Research session · Voynich Manuscript

Session 4: Image mapping, project set-up and the Picatrix cross-check

242 folio images were mapped to folios; the repository was set up with a research log, a findings tracker and a collaboration note; the six planet roots were "cross-checked" against the Picatrix's planetary correspondences and rated exact or strong matches. The draft book (v0.1) was then written from these findings.

Session 42 Mar 2026Draft0

What it concluded

The cross-check matched a medieval table against labels that do not exist (session 5).

What it left open

{'fate': 'Moot: the planet roots do not exist.', 'text': 'Ficino, De Vita, planet-drug comparison', 'then': 'high'}
{'fate': 'Done differently: our own entropies, computed in session 5, match theirs.', 'text': "Bowern and Lindemann's precise MATTR figures", 'then': 'medium'}
{'fate': 'Done: the transliterations themselves were obtained in session 5.', 'text': "Zandbergen's EVA frequency tables", 'then': 'medium'}
{'fate': 'Done: used for the per-scribe tests (sessions 5 and 7).', 'text': 'Davis 2020 five-scribe folio distribution', 'then': 'medium'}
{'fate': 'Moot: there are no planet roots.', 'text': 'Find the Mars root', 'then': 'medium'}
{'fate': 'Moot.', 'text': 'Vessel shapes against planets', 'then': 'medium'}
{'fate': 'Moot: the rosette has nine circles, not six.', 'text': 'al-Idrisi direct comparison', 'then': 'low'}
{'fate': 'Not done.', 'text': 'Tacuinum Sanitatis comparison', 'then': 'low'}

What it produced 1

Toward a Reading of the Voynich Manuscript: Lexical Anchors, Morphological Architecture, and the Constructed Language of a Fifteenth-Century Cosmo-Medical System

SRC

Cite it

Mysteries Department. (2026). Session 4: Image mapping, project set-up and the Picatrix cross-check [Research session SES08HP57C06Z11]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/SES08HP57C06Z11

@misc{mysteriesdept_ses08hp57c06z11,
  title     = {Session 4: Image mapping, project set-up and the Picatrix cross-check},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Research session, catalog key SES08HP57C06Z11},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/SES08HP57C06Z11}
}