APOD: The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript (2010 Jan 31)

[Erebus]

I vote for the hoax theory. This manuscript was produced at roughly the same time as the Shroud of Turin, Europe was awash in "relics" - pieces of the cross, bones of the saints, etc. - and fervent belief was the order of the day.
The complexity is proof of nothing. There are elaborate layers of symbols and mysterious text, drawings similar to alchemical and astrological writings of the day - everything that one would expect of an esoteric document of Secret Truth for which there was an enormous and lucrative market at the time. The more detailed and complex these things were was seen as evidence of authenticity and there were many willing to spend the months required to produce them as one sale could set the hoaxer up for a lifetime of leisure.
Being able to see patterns is one of the things that defines us as human - it is also the baseline of every con job that has ever been run.

[drhr]

It sure looks a lot like an older version of Gaelic to me.
How long have we had a 24 hour clock, and did we once have a 12 hour one? Note the number of titles (12) and the total of 24 rays coming from the middle. Three of them have 1 star, the rest have 2... baffling.
The 3 rings of text... looks like a particular piece of jewelery out of a certain story about Hobbits, hah!

[wdhardt07]

I recognize this as a rendition of a zodiac.
at the top of the drawing of the wheel are are 4 dots with vertical lines on both sides of the dots.
this looks to me to be the constellation orion, and the bars represent the milky way in which orion stands, between taurus and gemini. The depiction of a moon in the center relates to the 19 year lunar cycle and the last day and first day of the moon is illustrated. as to whether the wheel is drawn in clockwise rotation as the stars appear to us or in counter clockwise rotation depicting the true movement of the constellations over time is unclear.
little else is apparent but the shaded spokes radiating from the center suggest movement or motion ie direction of rotation may be indicated.
that is what it looks like to me

[neufer]

I vote for the hoax theory. This manuscript was produced at roughly the same time as the Shroud of Turin, Europe was awash in "relics" - pieces of the cross, bones of the saints, etc. - and fervent belief was the order of the day.

Assuming that the Voynich manuscript WAS produced at roughly the same time as the Shroud of Turin (i.e., ~ two centuries before Rudolf II purchased the manuscript) then exactly what sort of a hoax was being perpetrated

Researchers at the University of Arizona performed C14 dating on the Voynich manuscript and showed that the parchment on which the manuscript was written was made between 1404 and 1438, according to Walter Koehler.

The 13th and 14th century Radiocarbon 14 dating matched the first appearance of the Shroud of Turin in church history.

[Neal Brodsky]

The text appears to have been set down in a 15th century western European cursive script. The language itself has elements in common with medieval Germanic languages. It would be difficult and perhaps a bit bold to substantiate any further claims about the nature of this MS.

[Rose Marie Raccioppi]

As it reveals itself...

Known by soul in splendor sublime
The meaning of symbol, and word divine
Ever in query, ever in search be the heart
From these gifts of wonder I shan't depart
Stars by day stars by night
Twelve rays, sun, moon, in flight
The hours of day twenty four to treasure
Twelve months, a cycle in full measure
Across the heavens above earth and me
Time past, time present hold to mystery.

APOGEE Poet

[mfortsm]

For what it's worth. If you take out all the text if that is text and other distractions and look at the image it, to me , appears like the Sun and Moon together. Perhaps a 12 month calendar with 1/2 night and the other daytime. Perhaps a personal calendar. I took the image, inverted it and lowered the levels so the only thing left is what you see. Probably shouldn't consentrate too much on this because if I look at it a different way it could be a flower. Personally I like the space images better.
Mike

[jmbates]

Check out the nice screenshots from the Beineke Library: http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_cro ... &curpage=7

There seem to be many zodiacal images: pisces, libra, scorpio, gemini, aries, sagittarius . Look at the central images in many of the "astronomy" pages.

There is one image that shows a pretty good Pleiades, with Aldebaran nearby:
http://130.132.81.65/VOYNICHIMG/size4/D0034/1006196.jpg
(the image on far right. Look to the upper left of the moon.)

To its lower left is a close resemblance to Cancer or Leo Minor.

[Erebus]

neufer~
I guess fraud would be a more appropriate word. One has only to look at the billions being raked in today by the promoters of superstition and pseudo-science to imagine what could have sold at a time when anything was believable. The fact that it probably passed through many hands before reaching Rudolf II would have given it an extra degree of authenticity.
I have to admit a measure of admiration for the author, who was clever enough to create and cash in on something that could not be disproven, which is all too often all that is required for certain proof.

[neufer]

neufer~
I guess fraud would be a more appropriate word. One has only to look at the billions being raked in today by the promoters of superstition and pseudo-science to imagine what could have sold at a time when anything was believable. The fact that it probably passed through many hands before reaching Rudolf II would have given it an extra degree of authenticity.
I have to admit a measure of admiration for the author, who was clever enough to create and cash in on something that could not be disproven, which is all too often all that is required for certain proof.

Disproven as what?

[BillGorman]

It looks like a clock to me, 12 sections each divided by night and day hours. Possibly something to do with phases of the moon and the time of day it rises.

[Erebus]

Disproven to be an authentic and valuable work of arcane science or alchemy, of course. Like Nostradamus or the Dresden Codex - if you can't translate the imagery you can't prove they're meaningless pieces of imagination.

[scotts70bug]

Perhaps it's from Middle-earth. Did Tolkien ever comment on it?

[promethius]

the face in the center of the design appears to represent the sun due to the red rays emaninating from it.

the perspective drawing of a cyclinder appears to surround the face. this gives the drawing a three dimensional appearance.

adding to the three dimensional appearance is the ruffled collar. it consists of darkened sides of the ruffles, blue, apparently intended to appear as shadow.

the lighter portion of the ruffles contain small stars. the count of these proceeding clockwise from the top, starting at the leftmost single large star, is 9,7,9,12,8,11,11,8,9,8,10,12.
the associated count of the larger stars associated with the smaller clusters proceeding in the same fashion is 1,1,1,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2. the importance of the numbers i do not as yet understand.

the presence of three concentric rings of "words" round the design suggest the possibility of a codewheel.

in other sketches in the work, what appear to be poppy plants are shown. additionally, the sketch with the "elaborate plumbing" depicts naked women associated with what may be depictions of smoking opium pipes.

[HellCat]

Neufer wrote: by neufer » Sun Jan 31, 2010 10:44 pm
Disproven as what?

The function of a fraudulent product is exactly that - resistance to proof. And just enough 'truth' to make people believe.*

Look at today's homeopathic remedies - St. John's wort comes to mind. It's sufficient for the public to believe that it works, even without any rigorous (scientific) proof that it does. Belief, leveraged with hope, is great enough so that any possibility that it may work is enough. Harder yet, even if you prove to me that my remedy can't cure psoriasis, I can still believe that it cures my rash.

It seems very likely that the creator of this "art" intended to do exactly what it does today - invite curiosity and awe. It's also likely that it was then used to further whatever purpose the creator had: Increasing their stature at court, Extorting money from the king or soothsayer, or perhaps simply keeping someone (themselves?) alive while being imprisoned or tortured.

The fact that there are resemblances to Persian / Manchurian art is helpful, because it anchors the art within that context. The fun thing about science is that its true inspiration is nature, something that resists must human influences.

Steve Davidian

* By the way, Bernie Madoff's pyramid scheme also fits this definition. Look how many people he took to the cleaners!

[gregpast]

A minor start, but you note that every 2nd "spoke" has what appears 1 or 2 Suns in it - a total of 12 spokes with Suns in them. Maybe represents the 12 months of the year?? Greg Pasterfield.

[jhach281]

Flash!
It's a "WOW"

[meteor18]

I'm thinking the text is a type of invented occult writing like Enochian and the illustrations help explain what the writing says. My guess is the subject is para-normal featuring supernatural beings and how they interact with Earth. Perhaps it was a common practice of medieval astrologers to use secret alphabets so no one could know what they were saying unless they wanted them to.

[makc]

Once you have read _The Chymical Wedding_ and begin to think you might just understand why that crystal glass falls off the table at the end of the movie _2001_ then and only then might you begin to comprehend _The Voynich Manuscript_

ha ha wait wtf I dont get the joke

[neufer]

Once you have read _The Chymical Wedding_ and begin to think you might just understand why that crystal glass falls off the table at the end of the movie _2001_ then and only then might you begin to comprehend _The Voynich Manuscript_

ha ha wait wtf I dont get the joke

ha ha wait wtf there isnt any joke.

[jfetchko]

Oh my, thanks to the moderator for the pleasant diversion - it is cute to see the speculation run rampant.

keshlam: "Well alchemy is the root of chemistry"

And what is the root of chemistry?
Why of course, "Kemet", the name of Egypt in the time of the Old, Intermediate and New Kingdoms.
They just spelled it as KMT (which is also a great magazine and society about Egyptology, real science, not speculations)
Thanks to the Greeks, they derived "Egyptus" from their use of their own alphabet applied to KMT
Boy, those Greeks had a different word for everything
But the Greeks did admire the Egyptians for their knowledge of the "chemistry" and medicine of the time, having
been around so much longer than the Greek society.

Even the word "Sphinx" is a Greek mistranslation for what we call the Sphinx today.
We have no idea what the ancient Egyptians called the Sphinx in the Old Kingdom.
It was not until the New Kingdom that we even have a clue as to what the ancient Egyptians called the Sphinx.
Which is "Horus in the Horizon", I'll spare you the exact ancient Egyptian way of pronouncing or spelling that.
You can email me if your are interested - but it is found on the New Kingdom stelae in front of the "Sphinx" between his fore claws.

It does seem to be human nature to look at things in terms of that which we all ready understand (or think we do).

I appreciate the folks who keep APOD going, thank you.
Enjoy the temporary diversions too.
Now back to science (just speaking for myself).
APOD people, please keep doing the nice job, and thank you for putting this thread off on to its own board.

[makc]

there isnt any joke.

you know sometimes the entanglement of seemingly irrelevant things created in your mind is fascinating. this time it's not the case

For what it's worth. If you take out all the text if that is text and other distractions and look at the image it, to me , appears like the Sun and Moon together.

For what it's worth, the image from your post reminds me this.

[Social Media Artist]

I studied the chart and noticed some things which may help lead someone further with certain theories which may already exist. The 24 divisions correspond to the 24 cardinal directions, as in the Chinese system.

You'll notice that the sun seems just slightly tipped to the right. For instance, if you draw perpendicular lines to bisect the graph into four quadrants, in perfect symmetry, True North will be 7.5 degrees to the left of the first line of the 24 which divide the graph. This is exactly the same as the 24 directions of Fenshui, as noted http://www.proactive-qi.com/The24directions.html and
similar to the skew of magnetic north as seen at http://www.anthro.ucsd.edu/~jhaviland/P ... .Diags.pdf.

But I feel there is a connection to the 24 phases of chi as discussed http://www.proactive-qi.com/The24phaseofQi.html

A few other things that I think may mean something. I think the smaller face within the sun represents the moon. I also think the fan shape coming off the sun indicates a pin wheel and indicates wind. So the elements represented are sun, moon, stars and wind.

Each of the 24 lines seem to be exactly 15 degrees, so that each 90 degrees would represent 3 hours. Therefore the graph can be a clock, indicate cardinal directions, can serve to help for planting and harvest (calendar/almanac). There is also striking mathematics indicated in the design.

I'm interested in other theories and would enjoy the conversation.

I'm a novice and not an astronomer or scientist, but it seems to me this chart has heavy occult influences. And may have connections to the most ancient Chinese principles of chi (Qi), Fengshui, Pa Kua, five elements (Earth, Sun, Water, Wood, Metal), though the writing seems closer to Arabic or similar to reverse (mirror) writing of Leonardo.

[nickpelling2]

Taking any Voynich Manuscript image in blissful isolation is a wonderfully effective way of spawning a hundred femto-theories, each the marginal intersection between a thoroughly confusing artefact and a thoroughly confused pipe-dream. Hence, having page f67r1 as the APOD for the third time makes my heart sink: though it may (briefly) raise APOD's profile as the blog posts and retweets about it percolate through the infosphere, it does precisely jack-nothing for Voynich research, as we already have more than enough useless Voynich theories to be going on with. In fact, here's a link to the painfully long list I maintain: http://www.ciphermysteries.com/voynich-theories

Oh, and for all those who like to claim it as a late 16th century Rudolfine court hoax, (a) the vellum has recently been radiocarbon dated to 1404-1438 (at 95% confidence) [which rather makes a nonsense of a circa-1600 date], and (b) the current binding order (and in a few cases the binding stations) of many individual bifolios is demonstrably incorrect [from which it can be shown that much of the supposed lack of orderliness in the manuscript arises specifically from incorrect page order].

As a practical example, Voynich researcher John Grove carefully demonstrated several years ago that the wide bifolio on which the f67r1 "moon" APOD page appears has been rebound along a wrong fold: doing this separated the "moon" diagram from its twin circular "sun" diagram (which currently sits on page f68v1). Whereas f67r1's "moon" has a 12-way symmetry (12 astrological / calendrical months), f68v1's "sun" has an 8-way symmetry (8-way agricultural/pagan calendar). All of a sudden, what is just a load of rubbish when taken in isolation becomes rational and sensible when put back into its correct context.

Furthermore, when the overall order of the surrounding pages is reconstructed, you find that these two images appear inside a sequence of seven broadly similar pages, followed immediately by the Voynich Manuscript's zodiac pages. Given that the sun and moon were for millennia classified as two of classical astrology's seven "planets" (wanderers), the chances that these seven circular diagrams represent the seven planets must surely be pretty high.

OK, Voynich codicology lecture over, and the point to take home is this: that all looking at a Voynich page in isolation achieves is yet more netly noise - and if we are to make genuine progress, we have to join the dots together in a systematic and informed way rather than meditate furiously over a single dot.

More on the Voynich Manuscript's codicology here: http://www.ciphermysteries.com/the-voyn ... codicology

[neufer]

Taking any Voynich Manuscript image in blissful isolation is a wonderfully effective way of spawning a hundred femto-theories, each the marginal intersection between a thoroughly confusing artefact and a thoroughly confused pipe-dream. Hence, having page f67r1 as the APOD for the third time makes my heart sink: though it may (briefly) raise APOD's profile as the blog posts and retweets about it percolate through the infosphere, it does precisely jack-nothing for Voynich research, as we already have more than enough useless Voynich theories to be going on with. In fact, here's a link to the painfully long list I maintain: http://www.ciphermysteries.com/voynich-theories

OK, Voynich codicology lecture over, and the point to take home is this: that all looking at a Voynich page in isolation achieves is yet more netly noise - and if we are to make genuine progress, we have to join the dots together in a systematic and informed way rather than meditate furiously over a single dot. More on the Voynich Manuscript's codicology here: http://www.ciphermysteries.com/the-voyn ... codicology

Well, 100 replies & 7761 views is nothing to sneeze at

If the object was to make APOD readers even more eclectic
than they already are then I'd say that it was a success.

I've written two posts already today about people attempting to come up with answers to questions based upon inadequate information:

http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 23&t=18136
http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... =8&t=18134

You shouldn't dismiss the value of such efforts...
especially when the wrong conclusion is arrived at first.