My Approach to the Voynich Manuscript

A Procedural, Rule-Based Analysis

Most attempts to interpret the Voynich Manuscript begin with assumptions about language, symbolism, or direct semantic translation. Our work takes a different starting point.

We treat the Voynich Manuscript as a procedural technical document—one that encodes actions, materials, governance rules, and reuse patterns—rather than as a conventional narrative or purely symbolic text.

The core hypothesis guiding this work is simple and testable:

The Voynich Manuscript encodes a structured procedural system whose internal rules remain consistent across the manuscript, regardless of section or illustration type.

Method Overview

Our approach is method-first, rule-based, and deliberately constrained.

Rather than attempting immediate semantic translation, we focus on identifying and validating operational structure, including:

• Material introduction and handling

• Vessel and process governance

• Heat, time, and repetition controls

• Base preparation and reuse

• Procedural closure and transitions

These elements are tracked using a fixed set of operators and rules that are applied consistently across folios.

Importantly, the ruleset is not modified on a per-folio basis. This allows failures, ambiguities, and successes to be observed rather than explained away.

Full-Manuscript Application

The procedural framework has been applied across the entire Voynich Manuscript, including:

• Herbal sections

• Biological / balneological sections

• Zodiac folios

• Astronomical and cosmological sections

All folios are processed through the same workspace and rule system, producing structured outputs that record operational sequences, inheritance behavior, and validation status.

While the framework has been applied globally, selected folios are examined in depth as representative case studies. These include:

• Text-only base definition pages (e.g., f1r)

• Herbal preparation pages with varied morphology

• Zodiac folios demonstrating timing, segmentation, and reuse

• Stress-test folios chosen specifically for structural or visual deviation

This distinction—full coverage with selective deep validation—is intentional and central to the methodology.

Pressure Testing and Validation

The framework has undergone multiple internal pressure tests, including:

• Application to folios with no illustrations

• Application to folios with radically different layouts

• Cross-section testing without expanding the dictionary or altering rules

• Reuse tracking where later procedures reference earlier bases

In these tests, procedural structure and inheritance behavior continue to resolve without requiring ad hoc adjustments. Where ambiguity remains, it is recorded explicitly rather than forced into interpretation.

What This Work Does—and Does Not—Claim

This project does not claim:

• A complete semantic translation of the manuscript

• Definitive identification of every plant or substance

• Chemical, medical, or historical validation of outcomes

• Final resolution of the Voynich problem

What it does demonstrate is that:

• The manuscript encodes a coherent procedural system

• That system operates consistently across sections

• Later folios reuse and extend earlier base procedures

• Structural meaning can be recovered independently of full linguistic decoding
  
  Released 1/19/2026
  Thomas Woolvin
  The Lost Knowledge Files