The Voynich Ninja

You are demanding, which is good, I like critical questions. However, I don't agree with your reason for objecting.

The Aries/wave image is one of the stranger, more abstract ones. I'm relatively sure of Aries, and know that the whole drawing is meant to evoke (sorry) the mast of a ship in a storm. The thing might be waves, but could also be clouds or both. We won't know for sure until we read the text. I don't know whether the other things you posted represent waving water or clouds or various things, and I won't guess just to tell you something.

I do know some patterns throughout Q13a already. I have shown why I believe the wavy lines to represent the polar circles in this section. There also seems to be a tendency for green water (ocean) or green accents to gravitate towards southern constellations, but that is something I have to examine in more detail. The presence of a triple parallel line on a folio means that the constellations on this line are found on the ecliptic. This is clear on two folios. 

The stories are always read from right to left (!) which is an interesting feature and might suggest that the text has been transcribed from right to left script. But that's rather speculative at this point.

A very important feature is that the base of figures always hints at the constellation level. Perhaps even exclusively at the constellation level. I will provide an overview of this later. The fact that the flying Perseus and one of the Birds has no base is a clever variation on this theme.

The arms of figures generally refer to the constellation level as well. I will also provide an overview of this later.

Dots on a base or item refer to the stars and are meant as an indicator that this part has to be read this way.

All within Q13a. I have no way to make statements about other folios at the moment.

I don't know about the Konstellation theory as I'm not well versed in mythology, although I have seen what I think are references to Greek myths or figures as well, so I think you should keep at it until you have an explanation for the entire quire. My own theory is also one that is not 'seen' by others so I am trying to relook at it all, but I am still coming up with generally related ideas. However that is not to say that even if I believe in my own interpretation, that I don't believe there could be another, or that there aren't other layers of meaning, for instance the body part idea that Ellie outlined, I checked it out against my own theory of the page order that resulted from my geographical one, and it fits too, the body parts seem to follow an order of occurrence from foot to head. Not sure what the combo would mean although I could make some guesses, like travelling will gain you knowledge? Maybe there is more to it as well. So I'd be interested to see what ordering of Konstellations across the quire results from your theory.

Do you see any recurrences of the same ones indicated? I'm interested because in that case it might line up with my perceived double tour across the Mediterranean. it could indicate related celestial navigatory markers, in which case it would be interesting to see how they line up with locations in my view of the quire. So I guess I'm saying be open to recurrence if you see it, don't dismiss it as already having been covered. Or even if it doesn't match my interpretation at all, the ordering would still be interesting, especially if a cohesive pattern results. In my own case I began by looking for the seven seas, and the page ordering that resulted gave way to the indications of specific travels in Italy and elsewhere that still fit the main theme of depicting relatively large water bodies, but which also updated the information to the time the MS was created, by including Lake Constance; making it a copy of something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue: a marriage of information, so to speak.

Those blue wave/wool things to me are all mountains & water runoff, though. I can see what Sam is saying about isolated occurrences vs the whole. But if you can show that the differences in each of these same- looking things are pertinent to your identification of them, (i.e. why is that mountain (or wave, or wool) shaped that way in particular, and answer that this one evokes depictions of Aries, and that one looks like whatever it does) then perhaps it is another layer of meaning you are uncovering. I have several times found more than one interpretation of a particular diagram, but these generally lead from one into the other. The one you say is Casseiopea, I see as Cassandra, due to her name being associated with two places seemingly depicted nearby the nymph, and with other coincidences regarding one of the referenced authors. Is it a coincidence that they are both Cassie's? I like that Casseiopea is a mother goddess, that theme seems to come up too. Of course I can't be certain whether I am creating that result myself from trying to fit the puzzle pieces together or whether it was intended, but when the final result resembles writings from antiquity, (in my case the tour that results resembles Hecataeus' Periodos Ges, in its two parts, first being Europe, then Asia (to India) and Africa in the second, both beginning and ending in Gibraltar. This is why it seems interesting to see indications of Hecate (namesake/related to crossroads, earth, sea, and sky) and Cassandra (accurate predictions not believed, as also happened with Hecataeus) but with updates added to those writings, Strabo comes in with Sagres Point taking the place of Gibraltar as the start/end point of the tour, whereas I see Cosmas' view of the world in the rosettes with Cadiz as the western end of the world and mount Sinai on the other) it seems too much of a coincidence, and I can see that you get the same feeling with your own matchings of puzzle pieces, so I'd like to see what it looks like when complete.

Thank you, Linda, I agree. It is interesting that Diane thinks of this section as stars related to locations. So basically a combination of our both perspectives. No matter how we look at it, these illustrations are incredibly dense, and a multi-layered paradigm will be the only way to explain them - of that I am more convinced than anything else.

My feelings about your ideas are basically the same as yours about mine. I have always been horribly bad at geography and still know way too little about it to assess ideas based on itineraries. But I definitely remain open to the idea. There are still certain elements unexplained by my layers, so there could be more to it.

About repetition, in the five folios I understand more or less so far there are no repeats. It looks like each constellation has been used once. Though there are still many figures I'm not sure of, and constellations I havent found. For example, I have no Capricorn yet. Now I could slap "Capricorn" on one of them call it a day, but that's not how it works

It's still a work in progress, but I felt like I knew enough already to talk about it with some confidence. Also, I see no shame in admitting the things that are still unknown. I much rather hear an "I don't know what this is, after all I'm not a 15th century person so I can't understand all of it", than a vage guess put forward as a finished analysis. 

Just an example: 
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I know quite certain that this nymph represents a mourning woman on the myth level. She believes her sister has just died. The three objects in her hands would then be pomegranates, symbols of the underworld and so on. But I'm not so sure about the constellation level. By the placement of this nymph I can say with some certainty that she must be Leo, but how?

I could say that the base looks like a lion's tail, and perhaps it does. I could say that three apples are the attribute of Heracles and that the most famous lion in myth is the one he defeated. In fact the explanation for the lion being in the sky is that this is the lion defeated by Heracles. So the three apples link wouldn't be far fetched, and like that the attribute can work on both levels of meaning.

But she also has her hand very obviously in a tube, and I don't know what that means yet. And the hints towards Leo are not the most obvious. So I leave that one at 50% chance for now

Re shame in admitting unknowns, that's the same reason I don't go for it when someone says "it's not that". It's like Schrodinger's cat, until we know what's inside the box, it is both that and not-that. granted we can still talk about gradiations thereof and the likelihood or not of same.

Here is something that might connect constellations and the body part idea, I've seen quite a few of these, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. maybe something sparks with some of your identifications of the related constellations?

Hmmm Leo and the heart. Emotional ideas of the heart fit with your idea, and is that what she's standing on, a drawing of a heart, a broken or trampled one maybe? I forgot about what she's holding. I don't suppose it's a measurement device, although I took her to be pointing whatever it is at something.

Linda, I've been giving some thought to this too, especially after I saw a really different "zodiac man" a couple of years ago (it's been posted recently on the forum, you might remember it, and I laughed when I saw it... it's a woman from behind, emphasizing her curves and especially her buttocks, rather than the usual man-from-front).


A high proportion of the manuscripts that feature a number of sections of what one might call medieval "medical knowledge" include a "zodiac man", but not all of them have diagrams and not all of them used the traditional picture of a man with lines (or proximity) indicating which zodiac symbol relates to a specific part of the body.

The more of these documents I read (rather than just looking at the pictures), the more I realized there are many more ways of representing this concept than I initially realized from looking at pictures.


What if (this is a "what if" that I've been turning over in my mind for a while)... chunks of the VMS are based on UNILLUSTRATED texts? Most people tend to look for illustrated exemplars when researching a manuscript's provenance. I was actually quite embarrassed that it didn't occur to me earlier than a year ago that the "exemplars" for illustrations are sometimes textual descriptions and once it dawned on me, of course, it seemed very obvious (it was one of those D'oh!! moments). There is always a "first" manuscript that has illustrations—the first herbal illustrations, the first anatomical illustrations, the first zodiac man, etc.


I think it's reasonably clear that the VMS illustrator had seen illustrations in other manuscripts, some of them follow convention, but... I sometimes wonder if parts of the manuscript are pictorial interpretations of text that didn't have images and that's why they don't follow traditional models.

JPK: you are right, it is important to keep in mind that these images were supposed to accompany (and somehow "support") a text. Who knows what kind of text this was - so many have been lost entirely. When you read a text with an image, things that seem cryptic or absurd suddenly make sense.

I am not entirely opposed to the idea that the images may have been "new", after all I am arguing that they are a rather dense composition which may have been tailor made for a particular purpose. I don't think it could have been made without reference material though, but that may not be the most important question. If you say they drew it from memory, that is basically the same as making a new composition based on known sources. Depending on how good their visual memory was

Linda: I really think the focus is on what we would call "astronomy". This is also the most compatible with how you read the imagery (navigation, time keeping...)

(17-12-2016, 11:35 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What if (this is a "what if" that I've been turning over in my mind for a while)... chunks of the VMS are based on UNILLUSTRATED texts? Most people tend to look for illustrated exemplars when researching a manuscript's provenance. I was actually quite embarrassed that it didn't occur to me earlier than a year ago that the "exemplars" for illustrations are sometimes textual descriptions and once it dawned on me, of course, it seemed very obvious (it was one of those D'oh!! moments). There is always a "first" manuscript that has illustrations—the first herbal illustrations, the first anatomical illustrations, the first zodiac man, etc.


I think it's reasonably clear that the VMS illustrator had seen illustrations in other manuscripts, some of them follow convention, but... I sometimes wonder if parts of the manuscript are pictorial interpretations of text that didn't have images and that's why they don't follow traditional models.

This is basically the idea I came up with when I first started studying the VMS about four years ago.  I saw that it was written in some weird language (but using a Latin-based script) and had bizarre but stylistically European illustrations.  The simplest way to account for it, in my mind, was to consider some Marco Polo-type figure traveling off to some far-flung land, learning the language, creating a script for it, then returning to Europe with a mass of primarily textual material.  Then later, someone added illustrations to it, based on the text (and probably also based on other texts which we do not possess).  Adding illustrations to previously unillustrated texts seems to have been a common practice (and remains so today, especially on covers of works of fiction) and I suspect that many/most illustrations accompanying medieval manuscripts must have originated in this way, although I haven't found any sources stating this.

I still think there is possibly something to this idea, though there are some problems with it.  One thing I have become convinced of however is that the illustrations are themselves old, so this process of adding illustrations to the text could not have occurred in medieval times, but must have occurred in ancient times, with the medieval elements representing later modifications.

Ultimately I think the content of the VMS  goes back to the culture in which the language itself originated and therefore will not be found exactly in any known work, including in the sources which have supplied the most convincing stylistic parallels.

This is what I have believed ever since I started writing about the manuscript, yet I don't always stress it in my communication. I have noticed that for some reason, this idea seems to upset certain people, or lead to great confusion. Almost like a political statement. I still don't understand why. It was so common in the 15th century to copy stuff...

agreed. plus, the time in history that the MS is dated to marks a point where the west was starting to have access to outside texts, those that were not part of the established culture in that place and time, and generally came from places where more ancient societies once thrived. astronomy figures into almost all cultures and was especially important in the more ancient ones.

Not that they saw this, but I offer this as an example that in the context of astronomy we could be dealing with far older civilizations than we've been talking about:

Another interesting image from Linda, post #44. The varying representations of the Zodiac man are another area where a gallery of images would greatly help an investigation. However, the relevance to VMs research is little more than tenuous. The Aries to Pisces sequence is traditional, which contributes to the oddity of the heterodox version found in the VMs zodiac.

And then there was that illustration of a human figure bent over backward to align within a circular representation of the Zodiac signs. Ouch!

In this image, Sagittarius is strange - there was only enough room for the back end of the horse. Capricorn appears to be a normal animal. Does it look familiar? And Aquarius, partially appearing out of somewhere and pouring water somewhere else. And look, it's a cloud band, but not one that was based on a nebuly line.

Sam G.'s description of the VMs appearance in post #47 is a reasonable assessment. However, the assumption that the appearance gives us a genuine and valid interpretation of content and origin has lead to various difficulties. Trying to make an actual, factual interpretation of the illustrations does not work. Placing the VMs as an artifact of any known culture has not worked. And efforts that continue along these lines remain problematic.

It is my opinion that the appearance of the VMs is not genuine. The appearance of the VMs is a false front, a constructed facade, intended to conceal the actual content of the manuscript. The evidence for this is the cleverly disguised representation dealing with the origins of the tradition of the red galero as an historical event and the construction of the papelonny pun in the VMs Zodiac illustrations. Deception is at work. It has worked; it does work because recognition has failed. Yet these hidden representations are there to provide significant, historical grounding and also to designate specific text segments, as a covert way to initiate the linguistic investigations.