Could the 11 sections in the concentric circles around the moon in folio 86v be related to the 11 Moon phases in the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.?

Here are links to two articles dedicated to said 11 Moon phases, see
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Just published a blogpost about codicological evidence in the VMS: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I'd like to test a few potential ciphers to check whether one of them could be it. If Voynichese is a cipher and the manuscript was created in Europe in the 15th century, which languages and which flavo(u)rs of them would be the most likely for the plaintext? Let's assume there is nothing exotic and unexpected about the language, and it's one of the normal languages that manuscripts were written in.

According to ChatGPT, the list of the most popular written languages in the XV century Europe is: Latin, Middle French, Middle High German, Middle English, Various Italian dialects (doesn't sound very helpful), Castilian, Middle Dutch.

Is this list reasonable? What about Greek and Arabic, were they used in parts of Europe at that time?

Could someone suggest a good resource to find samples of each of these language variants, preferably both transcribed and as a photo? I think a short text of about 50 words for each of the languages will be enough, I'm just interested in basic statistics.

As far as I understand, it's quite possible that common abbreviations could have been encoded separately. I've checked the cipher tables from Francesco Tranchedino's list to get some understanding of which abbreviations might get their own codes. (I'm not suggesting these ciphers have anything to do with the Voynich Manuscript, I'm just trying to understand the way the plaintext would be tokenized before encoding.)

It appears that scribal abbreviations were used in the plaintext part of the cipher tables. E.g., I have trouble understanding the parts I circled below, what do these abbreviations stand for? Is there some good list of abbreviations? As far as I have seen, mostly people are referred to Cappelli for the scribal abbreviations, but there are probably hundreds of abbreviations in Cappelli's book, I'm mostly looking for a list of 5-10 most popular ones, like -9 for -us.

   

Ears seem (deliberately?) missing from the human heads painted in the cipher manuscript. 

Perhaps the artist was deaf from birth to ignore such an essential part of the human anatomy.

Although wearing a coif to cover the ears and the hair was still a common practice at the beginning of the 15th century, there are no coif depictions in the manuscript.

The VM was written on 14th century velum, and was picked up by King Philip a couple of hundred years later. If it were a working document for someone who could actually understand it, it became unusable when they died. So, where would someone salt away a useless manuscript for two hundred years only to have someone come along and acquire it because they know their boss, the king likes this kind of stuff. I would think it would have gone into a library. Would a commoner, or anybody but clergy or royalty be afforded the luxury of having something archived for a century or two? Who would even want it? Were encrypted books a thing back then?  Puzzles without a key get thrown in the fire.

Forum members have shared numerous illustrations suggesting that the VM was largely copied from other and better works. In the absence of artistic ability, the writer uses nymphs as some sort of all purpose symbolism. If manuscript was for personal use, the rough and ready finish would be understandable, the perfection in the script is just that, too perfect. 

I guess what this is getting to is that it seems common that old books can be traced right back to their source. In fact isnt the authorship of a book a status symbol. Then we have the VM, no author, no key, no meaningful link between sections. I think if it was a recipe book, where are the numbers? Sigh!

At least three symbols seem to be written on the back side of the head (occiput) and the right shoulder of a person in Folio 86v.
Has this been noticed and discussed before?

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Here is an example from folio 84r, a bathing naked nymph with three hands?
Note that the third outstretched hand holds an orb.

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Where did you get that hat?

Originally part of another tread, the introduction of the Virgo of Prague [Post #18] started a new line of investigation.

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The hat on the Virgo of Prague is detailed and seems fairly distinctive <what do I l know about hats?>, and the VMs representation is potentially similar but ambiguous as usual. Further investigation apparently stalled out for lack of additional evidence.

Imagine my surprise to find a similar hat represented twice, particularly given the source. 

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In both illustrations, a lady on the right wears a decorated, blue hat much like the hat on the Virgo of Prague.

The source is a 1460 French remake of Epitre d'Orthea. The dedicatory illustration shows Philip the Good and his three sons.

There is a person in folio 86v holding something that looks like a Globus cruciger (the orb and cross) in one hand.

In the other hand, said person holds something that looks like a flagellation birch rod (a bundle of leafless twigs bound together).

The person looks like a female with exposed breasts.

Since the Globus cruciger is a symbol of authority, perhaps it is worth investigating a possible link to 15th century royalty.

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Many researchers find VM parallels in analysis of old manuscripts. I believe the zodiacal maps in the VM have closely fashioned similar maps and charts in other readable books or manuscripts. It makes me think that if some researcher found a chart of which the VM is similar, could that be how we establish a key to break the VM code? 
Assuming No matter what the squiggle in Voinichese is, if the number of letter positions matches the numbe of letters  in Gemeni, Tauris, etc, then we have the start of a deciphering.

Part of my thinking is that the VM is a derivative document that copied work that has been produced before by others. The scribe took the easy route and copied over the chart and the language, but encrypted it. For me, the only value of the encryption would be to protect any alchemical recipes. Of course, making potions from non existant plants is tricky