The Voynich Ninja

(23-12-2016, 10:26 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[...deleted for brevity...]



I pasted the relevant section of the Farnese Atlas beneath it, leaving only the constellations on the tropic of Capricorn. I did mirror the image, since celestial spheres are mirrored by convention, so you have to mirror them again to get the normal positions. The thing in between the Dog and Hydra is the top of Argo Navis, which belongs to the Antarctic Circle and can be ignored.

That leaves three constellations in this section, from right to left: Hare, Dog, Hydra-Corvus-Crater.

So... it works out rather well. Though it takes some time and experience with the constellations to adjust your eye to it - which is why I'm a bit afraid I may be speaking Chinese sometimes :/

If the nymph lying in the water is Hydra, it fits rather well, although I suppose other interpretations are possible (that a nymph lying in the "hole", for example, is Crater). It was Hydra who guarded the water in Crater and the leftmost nymph has water coming to the head and might be blocking it? I'm not sure, it takes some study, but the possibilities are very interesting.

The dog looks like a guy with breast implants. I don't know if it has any relevance, but there are only a few places where breasts are drawn this way (circles rather than bumps). It looks so oddly deliberate but I suppose it might just be a different hand.


Since this path of analysis is both extensive and somewhat intricate (I've been trying to follow it but I may have missed some of the posts), I can't remember if you've done the left side of this page yet.

(23-12-2016, 11:29 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If the nymph lying in the water is Hydra, it fits rather well. The dog looks like a guy with breast implants. I don't know if it has any relevance, but there are only a few places where breasts are drawn this way (circles rather than bumps). It looks so oddly deliberate but I suppose it could be a different hand.

Since this path of analysis is both extensive and somewhat intricate (I've been trying to follow it), I can't remember if you've done the left side of this page yet.

I'm not 100% sure how to interpret the Dog since this nymph is so plain. But yes, you are right about the breasts. My tentative explanation is one I dare not write in full, so I will imply it; if the arms point to the constellation, they are likely a dog's ears. Like a dog with hanging ears. And if the arms are the ears, then the totally weird breasts are.......

Also note, to add to the creep factor, if you look at the original image, that the nipples are red. 

The biggest clue is not in the figure itself, however, but in its surroundings. The Dog = Sirius = start of the flooding of the Nile. All of Egyptian astronomy was focused around this event, the rising of Sirius together with the sun. Being properly aware of this timing meant the difference between life and death. This is not some obscure "buried with the pharaohs" mythology, since it was still written about by Roman authors.

From Wiki: Sirius was worshiped by the Egyptians as the goddess Sopdet, as she would be ruling the important Nile flooding, providing the fertility of the Nile. As Sirius is visible together with the constellation of Orion, the Egyptians worshiped Orion as the god Sah, the husband of Sopdet, with whom she had a son, the Egyptian sky god Sopdu. The goddess Sopdet was later conflated with the goddess Isis, Sah was linked with Osiris and Sopdu was linked with Horus, and their names were then joined, as in Sopdet-Isis. The joining of Sopdet with Isis would allow Plutarch to state that The soul of Isis is called Dog by the Greeks, meaning Sirius worshipped as Isis-Sopdet by Egyptians was named the Dog by the Greeks and Romans.

All constellations in this cluster are associated with the Nile and/or its annual flood cycle. And see, on the right of the page there is a small river coming down the mountains, which becomes much, much wider at the bottom of the page. Then look again at our Dog, and see how the river completely leaves its bounds around it.

But these considerations are more advanced than identifying the constellations, and I would like to nail those down first. That's complicated enough

About the left side of the page: the problem is that I don't understand the next figure yet. It surely looks beastly. Would it provide more clarity if I made a quick overview of the constellations I have found so far just by marking them on the folios? I'd differentiate between "almost certain", "tentative" and "unknown".

Corvus, Crater and Hydra are in the Hercules group.

When I glanced at the first nymph on the left above the pool, my first thought was Cygnus because it's airborne and because you've made me much more aware of arms. Maybe not, but since Cygnus is in the Hercules group, it might be worth checking.

I just remembered, Lupus is also in the Hercules group. A lot of things have been proposed for that curled-up critter (and I like the idea that it might be a golden fleece). It doesn't completely look like a wolf (although it does have paws), but could it be Lupus? If so, what would be between Cygnus and Lupus? Is there a pattern (I don't know my constellations well enough to know without hunting). Anyway, all that is first-impression half-baked musing and may be completely off, but it occurred to me after I read your analysis of the right side and bottom that the Hercules group might continue up the left-hand side.

One folio contains a number of clusters, but they aren't necessarily all connected through proximity.

Remember the Gemini folio? There it appeared that dots on the triple line (= ecliptic) indicated that a number of constellations were skipped.

Now between Hydra-Corvus-Crater and the Beastly one, there is not only a set of dots, but also two tubes.

Let me first show what I mean with the clustering. There are basically three clusters on this folio. The Eridanus cluster (blue), the Dog-Hydra cluster (red) and the North Pole cluster, which contains both Ursae, Draco and Bootes (green).

In the attachment I've used a top view planisphere which is a bit more compact and allows me to show the clustering well.

Now in between Bootes and Hydra is the unknown one and a bunch of markers...

(Edit: this planisphere from Harley MS 647 has been shifted to have Ursa Minor on the Pole, so the Circles obviously don't match those on the Farnese Atlas)
Also, I really think the curled up animal is Draco, which was famous for being, well, curly . As I told Sam before in this thread, the wavy line always indicates a polar circle.

Edit2: Now I see the misunderstanding, I found it weird that you considered Hydra part of the Hercules group. Hercules is next to two unrelated serpents: Draco and the one held by Serpentarius. The Hydra-Corvus-Crater group is not so close.

I was a bit puzzled by the garment and the connected hand on the "Virgo". On the narrative level of meaning, this is Philomela bound and about to have her tongue severed, but why is it drawn like that, and how does it refer to Venus/Aphrodite as Virgo? As it turns out, the pose is fairly standard...



Also, the item in her hand is drawn like the pincers used to extract her tongue, but Spica is very often held this way by figures of the Virgo-spectrum. This was found even outside of Virgo iconography proper, as many of these goddesses were associated with grain (fertility) and prosperity. Their attributes are so interchangeable that even experts don't always know which figure is meant if she isn't explicitly labelled.



What I don't know yet is why her assailant appears to hit her in the eye and why her face is drawn in a rather square way.

Koen (in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.):

Quote:Although I might have a problem, even duration the chaos of the holidays I found half an hour to find an explanation for some nymph that was bothering me 

It is a little, but made your observations much more interesting, indeed.

Koen,

I have to admit that I have quietly followed this thread in the background.  What are your thoughts on Andromeda saved by Perseus represented in the VMS.  I have noticed the chained maiden and a man figure trying to unbound her in the Nymph series of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..  This is a very interesting theory associating the imagery of Nymph's compared to Constellations.

Quote: Andromeda is chained to a rock and left to the mercy of the monster. The hero, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., riding through the air on winged sandals, arrives at the scene and they fall in love. Perseus has a consultation with Cepheus and Cassiopeia, it is agreed that if he rescues their daughter he could marry her. The sea monster (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) arrives and Perseus kills it by turning it to stone with the Medusa's Head (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Perseus breaks the chains that bound Andromeda to the rock and frees her. The wedding follows.
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Stellar - that's a good place to start, but doesn't work in this case. The general impression people (including those before me) got from this pair is that the man is hostile towards the woman. I believe it was Marco who held a similar view.

We can clearly see that the man has a somewhat evil face and he's holding the woman's arms behind her back. He's clearly portrayed as capturing rather than liberating her.

(06-01-2017, 02:54 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Stellar - that's a good place to start, but doesn't work in this case. The general impression people (including those before me) got from this pair is that the man is hostile towards the woman. I believe it was Marco who held a similar view.

We can clearly see that the man has a somewhat evil face and he's holding the woman's arms behind her back. He's clearly portrayed as capturing rather than liberating her.

my take is different. the male wants the female but she is/plays hard to get. she is not bound, she is holding a spindle behind her back. he reaches for her, but she maintains her own independence.

(27-01-2017, 08:03 AM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.my take is different. the male wants the female but she is/plays hard to get. she is not bound, she is holding a spindle behind her back. he reaches for her, but she maintains her own independence.

That is different, yet similar at the same time. Some people see the man as a sexual predator, you see it more in a sense of seduction/courtship. But the reading of the man as a "hunter" is similar, as opposed to the man as a liberator like Stellar suggested.