Voynich Reconsidered

A forum to announce articles, books, radio shows, podcasts, and books about the Voynich Manuscript.
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DFS346
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Re: Voynich Reconsidered

Post by DFS346 »

Planning a podcast, or series of podcasts, on Voynich Reconsidered, with Francis Tapon on the WanderLearn channel, probably in March 2025.

https://www.youtube.com/@ftapon
Last edited by DFS346 on Thu Feb 06, 2025 2:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

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DFS346
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Re: Voynich Reconsidered

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Voynich Reconsidered on Medium:

a research philosophy
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_87384/acbc953deb45
the {8am} strategy revisited
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 0c1b7b40f9
the Sukhotin algorithm
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 73924a64b0
the glyphs re-ordered?
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 5905026bcc
a research strategy
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 1eee24f3b4
them’s the breaks
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... b0592fbfc1
abjad languages
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 2761cfdd8e
La Divina Commedia
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 5815b39ae8
Currier's dilemma
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 0dff32715a
"leaf words"
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... b0d3e1cdda
mapping glyphs to letters
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... f1f391c478
wild cards
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 6f9be5731c
scribes and languages
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... b1fd2a0996
alternative transliterations
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 71adbc1ea4
what is a “word”?
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 1d15d350f4
an alphabetic cipher?
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 91c877c3e9
multiple alphabets?
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... fab1ea73a2
punctuation or junk
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... c83db49ed1
the “truncation effect”
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... bcb4922e5e
Zattera’s “separable words”
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 0d1504c6df
the “Voynich alphabet”
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 9f69b9dcb5
upper and lower case (1,209 words)
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 06fa747832
the “truncation effect” (Part 2) (617 words)
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... bf4384051c
the author's name? (1,368 words)
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... ced8430a34
Turkish as precursor (1,512 words)
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... e317edf645
Latin as precursor (963 words)
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 2d2f4e9f6b
Persian as precursor (1,922 words)
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 753dbf1f7a
filtering the languages (1,195 words)
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... c35e8e8b35
Arabic as precursor (883 words)
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 71f07c4b0e
manuscripts and printed documents (451 words)
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 9f86785824
Bohemian as precursor (949 words)
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 34f396e462
"leaf words" revisited (1,400 words)
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 4357899acb
Welsh as precursor (791 words)
https://medium.com/@robert.edwards_8738 ... 8141e14b7d

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DFS346
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Re: Voynich Reconsidered

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Planning a podcast on Voynich Reconsidered with Francis Tapon on WanderLearn http://www.youtube.com/@ftapon

Will record on July 31, 2025 and release probably a few days later.
Last edited by DFS346 on Mon Jul 14, 2025 5:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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DFS346
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Re: Voynich Reconsidered

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A review of Voynich Reconsidered, in the Fortean Times, July 2025:

"Voynich Reconsidered is an analytical tour de force. Even though the details can overwhelm, its good ordinary prose, splendid colour layouts and umpteen tables of correspondences are mesmerisingly focused. The studies of earlier attempts at decipherment, and new ones of the author’s own avenues, which seem promising, are cogently presented.

The product of five scribes working for some uber-inscrutable purpose, the Voynich Manuscript, cryptography’s holy mountain, is an outlier. At first appearing quite accessible with its dreamlike illustrations of plants, female bathers, peculiar apparatus, we get the gist – sort of. Then there’s the… they are words, aren’t they? The text looks decipherable… right? Unknown, for these apparently simple concepts are stress-tested to their limits with deciphering efforts.

Is the Voynich an alchemical or magical grimoire or a medical manual? Poem or pharmaceutical? Or some combination? Why do its “letters” and “words” look so much like bits of known languages that don’t stack up to complete phrases? The lack of punctuation doesn’t help one bit.

The author suggests some of it corresponds to particular ancient Balkan languages, that is, if indeed it really isn’t utter gibberish, a hoax; a possibility ruled out by Edwards with “some degree of confidence”. The only Voynich conference sponsored by an academic institution, in 2022, generally favoured the opinion that the Voynich text is meaningful.

The producer must have been wealthy, an aristocrat or high clerical official. Someone who may, Edwards admits, have had “a colossal sense of humour”."

Rating: 5 stars. "... rigorous, clear presentation ... eminently worth reading".

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DFS346
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Re: Voynich Reconsidered

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Today I recorded two episodes of a podcast with Francis Tapon of the WanderLearn channel (https://www.youtube.com/@ftapon), on the Voynich manuscript and Voynich Reconsidered. Each episode is about 40 minutes.

Francis will publish them in probably about a few weeks' time.

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