Re: Where Do We Go From Here?

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

About me: I'm a veteran of the computer games industry, with a degree in 
Maths and Philosophy, and have only been on this list less than six months.

Much to my surprise, I now believe that the VMS were indeed owned by Edward 
Kelley, and were probably bought by Michael Sendivogius from Kelley's widow 
- and from there it could have gone anywhere. :-)

As far as religion goes... I'm crypto rather than linguist. :-)

However, I don't think that the VMS quite matches our modern paradigms of 
ciphers and codes - rather, that its text is readable though heavily 
obfuscated. My theory du jour is that (most/all?) letters are written as 
*pairs* of symbols (like "ol" or "dy"), and that the gallows characters are 
coded forms of *simple* symbols.

So: having converted a gallows character into an "o" or a "y" (or 
whatever), you then recombine it with its neighbour to get a pair, and then 
convert that pair into a real letter. The gallows, then, are there to 
misdirect our gaze, by breaking up the flow of the pairs/groups. I'm taking 
f23v apart at the minute - I'll post how I get on with it later.

Oh, and there are bound to be numerous other obfuscationary tactics to deal 
with, but this should be a start. :-)

Underlying language: probably Occitan or Italian, possibly Latin (though I 
don't believe it myself).

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....