VMs: RE: More shorthand trivia

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jorge wrote:

> Someone (Rene, perhaps?) once observed that in 15th
> century Germany, at
> least, the digit "7" was written like an uppercase
> Lambda, and that
> "17" would be somewhat similar to the above symbol,
> minus the "o".
>
> Rene provided this picture
>
>   http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/misc/german3.gif
>
> Check out the "17" in the leftmost column, near the
> man's neck.
>
> That could be dismissed as a meaningless coincidence,
> except that the
> above sign is the 10th in a sequence os 17 symbols,
> which is repeated
> 4 times...
>
> Perhaps the symbol means "107" or "10/17" or "17th" ("17º") or
> "17 degrees" or ...
>
> BTW, how does one say "17th" in German? And in Czech?
>
> Someone else suggested that Voynich was a Bolshevik
> agent, who planted
> the VMS in order to distract those Capitalist
> cryptographers and drive
> them insane.
>
> There are times I can almost believe it...


No rest for the weary again tonight.  I've really got to lay off
this Voynich crap for awhile!

Anyway, I really like that image, Jorge.  It's got a real
"Voynich" feel to it.  I'd almost be willing to agree with you, if
it weren't for another glyph on the same page, folio 57v.  Not
only do we have "Feare of God" exactly as reproduced by combining
"Feare" and "God" in English shorthand, we also have "life" or
with a dot, "eternal life" on the same page.  You're forcing me to
show my hand before I'm ready to lay down all my cards, but here
goes the second part.

The glyph

xxxxx
     x
      xxxxx

means "Life", (combination of L and F), and when you add a dot
over it, you get what should be interpreted as "Eternal Life".
Remember also that the "caret" looking glyph, ^, stands for G and
is also part of "Feare of God".  The biggest G word is God, so the
caret alone always stands for "God".  I've now given you three of
the 17 "words" here, straight out of a shorthand book, all three
in agreement as far as subject is concerned.  We have "God",
"Feare of God" (or "Feare God"), and "Eternal Life".  I'm try not
giving up any more of the glyphs until I've worked out the entire
sequence to my satisfaction, but you also have "Mercie" in this
string.  It's beginning to look like a quotation from scripture,
but I think this is what the author intended it to look like.

I had hoped for the philosopher's stone, galactic charts, alien
spaceship plans, a fool's-proof aphrodisiac, or even a string of
numbers that might help in decoding, but what I'm getting out of
this ring is quite different from what I'd expected.  Rather
disappointing to be honest.  Some good may come of it however.
Time will tell.

I do have to point out that by this system, the <ch> glyph means
"scripture", and several of the others have similar religious
meaning.  Shelton is accredited with invention of this system, and
in many ways I'm certain that is correct.  His "shorthand"
characters for religious subjects had probably been in use for so
long that they were ingrained, but Shelton probably simplified,
organized and streamlined the notation for ease of use.  A lot of
evidence exists that shorthand was used to take down sermons
verbatim for centuries, so the basic idea was not Shelton's.

The system of notation is obviously earlier than Shelton by about
100 years, leaning heavily on Latin with some standard church
symbols mixed in, but recognizable.  I don't think for a minute
that the VMS is Written in shorthand, only that shorthand was the
source for the characters.  That these one-time and rather complex
glyphs demonstrate themselves to be traditional church-based
notation is even more convincing to me, though I had hoped for
something far more exciting.

GC