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Nowadays, more people are aware of the existence of this mysterious Voynich MS than ever before. This is clearly due to the advance of the internet into everyday life, and the occasionally increased media attention. Invariably, the Voynich MS is seen as a manuscript containing a cipher text that is just waiting to be translated by someone, and the number of people around the world who are actively pursuing some solution attempt of this text is impossible to guess. It will also be more than ever before.
It may seem as if the ultimate question about the Voynich MS is: "what does it say". Of course, if the text of the MS has a meaning, this will be of some interest, but at least an equally interesting question should be the context of its creation:
The translation attempts have involved people from all parts of the world and from all walks of life. Unfortunately, there have only been relatively few scholarly investigations into the origin and the meaning of the MS.
The MS appears to have become some sort of public property where anything can be written about it, and presented as being the truth until proven wrong. This is a pity, as this MS is a historic object that also deserves the proper type of attention, and it is my strong hope that this will increase in the near future.
Countless explanations for the MS text (i.e. solutions) have been proposed in the past, but none of these can be accepted as the correct one. In reality, we are far from having the solution, and we are unclear even about some of the most basic questions, for example whether the text of the MS is meaningful or completely meaningless. However, all of this could change any day, given the multitude of people working on, or thinking about the MS. I will not be at all surprised if there is a significant breakthrough in the near future (even though I have been saying this for many years now....).
Do I have a Voynich MS solution in mind?
The short answer is a definite no. I don't have any preferred theory, and as it is, I cannot even think of any scenario that would explain everything I know about the Voynich MS. This brings me to one of the fundamental questions: when is a solution 'good'?
Most of the Voynich MS translations that have been presented until now propose a 'decoding' of the text from cipher text into plain text, and work in the following way:
While this may not seem like a bad approach at first sight, we need to imagine the person who, in the early
fifteenth century, composed the text of the Voynich MS. We should imagine that he intended to write the
'clean' text mentioned in bullet 3 above, but instead of writing that, he wrote the 'raw' text of bullet 2.
Our proposer of the solution never explains why that would have been done, or even indicates that this is
understood to be a strange thing.
The supposed author then supposedly converted this garbled or even meaningless text, using the inverse of
the 'decoding method' of bullet 1, and wrote it in a strange alphabet.
Is this realistic?
In reality, we don't yet know whether the Voynich MS represents a meaningful text. What we do know for certain, however, is that sometime in the past, somebody or some group of people sat down and generated the text of the Voynich MS using some method.
This may seem trivial but, in reality, it is fundamental. There may or may not be a decoding method (step 1 above), but there certainly was an encoding or rather text generation method.
Anybody who wants to present a Voynich MS solution should present the method how the text that we see in the MS was generated. The main advantages of this approach are:
This text generation method should then explain the properties of the Voynich MS text that have been reported extensively in the past, and have been summarised to some extent in the text analysis section of this site. Most particularly, it should explain the peculiar word structure, and the variations in 'language' throughout the various sections of the MS. If a proposed solution suggests that the MS represents a meaningful text in some language, a critical test will be to convert a real, documented piece of text from the proposed area, time frame and language into Voynichese and then show that this generated text exhibits the above-mentioned properties of the Voynich MS text.
Just to repeat the critial point: the Voynich MS exists, it is real and it was really created by someone, some time ago. There was a method used to create it. Unfortunately, we don't (yet) know this method. We can only imagine a multitude of different ways how it could have been created. In the following page I will introduce in the term "solution space", which is the set of all hypothetical ways the MS could have been created. Many such ways have been suggested in the past, others will certtainly be suggested in the future. Among all these elements in the solution space, there is exactly one that is the correct one. This correct solution should not be seen as the translation of the Voynich MS into plain language, but it is the method how the MS text was generated.
Suppose I am searching for the solution to the Voynich MS, i.e. not the translation but the
text generation method. Then, as soon as I make any assumption, I reduce the size of my solution space.
What does that mean?
If I assume that the base language of the Voynich MS is Latin (which is not an unreasonable assumption of course),
then I exclude a lot of hypothetical solutions, for example that the text is meaningless. I cut out part of the
solution space. If the real solution is in that part of the solution space, I won't find it.
It is very difficult not to make any assumptions, and in fact it is done all the time, often even unconsciously. The following page discusses this in more detail.
Note that at the bottom of this page there are also some answers to Frequently Asked Questions .
Furthermore, there is a new page with a checklist of common mistakes and errors found in publications about the Voynich MS.
Over the years, I have formed many different opinions about the MS, or particular aspects of it, and many of these have changed, or I have simply discarded them. Several times, I have gone through the process that I noticed something striking, and I was convinced that I was onto something. Very often, I found it impossible to convince anyone else of my striking discoveries, and typically, I ended up deciding that it was probably nothing after all. At the moment I still have plenty of ideas, but no 'hot leads'.
To me there can be no doubt that the Voynich MS is from the fifteenth century. All the evidence is sufficiently consistent: the radio-carbon dating of the parchment, and the opinions of several people with the required experience / knowledge who have examined the MS (1).
Now, with this assumption, I am already going against what I wrote above. I am eliminating part of my solution space. However, this part is small enough, in my opinion, for me to accept. It's a conscious decision after weighing the probabilities, and it will always be possible to go back, should evidence to the contrary show up.
I do believe that the MS is from the wider Alpine region, possibly, but not necessarily what is now Northern Italy, as has been suggested many times. The herbals to which the Voynich MS is most similar in style all originate from Northern Italy: the Italian branch of the Tractatus de Herbis and to a lesser extent the alchemical herbals. Recent work published by contributors at the blog of Stephen Bax (2) has shown that the zodiac illustrations in the Voynich MS fit in a style prevailing in South German MSs of the entire 15th C, so I remain undecided whether the place of origin is rather North or South of the Alps.
To me, the Voynich MS looks like a very intentional creation, and it looks like the work of one 'brain'. Now this appears to go against the recent evidence by Lisa Fagin Davis that there appear to be five scribes involved in the MS (3). I do trust that analysis, and I find that this can be reconciled quite easily, by assuming that there was one originator of the work, who obtained the help of four or five people to write it down, based on instructions or by copying it from a draft.
There are indeed signs that the MS has been copied from a draft. There is even a hint that the copyist(s) did not understand what he was copying. All in all, the evidence for this is quite thin, so I am ready to change my mind on this point.
The work of Prescott Currier, who identified two (or more) hands and two languages, is often quoted (4). The identification of hands has been superseded by the more expert analysis of Lisa Fagin Davis and was already mentioned above. With respect to the two different languages, I would maintain that there aren't really two different languages, but there is a continuous, though relativily quick, change in language (5). Currier's conclusion seems to derive from the fact that he based his original classification of two languages primarily on part of the text only, and he did not reconsider this classification at the time that he assigned each page of the entire MS to either language A or language B.
There have been plenty of suggestions for names of individuals who could have written the Voynich MS. It is, however, not at all certain that the MS was written by one individual, and it is far from clear to me that it should be someone well known from other work. Attempts to make an author profile have been started but no thorough, documented attempt is known to me.
The Voynich MS does not look to me like a document commissioned by a client. It rather looks like this was someone's own initiative. From the similarity of the herbal pages to other herbal MSs, and of the zodiac pages to other astrological MSs, I strongly believe that the author of the MS was familiar with philosophical (scientific) books of his time. There is one very particular example for this among the herbal illustrations (6).
At the same time the MS does not make any sense as it is unreadable. Why should that be? I do like the suggestion by Sergio Toresella (7) that this MS was made by a 'quack' just in order to appear very learned, and thereby attract clients who would buy his medications. I could also imagine that this could be someone's masterpiece, to be used to enter some secret societies of the time. (It has been pointed out to me that these only became popular about a century later, so this may not be a good hypothesis). Of course, in both of these scenarios the text of the MS may very well be meaningless.
The more we go back in time, the less we know. The earliest solid information we have is provided in Marci's 1665 letter, referring to Rudolf's reported acquisition of the MS, around 60 years earlier. More recent evidence provides a realistic guess about the identity of the seller to Rudolf (Karl Widemann), and even the name of a potential earlier owner (Leonhard Rauwolf) (8). I don't quite understand why some people doubt the reliability of Marci's letter. Yes, he was old when he wrote it, but all details in the letter that could be verified in the meantime (his inheritance of Barschius' library, the fact that Barschius wrote to Kircher) have proven to be correct (9). Marci's memory on this topic was just fine at this time.
How would Raphael Mnišowský have known anything about Rudolf's MS acquisitions? Though by profession
he was a lawyer, he was deeply interested in alchemy and secret writing, and also writes about his research into
Rudolf's plain text and enciphered manuscripts
(10).
For me, there is little reason to discard this evidence for being unreliable. That he reports the opinion that
the MS was by Roger Bacon, which is no longer believed nowadays, does not change that. It is clearly stated to be
an opinion and it is not even clear that it is his own opinion
(11).
Mnišowský was not yet associated with Rudolf's court when the MS probably arrived there, but,
to add some speculation to this, the famous alchemist Sendivogius was, and they knew each other well.
Sendivogius also corresponded with Rudolf's courtier Hans Popp
(12),
meaning they knew each other well, and Popp was the person to whom the mysterious book(s) that Rudolf bought
from Widemann was/were first handed over.
This is certainly only speculation...
(13)
So, I do not doubt that the MS was bought by Emperor Rudolf II some time during his reign, and I believe that Widemann was indeed the one who sold it to him.
I don't mean to suggest that the three options in the title are the only three options. These are the ones that are most usually mentioned and the ones most easily imaginable. There are further possibility, for example that there was an original meaning but it has become irrecoverable through the encoding or inaccurate copying process. It may also be someone's invented language or writing system. In general, I just don't know which is the correct or even most likely answer, so I prefer to keep all options open.
The most evident feature of the Voynich MS text is the word structure. Any proposed solution should properly explain this. So far I can only think of two candidates (none of which are my own idea, by the way), namely a language that by itself exhibits such a structure, or a stroke-based encoding such as proposed by Elmar Vogt (14). Languages with such a word structure do exist, though not in Europe. This is basically the Chinese theory as first proposed by Jacques Guy and taken up more seriously by Jorge Stolfi. Originally I strongly opposed to this idea, but I now feel that it would be wrong to discard a priori. Who knows...
Now the structure is not very rigid, and some words do not fit the structure at all. (Of course, there are likely to be errors in the text.) In my opinion there is an interesting possibility, which I will still follow up whenever I have time. This is (assuming that the text is meaningful) that, regardless of the manner in which the encoding was done to generate the word structure, some words, for example proper names of things or of people, were encoded using a simple substitution. So far, I have only two candidate words for this. I will write more about this sometime in the future.
The MS has several different sections: herbal, astronomical, zodiac, biological, cosmological, recipes. What is usually referred to as pharmaceutical for me is just another herbal part. It is not unusual for medieval and later MSs to have several herbals combined into one MS.
Now this brings me to the question: are these independent works, bound together, or are they part of one common philosophy? I find the latter idea attractive. The zodiac has 360 labelled nymphs, one for each degree of the ecliptic. The recipes section at the end has, if I counted correctly, 324 starred recipes, but there is an indication that pages are missing, so there could have been more. The pharmaceutical pages have about 240 drawings with labels, but again there is a hint that this is incomplete and possibly pages are missing. Many pharmaceutical drawings are more-or-less simplistic versions of herbal drawings in the MS. In the biological section there are lots of labelled nymphs populating what looks like organs of the human body (several per organ).
In short, I am attracted by the idea that there is an overall philosophy, linking to each degree of the zodiac one herb, one recipe, and maybe even one part of the body. I am looking for evidence for this, but for the moment, this is just an idea, no more. It may be the next one that I need to give up.
For me, there are several areas where further progress is most needed: better use of expertise, better availability of information and better tools. Before going into that, however, let's look at what has been achieved until now.
It is often suggested that Voynich MS research hasn't progressed significantly since the MS was discovered by Voynich. If one were to measure success by the number of words of the text that we can read, this is indeed essentially true. However, there is more to the MS than just its text, and very significant progress has been made in many areas:
Personally, I am also impressed by recent work, in part confirming older work that wasn't very well documented (15), in the area of identification of some of the herbal illustrations. It can't be said anymore that the Voynich MS plant illustrations are unrecognisable, ugly, low-quality or fantastic/imaginary. Still, more solid work is needed here.
I am also happy that I have been able to contribute to an increased awareness of, and interest in the Voynich MS in the Czech Republic. This is where its earliest known traces are, and historians there are in the best position to find additional evidence about the MS's history, in particular before the time of Rudolf II.
What is desperately needed is that the Voynich MS is more in the focus of people with real expertise in relevant areas, and is seen by them not as a possible fake MS, but as a MS worthy of serious analysis. This includes at least the following areas:
Fortunately, this has already improved significantly as a result of the interest into the MS by medievalist Lisa Fagin Davis. Further good news in this area will be announced here when it materialises.
For people wanting to gather either general or specific information about the Voynich MS there is no official, authoritative place to obtain it. Books are quickly outdated, and they are often contradictory. That leaves the internet.
The standard problem with the net is that it is difficult to separate reliable from unreliable information. While I am pleased that my web site is considered by many to be useful, it is by no means authoritative, and it is never up to date in all places.
With tools I mean computer-based tools to support Voynich MS research. It is odd how little advanced such tools are nowadays, even in spite of the fact that most people interested in the Voynich MS that I know have far better computer skills than history knowledge. Possibly, lots of people have quite clever tools but these are only for personal use and not known or available to the community.
The transliteration(s) are kept in simple ASCII text files. The metadata are comments in these files. As already mentioned on the transliteration page, there used to be an excellent tool to take an existing transliteration and convert it from one transliteration alphabet to another quickly and easily. This tool, developed by Jacques Guy in Pascal, was called BITRANS and it ran only in MS-DOS. I decided to re-create it, and make it available, together with another tool that takes an existing transliteration file and extract from it only those parts one wants to analyse: one particular quire, one page, only all labels, etc. etc. and do all sorts of conversions (16).
I know that many people have developed their own tools to do a great number of similar things. However, I believe it is time to advance on this significantly. There are some online tools such as the Jason Davies' Voynich MS Voyager and especially "Job"'s Voynich Query Processor (17), that are good examples of how things could be done.
What I have in mind is that the Voynich MS transliteration should be contained in an online database. This database should link the transliteration to the location on each particular folio. The database should also contain all metadata. Its contents should ideally be independent of the transliteration alphabet that any researcher would prefer. I know that this is difficult, but the recent development of a so-called 'super-transliteration alphabet' should be useful for this purpose.
Any transliteration file to be used for analysis should be the result of a query to this database, selecting the transliteration alphabet (rules), the part of the text of interest, etc.
From time to time I am contacted by journalists who want to write an article about the Voynich MS, and invariably they start by asking the same questions. These questions, and some additional ones, are listed and answered below.
What is your background?
I studied Aeronautics and Space Engineering at the Technical University in Delft, the Netherlands, and have
obtained both a Master's degree and a Ph.D. on the topic of precise orbit determination of artificial satellites.
I used to work for the European Space Agency, on high-precision applications of Satellite Navigation Systems,
and I retired in 2022.
How/when did you first find out about this MS?
In the earliest days of the internet, there was a thing called "Usenet" in which people could post information
in groups dedicated to various topics, including news, sports, culture, science, etc.
One such group was called "sci.sceptic", and it dealt with scepticism about unexplained phenomena in general.
Probably in 1993 I was struck by the mention of a medieval MS of more than 200 pages that could not be deciphered.
There was a link to an ftp site (by Jim Gillogly) that had two illustrations. In particular, the B/W image of part
of the text of f3v
(18)
attracted me, and I thought that I might be able to read it. It was 1995 before I could join the internet mailing
list that had recently started, and I followed all discussions. By 1998 I decided that there was a clear need to
have a common repository for all information, and started the present web site, originally hosted by "Geocities".
Do you believe that the text will be a revelation?
I really don't know. I certainly don't expect that the text contains lost secrets, cures for modern diseases etc.
In fact, I am not at all certain that there is a meaningful text to be revealed. By now I have become more curious
about the method how the text was generated than about the contents, if there are any.
Could the MS be a hoax?
To me, it could certainly be a 15th Century hoax, in the sense that it is not a book containing wise and/or ancient
knowledge, but was just made to look like such a book.
I do believe that the MS text could be meaningless, however, existing claims of proof that the text is meaningless for me are not convicing.
The suggestion that it was a hoax made by Dee, Kelley or a contemporary in order to elicit some gold ducats from Rudolf II is excluded for me by the radio-carbon dating of the parchment.
The Voynich MS is certainly not a modern fake by Wilfrid Voynich. This has occasionally been suggested, but never by specialists who have seen and handled the actual MS.
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Why the Voynich MS is not a fake by W.Voynich |
I found the solution. What should I do?
The most important thing to understand is that you are not the first person who claims this.
There are probably a dozen people every year who believe or claim that they have found the solution.
It is therefore also important to realise that your message that you found the solution is not going to get
anybody very excited. This means: do not write an E-mail to anyone at the Beinecke library, that you
solved it, because they are literally bombarded by such messages and similar other ones, and are not likely
to respond to them.
Now of course, you
In that case you will need to convince someone that you are right, i.e. to move from the very large group of
people who
Case 1: did you find the solution, without having consulted any web sites (such as this one here, or Wikipedia) or without reading any of the printed works about it, because you wanted to have an open mind? If yes, I'm afraid it's not looking very good. A lot is known about the Voynich MS text, and without that knowledge you probably fell into the same pit that so many people already fell into. (Note that this specifically applies to text solutions. For other areas, such as analysis of the writing or the illustrations, there is no such problem. The worst that could happen is that you come up with something that has already been suggested by someone else in the past).
Case 2: is your solution complicated, and you need money to complete the work? If yes, please don't write to me or to Yale. If you find someone gullible enough to give you money, you're lucky, but they might get angry with you as time goes on and you don't deliver.
If you think that you found the solution, or also if you are sure that you found the solution, but you are not sure how to announce it to the world, I can only recommend to describe it as clearly as possible on a web site. In my personal opinion, videos at youtube really don't work very well. Your best approach to making sure that nobody steals your idea will be to write an E-mail to several people at the same time, making it clear that they are all in copy. There are quite a number of completely trustworthy experts, but be aware they are also quite critical. It wouldn't make sense to recommend myself, and I won't name the others here, so feel free to ask me should you be in that position.
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