Voynich Manuscript - Solved???

I was looking around to check into this old topic a bit more, and came up with this

Solution of the Voynich Manuscript
by Leo Levitov

www.amazon.com...=1110817369/sr=2-5/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_5/104-2693921-1566322

Product Description:
Described as the most studied and most mysterious manuscript in the world, hundreds of scholars have attacked the Voynich manuscript. Dr. Levitov tells how he broke the text, including his discovery of the word ISIS, a pattern-word. A transliteration of the script symbols is provided.

Anyone read this???

More info:

Dr. Leo Levitov, author of Solution of the Voynich Manuscript, presents the thesis that the Voynich is nothing less then the only surviving primary document of the " Great Heresy" that arose in Italy and flourished in Languedoc until ruthlessly exterminated by the Albigensian Crusade in the 1230s. The little women in the baths who puzzled so many are for Levitov a Cathar sacrament, the Endura,'or death by venesection [cutting a vein] in order to bleed to death in a warm bath'. The plant drawings that refused to resolve themselves into botanically identifiable species are no problem for Levitov. He stated, "There is not a single so-called botanical illustration that does not contain some Cathari symbol or Isis symbol. The astrological drawings are likewise easy to deal with; The innumerable stars are representative of the stars in Isis' mantle. The reason it has been so difficult to decipher the Voynich Manuscript is that it is not encrypted at all, but merely written in a special script, and is an adaptation of a polyglot oral tongue into a literary language which would be understandable to people who did not understand Latin and to whom this language could be read. Specifically, a highly polyglot form of medieval Flemish with a large number of Old French and Old High German loan words. Many people disagree with his claims.

Some of the symbols used in the Voynich manuscript are similar to symbols in other scripts or notations. In particular, the following similarities have been noticed:

Alchemical Symbols
Early Arabic Numerals
Latin Shorthand Abbreviations
Beneventan Script

Lots of images here: www.geocities.com...

Another interpretation: users.gloryroad.net...!_the_eye.htm

I know we've had threads on this, but I don't remember seeing any talking about possible existing solutions, so apologies in advance if we went this route before...

I'm still curious about the book I mentioned, as it's very "DaVinci Code", no? With the talk of an Isis cult, and Bacon, who knows?

Levitov's solution isn't thought of very highly among voynichers. Here's a quick summary:

a) On its own his interpretation is actually pretty believable-sounding. Major quibbles are that the Cathars predate all the other likely candidate authors by acouple centuries which woulqd make the book a bit older than earlier thought, but on its own that's not majorly damning.

but

b) He's never provided thorough documentation of his methods of decipherment
c) what he has shown is basically something like this: pick some alphabet, and whatever words look like they're in old dutch keep in old dutch. for the remainder, figure out if they look like anything from any other language spoken at that time and fill in as appropriate.

So he's basicaly assuming the book is written in some sort of pidgin medieval dutch together with words drawn from other contemporaneous languages as needed. He might be right, but he hasn't provided sufficient documentation of his reasoning to make a good case for himself, and without that evidence it shoulqd be obvious that his method is a pretty easy way to arrive ata false translation if you're not careful.

here 's a further discussion of the manuscript and levitov in particular.

also mentions Leo Levitov,
an American physician who in 1987 also alleged a solution to the cipher,
but which Poundstone also regards as pathetic and illusory. I won't quote
any more from his book, since this post is way too long as it is, unless
people request more. If anyone wants to order Poundstone's fascinating
book, go to any Waldenbooks, B. Dalton's, or Barnes and Noble bookstore to
special order it:
Title: Labyrinths of Reason
Author: William Poundstone
Publisher: Doubleday 1988
ISBN#: 0-385-24261-1

Perhaps you might want to get that book instead of Levitovs?

Might just get them both...it's always fascinated me, and most occultists did use some interesting codes...such as Crowley.

This gives me an idea guys. We've got a very wide pool of knowledge on ATS- linguists, computer experts, people of great esoteric knowledge, etc.

What if we started an ATS project to create our own coded manuscript to leave for future generations to pull their hair out over?

The Vagabond: www.maydaymystery.org...

Originally posted by sisonek
The Vagabond: www.maydaymystery.org...

Begorah! A guy would have to spend days every month keeping up with a mystery like that, on top of having a very very impressive knowledge or reference of languages, maths, etc.

the mixing of several languages may not be such a silly idea as it may first seem. the novel 'the rule of four' revolves around a very old and real book of such type (the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili) which was also written in several languages (complete online version here - ( mitpress.mit.edu... )

justyc: You're right; the problem is that Levitov doesn't document how he "deciphers" the manuscript and so it's hard to judge if he's using the languages in a way that makes sense. From what he has said of his decipherment techniques it doesn't sound very systematic, though, hence the skepticism.

The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is a very neat book.

Parden me... but what ever happened to the research team on ATS that was to investigate the Manuscripts? It's been over a year, but so far nothing has been mentioned!

I would like to think this guy's translation is just as good as the next, though. For all we know, it's a cookbook entitled "How to Serve Man".

For those of you who don't know about the Voynich Manuscript:

www.world-mysteries.com...

I never heard of it either, until this thread, so I did a little quick research for the benefit of other ATS members.

[edit on 18-3-2005 by Ohio_Ron]

Originally posted by soothsayer
Parden me... but what ever happened to the research team on ATS that was to investigate the Manuscripts? It's been over a year, but so far nothing has been mentioned!

Has any research project ever accomplished anything here? I don't know if they have, have they?

Originally posted by Nygdan
Has any research project ever accomplished anything here? I don't know if they have, have they?

In my experience they tend to stall out before being completed, however they do usually uncover a certain amount of useful fact which benefits future discussion. We learned a lot in the Gulf War Syndrome I tried to put together, we just stalled out before we could figure out who was behind it and such.

Below is a link yo Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, where the whole book is layed out as "readable" sized pages with hi-res pictures of every page. Except for the obviously lost ones.

beinecke.library.yale.edu...

Anyone heared anything new on the desciphering of these texts and drawings?