VMs: Alchemical manuscript, diagram on f89r

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    > [Nick Pelling:] I'm fascinated by the complex figure
    > right at the end (f89r) - can anyone tell me what it is supposed
    > to mean?
    > http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/ljs/PageLevel/index.cfm?ManID=ljs382&Page=177

I have no idea, but what caught my attention was the word at the
center, which reads something like "mixtio". Both the word and the
handwriting remind me very much of the text in VMS f116v, specifically the
line which looks like "six marix morix ...".

Note also the characters resembling EVA "y" (abbreviation for "us"?)
in other words on that image.

I read "vinum" at the bottom left, "dissolutio(nem)" twice in the
center and right columns, "ferm(en)tatio(nem)" and "aqua" in the right
column, and "Arbor" (tree) at the bottom.

(-8 Obviously, it is a recipe for carbon oxosulphide, whose
molecule is drawn quite accurately at the top. 8-)

    > All in all, it has everything you ever wanted from a
    > straight-down-the-line alchemical manuscript. :-)

Which only underscores a major weakness of the "hoax" theory.

All the best,

--stolfi

PS. Yes, I am still alive! It's just that I have been too busy with
boring work (and petty academic politics) to do anything about the
VMS. Besides, six months ago I stopped reading my e-mail for a few
weeks, and then found that, with 200 spam messages per day, I could
never hope to catch up.

I just decided to move all the e-mail I got since then, still unread
and unsorted -- some 200 MB -- to an archive folder, and start from
scratch. So if you wrote to me in that time frame, expect an answer
sometime after I retire, perhaps in 2012 or so. (And yes, I know what
McLuhan said about yesterday's message. 8-)

I am still very much interested in the VMS, and plan to get back to it
as soon as I can. By the way, I am still a firm believer in the
"Chinese theory" --- namely, that Voynichese is an East Asian language
written in an European-inspired phonetic script. And I still hope to
have a free pizza some day... 8-)
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