The Voynich Ninja

Thank you Marco, your last post does address some of the issues in a clear way. 
Do you happen to know of any comparable imagery where a medical charm is visualized in the same way? Or would this be a rather unique kind of illustration? I have never seen a concrete medical tool surrounded by a cloud band - let alone held by the business end by a naked woman.

(01-12-2016, 12:50 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thank you Marco, your last post does address some of the issues in a clear way. 
Do you happen to know of any comparable imagery where a medical charm is visualized in the same way? Or would this be a rather unique kind of illustration? I have never seen a concrete medical tool surrounded by a cloud band - let alone held by the business end by a naked woman.

Hi Koen,
I am not aware of good parallels for these images. This is the problem with the balneological section, one has the choice of either speculating on some highly original way of representing an uncommon content (as I am doing), or considering a deviant way of representing a common content that had an established visual tradition (e.g. the constellations). I think the images are original because the illustrated content is.

Some weak parallels can be found in the use of clouds in Renaissance emblems. For instance Paradin (1557) offers You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Nothing specifically similar, but the process is: you can take any physical object and make it a symbol for an abstract concept.

Possibly, earlier parallels could be found in alchemical manuscripts, since that field produced a varied range of innovative allegories in a period closer to the production of the VMS.

Marco
It is good to see that even though our views differ, there are some tentative patches of common ground emerging throughout the discussion. Especially the nymphs as metaphors or concepts rather than real people in baths. And also, the inconvenient impossibility to produce satisfactory visual parallels from the early 15th century. But if it were easy to find such parallels, this forum would probably not exist

I like how you phrase the choice one faces when studying quire 13, though I don't see the section as a 15th century deviation from the Aratea tradition. I would rather see it as an offshoot of a different tradition, of which only one example happens to survive.

The Aratea tradition only survived because it was picked up by a number of intellectual centres, like the Carolingians. The Leiden Aratea is one of the most beautiful examples, believed to have been copied from a manuscript as early as the fourth century (see for example Marion Dolan's thesis, which goes into more detail than Dekker). These various early copies were copied again and again, well into the 15th century.

Let's imagine that only one of these manuscripts survived, and let's say it was one with a good amount of copyists' reinterpretations. I have seen examples where male figures like Heracles and Eridanus are turned into women, where Hercules' lion pelt has evolved into a live human hostage... There are whole strands of manuscripts where the goats around the Charioteer have become rabbits. The list goes on and on. Imagine such a manuscript was the only survivor. What would we say about it?

So my reasoning is, that in quire 13 we see the 15th century end of a much less common tradition, of which exactly one copy survived, gathered together with copies of similarly uncommon documents. That we see some clearly medieval elements in it is undeniable - the artefact was made by 15th century hands, just like some of the more deviant Aratus copies. The difference is that we can understand very well what happened to those Aratea copies, because we have tons of material to compare it to, and in many cases can even trace the steps it took to end up with a deviant depiction of a constellation. Aratus had the fortune to have remained popular in Europe.

Please note that all the blue rivulets flow through the grooves nebuly. Similarly, the water flowing on the slate.



Maybe nymph in this cloud - Дана (in the Slavonic mythology, the goddess of water). Дыва - initial cosmic water.

A Slavonic goddess? Perhaps.

However the line patterns being compared differ by definition. The VMs examples are *nebuly* lines. The individual crests and troughs are *bulbous*. Narrower at the base and wider at top (/bottom). The other example is a *wavy* line - a regular sine wave, wider at the base and narrower at the top (/bottom).

Wavy lines frequently are used to designate water. However, nebuly lines more often represent clouds, which is what the etymology of the name denotes.

I'm of mind that the "things" are spindles and that they imply a length of time, of a journey, for instance. This falls in line with my hypothesis that quire 13 is about travels, but even if that is not so, I would still take the spindles to indicate something about time/fate/life, related to the three fates, in which the spindle and thread indicates a life span, the cutting of the thread indicating death. There is no cutting indicated in the manuscript so to me the usage could literally indicate other ways of life. The thread also seems to me to indicate further detail re length of time, the time it takes to create the thread, perhaps? The dots may indicate multiple time periods. When pointed at something, direction of the journey implied? When held behind, a journey from, instead of to? When empty, indicating a short journey, or that they are close, and therefore perhaps similar in their ways?

Re the nebuly lines, I take them to be indicative of mountains, with the blue as the runoff that comes from the skies/clouds/heavens (the nebuly lines) and down the mountains to create rivers and lakes.

Nice example, Linda.

The weird thing is that usually the distaff was held up high, and the spindle hung down. Hence, I take it not as literal spinning of wool, but rather spinning as in "turning". For example in Plato's Myth of Er, the heavens revolve on a spindle, which is basically how I read this item as well. 

Some more examples below. 

(02-12-2016, 09:25 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Nice example, Linda.

The weird thing is that usually the distaff was held up high, and the spindle hung down. Hence, I take it not as literal spinning of wool, but rather spinning as in "turning". For example in Plato's Myth of Er, the heavens revolve on a spindle, which is basically how I read this item as well. 

There is no distaff in the picture I posted, the spindle is down as usual, but is not being spun, presumably the ball of thread/yarn is the "spent" life, having come off the spindle and it is being cut short. To me that means the yarn on the spindle is the potential future.

The fact that the spindle usually hangs down to spin makes the pointing of it significant in the ms, as this is not how it is generally used. That is why I felt it was direction related, using it as a pointer. Almost never do they hold the spindle in a way in which it would be used as what it is, instead they are moving it around, which to me means it must be symbolic in related ways, direction + time + movement = change of space = travel?

Spinning heavens is an interesting concept, and again time related.

I do think you are thinking about it in the right way. 
Off the top of my head, there are at least four spindles in the MS, two full and two empty.

I  can't check now cause I'm replying from my phone, but I think two of them are behind the back and two of them are held high. So one of each type in a system with two variables. 

In my opinion, held high means proximity to northern pole, held behind back proximity to south. Full spindle likely means spinning fast, i.e. close to pole. That's something I still have to check.

(02-12-2016, 09:25 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Nice example, Linda.

The weird thing is that usually the distaff was held up high, and the spindle hung down. Hence, I take it not as literal spinning of wool, but rather spinning as in "turning". For example in Plato's Myth of Er, the heavens revolve on a spindle, which is basically how I read this item as well. 

Some more examples below. 

Hi!
I can add one more example in this category of images, but what the thing there is unknown. Maybe, it is a spindle, too.