Cipher Mysteries

If you combine the thoughts I posted yesterday (suggesting that the "o[r]aiiv" word in the top line of f67r1 might encipher "luna") with the "or oro ror" sequence on line #2 of f15v (which would appear to be a verbosely enciphered Roman numeral, probably "CCCC"), the two would superficially seem to be incompatible. How can the Voynichese "or"-pair encipher ...

Just a quick note on Voynich cipher cribs. Even though I've built up a fairly substantial set of (what I think are) reasonably pragmatic deductions about how Voynichese works, actually finding any way to use those to get at the rest has (perhaps unsurprisingly) proved difficult. To recap, I suspect that... "4o" steganographically codes for "lo" (and perhaps "la" as well, via some subtle letter formation ...

OK, moving straight into confessional mode, I feel more than a touch ashamed that I haven't reviewed Chris Harris' Mappamundi loooong before now. But... even though I've read it twice, I still don't really know what to say about it. Let me explain... Sticking to the knitting, it's a fairly trite starting point to note that it's an historical adventure, with ...

Self-professed Voynich skeptic Elmar Vogt has been fairly quiet of late: turns out that he has been preparing his own substantial analysis on his "Voynich Thoughts" website of the Voynich Manuscript's teasingly hard-to-read marginalia, (with Elias Schwerdtfeger's notes on the zodiac marginalia appended). Given that Voynich marginalia are pretty much my specialist subject, the question I'm sure you want ...

For years, numerous Voynich researchers have pored over the VMs' confusing images, hunting for any tiny clues that might possibly be hidden beneath the clumsily-applied paint. And yes, I admit that I've done probably more than my fair share of this kind of thing (Curse pp.96-102 stands as testament to this endeavour): so it's now interesting to hear that René ...

Art historians have long debated whether or not dissatisfied architect Antonio Averlino made the trip from Italy to Constantinople in 1465: one of the key pieces of evidence supporting the notion is the letter of recommendation written in Greek by Averlino's old friend Filelfo (the humanist writer and Hellenophile) and addressed to George Amirutzes (Mehmed II's personal tutor). This is one of those things ...

I remember when I first saw the "Roger Bacon Manuscript": Wilfrid Voynich brought it with him to Philadelphia for his lecture back in 1921 - my old friend Bill Newbold was there, taking in every word, nodding like the crazy-but-brilliant spiritualist and Antioch-obsessed nutter he was. So it just had to be Bacon behind it all, right? I sat at the ...

Here's something neat and slightly unexpected from long-time Voynich Manuscript researcher (and Voynich theory über-skeptic) Rene Zandbergen I think you'll probably appreciate. Arguably the least-discussed subject in the VMs is the set of tiny plant drawings in the two 'pharma' (pharmacological) sections, which somehow usually manage to fly beneath most researchers' radars. Yet it has been known for decades that a good number of these plant ...

Rene Zandbergen recently stumbled upon a circular drawing in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France's MS Coislin 338, and wondered whether it might be "a possible precedent for a Voynich astronomical illustration, where the original MS is Greek", just as for two other Greek manuscripts (Codex Taurinensis C VII 15 and MS Vat Gr. 1291) ...

Ethel Voynich's story (1864 - 1960) is quite fascinating: while the young Ethel ('Lily') Boole was studying music in Berlin, she became inspired by Stepniak's revolutionary writings. As a result, she became closely involved with Russian dissidents living in London, and in 1893 married the very charming Wilfrid Voynich. Voynich himself often travelled around as part of the ...