Newsgroups: alt.horror.cthulhu
Subject: Re: the Voynich mss.
From: kck+@cs.cmu.edu (Karl Kluge)
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 10:06:03 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon

Regarding the suggestion that some of the ink has dropped off/faded, I
believe this is misinformation based on Colin Wilson's "Return of the
Lloigor", in which it is discovered that the Voynich is the Greek text of
the NECRONOMICON written in Arabic characters which had partially faded.

Regarding the Brumbaugh "decipherment": While it is unquestionably the most
competent claim of decipherment, just plausible and workable enough to
tantalize, it is almost certainly wrong. A couple of us checked what we
could of Brumbaugh's work. To summarize, when he transcribes the running
text which he claims he can't construct an intelligible plaintext from, it's
very easy to reconstruct what he's doing and verify its correctness. The
plant label translations, on the other hand, are a mess. He seems to be
seeing distinctions that aren't obvious to me as someone who has spent some
time transcribing Voynich text into one of the standard ASCII transcription
schemes in order to get a sensible plaintext for the labels.

I'm increasingly drawn to the theory that Edward Kelly forged the Voynich to
accompany fake "powders of transmutation" he brought with him when he sought
Dee out. I suspect the text was generated semi-randomly  using tables of
letters similar to those used in the generation of the Enochian calls.

For anyone reading the Brumbaugh book, here is my analysis of his plant
label translations. This will make no sense to anyone without the book.

Regarding Brumbaugh's decipherment of f100r captions...
I enlarged the illustration on our copier, transcribed the captions into
D'Imperio's notation, and compared with Brumbaugh's explanation on the
facing page:
=====================================================================
Mss.: S02AROZOE   2OSORY9       OPCAR   SOVAD9     2ARSAR   8AM89
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Brm.: PAPAVAYJS   PAPER(YC)-US  ULCER   PALEV-US   PEPPER   QUOQ-US
                                A FA
=====================================================================
                                     7       ?
MSS.: O2ADO   SAE2AN   2OIP9     202AJ   8AFOX       20VAE
---------------------------------------------------------------------
BRM.: UREVA   PASPA-   PACL-US   PJPER   HELY(YC)?   GALER
      A                                               O A
=====================================================================

Note that Brumbaugh give the digit equivalent of PEPPER as 7577*52, so we
know that P and R can't be in the same plaintext equivalent class.  Voynich
2 is P in PAPAVAYJS and R in UREVA (although the 2 in O2ADO is unclear).
Voynich R is both P and R in PEPPER (2ARSAR). On closer examination,
Brumbaugh is seeing two different characters for D'Imperio R. In the first
the backward c comes out of the middle of the diagonal stroke, in the second
it attaches to the top. This clears up the 2=R in UREVA problem, as that 2
could be the second type of R (in fact, he seems to consider all 2's
equivalent to such R's on closer examination).

Below is the decryption matrix I extracted from the above.  Compare with the
decryption matrix given in his Nov. 1978 Voynich Newsletter:  The symbols in
the 2nd column are drawn Voynich letters, as seen by Brumbaugh.  Here I use
our closest Currier equivalents, except:  "v" is like a lower case Roman 'v'
or Greek 'nu' or American 'check mark', "w" is a zigzag scribble, like a
Currier M or N without the final curved upward stroke, and ")" looks here
like a right parenthesis or (only in this box, but not in B's
transcriptions) like a "partial derivative" sign with a much smaller loop
than usual.) Note the substantial overlap. Brumbaugh appears to be
separating letters that appear to me to be the same Currier symbol into
different groupings (this would account for the jumbling together of A, E,
O, U, and J in my reconstructed decryption matrix, for example).

   Apparent decryption matrix		Brumbaugh's matrix (11/78 newsletter)
Voynich		Digit	Plaintext		digit	Voynich	Latin
--------------------------------------          ---------------------
M, O, A		5	A, E, O, U, J		1	O,v	AJV
						5	A	ENX
R, J		2	R, V			2	RJ	BKR
F, V, P			L			3	CFB	CLW
C, I		6?	C, F
E			S			4	4E)	DMS (X)
2, S, D		7	P, G			7	S2Z	GPY
Z			Y			6	P	FOT
8		8?	Q, H			8	8w	HQU
9		9?	-US			9	9V	I, -US, Z
Y, X			-YC-