If you are in or near Toronto, you may be interested in this lecture I'll be giving at the University of Toronto Centre for Medieval Studies on Friday 26 September: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I'll be presenting new evidence for the original sequence of bifolia in the VM. I'm told the lecture will be streamed and recorded.

I have a new draft paper,

I don't think it's well written, but I think the findings are useful, especially on categories.

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At last Sunday's conference Tavie gave a brilliant yet entertaining presentation on the strange statistics of gallows. Among other things, she spokes of the rare preference of two of the gallows in the first line of the paragraphs. There's no explanation for this behavior in a linguistic system. Nor is there one for benched gallows, when we also see benches on both sides of the gallows.

Tavie didn't mention another very significant phenomenon: gallows that extend their arms, those strange stranddle gallows. What does this mean in a linguistic system? It's hard to believe it indicates something ornamental when we see the gallow with one leg and two loops resting on a [c] and other oddities.

I don't know if the linguistic mirage will last another hundred years, but what I am sure of is that one day it will be abandoned.

Hi everyone,

I am new to the forum but not new to the VM. I see everyvere some interesting stats but I wonder if there is a complete list of all vords in the VM and where they appeare. I can't find one and I think it would be helpfull. Especially to test the Naibbe cipher.

Best regards,
Bernd

Well, I've been keeping this mostly-quiet for a while, but I can now officially announce that, in collaboration with several brilliant colleagues, I have signed not one, but TWO publishing contracts for Voynich books!

1) "The Most Mysterious Book in the World: Unlocking the Secrets of the Voynich Manuscript" (Getty Press), with Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano (award-winning children's STEM author). This will be a young-adult book emphasizing the importance of evidence-based research and scientific methodologies.

2) "The Voynich Manuscript: Past, Present, Future" (ARC Humanities Press), a scholarly volume of latest-research essays with contributions from myself, co-editor You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and others.

Both should appear in late 2026 or early 2027.


In addition, Siloé, the publisher of the life-size facsimile, has a volume of background essays coming out soon (hopefully late 2025) with contributions from myself, Rene, Alain Touwade, and others. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

As mentioned a few days ago, I have seen one example where I feel that the scribes/copyists made a tell-tale mistake.

For this, let's look at the pharmaceutical section.
This consists of three sheets (bifolia), each with a single page to the left and a foldout page to the right:

f88+f89
f99+f102
f100+f101

Of these, the third: f100 + f101 appears incomplete, probably unfinished: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has no labels at all, and on f101v, the labels of the bottom row are missing.
On f100, the containers appear to have no labels.

The other two bifolios consistenly have one label for each container and one label for each plant fragment.
The container label may be written below it, on it (under the paint) or next to it.
But let's look at the top of f88r:

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This has five plant parts, and six words surrounding them. 
However, the leftmost word is the container label and should have been written near the container.

I can only conclude that the scribe was not aware of this.

I'm a new independent researcher. I have developed a working hypothesis regarding the "Nine-Rosette" page (Folio 85v,86r,86v) that I would like to share with you all for feedback and critical review.

My proposal is that Folio 85v,86r,86v is a work of symbolic political cartography depicting the key strategic assets of the Duchy of Milan under the Visconti family, dating to the manuscript's radiocarbon period (c. 1404-1438).
Rather than focusing on the text, this hypothesis treats the folio as a cultural artifact whose symbolic language is a product of its specific time and place. The power of this model lies not in any single identification, but in the convergence of multiple, interlocking pieces of evidence that point to the Visconti state.
Here are the core identifications proposed in the paper:

• Systemic Framework: The connecting pathways are interpreted as the Navigli canal system, the advanced hydro-engineering network that was the foundation of the Duchy's economic and military power.
  
  
• Strong Correlate (R2): The rosette with a castle displaying swallow-tailed merlons is identified as a major Visconti fortress (like the Castello in Pavia), a clear architectural symbol of their Ghibelline allegiance.
  
  
• Strong Correlate (R3): The "two-tiered" city is identified as Bergamo, matching its distinct topography of a fortified "Città Alta" and a lower "Città Bassa."
  
  
• Central Rosette (R1): The largest, central rosette represents the capital, Milan, with the central structure symbolizing the dynasty-defining Duomo, which was a massive construction site at the time.
  
  
• The "Volcano" (R9): Often called a volcano, this is re-interpreted as Brescia on its hill, with the "eruption" being smoke from its vital arms-manufacturing forges (Lombardy having no volcanoes).
  
  
• Other Correlates: The paper also proposes historically grounded identifications for Como and Castel Baradello (a paired strategic asset) and the Abbey of Chiaravalle (a nod to the Cistercian's hydraulic expertise).
  
  

If you think you can translate the Voynichese text, here are some suggestions that I would find most interesting to read. If you want a botanical page, try costmary.

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Hello everyone and thank you to everyone involved in the talks and organisation today. I would like to take this opportunity to start a topic on Leonhard Rauwolf, as I have some thoughts on his role. This is of course in reference to the research conducted by René Zandbergen (including the presentation today) and Stefan Guzy, who, in my opinion, have made a very convincing case for Widemann as the person who sold the manuscript to Rudolf. However, as a short tl, dr: I am quite skeptical of the theories about Rauwolf's role, and would not consider him a much more likely candidate for a previous owner than any other of Widemann's contacts.

Unfortunately, this opinion is not based on any archival material or other new findings. I hope to have managed to get my hands on most relevant publications including S. Guzy's elusive German-language article, although I could only read it at a library in a break while working on my actual project, so my apologies if there is something I misrepresent. Beyond that, my thoughts here are informed by my own studies on early modern provenance, book acquisitions, history of knowledge etc. which was a core element of my PhD thesis, in which somehow Rauwolf is mentioned exactly once.

The core question I started asking myself regarding the manuscript's history from Widemann to Kircher (which I will treat as a given here, since there is little point in discussing several aspects at once): When and why did knowledge about the previous owner(s) end? Obviously, Widemann himself must have known how he acquired the book. Mnišovský, Barschius and Marci must have had additional knowledge beyond the little that is mentioned in the letters to Kircher. The latter two may have only sent information that they thought would encourage Kircher to take an interest in the matter, but unless they knew the manuscript was a hoax, they probably did not misrepresent their information on purpose. So, why did they convey this exact information to Kircher? Let me structure my assumptions on the matter a bit:

1. It makes sense to not mention all the less relevant people such as Widemann, Geizkofler, Tepenec and whoever might have owned it after them. Kircher would not have known them and they provide little additional value for the understanding of the manuscript. Therefore, there is no insight to be gained from this omission.

2. 'Name-dropping' the emperors, including the price of sale, and Bacon is reasonable to draw Kircher's interest. Mentioning Mnišovský, who, by the way he is described, Marci did Kircher not expect to be familiar with, seems like an attempt of Marci to describe the Bacon-theory without fully owning it. This all is logical as well in my opinion.

3. Regarding Rauwolf the question is: If the Barschius-Marci generation of Voynich scholars was aware of his involvement, would they have mentioned him? I think the answer is almost certainly yes. After Kircher's "success" with hieroglyphs, which Barschius even mentions, it would be strange to omit such a direct connection to an "oriental" origin and rather mention it indirectly like Barschius did. Instead, Marci offers a geographically opposing explanation in the follow-up letter, which I would consider unlikely if they had any solid information on Rauwolf or even just a vague record of the manuscript's "oriental" origin. From my research, Rauwolf was also relatively well known in the 17th and 18th century and respected as a overseas traveller with a scholarly background, which would have been another reason to convey this information to Kircher.

4. It also seems unlikely to me that such potentially relevant information as a previous ownership by Rauwolf was lost in the less than 40 years since the sale to Rudolf, while the exact price was still discussed. Perhaps Rudolf could have only mentioned the value to highlight the generosity of his gift to Tepenec, if that was how the book was transferred between them - there are possible explanations for why Rauwolf was forgotten in that time frame. However, because there seems to have been a significant level of discussion about the cipher manuscript in Prague in the 1600s and several people involved in the transactions, it is hard to imagine a particular point at which the information was lost, be it through death or the deliberate decision to not provide it to others.

5. The most likely candidate to have obscured the manuscript's provenance before Widemann is actually Widemann himself. First, he had the opportunity, in contrast to the later scenarios where a larger number of people had knowledge of relevant events. Second, he had a financial motive: The value of a manuscript depended significantly on its previous owners or author(s), meaning Widemann had an incentive to tell the most enticing story to his potential customer. I think Rauwolf might have been a reasonably convincing (=valuabe) background story, so there would probably be no need to make up another explanation, such as possibly one involving Kelly and England that might have led Mnišovský to his theory. The only somewhat realistic scenario I can come up with where Widemann omits the connection to Rauwolf is one where he obtained the manuscript in a not exactly clean way, i. e. he simply kept it after the Rauwolfs' death and sold it as soon as no heirs claimed it, this would fit the timeline reasonably well. But this is pure conjecture and certainly less plausible than a number of theories of pre-Widemann ownership that do not involve Rauwolf at all.

In summary, while what I write here is just a mix of assumptions, probabilities and context clues, in my opinion, nothing really more convincing is available in favor of Rauwolf's ownership. Therefore, it seems more likely that Wiedemann had acquired the manuscript from someone else than that Rauwolf's involvement and the implications in terms of its origin were forgotten by the time Barschius and Marci wrote their letters.

That's it, I hope posts like this one are at least as welcome here as another brilliant theory on which language the cipher is derived from... I would of course gladly discuss this further and plan to be around here a bit in the future, focusing primarily on provenance and history.