Thank you for your comments. I am especially interested in some of the eastern European languages in relation to the VMS, so I welcome your ideas.

“Besides av, aiv, aiiv, and aiiiv those glyphs can also be transcribed as ai, an, am, ain, aim, anw.”

Yes, agreed. When I write “av/aiv/aiiv” and I am not interpreting their meaning or translating, I am only mimicking the glyph-shapes so readers know which ones are being discussed. What they represent in symbolic or linguistic terms is a separate subject.

“I believe the minims should be read as Dr. Bax proposed, which makes it quite complicated.”

Just to keep the record straight, Stephen Bax’s paper regarding “daiin” was not original. He did not propose these ideas. What he did was summarize previous writings on the subject, and he did not consider context as much as I think he should have.

I find your post more interesting because you are looking at the “ain/aiin” patterns (which are not always prefaced with EVA-d) and I think that is a better way to approach the subject.

Barbara Curtis: “You know, I am leaning more and more towards Medieval Hebrew as a possible language if the key is ever found. I’ve seen your work on Latin so I hope that isn’t contrary to your own thinking. “

Thank you for your comments, Barbara.

My blogs are mostly about Latin scribal conventions, not the Latin language. The VMS glyph-shapes are consistent with Latin letters, ligatures, and abbreviations, with some of them (primarily the gallows characters) possibly based on Greek conventions of superposition.

So, your ideas are not contrary to my thinking. I consider the VMS glyph-shapes to be separate from the language. The language could be anything (including Latin, French, Italian, German, Spanish, English, Swedish, Czech, Arabic, Aramaic, Greek, Slavic, Ge’ez, Gujarati, Hebrew, or others. I currently have a number of languages on my list of possible candidates).

Just looked it up and it wasn’t the main symbol for Judaism then. It was much more associated with the Seal of Solomon, a main symbol for talismanic magic and alchemy. I saw it mentioned a lot in Picatrix. So, if it’s there, it fits my main theory, but not in terms of a possible language. Sorry for the tangent. I have so little internet time and my ideas spill out in a rush.

You know, I am leaning more and more towards Medieval Hebrew as a possible language if the key is ever found. I’ve seen your work on Latin so I hope that isn’t contrary to your own thinking. It’s not the presence but the absence of anything that might point towards Judaism that intrigues me. (And Hermetism really stresses that there are never any spaces, you must look or spirit or mind in them). The Rosette page emphasizes that philosophy by coloring the flower petals bright but leaving their centres pale even though, at least in a few, the centres have meaningful symbold.

At least there seem glosses of Christianity in this text. But I mean, why a 7 or 8 pointed star, much harder to draw, and so many of them, than 5 or 6 (I read somewhere that the Star of David could also be depicted as 5 pointed in this time period, it only became permanently 6 when 5 became associated with pentagrams). But if that Star of David is really at the centre of the rosette, I mean of the whole diagram, we might be looking for a Jewish Hermetist, possibly an alchemist, if the rarity of triangle shapes means anything too – they were used extensively in alchemy.

I will have to verify that info about the Star of David. But one of my main reasons for studying thd rosette is that I believe if we can get its symbolism down, and its order, we can transfer what we find to 57v, which is centered by a rosette as well, and finally be able to make something of that key. Given the importance of purposely faded out centers of things, at least for me, how significant might it be that the Star of David invisibly underlies the centre of the rosette cosmos, and if transferred to 57v, centers that key, with its emphasis on language and symbols, too?

This just struck me. Don’t even know if it’s there, or if the six pointed star was used then and not five. But you’ve been doing this for a long time – have you been noticing weird additions and absences too?

I have always believed the central rosette is the earth and that the map refers to hermeticum cosmology. The path leading up right off the map at the top of the page leads to the All in One and One in All invisible Prime Mover God, who is outside the cosmos but within everything in it. The T-O map is a T-O map, we’re just finding out what it is composed of in the sphere of forms and naming, before it gets shot out as the centre sphere.

The Hermetica are teaching texts. They are specifically set up as question and answer teaching texts.

We learn a few things pertinent to the spiritual city in the centre of the Earth. God tells the student that though he is the prime mover, he creates other gods for acts and operations, and worshipping other gods, if they see God’s Mind, is encouraged.

He also teaches that the spiritual centre of the Earth is Egypt, then talks about how old gods have been thrown down and new ones have replaced them.

The Hermetica texts were mostly composed in Hellenic Egypt. It was likely written about the same time Coptic Christianity began, between 100 and 200 AD. The capital was the thriving city of Alexandria situated on a Nile tributary. I’m sure you know more about it than me so I won’t bore you with more about it.

The first time I saw the city, I thought – what are Muslim minarets doing with crosses on top of them? And I still think that first impression was right, though I like the medicine bottle one too, and that fits with the same theme. I wondered where I had seen that bulky in the middle cross shape before.

The Coptic Cross was developed by those first Christians in Hellenized Egypt as a hybrid between the Egyptian ankh, symbol of life and the religion as a whole, and the cross as we know it. So it had a circlish shape above it instead of continuing with the vertical beam. Over time, the circle shifted down to the middle, and would create that bulky silhouette.

At the time the Voynich was written, that was one of its forms. However, a few hundred years earlier the Muslims (can’t remember which group) had taken over the city and minarets – the call to prayer – multiplied prolifically. But of course, no Coptic crosses decorated them in reality.

The structures are therefore symbolic of three different religions – Egyptian, Christian, Muslim – created by one, who can be worshipped through them. Moreover, and this is far more tentative, they are arranged as six structures around a pool of water (the sacred Nile, and those bulges represent its tributaries, similar to your blocked pipes above). I haven’t tried it, but I think if you connected those six, you might end up with the Star of David. (Have you noticed, by the way, the lack of triangle shapes in character formation and their rarity even in illustration?) Even more tentative, those dotted tombstones might represent pantheons or other gods.

Regardless of the last two, I’m rather convinced by the first three that this is likely Alexandria, though as an understood symbol of Egypt or even many religions it’s not essential to identify the city. Three, maybe many religions, that can be worshipped to reach God. The Egypt as spiritual centre mentioned in the Hermetica, the Hermetica religious philisophy (heed the call to prayer – listening is stressed as well as the one god, all gods concept), the location and date of the Hermetica’s origins in Hellenized Egypt, the Coptic cross and minarets, the spherical Nile with emphasis on its tributaries, where Alexandra was situated, and lastly the date of the Voynich Manuscript, when Coptic Christianity and Islam had both converted native Egyptians (and the Jews had left their stamp upon the land religiously and intellectually).

Neat fit, don’t you think? And it fits in beautifully with my main theory, of course, so I’m happy!

I’m so enjoying this website when I get a chance to read it, which is usually unfortunately whenever I google something like Voynich and Alexandria and you pop up. But I learn so much! One day when I get back to civilization I will curl up for a few days and read it through, not piece by piece. You are a real benefit to this community!

“…the map shows a circular town or city, divided into three and joined to the wider world by a highway and a by-way.  To those better acquainted with Latin mappaemundi and Isidore’s “T-O” diagram, the emblem immediately recalls those, but the impression is dispelled on closer scrutiny. In the illustration below, I’ve enlarged  that emblem so that readers can appreciate the form given the town or city taken as marker of the far north.  One sees its palisades, canals, the great highway to the east on its embankment, and the rougher ‘cart-track’ passing towards the south.”

Voynich map observations and notes

—————————————1. The Voynich Map – a god’s eye view

published as a post to Voynich Revisionist – March 25th., 2019.

 By D.N. O’Donovan

https://voynichrevisionist.com/voynich-map-observations-and-notes/

I myself still think of it as a TO map, closer scrutiny only leads me to go back to the Isadore interpretation of continents, rather than the spherical right hand northern ecumene and water interpretation i had been considering. I do not see any reason behind Diane’s preference for the town idea nor what exactly is supposed to dispel the TO map impression.

For me there is a complicated reasoning for my TO map preference which involves the tube funnel things coming from the outer dunes on the left and going to northern Asia on the TO map, with the other one on the opposite side going to the bubbly area to the right of the TO rosette, which taken together i see as connecting the Rhine, Danube, and the Black Sea, just as is similarly portrayed in quire 13 as one of the possible routes to get to the Caspian Sea.

Also i finally found out what Diane says is portrayed within the rosettes, which i never knew before now:

“As I see it, at a time that I would judge to be during the Hellenistic era, a map of the ways from as far as Sicily or Carthage in the west to as far as the eastern limits of Alexander’s empire in the east was made  – this being the range covered by the Voynich map”

I have some difficulty with seeing this. There are other aspects with which i also have difficulty, such as the East is West idea, but there are points I do agree with, such as the identification of Cappadocia, the general idea of representation of dunes, and the basic idea that the rosettes page is a map. However i don’t think anything is proven.

Diane, I have never seen your map analysis. I don’t know if anyone has. All I’ve seen is brief references to a compass rose and lighthouse on the ninja forum, along with repeated assertions that you “proved” the VMS rosettes folio was a map (without any links to the research).

You closed off your original blog years ago and I don’t even know if the “map” analysis was one of those blog posts (you mentioned unpublished “essays” a few times so I have to assume not all your research was blogged).

Your constant complaint about people not citing your analysis makes no sense—we cannot cite what we have not seen (and what is not see-able).

As for your statement that there are no ‘T-O forms’ on the VMS rosettes page, I think most researchers would disagree. I don’t know what it represents, but there is clearly a T within O-shape in the upper-right.

Looking back down the road is can also be a useful indicator of why the study is at the point it is – and how to find the next step forward.

just btw – there are no ‘T-O’ forms in the Voynich map which – also btw – received a full, detailed and historically annotated step-by-step analysis nine years ago which had the nice side-benefit of proving what had only been speculated before, viz. that it is a map. It had gone unrecognised for a century because it is not a map in the medieval European tradition, or rather in any of those traditions. But why take my word for it… enjoy the chase. 🙂