Re: VMs: Folios 85_86 Rosettes or Sephiroth

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jorge,

At 16:11 11/02/2004 -0300, Jorge Aveleira wrote:
> Thanks for your prompt reply and helpful suggestions. I had already
> downloaded and studied your reproductions of folios 85_86, thanks again, and
> also taken a couple of hours of study on the EVA character set. However, I
> am not specially gifted for memory tricks, and memorizing or becoming fairly
> skilled on a unsettled alphabet would be much frustrating.

"Unsettled" is the last thing I would call EVA - though not perfect, it is 
extremely stable and useful, and a proper understanding of it is a huge 
assistance for anyone who wants to help moving our collective understanding 
of the VMs forward. Perhaps surprisingly, it's actually very logical and 
simple, with the bare minimum of memory tricks (specifically for the 
gallows, based on their general shape).

> For what I
> intend, a conventional, more or less agreed upon EVA transcription of the
> complete contents of folios 85_86 would be convenient enough.

Be very careful - if you look at an EVA transcription and see a simple 
substitution ciphertext, you're missing the fundamental point about 
Voynichese, which is that *it looks simple but isn't*.

> Some time ago,
> I attempted unsuccessfully to interest somebody else on my particular view
> of those folios and on a correlational/statistical analysis of its textual
> contents against that view. Perhaps I could attain something meaningful
> enough to attract the interest of others better equipped for a thorough job
> on that. As you may have noticed, the structure of f85_86 fits nicely with
> my conjectures and also with Steve's, in addition to its suitability for
> being the repository of a multiple codetable. I am willing to bet a bottle
> of red wine on that, to accompany the pizza that according hearsay will go
> to the Vms codebreakers.

I like Steve a lot - for example, he's been kind enough to email and mail 
me many of his notes - but we're a little early for a pizza dinner just 
yet. :-o

Actually, I think it was me who suggested that the 9 rosettes might 
correspond to 9 code-wheels, with the contents of each wheel encoded within 
the circular zodiac diagrams. FWIW, Steve now sees each code in terms of 
tic-tac-toe boards - that *may* be the case, but Steve has to see that he 
can't have the whole answer, or else he would be "1 of 1", not "1 of 12". :-)

Please take the time to understand EVA properly - once you have, you'll get 
an understanding of why the text isn't just a simple cipher: and 
(hopefully) you'll also get an idea of how we can all work together to try 
to move this forward. A single good idea seems unlikely to open this door, 
no matter how insightful - but a combination of good ideas stands a good 
chance. EVA is the mechanism by which we can join our ideas together. :-)

And yes, EVA has limitations: however, I think we have barely scratched the 
surface of what we can collectively achieve with it.

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


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