The Open Directory Project...

I've just been accepted as an editor of the Open Directory Project: for several years, its Voynich Manuscript category has been fairly moribund (if not actually dead), and I thought it would be a positive thing to try to update and restructure it, so that it could provide a set of links to Voynich-related things that was actually useful - image galleries, research, theories, etc.

I made a good start at doing this: but then I ran into a heap of problems...

Firstly, it turns out that nearly every interesting Voynich-related site I've looked at over the past six years has stopped working: Voynich dead links significantly outnumber the live links. Furthermore, many dead links (even recent ones such as ms408.com) don't appear to have made it into the Wayback Machine. And "deeplinking" (linking to sites inside a website) into the Wayback Machine is a no-no in the ODP.

Secondly, while the intention of the Open Directory Project is that it should provide a categorized directory of useful resources on a subject, Voynich Manuscript research only rarely works like that. For example, some ODP editors wouldn't even link to the Wikipedia page on their subject because it is a deeplink within another resource (i.e. within Wikipedia itself), as opposed to a user's subsite. So only a tiny handful of sites (such as Rene Zandbergen's exemplary pages on the subject, my Voynich News blog, etc) would satisfy a hardcore ODP editor's criteria for inclusion.

In other words, though I hoped that the ODP section might be the right place to bring some kind of order to the disjointed heap of fragments we call Voynich knowledge, many inside the ODP actively argue that that's not what it's for.

But if the ODP is the wrong answer, what is the right answer?

Having just spent a few days tracking down a long succession of dead links, I think there are two main types of webpage that should somehow be actively preserved: research pages (analyses of features, mainly of Voynichese) and theory/hypothesis pages ("my theory that I have, that is to say, which is mine, is mine").

And so I've just started up Voynich Research and Voynich Theories (as subsites on GC's Voynich Central website), each of which I plan to maintain as a single index page giving links to (and brief summaries of) all the research papers and webpages placed there. Though the ODP won't allow links to the Wayback Machine, I can put them in here: though my plan (longer term) is to contact the people involved asking for their permission to put an actual copy on the site, which would be a somewhat better answer.

OK, it's not a perfect answer... but it's a start.

Thorndike on the Voynich Manuscript!

I've often wondered what Lynn Thorndike thought of the Voynich Manuscript: after all, he (his first name came from the town of Lynn, Massachusetts) lived from 1882 to 1965, and continued to publish long after his retirement in 1950, and so was active before, during and after the 1920s when Wilfrid Voynich's cipher manuscript mania/hype was at its peak. As a well-known writer on alchemy, magic and science, my guess is that Thorndike would surely have been one of those distinguished American academics and historians whom Voynich tried so hard to court after his move from Europe to New York.

One of my ongoing projects is to work my way through all of Thorndike's works, as it seems to me that his science/magic research programme carved a trail through the jungle of mostly-unread proto-scientific manuscripts that probably falls close to where the Voynich Manuscript is situated: and few historians since him have felt any pressing need to build on his work except in generally quite specific ways. All of which is why I happened to be reading Chapter VII "Nicholas of Cusa and the Triple Motion of the Earth" in Thorndike's "Science & Thought in the Fifteenth Century" (1929).

Firstly, you need to understand that Thorndike thought that the whole Burckhardtian notion of the (supposedly fabulous and extraordinary) Renaissance was plain ridiculous: there were countless examples of ingenuity, invention, and insight throughout the Middle Ages (and, indeed, throughout all history) to be found, if you just bothered to take the time and effort to place events and writings within their own context.

Furthermore, Thorndike believed that lazy historians, having set up this false opposition between (high) Renaissance culture and (low) medieval scholasticism, then went looking for exceptional individuals who somehow bucked that trend, "forerunners, predictors, or martyrs of the glorious age of modern science that was to come." (p.133) The list of usual suspects Thorndike suggests - "Roger Bacon, Nicholas of Cusa, Peurbach and Regiomontanus, Leonardo da Vinci" - appears to me not far from how the fake table of Priory of Sion Grand Masters would have looked, if Pierre Plantard been a tad more receptive to non-French history.

Of course, Thorndike - being Thorndike - then goes on to demonstrate precisely how the whole myth around Nicholas of Cusa arose: basically, German historians looking out for a German 'forerunner, predictor, or martyr' plucked three marginal fragments from Nicholas's work and wove them together to tell a story that was, frankly, not there to be told. Then you can almost feel the fever rising in Thorndike's genuinely angry brow when he continues:

"Could anything, even the most childish of medieval superstitions, be more unscientific, unhistorical, and lacking in common sense than this absurd misappreciation and acceptation of inadequate evidence, not to say outright misrepresentation, by modern investigators and historians of science?" (p.137)

Punchy (and grouchy) stuff: but he's far from finished yet. He has an example of something even more scandalous which he feels compelled to share with us:-

"When are we ever going to come out of it? To stop approaching the study of medieval science by such occult methods as the scrutiny of a manuscript supposed to have been written by Roger Bacon in cipher, instead of by reading the numerous scientific manuscripts that are expressed in straightforward and coherent, albeit somewhat abbreviated, Latin?" (p.137)

So there you have it. In 1929, while Wilfrid Voynich was still alive, Thorndike took a measured look at Voynich's and Newbold's "Roger Bacon Manuscript" nonsense, and placed it straight in the category of "absurd misappreciation and acceptation of inadequate evidence, not to say outright misrepresentation".

John Manly may have been more dismissive of Newboldian cryptography in his article in Speculum 6 (July 1931), but Thorndike was no less dismissive of Newboldian history in print in 1929. Just so you know!

Adam McLean and Voynich baths...

On 12th April 2008, artist and well-respected alchemy expert Adam McLean posted up a fascinating picture of the baths of Pozzuoli he had found from the third quarter of the fifteenth century, and commented on its many strong similarities with the Voynich Manuscript's water section. Excellent research, I thought... but how come I hadn't seen it before?

Though Adam didn't mention his source, a little detective work revealed that the image is entitled "Balneum Sulphatara", folio 4 of Valencia Bibl. Universitaria MS 860 (formerly 138). And I had seen it before: an extremely over-exposed black-and-white version appears as plate 62 of C. M. Kauffmann's classic 1959 "The Baths of Pozzuoli: A Study of the Medieval Illuminations of Peter of Eboli's Poems". But really, you'd barely recognize them as the same.

Unusually, Valencia MS 860 has good date and provenance information for it. Kauffman (p.82) says that De Marinis dates it between 1455 and 1458: and that it stayed in the "Aragonese royal library in Naples until the Franco-Spanish conquest of 1501", when it moved to Spain until the present day. Kauffman also asserts that it was derived from the Bodmer (Geneva, Bibliotheca Bodmeriana) De Balneis MS, which he dates to the "third quarter of the fourteenth century", and placed as "Southern Italian".

If you compare the Bodmer Balneum Sulphatara drawing (f.3, Kauffman plate 21) with the Valencia one (f.4, Kauffman plate 62), you can see the reasons why the former was very probably the source of the latter: every figure is reproduced between the two MSS, each with extremely similar size and orientation. Their differences are merely ornamental: the wooden bath sides got upgraded with a fancy fish-like motif in the Valencia MS, while the top edge of the cave has taken on a stone-like 'wolkenband' appearance there.

But the big question: was either of these also a source for the Voynich Manuscript? I've gone through all the plates in Kauffman really closely, and I have to say that on that evidence I really don't think that the water section of the VMs is an enciphered De Balneis. However, I am quite sure that the VMs' author had definitely seen a copy of De Balneis and was influenced by it when constructing his pictures, in the same way that Rene Zandbergen persuasively argues that the author must have seen the manuscript now known as MS Vat. Gr. 1291 before drawing the zodiac section.

In fact, I interpret this in terms of steganography, in that I believe the style used for Vat. Gr. 1291 was appropriated as the cover cipher for the VMs' zodiac section, while the style used for the Bodmer MS and Valencia MS 860 formed the cover cipher for its water section. Whereas the particular drawing similarities between the VMs and Valencia MS 860 simply arose from having been drawn in the same general period: correlation, but not causation.

I should close by noting that Adam McLean made his own in-depth art history study of the Voynich Manuscript, posting his results on the set of pages here. One of the most compelling similarities comes from his comparison of the lozenge-shaped tiles in the picture here: but that's a discussion for another day...

Research breakthrough...

Not long ago, I mentioned here that I had made a fist-punching-in-the-air breakthrough in my research, and promised to describe it more fully at a later date. Well, that later date has (thanks to a torrent of two gently chiding emails chivvying me along) now arrived: here's what I found.

Regular Voynich News readers will by now be aware that I've spent a long time this year slowly trawling through various volumes of Lynn Thorndike's vast "History of Magic & Experimental Science". Given that I believe the Voynich Manuscript is an enciphered book of proto-scientific secrets rooted in Italian Quattrocento culture, Thorndike's general focus on Italian scientific documents of the 14th (Volume III) and 15th (Volume IV) centuries is pretty much spot on. This approach has turned up a whole set of research leads to follow up over the next few weeks and months... so far so good.

But I also (sad completist I sometimes tend to be) picked up a copy of Thorndike's rather less-well-known "Science & Thought In The Fifteenth Century" (1929, Columbia University Press): in which I found something pleasantly unexpected. But I'll fill in all the background first...

Once upon a time (oh, in 2006), I wrote & published a book called "The Curse of the Voynich", which described how I concluded from my meticulous codicological study that Quattrocento Florentine architect Antonio Averlino (better known as "Filarete") was probably both the author and the encipherer of the Voynich Manuscript. Part of the textual evidence revolved around a set of "small works" to which Averlino alluded in his larger libro architettonico, and which I suspected were at least in part enciphered in the VMs. However, art historians have long disagreed about whether these other works actually existed, or whether they were just added in for spice to amuse Averlino's (hoped-for) ducal audience: as far as anyone, there has long been no external evidence either way.

But then on p.219 of Thorndike's "Science & Thought", in chapter XII which is largely devoted to Giovanni Michele Alberto of Carrara's "De constitutione mundi", I found the following:

Antonio Averlino Filarete (1410-1470), who is commonly thought of as an architect and sculptor, is listed by John Michael Albert [i.e. Giovanni Michele Alberto da Carrara] among writers on plants as having treated that subject "elegantly in the vernacular tongue". [94]

Thorndike's footnote 94 then says:

Ibid. [MS Ashburnham 198], fol.78r: "Sed et Antonius Averlinus Philaretus lingua vernacula scripsit eleganter." The work of Filarete on architecture was first printed only in 1890 (W. von Oettingen). In it he alludes to his work on agriculture, which is probably what John Michael Albert has in mind. See M. Lazzaroni and A Munoz, "Filarete, scultore e architetto del sec. XV", 1908, p.281.

Somehow this whole mention appears to have gone unnoticed by all recent writers on Filarete: yet its existence would seem to strongly tip the balance of probability towards the likelihood that he did actually write his "other little works". Hence why finding it was so rewarding (for me, at least).

Incidentally, MS Ashburnham 198 (one of the 11,000 manuscripts held by the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence) was dedicated to Boniface, marquis of Montferrat: and so was probably written between 1483 (when Bonifazio Palaeologo became marquis) and 1488 (when Alberto was given the title Count Palatine by Frederick III) or 1490 (when Alberto is thought to have died).

I then wondered where Alberto might have seen Filarete's herbal manuscript. Alberto was born in Bergamo, trained in Padua, returned to Bergamo, and practised medicine at Rovato, Brescia, Chiari: and for a time was private physician to Roberto di Sanseverino, as well as Prior of the College of Physicians in Bergamo. I'd therefore guess that Alberto probably saw Filarete's work (and perhaps even had a copy made of it) while in Bergamo, where he spent most of his life, only 50km or so from Milan where Filarete was working: or he may even have met Filarete, who is believed to have designed the plans for Bergamo Cathedral circa 1459, and who doubtless visited Bergamo on several occasions.

It would be amazing if Filarete's elegant vernacular work on plants (or even just its incipit) could be identified: and so I started, emboldened by the archival research content of Day Three of the Warwick/Warburg Course, to think about where I might search (and for what, and for how long).

Identifying herbals from purely written descriptions is not unprecedented. In Thorndike's "History of Magic & Experimental Science" Vol.IV (p.599), he describes Pandolphus Collenucius of Pesaro learning about herbs in Venice: "There in the street of the spice-dealers in a shop having as its sign the head of an Ethiopian he had consulted an herbal in which the plants were represented so carefully and artfully that you would have thought they grew on its pages." In a footnote, Thorndike notes that Valentinelli (1872) "has shown that this was the De Simplicibus of Benedetto Rinio, with pictures of the plants by the Venetian painter, Andrea Amadio. The MS is now S. Marco VI, 59 (Valentinelli, XIII, 10)." All the same, we really don't yet have enough to work with in the present case.

Where did Alberto's belongings go after his death? Sergio Toresella tells me that Apostolo Zeno (1668-1750) wrote: "I understand that this Alberti was an humanist that wrote a lot of comedies and poetry but I do not know were his belongings went after his death." So at least I'm not the first to ask!

But all is not lost: the Biblioteca Angelo Mai in Bergamo has a good collection of his letters and notes, and many manuscripts from his personal library (and so with his initials and coat of arms added to them). The library's bibliographical description of its various humanistic documents taken from Kristeller's Iter Italicum and Iter Supplementum is here. But, as Sergio points out, none looks particularly promising, with the possibly exception of MA 184-186 folio 8v "Ex experimentis et secretis magistri Guelmi" (though this too seems fairly unlikely).

There are some books on Alberto's work. For instance, a 20th century academic called Giovanni Giraldi seems to have spent his life editing and publishing papers on him in obscure journals, many of which are reproduced in his 1967 book "Opera poetica, philosophica, rhetorica, theologica" (Novara: Istituto Geografico de Agostini): although none appears to be for sale online (boo), WorldCat lists 5 or 6 copies, one in the Warburg Institute (hooray!)

For Alberto's life, there is "Giovanni Michele Alberto Carrara" by Ercole Vittorio Ferrario and Gian Camillo Donadi (1964), for which WorldCat lists just one copy (boo)... in the Wellcome Institute Library in London, just around the corner from the British Library (phew!). I've been meaning to go there for a while, partly to take a picture of its necromantic painting depicting John Dee (but that's another story).

Interestingly, the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana makes a log of everyone who examines each of its manuscripts available on its website. Of the ten people listed for MS Ashburnham 198, there is someone from the Warburg Institute (in Hamburg!) in 1930, Patrick McGurk from the Warburg (in London) in 1953, Federici Vescalini Graziella in 1987, John Monfasani in 1995, and Ulrich Pfisterer in 1998, though I don't yet know if Ulrich (who has written papers on Filarete) was or is aware of the mention on f78r: I'll ask him, see what he says...

As far as the Voynich Manuscript goes, there's always the tiny possibility that multispectral imaging of its very first page might just (if Alberto just happened to end up owning it) reveal a faint contact transfer from Alberto's coat of arms and initials. But I'm more interested in seeing if the incipit is anywhere to be found: that would be far more useful for trying to break its cipher.

All of which may not seem like much to get hugely excited about, but it is a step forward (though admittedly only at the glacial pace normal for Voynich research). *sigh*

Thorndike has the answer...

For me, Voynich research is one of those things that grind slowly onwards for long periods of time, punctuated by occasional testosteronal fist-clenching-in-the-air moments of elation, a bit like a prisoner being unexpectedly set free. OK, I know it's a bit cliched: but I do it anyway.

For "The Curse of the Voynich", I forensically examined the manuscript itself, travelled to all the places, critically read all the secondary sources, and from all that reconstructed the story as best I could. In short, I'd done an OK job: but though readers told me they liked it, it hadn't set the world on fire. Though it ticked all the right boxes, it was obvious I had to go away and try harder. But what could I do better?

At first, I bought a pile of books on the history of cryptography, such as David Kahn's "The Codebreakers": all fascinating, but the question I'm trying to answer - "at the Quattrocento birth of mathematical cryptography, what kind of cryptography died?" - only features marginally (if at all) in the generally rather positivistic accounts presented there.

And then I realised what I had been missing. Sure, I had read plenty on Quattrocento individuals such as Filarete, Alberti, Brunelleschi, Taccola: but there was one gigantic motherlode of information which most historians seem to pay lip service to (rather than have to set aside several months to read): Lynn Thorndike's epic multi-volume "History of Magic and Experimental Science".

I therefore bought volumes III and IV (for the 14th and 15th centuries) and have now reached halfway through the latter. What continually amazes me is the amount of ground Thorndike covered that has apparently not been touched by anyone since: though there is a large literature tree cascading off it, it is very deep in places and non-existent in others.

From what I have read, I am now quite sure that virtually all of the Voynich Manuscript's roots will turn out to be directly traceable from the late 14th and early 15th century: which means that we might in time be able to reconstruct or predict plaintexts for some sections. But these are still very early days in this ultra-long-term research programme. *sigh*

However, the good news is that I also bought a copy of "Science and Thought in the Fifteenth Century" by Lynn Thorndike: and one obscure page from that gave me precisely the clenching-both-fists-in-the-air-YESSSSS-moment I mentioned at the start. The details are too convoluted to go through here, but trust me, it's a peach.

Voynich proto-optics...?

I've been reading up on the pre-history of the telescope recently (hence my reviews of Eileen Reeves' Galileo's Glassworks and Albert van Helden's The Invention of the Telescope), but have omitted to mention why I thought this might be of relevance to the Voynich Manuscript.

The answer relates to Richard SantaColoma's article in Renaissance Magazine #53 (March 2007) with the title "The Voynich Manuscript: Drebbel's Lost Notebook?", which claimed to find a persuasive familial similarity between the curious jars arranged vertically in the pharma sections and Renaissance microscopes, specifically those described or designed by Cornelius Drebbel. His (updated) research also appears here.

The biggest problem with Voynich hypotheses is that, given 200+ pages of interesting stuff, it is comparatively easy to dig up historical evidence that appears to show some kind of correlation. In the case SantaColoma's webpage, this category covers the stars, the hands, braids, caps, colours, four elements, Francis Bacon's New Atlantis and handwriting matches suggested: none of these is causative, and the level of correlation is really quite low. All of which is still perfectly OK, as these parallels are only presented as suggestive evidence, not as any kind of direct proof.

It is also tempting to use a given hypothesis to try to support itself: in the 1920s, William Romaine Newbold famously did this with his own circular hypothesis, where he said that the only way that the manuscript's microscopic cipher could have been written was with the aid of a microscope, ergo Roger Bacon must have invented the microscope. All false, of course. Into this second category falls the "cheese mold", "diatoms" and "cilia" of SantaColoma's webpage: if these are to used as definitive proof of the presence of microscopy in the VMs, the level of correlation would need to be substantially higher. But these parallels are, once again, only presented as suggestive evidence, not proof.

Strip all these away, and you're still left with the real meat of SantaColoma's case: a set of striking similarities between 17th century microscopes and the curious devices in the Voynich Manuscript's pharma section. Even if (as I do) you doubt that all the colouring on the pages was original (and upon which some of SantaColoma's argument seems to rest), it's an interesting observation.

Having said that, no actual proof or means of proof (or disproof) is offered: it is just a set of observations, resting upon a relatively little-tested tranche of history, that of the microscope. Can we do better? I think we can.

Firstly, modern telescope historians (I'm thinking of Albert van Helden here, though he is far from alone in this respect) now seem somewhat dubious of the various Janssen family claims: and so I'm far from comfortable with placing the likely birth of the microscope with the Janssens in 1590. As Richard SantaColoma points out, Cornelius Drebbel is definitely one of the earliest documented microscope makers (from perhaps a little earlier than 1620, but probably not much before 1612, I would guess).

Secondly, it is likely that the power of the lenses available for spectacles pre-1600 was not great: Albert van Helden calculated that a telescope made to della Porta's (admittedly cryptic) specification could only have given a magnification of around 2x, which would be no more than a telescopic toy. I would somewhat surprised if microscopes constructed from the same basic components had significantly higher magnification.

Thirdly, the claimed presence of knurled edges in the VMs' images would only make sense if used in conjunction with a fine screwthread, to enable the vertical position of an element along the optical axis to be varied: but I'm not sure when these were invented or adapted for microscopes.

All in all, I would assert that if what is being depicted in the VMs' pharma section is indeed microscopes from the same family as were built by Drebbel from (say) 1610 onwards, there would seem no obvious grounds for dating this to significantly earlier than 1610: even if it all came directly from Della Porta, around 1589 would seem to be the earliest tenable date.

The problem is that there is plenty of art historical data which places the VMs circa 1450-1500: and a century-long leap would seem to be hard to support without more definitive evidence.

As always, there are plenty of Plan B hypotheses, each of which has its own unresolved issues:-
(a) they are microscropes/telescopes, but from an unknown 16th century inventor/tradition
(b) they are microscropes/telescopes, but from an unknown 15th century inventor/tradition
(c) they're not microscopes/telescopes, they just happen to look a bit like them
(d) they're not microscopes/telescopes, but were later emended/coloured to look like them
(e) it's all a Dee/Kelley hoax (John Dee was Thomas Digges' guardian from the age of 13)

Despite everything I've read about the early history of the telescope and microscope, I really don't think that we currently can resolve this whole issue (and certainly not with the degree of certainty that Richard SantaColoma suggests). The jury remains out.

But I can offer some observations based on what is in the Voynich Manuscript itself, and this might cast some light on the matter for those who are interested.

(1) The two pharma quires seem to be out of order: if you treat the ornate jars as part of a visual sequence, it seems probable that Q19 (Quire 19) originally came immediately before Q17 in the original binding.

(2) The same distinctive square "filler" motif appears in the astronomical section (f67r1, f67r2, f67v1), the zodiac section (Pisces, light Aries), the nine rosette page (central rosette), and in a band across the fifth ornate jar in Q19. This points not only to their sharing the same scribe, but also to a single (possibly even improvised) construction/design process: that is, the whole pharma section is not simply a tacked-on addition, it is an integral part of the manuscript.

(3) Some paint on the pharma jars appear original: but most seems to be a later addition. For example: on f99v, I could quite accept that the palette of (now-faded) paints used to colour in the plants and roots was original (and I would predict that a spectroscopic or Raman analysis would indicate that this was probably comprised solely of plant-based organic paints), which would be consistent with the faded original paint on the roots of f2v. However, I would think that the bolder (and, frankly, a little uglier) paints used on the same page were not original.

Put all these tiny fragments together, and I think this throws doubt on one key part of SantaColoma's visual argument. He claims that the parallel hatching inside the ornate jar at the top of f88r (the very first jar in Q17) is a direct indication that it is a lens we are looking at, fixed within a vertical optical structure. However, if you place Q19 before Q17 (as I believe the original order to have been), then a different story emerges. The ten jars immediately before f88v (ie at the end of Q19) all have vertical parallel hatching inside their tops, none of which looks at all like the subtle lens-like shading to which SantaColoma is referring. For reference, I've reproduced the tops of the last four jars below, with the final two heavily image-enhanced to remove the heavy (I think later) overpainting that has obscured much of the finer detail.

This is the "mouth" of the top jar on f102r: the vertical parallel hatching seems to depict the back wall of a jar, ending in a pool of faintly-coloured yellow liquid (probably the original paint).

This is the mouth of the bottom jar on f102r, which appears to have vertical parallel hatching right down, as though the jar is empty near the top (or perhaps its contents are clear).

This is the top jar on 102v, enhanced to remove the paint. I think some vertical hatching is still visible there: it would take a closer examination to determine what was originally drawn there.

This is the bottom jar on f102v, again heavily enhanced to remove paint. Vertical hatching of some sort is visible.

Voynich magic circles (Part 1)...

I'm just collecting my thoughts after an exhilarating lecture by William Kiesel (the publisher and editor of Ouroboros Press) on magic circles at Treadwell's in Covent Garden (Christina's post-lecture blog entry is here). William presented a long series of images of magic circles (manuscripts diagrams, woodcuts, paintings, etc) from the Middle Ages right through to the 19th century, including many of John Dee's strange diagrams.

Voynich Manuscript, page f57v (the 'magic circle' page)

The reason I've been trying to find out about magic circles for years is because, as you can see above, page f57v in the Voynich Manuscript apparently contains one. Or (more precisely), whatever f57v actually contains, it seems on the surface to follow the constructional rules and layout of genuine magic circles. However, this is hard to research because the topic of magic circles has attracted relatively little academic interest over the years, Richard Kieckhefer's (1997) Forbidden Rites (an in-depth study of a 15th century necromancer's manual) being one of the few honourable exceptions. Which is why I was so excited about the lecture.

Having said that, there are many things about f57v that cast doubts on its 'magic circle-itude'. For example, I could find no other magic circle with the directional spirits given faces rather than simply named: depictions in every other magic circle I had seen were instead abstract diagrammatic renderings (swords, pentacles, rings, sigils, etc), and names of the directions (to help orient the circle, the first thing any proper necromancer would want to do). But even more brutally: when magic circles are all about the power of names, why ever would someone want to replace them with images?

And so... after the lecture, I asked William for his thoughts on f57v (which, delightfully, he had looked at before). As far as the directional faces go, he agreed that this was pretty much a unique feature: though a tiny number of magic circles he had seen do have sigils shaped to broadly resemble faces, that would seem to be a completely different strand of development to that which we see in the VMs. Overall, even though he did note that it was intriguing thatthe postures of the four "people" on f57v were all different, the main impression the page left him with was that each of the four faces faced in a different direction (though he didn't know what that meant).

On the train home, I sat there wondering what this might have caused this, letting all the various aspects swirl around me (though, no, I didn't have any of Treadwell's wine that night). And then all the bits clunked into place, with that sound very familiar to any Simpsons fan: "d'oh!"

I should explain. Perhaps the biggest trap Voynichologists fall into is that of overthinking issues: when many complex explanations for a given phenomenon exist, sometimes simple ones gets overlooked, or (worse) rejected for appearing too simple. And the simplest explanation here is that, because almost every magic circle has the directions of the compass written on it, that would be both the first thing you would want to keep and the first thing you would want to hide. And so it seems highly likely to me that the four faces on f57v code for N/E/S/W. In short, I think that (like the VMs' "Naked Lady Code" I described in my book) the four faces employ a misleadingly elaborate way of enciphering something very simple - the compass directions. But which is which - and how - and why?

• The left figure is facing forward-left
• The top figure is facing backward-right
• The right figure is facing forward-right (and holding a ring / egg)
• The bottom figure is facing backward-left

But how do these four map onto N/S/E/W? The first thing to notice is that magic circles are very often written in Latin, with the four points written Oriens [E], Meridies [S], Occidens [W], Septentrio [N]: and so an encipherer would only need to hide one in order to hide them all.

While I don't know for sure... I do predict that the nose and eyebrow of the left figure's face was elaborated around an "S" to denote "Septentrio" [i.e. North]: and that the only useful information is that a ring (as rings are far more common than eggs in magic circles, The Black Pullet notwithstanding) should be placed opposite it [i.e. South]. The flower-like shape at the centre is probably an elaborated shape around the central o-shapes, which probably denote locus magistri, the place where the exorcist / conjuror / master of the magic circle should stand. Finally: might the heavily-drawn straight line on the shoulder of the ring-carrying person denote a sword? Very possibly.

Voynich Manuscript, page f57v - four central figures

This doesn't answer every question about f57v (how could it?): but it does give a good snapshot of my current thoughts on how (beneath all the deception) it is actually a magic circle (though perhaps not as complex a magic circle as you might initially think).

Part 2 will move on to the VMs' other magic circles...

Comets in Quire 20...?

After my recent (and unexpectedly extended) foray into Voynich-themed novels, I thought it would be a good idea to get back to proper manuscript research.

One small feature I've been mulling over is the "starred paragraphs" in Quire 20, the final gathering in the VMs (the one which famously ends with the "michiton oladabas" page). I posted about this section not long ago, discussing Vladimir Sazonov's suggestion that it might originally have formed some kind of 365-paragraph calender. But what I'm thinking about here is the possibility that the "tailed stars" used to mark the start of each paragraph here were actually comets, chosen on the basis of a Latin pun.

Back circa 1500, the named structures used for written works were often slightly different from now. What we moderns would call a chapter or part, would typically have been called a book: while a modern subsection (a block of continuous text with a descriptive header) would typically have been called a chapter, or capitulum (literally "diminutive caput", "little head"). Ironically, the short punchy chapters in Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" are closer in spirit to this medieval world of text than most other modern books.

What we therefore see in Quire 20 is what I think would have been understood in context to be not so much a series of paragraphs, but a series of "chapters" within a "book". With this in mind, might those little shapes that have usually been called the "stars" or "tailed stars" be instead iconic comets?

Our word "comet" originally came from the Latin cometes, which itself was a loan-word from the Greek kometes, "wearing long hair" (it's in Aristotle). Similarly, the Latin term crinis means hair, or tail of a comet, or rays of sun: and so a comet may be called a stella crinita, a 'hairy star' (yes, really!)

So, when I now look at the starred paragraphs, I do think that the "stars" there are very probably comets comprised of a little head (capitulum) and a deliberately hair-like tail. This kind of punning visual / Latin iconographic word-play would be consistent with the view of the VMs as a high-culture cipher: but perhaps seems a little too ornate or too conceptually 'fancy' for a mere hoax.

Modern astrologers (even such mainstream ones as Jonathan Cainer) are still sent into a tailspin (if you'll forgive the pun) by comets, seeing in them omens for, well, all sorts of things, such as the death of Benazir Bhutto, etc: which is, of course, no different to ancient, medieval and Renaissance astrologers alike, for whom comets had the power to invite speculation, wonder, and fear.

But for the VMs, where should this research thread go next? As far as art history goes, Giotto famously depicted the 1301 appearance of Halley's Comet in his Adoration of the Magi: and if you subscribe to a likely Quattrocento origin for the manuscript (as I do), I would guess that there is a lot more to find in Roberta Olson's (2000) "The Florentine Tondo" (ISBN10: 019817425X, ISBN13: 9780198174257, £85) - pricy (but supposedly fascinating). I would also suggest "Cometary theory in Fifteenth Century Europe" (Kluwer, 1985, also £80 or so) by Jane L. Jervis, and Lynn Thorndike's (1958) "Some tracts on Comets 1456-1500" (in Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences 11 (1958) pp.225-260), none of which I've seen myself but perhaps will one day soon (if I spend a day at the BL, or win the lottery). I've also read that Galileo discussed (in his "Il Saggiatore") the three comets that were seen in 1417: and so there was presumably much debate on this at the time.

I don't know: it seems possibly too lightweight an issue to devote a great deal of time to. And yet there is much in the VMs that points to astronomical and astrological thinking - enough that I can empathize with Enrique Joven's novel "Castle in the Stars", where the VMs is imagined as being part of that general tradition (No! Enough with the novels, already!). Maybe there is enough there after all...