Although it has always been "known" that the scribe(s) used mechanical aids to draw the circles in the VM, I thought I'd spend some time with a pair of compasses to prove this, at least on the Rosettes page.



They have all been drawn with a pair of compasses. In some cases the centre of the circle is a prominent feature of the imagery; in other cases it is not. In some cases the circle is properly drawn, in others the scribe has messed it up a bit.
I go through the circles one by one, from top left to bottom right. In all cases I have measured the inner circle of the line of text. 





Top left: This is 9.3 cm wide. There is no real centre to the image.





Top middle: This is 9.3cm wide. The centre of the image is the centre of the circle.





Top right: This is 9.3cm wide. The centre of the image is slightly off centre to the circle.





Middle left: This circle has been messed up. The scribe has hit the fold of the parchment and had to recentre his pair of compasses. The width is aprox 9.3cm, but if you look the top and bottom halves of the circle do not quite match at the fold. The centre of the circle is aprox the centre of the image.





Middle right: The same thing has happened here - the circle is not perfect where the compasses have hit the fold and been recentered. The image is 9.2 cm wide.





Bottom left: This circle is 9.5cm wide. The centre of the circle is not the centre of the image; instead it is below it:

   





Bottom middle: The circle is 9.5cm wide. The centre of the image corresponds with the centre of the circle.





Bottom right: This circle is 9.6cm. The centre of the image does not correspond with the centre of the circle:
   

The "clock" in the bottom left is mechanically drawn on the inside circle, rather badly. I imagine it was difficult to do such a small circle with the pair of compasses available to the scribe. The outer circle, however, appears to have been drawn by hand afterwards.

Observations:
- The problems experienced by the two circles of the middle row suggest that the parchment was folded before the imagery was inked, because the compasses have hit the fold and had to be realigned.

-The circles are all roughly the same sizes, suggesting that the scribe drew the circles in sequence and before inking in the details.

The first four are the same size; the middle right is the smallest.
The following two are the same size, with the final one being slightly bigger.

If this is correct, then it means there was an overall plan, and probably a template for this drawing.

- Sometimes the centre of the circle is a feature of the image - in other cases it is ignored.

q is a bit of weird character, because it almost always appears at the beginning of words, followed by o. But the cases where q isn’t followed by o are even more interesting, because they seem to follow strict rules, not random as you’d expect from mistakes or outliers. I decided to look at q’s occurrences to see what the rules might be. 


qo: 5230 instances 
qf: 1 instance, followed by o (q links to o, possibly like a bench)
qk: 19 instances, some might be errors, they’re followed by o (8), e (6) or c (3), often with the q extending to the k or the letter after
qp: 2 instances, both seem to be transcription mistakes 
qt: 3 instances, all probably errors
qe: 66 instances, q often connects to the top of the e similarly to h
qc: 23 instances, at least some are mistakes
   qch: 4 instances, all seem to be errors 
   qckh: 9
   qcph: 2 
   qcth: 8
Everything else is has no instances. 

From this we can make a few conclusions: q appears before o or e, sometimes with k or f in between, or before the benched gallows ckh, cth or cph. 

This implies to me a few things: q affixes itself to certain word initial sounds, likely vowels. So, word initial o, e and benched gallows are vowels, or at least they sometimes start with a vowel sound. Word initial y is never a vowel or at least does not start with a vowel sound. k might be silent in some cases. Benched gallows are different from ch, and are composites beginning with e. Any of these conclusions could be wrong, but they are the initial impressions I get from this. 

If it hasn’t already been done, a look into whether or not qe words have q-less equivalents might yield interesting results. 

I got all the numbers from voynichese.com

I just published a post I've been working on together with Cary for the last couple of months. It took a lot more involvement, research and late night writing sessions than usual, but we are happy with the result. We believe it opens up a new, coherent avenue of investigation into the manuscript's images.

If possible, please read it when you have some time to spare, since it turned out much longer than my usual posts (more like an article).

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Hi, everyone,

Claire Bowern and I will be online at the Beinecke discussing the VMS with curator Ray Clemens on Monday, July 12, at 4 PM Eastern. If you're interested, you can register here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

- Lisa

Just in case anyone might find it useful, here's a schematic I made a while back of all quires that contain Herbal A folios. Please feel free to correct any mistakes I might have made.

• The view is the top edge of the parchments head-on, stacked before folding and [their most recent] binding.
  
• For folios on the left side of the diagram, the recto side is toward the top of the page and the verso side toward the bottom. The reverse is true for the folios on the right.
  
• The dashed lines indicate bifolios currently bound in the same quire that are not Herbal A.
  
• Source for data: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
  

• 25 Herbal A bifolios. This includes the now missing first half of 12-13. Also, 87-90 is technically a trifolio with six pages instead of a bifolio's four. Conveniently, these two extra plant images are matched by the absence of any plant images on 58, giving a total count of:
  
• 100 Herbal A plant pages
  
• Q1~3 are homogeneously Herbal A
  
• Q4~8 are heterogeneously Herbal A, admixed exclusively with Herbal B
  

• The first 8 consecutive quires all contain Herbal A bifolios
  
  
• Only two Herbal A bifolios occur outside of the first 8 consecutive quires: the 87-90 trifolio in Q15, and 93-96 in Q17.
  
  
• With the omission of any single bifolio, all the rest of Herbal A would fit neatly into six quires of four bifolios each
  

Here are two papers about the Decoding of the Voynich Manuscript by Darius Lorek and Sebastian Lorek ( March 31,2021 and June 6,2021).

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I haven't quite understood the theory yet, but maybe the concept will be easier for others to grasp.

Names of the scribal sigla that were in use by medieval scribes are often referred to as glyphs, marks or
Tironian notes, which is a general term and does not refer to a specific symbol.

So there are for example: the breves (ĕ), acutes (ó), apices (u᷄), the thorn, the rotunda, ampersand, etc,



But what is the name referring to the curl that is used on the CH to become SH?

If there is no name, can we agree on a name for it?

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away - or more precisely, in 2015 on the Cipher Mysteries blog, Nick Pelling made a post about the quire numbers in the VMS and his observation that they have an unusual format has lived in my brain ever since.

This is the blog post: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Ever since I read that blog, whenever I browse through a manuscript I take a moment to scan for quire numbers in the hope that I might see a quire-counting system like it, and I have never found a good match. Nick has a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and at the time he suggested that there might be four different scribes who wrote or emended the quire numbers. I am not sure if I agree that 4 different people wrote or emended the quire numbers, but I agree that there is a lot of variation in both the numerals and the grammatical endings and it is worth keeping in mind that these variations exist.

As the quire numbers are believed to have been added after the VMS had been rearranged at least once, the quire numbers probably(?) represent the work of later owners or librarians rather than the work of the original scribes of the VMS, but I was hoping that we could use this thread to share similar quire numbering formats if we ever find any as it might help to identify some of the subsequent owners or users of the manuscript.

A nice little game with some not so easy puzzles. It also runs smoothly under Linux and is almost for free.

It has nothing to do with the VMS but it was fun.

Alchemy Mysteries: Prague Legends
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Here is an example of the more difficult puzzles (spoiler):

Heraldry clearly has significant relevance to several areas of VMs investigation. Obviously, the cosmic connection shows that a nebuly line indicates a cloud band, which can represent a cosmic boundary in medieval art. Medieval heraldry supplies the name and structure / definition of the nebuly line. Surely the image of the VMs cosmos tells us that this information is contained in that illustration. Heraldry expands the interpretation of the VMs drawing and the use of any other descriptive term for this line, meandering, wobbly, serpentine, etc., provides a connotation that leads in an erroneous direction. That is cultural information derived from medieval heraldry that was known to the VMs artist.

There are various heraldic shield patterns on the tubs of the outer ring of VMs Pisces.

Another heraldic representation is found on VMs White Aries. Though visually conflicted, there are two clear, ideological, heraldic elements: red hats and blue stripes. History reveals the singular situation of the Fieschi popes. The White Aries illustration clearly has a single figure in the inner circle with both attributes. Heraldry defines the attributes and it identifies historical persons. Heraldry is the pictorial language used in the VMs. What more does it tell us about purpose?

As a language, it needs to be read. It needs to be promoted, not ignored - included as a topic of research, not omitted.