What does the Voynich Manuscript mean? Here’s what researchers know in 2026

History buffs and mystery aficionados love a good challenge, whether it be the origins of the ancient pyramids of Giza or even the mismatched memory of those who experience a Mandela Effect.

Cue the Voynich Manuscript, a famous illustrated codex that has not been cracked by leading experts and has boggled thousands of history lovers. For years, researchers have been looking at the document for evidence as to what it means and where it originated. 

One content creator, Jiuor1 (@jiuor1), claimed that “ Yale has posted the Voynich Manuscripts to the internet.” As of this writing, her post discussing the Voynich Manuscript and carbon dating has more than 319,000 views. 

What is the Voynich Manuscript, exactly?

The Voynich Manuscript is often called the most mysterious book in the world. It's a text that's estimated to date back to the early 15th century. Rare books dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich (whose name is also spelled “Wilfred”) originally purchased the manuscript in 1912 from a Jesuit order alongside other rare prints. Famously, he was unable to sell the 234-page book. It contains “unidentifiable plants,” various “astrological charts,” and an “unreadable text,” according to Yale. 

How true is Jiuor1's video?

Jiuor1 posted a video regarding the Voynich Manuscript. But there were some details that didn't match what experts say.

Some of Jiuor1's post is factual. For instance, the content creator said that researchers discovered that “ the paper actually dates back to the 15th century,” which is true. Researchers studying the text were able to determine it likely came from the 15th century with “95% confidence.” The content creator also said that new information about the Voynich manuscript is steadily coming in, which is technically true. 

But, Jiuor1 implied that Yale only recently uploaded the Voynich Manuscript to the internet. “ It is a very solid idea because what starts happening, people start flooding in, [expletive] starts happening, things start to come out about the Voynich manuscript and what the [expletive] could possibly be the tea,” Jiuor1 said. 

The Voynich Manuscript was first digitized in 2004 by Yale researchers. In 2016, the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library created a photo facsimile edition that's commercially available. Then, in 2022, researchers and Yale alumni created an official “Voynich Research Group.” The group has relied on history, literature, paleography, linguistics, cryptology, computer science, and even large language models (LLMs) to decipher the manuscript's text.

Viewers also pointed out that the image Jiuor1 used in the background of her video doesn't come from the Voynich manuscript. 

“[That] picture is not from the voynich manuscript,” one viewer said. 

Another commenter said, “the Voynich manuscript has been available online since ever, and that is not a picture from the manuscript.”

Buzz News has reached out to Jiuor1 via TikTok direct message for comment. 

@jiuor1 #historychannel #fypシ #historybuff #history #fyp #voynichmanuscript ♬ original sound – jiuor1

What do experts know about the manuscript?

There are a variety of independent researchers and experts still studying the Voynich manuscript who have come up with recent theories regarding the text. Currently, there is no definitive answer as to what the text actually says.

In 2024, Medieval Academy of America executive director and notable medieval studies researcher Lisa Fagin Davis released a set of multispectral scans that showed what some of the manuscript's pages look like under ultraviolet and infrared light. The images were taken 10 years prior. 

The scans, which are publicly available, revealed a previously unreadable “Tepenecz inscription” as well as a visible Roman alphabet written in what paleographers refer to as “Humanistic bookhand,” according to Davis. Davis noted that many of the findings from the multispectral scans would take time to decipher so as not to misinterpret the manuscript's information. 

In a post on Davis's blog, Manuscript Road Trip, the researcher said, “For Voynichologists, any new textual evidence – no matter how little – is significant, as it adds data to the analysis of the text.” 

In 2025, science journalist Michael A. Greshko published a peer-reviewed study in the journal Cryptologia. The researcher theorized that the Voynich Manuscript used a “verbose homophonic substitution cipher,” which he called the “Naibbe cipher.”

According to Newsweek, the cipher is based on “a combination of dice rolls and playing cards to turn normal language into symbols that resemble those featured in the manuscript's glyphs.” 

The Naibbe cipher, however, has not decoded the manuscript. It only offers researchers an idea as to how the manuscript may have been formed.