci kept Baresch's books in his (Marci's) library - as far as we know Marci did not transfer his library to Kircher. So, what happens to carefully collected libraries after their compiler dies? A famous example is Benjamin Franklin: I'd have to refresh myself on the details, but if memory serves correctly, he made no provisions at all in his Will for his more or less incomparable library of 6000 volumes, and as a single collection they broke apart, the volumes variously dispersing. Now then, to Marci's library after his death, which might well have contained within the Baresch books, some Baresch notes on the Prague ms. The story seems to be that Marci's son inherited the library, and then further we don't the fate of the books. Where do books go as the years roll by and decendants not directly interested in certain books, dispose of them in one way or another? Marci's library I would imagine would have had many volumes on science, philosophy, and of course: medicine. Well, we do know that Wilfrid Voynich was something of a whiz in finding old medical manuscripts. This is from Dr. Archibald Malloch (McGill U.), the Librarian of the New York Academy of Medicine, eulogizing Wilfrid at the Thirty-third annual meeting of the Medical Library Association, 25-27 JUN 1930, at McGill: " Of course his interest was not merely in medical books, but those who find pleasure and profit in medical history and bibliography owe much to him for his discoveries of points relating to editions of Vesalius, or of anatomical books which contain plates after those of Vesalius. He once said that scarcely a year passed in which he did not find a further item of Vesaliana, such as a case history by him or a book dedicated to him. " Then as we know Malloch goes on to comment about Wilfrid's profound and seemingly "intuitive" knowledge of medieval mss, the VMS and Newbold etc. etc. It seems well attested then that Wilfrid was well into navigating the world of ancient medical manuscripts. This causes me to wonder if there is a connection here with Wilfrid's never saying anything about Baresch: that Wilfrid was, in addition to his normal antiquarian activities, on a search for manuscripts that had once passed through Marci's hands, and perhaps even Baresch's, a search taking place in a logical area: ancient medical books. Might there then be any VMS clues, things Wilfrid may have known but didn't tell, deducable from Wilfrid's medical-manuscripts activities? Berj ************************** Subject RE: VMs: RE: VMs: Relationship of Baresch to Horczicky Sent Date 12-07-2008 3:09:26 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan Hurych wrote Sun, 7 Dec 2008 08:36:17 -0800: " Yes, it is hard to believe, unless the letter was glued under some paper to the inside of teh VM cover. If letter was there but visible, it was the only provenance he had and antiquarians would NEVER neglect that. I guess he saw and read the letter even BEFORE he bought the VM, ..... " Yes Jan, it seems truly hard to believe that Wilfrid would not immediately, first thing, take a good look at a letter, attached to the ms, a letter bearing a 17th century date. Let us suppose the reasonable, that Wilfrid quickly looked at the letter, and spotted in it the "Rogerium Bacconem Anglum". Suppose now that Wilfrid wanted to pretend to the world that he, Wilfrid, all on his own, recognized Roger Bacon as the VMS author - which is just what he did do. So he puts out the story that at first he didn't pay attention to Marci's letter, but later when he did read it, he found that the letter supported his Roger Bacon conclusions. The trouble with this scenario is that it is not really believable - it smacks of a crude ploy - we are the evidence for that because to this day we are seriously doubting that Wilfrid ignored the letter before, or at least along with, his initial examination of the book itself while coming to: Aha! This is Roger Bacon. So then, what could be the reason why Wilfrid, a very sharp guy, would go with such a dubious scenario, when with this scenario he is risking the undermining of his credibility, at least a little? Is it possible that he was risking a little white-liar labeling in return for diverting attention away from something much more significant? Like what? Well, how did it come to be that we know about Georgius Baresch in the first place? As it went, ultimately we know about Baresch because Wilfrid knew about Baresch. Wilfrid did not tell, but forty some years after he died, around sixty years after Wilfrid first announced the VMS, John Edward Fletcher mentioned Baresch in connection with Marci-Kircher correspondence, and a few years later Robert S. Brumbaugh discovered that Wilfrid once had privately obtained information from the Bohemian archives, they guessing that Marci probably got the VMS from Barschius. And Brumbaugh told that to the world. And from then on Baresch moved to center stage. It can of course be argued that eventually Baresch would have surfaced in VMS studies anyway, via attention on Marci, but for decades Baresch was not in VMS studies, as best I know. Wilfrid had to some extent downplayed Marci, by implying that Marci's letter was not needed to conclude: Roger Bacon. So let me try to collect my main thought here about all this longwinded stuff: Wilfrid gives some odd indications concerning just how he began his involvement with the VMS. It seems reasonable to me that he knew things he witheld. Especially puzzling is his known silence on Baresch, because I don't see how Baresch would severely, if at all, hurt Wilfrid's aim to place the VMS in Rudolf's court (where Bacon would be good coin), unless he thought that Baresch would cause problems (but what problems?) for the Tepenec / Horczicky scenario - it doesn't seem to hurt the current standard VMS history, and the subject-line of this thread shows an excellent hypothetical connection to explore. Therefore, it seems reasonable to me to consider as a possibility that Wilfrid not only witheld information, but that when he first obtained the VMS, it was a "VMS package", a package that included information still unknown to us. And that perhaps Wilfrid's antiquarian activities, in particular with ancient medical texts, may provide clues to what more Wilfrid knew about the VMS. And finally: Is it possible that Wilfrid Voynich had, and witheld, information that contradicted the Bohemian archives Barschius guess? Berj ************************************************* Subject RE: VMs: RE: VMs: Relationship of Baresch to Horczicky Sent Date 12-08-2008 2:52:25 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan Hurych wrote 12-08-2008 9:44:22 AM: " Let's summarize all info about Baresch so far - ..... So apparently knowing about Baresch, he did have a reasons to avoid mentioning him. One fo those may be he was alredy stuck to his theoretical chain: Bacon - Dee - Rudolph - Horczicky and was not interested what happened afterwards (true, it did not matter too much for the provenance and the search for the author). Still, by separating Marci's letter from the VM, he could not prove it was originally in it (any other witnesses, please?) so his discovery of hidden Horczicky's name in the VM came just in time. Had he known that Baresch's letter to Kircher existed, it would provide the additional provenance he needed. The question why he was strangely silent about Barsch is still open. It would certainly do no harm to mention his name. Or would it? There were some indications he searched for the former owner in Prague, but only via correspondence and apparently with no additional results. " Jan, it seems to me that, given Wilfrid was building a provenance chain that included John Dee, and given Dee's involvement with alchemist Edward Kelley, that it would help, rather than harm the provenance chain, for Wilfrid to include mention of alchemist Baresch. Presumably Wilfrid, if he did not know of Baresch's 1639 letter in the APUG, he still knew from contact with the Bohemian archive, or else he could deduce, that Baresch spent time in the alchemical metropolis of Prague, so important to Wilfrid's provenance chain with its Rudolph II court there. Again, why exclude alchemist Baresch? It seems logical to assume that Wilfrid remained silent about Baresch because Baresch was either irrelevant, or harmful to the VMS provenance. Of course it is possible that what Wilfrid might consider "harmful" we might consider trivial today. Perhaps Wilfrid did not want the Roger Bacon scientific ms too closely associated with Kelley by way of alchemy. But since Baresch has been on central stage in VMS history theory since the 1970's, he has most definitely not been taken as irrelevant by VMS students since then. The most powerful reason for remaining silent about Baresch that Wilfrid Voynich could possibly have would be that Wilfrid knew, and witheld, that Baresch was definitely NOT involved with the VMS. Exploring this idea, how could it fit in with the rest of the story? There are some possibilities, even including scenarios involving Baresch's rather plastic name, Mr. Georgius Beth-Aleph-Resch as I once commented in reaction to your noting the name's plausible Jewish character. Lets try speculating from the idea, while trying to keep intact as much of the current standard theoretical history of the VMS as we can: Wilfrid comes into possession of manuscripts and information: 1.) The VMS 2.) Marci's 1665/66 letter. 3.) Information that a Baresch-Prague manuscript existed. 4.) Information that a Marci-Prague manuscript existed. 5.) Information that the equation: Baresch-Prague ms = Marci-Prague ms is possible. 6.) Information that the Baresch-Prague ms cannot be the VMS. What to do?, when the aim is to equate: VMS = Roger Bacon scientific cipher manuscript. The harmful problems are of course items 5.) and especially 6.). The solution is to keep silent about Baresch - keep him completely out of VMS proceedings, by making the DECISION that Baresch is "irrelevant". It works, because basically it is his OPINION that Baresch is irrelevant, an opinion which Wilfrid can keep private. From his point of view he is not lying about anything, because despite knowing 6.) he does not possess concrete evidence that the equation in 5.) is definitely true. So he utilizes only 1.) and 2.) and 4.). He also downplays 4.) somewhat so as to divert attention away from the historical Baresch-Marci connection. And then the big attention grabber: he chemically operates on VMS f1r, and having every reason to, he "discovers" that he can "read" the name of Rudolf-courtier "Tepenece" in the resulting mess at the bottom of f1r. He is still not lying: like those after him who he has convinced to read Tepenece on f1r, at times including me, he more than willingly allows himself to read Tepenec there. And with that Wilfrid has what he wants: the VMS in Rudolf's court, where Roger Bacon's works are highly regarded, and where one of the world's best Bacon ms hunters, John Dee, is known to visit. The above is an attempt at a plausible explanation for: WHY IS VOYNICH SILENT ABOUT BARESCH? We note that in this scenario Wilfrid hypothetically possesses information that the Baresch-Prague ms cannot be the VMS. BUT - what if that information was in reality inaccurate, was false? The scenario would then both have an explanation for Wilfrid's silence on Baresch, and also still preserve the current standard VMS history theory. You wrote: " So the question is: does the box in Beinecke contain all that Voynich had or some more documentation is missing? Three people had opportunity to separate it before it become publicly available: Voynich, his wife Ethel or Miss Nill. But if they did, why? " I think it is a good bet that the Beinecke and other V-M-S-iana collections do not have at least a few CRITICAL items that did exist, but were super-secured by WMV et al. We have that weird story from Ethel and Miss Nill changing the VMS find from an Austrian castle to the Villa Mondragone, showing if not credibility problems, then certainly the witholding of critical information. We have the missing VMS folios, and when we see the cutouts of them in the SID images, some of them look like they could have been cut yesterday - there is even list-discussion somewhere back about the super-sharp knife that must have been used. So, extremely careful cutting, but very sloppy f1r chemical accident. My main aim here has been to advance the point that Voynich's silence about Baresch needs to be placed as much on VMS history center-stage as Baresch himself. It is a major incongruence in the whole story, and there must therefore be a major reason behind it. By focusing some attention in this direction we stand improved chances of figuring out the overall mystery, is what I am saying. It is classic Voynich smoke with every reason to believe that there is indeed some serious Voynich fire underneath it. Earlier this year Greg Stachowski opened up what I think could be terrific new ground to explore: he suggested investigating the friendship between Wilfrid Voynich and Fr. Achille Ratti, paleographer and mountaineer (once again an item reminiscent of Ethel's Gadfly novel), and Librarian of the Ambrosiana - until 1912!!, and then Vatican Library vice-prefect, who finally became the unique Pope, Pius XI. We know almost nothing about this friendship! But the VMS scenario possiblities are vast, are they not? Berj ******************************************* Subject RE: VMs: RE: VMs: Relationship of Baresch to Horczicky Sent Date 12-08-2008 7:09:04 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan Hurych wrote Mon, 8 Dec 2008 14:42:01 -0800: " ..... what if Voynich found out via Baresch connection that B. got the manuscript from somebody who could not possibly be connected with the chain Dee - Rudolph - Horczicky? That would of course be good reason not to mention him at all. The example is not difficult to find: say Baresch wrote somewhere he got manuscript personally while he was studying in Italy?). " r Jan. Depending on the details, that might still allow Wilfrid to deem Baresch as "irrelevant". " 4) His provenance strangely ends with Horczicky, then there is a gap -at least 44 years after Horczicky's death with soem obscure owner and then the VM appears in Marci's hands. Voynich knew there was a previous owner from Marci's letter but did not even hint he tried to locate him :-). " It is as if Wilfrid wanted everyone to look backward, preferably starting with Horczikcky / Tepenece, and find something, anything, in Rudolf's court that could be interpreted as the VMS or its record. " For above reason, his provenance is dubious. All in all, the record from whom Marci inherited the VM would not be even then difficult to find, since apparently such record was all that time in Prague. Curiouser and curiouser, said little Alice :-). " Was Alice friends with Fr. Achille Ratti ? :-) Berj ********************************************** Subject RE: VMs: RE: VMs: Relationship of Baresch to Horczicky Sent Date 12-09-2008 11:30:06 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan Hurych wrote Mon, 8 Dec 2008 20:33:58 -0800: " ..... But if B. wrote in his notes he got it in Italy, that was surely not the manuscript Mnishowsky claimed (as per Marci) that Dee brought to Rudolph. So V. would have to admit he was wrong or at least that there were apparently two manuscripts and the one Marci got from B. was not the one Dee sold to Rudolph. To keep this info under the lid would be ignoring the facts or even purposefull coverup. And yes, if V. did the search for the VM owners after Horczicky, he either did not get too far or dtopped rather soon. ..... " Interesting Jan. If I read you correctly, one possible scenario you are suggesting is that Wilfrid Voynich may have indeed been researching the provenance far and wide, as is of course logical, but the instant that he found the first hint that he was on a trail that might jeopordize his Dee-Rudolf scenario he dropped that trail like a hot potato and walked away so that he would not discover any crushing facts, and could continue with his favorite scenario "in good faith". Incidentally, in another branch of this thread, that is quite interesting what you are doing: analyzing the folds and seals of Marci's letters. Berj ************************** Subject RE: VMs: RE: VMs: Relationship of Baresch to Horczicky Sent Date 12-09-2008 4:46:10 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan Hurych wrote Tue, 9 Dec 2008 10:45:06 -0800: " 2) He found it was Baresch (probably) - he wrote to Prague so he could get the name. Is there any direct indication he knew the name? " r Jan. Well according to Brumbaugh in his 1978 book, an undated translation of a communication from the Prague archives to Voynich, tells Voynich that Marci probably inherited the ms from George Barschius, an alchemist, since "Marci inherited Barschius' alchemical library." This is a piece of paper among definitely-Voynich papers at the Beinecke. If I recall, there is a guess by someone that the paper dates from around 1921. I suppose we might conjecture that it was Miss Nill who was actually handling this (she was associated with Wilfrid Voynich at least as early as 1919), and that she just didn't get around to showing Wilfrid the translation. Or something like that. But how realistic is that? Not at all I'd say. There is a lot to go through with all the scattered papers of Wilfrid et al. For example, Rene has a lot of notes from his examination of the Beinecke papers, available in the list archive, and Dana's extensive notes from his examinations are available as images on his website. Berj **************************** Subject RE: VMs: RE: VMs: Relationship of Baresch to Horczicky Sent Date 12-10-2008 5:48:51 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan Hurych wrote 12-10-2008 1:06:30 PM: " This silence seemed to work rather well - after all, it took me ten years before I discovered the importance of Marci's claim that he sent the notes with the VM :-) . I do not think anybody was ever asking Voynich about the notes and it seems nobody pays to it any attention even today. Of course Voynich had no obligation to mention those notes - if he ever had them - and no bill of sale of the VM was ever presented by him either. " Yes Jan, that is completely consistent with Voynich suppressing Baresch for a very powerful reason, a reason almost surely bearing directly on the truth about Beinecke MS 408. " Also, I believe Miss Nill was apparently on his little secret and maybe even some more. ..... Anybody saw her last will? " My take on the mysterious Miss Nill is that she is defined by admirable loyalty first to Wilfrid, and then to Ethel. To effect Ethel's orchestrating of VMS work after Wilfrid's death, Miss Nill once went so far as to basically insult Dr. Strong, by insinuating that he was confused between Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon. I have no knowledge of her Will, and as you know my graveyard investigations only turned up more Miss Nill mysteries. If we can discover a death certificate for her then maybe we can get further leads - maybe she died in a nursing home, and shortly before confided some things to a young attendant still living today, someone unaware of the historical significance. You wrote 12-10-2008 1:33:49 PM: " ..... Baresch's statement clearly conradicts Marci's letter that "He ( it is not clear who,j.h.) believed the author was Roger Bacon, the Englishman" So it was only Mnishowsky or Rudolph who believed it, but certainly not Baresch. " Roger Bacon is definitely a problem in that last Marci letter. Take Roger out of it, and the letter is quite consistent with Baresch's 1639 letter to Kircher, with of course the reinforced implication that the Baresch-Prague ms is not the VMS. I suppose it is possible that Wilfrid had some blank 17th century paper handy from his normal business, and maybe he had to cut it funny, so creating that odd tab that Dana pointed out, and Wilfrid being chemistry-trained he could make appropriate ink. So, hypothetically, he duplicated Marci's letter, BUT he added the Roger Bacon paragraph, which he made up to suit his scenario. That last Marci letter is well logically organized from initial greeting to final signature, WITHOUT the Roger Bacon paragraph. Actually, without that paragraph, it would seem Kircher would have no reason to be puzzled about anything in the letter, notably the ambiguous provenance. Berj ***************************** Subject RE: VMs: Relationship of Baresch to Horczicky Sent Date 12-12-2008 11:12:11 AM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Rene Zandbergen wrote Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:05:57 -0800: " in all this we have few facts, and need to fill in the gaps. That is speculation, but in some cases there are rather obvious choices, while in others we have nothing but speculation. ..... Marci writes that he is sending both the VMs and Baresch' notes. The letter and the VMs were found together. ..... " To be precise about it Rene, for me anyway it is still speculation that Marci sent the VMS / Beinecke MS 408, and Baresch's notes. Marci's letter says he is sending to Kircher a book, and some deciphering attempts on the book by its former un-named owner. Personally I am inclined to believe the un-named fellow is indeed Baresch, but I am far less optimistic that the book is the VMS. In contrast, it seems to be much closer to fact that Wilfrid Voynich obviously avoided revealing Baresch. Why? Jan is also making a major point when he points out that Wilfrid somehow escaped even being asked about Baresch's notes. Berj *************************************** Subject RE: VMs: RE: VMs: Relationship of Baresch to Horczicky Sent Date 12-15-2008 4:29:21 PM From Berj N. Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan, another thing occurred to me after looking again at Kinner's 5 January 1667 letter. It is not uncommon I think, at least in my own experience, that when the new year turns, in the first few days one can unintentionally write a date with the old year. So for instance, say I am writing a letter on January 5, 2009, and from force of habit I hastily write January 5, 2008. It has happened to me, and the document has gone out like that. So therefore it seems that when we are relying on personal documents that are dated very early in a year, it is good to check if all the information in the document is consistent with the indicated year in the date. For example, in Kinner's 5 JAN 1667 (indicated year) letter it appears that Fr. Schott's death is somewhat recent. So, if 1667 is correct, then Fr. Schott probably died in 1666. But if he actually died in 1665, then there may be a turn-of-the-year error with Kinner's letter. It's probably nothing, but I don't have Schott's date of death handy to verify. Berj ******************************** Subject RE: VMs: RE: VMs: Relationship of Baresch to Horczicky Sent Date 12-15-2008 9:02:37 PM From Berj KI3U Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan Hurych wrote Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:05:41 -0800: " Neither have I the day Schott died, ..... " According to Catholic Encyclopedia, Gaspar Schott died 12 or 22 MAY 1666: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13589a.htm So that seems to fit ok with Kinner's 5 JAN 1667 letter. The last Schott letter I can find in APUG is dated 21 AUG 1664. Berj ******************** Subject RE: VMs: RE: VMs: Relationship of Baresch to Horczicky Sent Date 12-15-2008 10:02:37 PM From Berj KI3U Ensanian Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan, I think you are correct in that there is something curiouser and curiouser that needs to be sorted out. I am not quite clear yet on it myself, but this is what I am seeing: 19 AUG 1665 or 1666 ambiguously dated (i.e. the last numeral in the year appears overwritten so as to make it ambiguous) letter of Marci to Kircher, THE last Marci letter, wherein he tells Kircher he is sending a mysterious book PLUS decipherment attempts by the former un-named owner. 4 JAN 1666 dated letter: Kinner, referring to Marci, tells Kircher (Philip Neal translation): " You will be the occasion of even greater joy if your craft and skill can uncover the interpretation of that arcane book which he gave up to you, and I would dearly like to know myself. " 12 or 22 MAY 1666 Father Schott dies. 5 JAN 1667 dated letter: Kinner says he has not written to Kircher since Schott died; he tells Kircher (Philip Neal translation): " And now for other matters. Dominus Marcus has lost his memory of nearly everything but still remembers you. He very officially bids me salute you in his name and he wishes to know through me whether you have yet proved an Oedipus in solving that book which he sent via the Father Provincial last year and what mysteries you think it may contain. It will be a great solace to him if you are able to satisfy his curiosity on this point. " Both Kinner letters are dated very early in January. If nothing else, a hypothetical forger of the Marci letter, who knew of the Kinner letters, would have good reason to make the year ambiguous - as previously noted concerning habits at the turn of the new year. But per your observations even much more curious is this: in Kinner's 1667 letter he implies that Marci sent the book "last year" - 1666, whereas in his letter a full year earlier Kinner is already querying Kircher about the arcane book that Marci has given up to Kircher. Indeed: curiouser and curiouser. Berj *************************************** Subject RE: VMs: Bartschius, Georgius Sent Date 12-17-2008 7:53:53 PM From Berj N. Ensanian KI3U Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Luis Velez wrote Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:18:31 -0500: " ..... Couldn't find it in the mail archive. " And I can't find it anywhere. I'm thinking there may be a confusion with Jacobus Bartschius (1600-1633), the astronomer assistant of Kepler: introduced to vms studies by Jeff Haley on this list if I remember right. Berj / KI3U ***************************** Subject RE: VMs: Bartschius, Georgius Sent Date 12-18-2008 12:40:14 PM From Berj N. Ensanian KI3U Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan Hurych wrote Thu, 18 Dec 2008 05:03:39 -0800: " ..... so they are two different persons. " r Jan. One thing interesting though from Rene's find of Luis's lead is the name variation: Partsch. Berj ****************************** Subject RE: VMs: Bartschius, Georgius Sent Date 12-17-2008 7:53:53 PM From Berj N. Ensanian KI3U Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Luis Velez wrote Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:18:31 -0500: " ..... Couldn't find it in the mail archive. " And I can't find it anywhere. I'm thinking there may be a confusion with Jacobus Bartschius (1600-1633), the astronomer assistant of Kepler: introduced to vms studies by Jeff Haley on this list if I remember right. Berj / KI3U Subject RE: VMs: Bartschius, Georgius Sent Date 12-18-2008 12:40:14 PM From Berj N. Ensanian KI3U Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Jan Hurych wrote Thu, 18 Dec 2008 05:03:39 -0800: " ..... so they are two different persons. " r Jan. One thing interesting though from Rene's find of Luis's lead is the name variation: Partsch. Berj ********************************** RE: VMs: Bartschius, Georgius? From: owner-vms-list@voynich.net on behalf of Berj N. Ensanian KI3U Sent: Fri 12/19/08 2:40 AM To: vms-list@voynich.net Jan Hurych wrote Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:08:35 -0800: " One crazy idea: could the name of the author be encoded in the VM? " Oh I look for that routinely Jan, as I imagine others do also. Here and there in the VMS there are indications that the author is intentionally making mutual-awareness contact with the reader of the book (across time of course). For example, the little creature of f25r that is commonly referred to as the "dragon", munching on a plant-leaf: it is making direct eye-contact with us, as if to convey: I SEE YOU - DO YOU SEE ME? DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM UP TO WITH THIS BOOK? I remain absolutely convinced that that is the author's self-portrait in f76r, masterfully concealed in what is a unique artform: handscript text-art. I think he had help with the book from a woman, perhaps his wife, ladyfriend, or daughter. I think she appears a couple or three times among the VMS ladies. Berj **************************** Subject RE: VMs: Bartschius, Georgius Sent Date 12-19-2008 2:14:57 PM From Berj N. Ensanian KI3U Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Dennis Stallings wrote 12-18-2008 11:37:47 PM: " I think he's looking at us out of the corner of his eye. " Hi Dennis. Yes indeed, as if the illustrator might thereby be suggesting a subtlety or stealth aspect of the awareness. I intended f25v of course, not f25r as I mistakenly printed in my reply to Jan. Of course the perceptions of artistic devices can change with apparent distance from an illustration. Beinecke gives the size of the VMS as 225 x 160 mm. We make an image of f25v that size, and place it before us, say 300 mm from our own eyes, and we get an impression. And that impression can change with different distances from the image, or say if we zoom in or out with the SID images. I'd say that impressions of facial expressions especially can change with apparent distance from a face. " Do you mean the highly stylized EVA

in the upper-left corner? " No, rather something completely different, that I have brought up here in this list forum, but have gone into in great detail in J.VS. I am referring to the hypothesis that many of the text blocks in the VMS exhibit a unique artform: hand scripted (in the VMS alphabet) text-art, akin to today's less complex ASCII art, less complex because the mosaic tiles making up the picture elements are print-type characters rather than indvidually hand-scripted characters as in the VMS. And that among these works the exhibit in the upper half of f76r is the VMS author / illustrator's masterpiece: his three-dimensional self-portrait, showing him holding up to his eyes a rectangular optical color-filter plate, which, per hypothesis, is needed to see steganographic effects in the VMS's pages. [1] " Can you identify specific instances? " Yes. The idea that some of the VMS "nymphs" are drawn as identifyable individuals, and repeated, is of course not new, but I am interested here in the idea that one specific one among them depicts a woman close to the VMS author, and who may have helped him with the manuscript's creation. First, let me re-state my opinion that the VMS illustrator was a highly skilled artist; so that when he appears to be drawing and painting crudely, as in many of the botanical pictures, his aim is not normal realism, but something else. As I've said, the very economically-sketched young lady being "chased" up in the upper right corner of f80r shows me that the artist has command of 3D perspective and anthropomorphic forms. Certainly the VMS artist is capable of great patience: we imagine the patience required to produce the fantastic image of the nine rosettes, the model for which originates in the artist's mind, rather than some scene before him that he can copy. Further, if we accept the hypothetical "The King of f37v" as an exhibit of master miniature illumination art steganographically embedded within crude low-level art, then we get an even greater scope of what the VMS illustrator was capable of. [2] That all said then, there is a basis for pondering that the VMS author-illustrator could easily, if desired, depict among the hundreds of VMS ladies / sisters a few in such a way, subtly perhaps, so as to make them special, make them stand out, perhaps as an indication he is depicting real women close to him. This is subjective of course. Some of the VMS women are drawn so as to suggest a creature barely in existence, as if a mere shadow of a creature barely conscious. For example in the f72r2 panel, lets have a look at the woman, directly above the blue-robed lady in the center who is exchanging marriage-vows with a young man, or whatever it is she is doing. Anyway, the female figure directly above her is rendered as a barely consciousness-capable being. And this comes not from any fading of the ink or paint. But then at the bottom of f82r we see a pair of VMS ladies, facing each other, and also rendered very economically, but projecting a much different impression. I've discussed them in connection with earrings worn by VMS ladies / sisters [3]. These two appear quite alive, as if perhaps modeled upon women familiar to the illustrator. Now finally to Voynich manuscript lady no. 1, by which I mean the VMS sister who most gives me the impression that she is modeled after a real person close to the VMS author. She seems to me to appear at least twice. We first see her in f78r, in the lower pool/ tub. She is the rightmost lady of the upper three in that pool. Contrast her with the two in front of her. And we see her again in the upper tub of f81r - she is the second one in from the right. She seems alert and intelligent, and in general a standout among the hundreds of VMS ladies, suggesting she depicts a real person, someone, if she were here with us today, who we could have a high-level discussion with on the topic: what is this manuscript all about? So, I think she was a real lady who was close to the VMS author. And, on the hypothesis that a woman's hand can at times be detected in the VMS, then I would pick her as the one being depicted in f78r and again in f81r. Berj [1] Navigation of references to all detailed information on the hypothetical text-art portrait of Voynich f76r is available here: Journal of Voynich Studies communication #163 (9 FEB 2008, Vol. II): J.VS: Re: The Voynich hypothetical f76r text-art portrait: how was it done? http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolII2008.htm [2] Navigation of references to all detailed information on the hypothetical Voynich "The King of f37v" is available here: Journal of Voynich Studies comm. #107 (22 OCT 2007, Vol. I): J.VS: The VMS f3v Deathmask, the f76r text-mosaic portrait, The King, Rudolf, and more; by Berj / KI3U. Journal of Voynich Studies comm. #108 (24 OCT 2007, Vol. I): J.VS: Faces: a major theme in the Voynich Manuscript, and VMS history considerations; by Berj / KI3U. http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolI2007.htm [3] Journal of Voynich Studies comm. #88 (21 SEP 2007, Vol. I): J.VS: VMS Ladies and earrings; by Berj / KI3U. http://www.geocities.com/rfamperes/JVSvolI2007.htm ************************************************************ Subject RE: VMs: seeking confirmation Sent Date 12-22-2008 1:34:23 AM From Berj N. Ensanian KI3U Reply-To vms-list@voynich.net To Joel Stevens wrote Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:41:34 -0500: " ..... If you recognize this image, could you also let me know if anyone has been down this path? " Hello Joel Coincidentally Jan Hurych and I have lately been studying similar patterns, only elsewhere on Earth. I have here only this to comment by way of opinion based on personal experience, for what it is worth: caution is needed because here and there google earth images appear to be edited, and distorted: I have walked right up to major features long out there in the world, and still there right now, yet on the google earth images, at well more than enough resolution with all else in the surroundings nicely visible, these major features do not exist. In some cases the editing is discernible, and from what I can tell, artifacts also seem to be added in some cases, so as to make the editing less conspicuous. It seems to be because of general security priorities. For our Voynich concerns then it means that an interesting pattern ought to be double-checked with independent sources, so as to make sure that what we think we see on google earth, is actually there. Berj ****************************