The Voynich Ninja

(28-12-2020, 10:48 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I also noticed that four of the nymphs in Q13 are wearing a red "headband".

Edit: here are three more blue ones. I wouldn't be surprised if there were also green ones.

From my perspective,  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is the two bays of Lesbos, they were created through volcanic subduction. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is Marseilles. It is located on the Mediterranean shore within the Gulf of Lion. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is Lyon, at the confluence of the Saone and the Rhone. Well known volcanic region.  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is Lake Trasimino in the Umbrian region of Italy, so central, that it could be thought to stand for the entire peninsula.

So the red may mean heat, supplied by volcanic action, or it may represent viticulture (wine is red) due to the fact that volcanic regions seem to lend themselves to this activity. Maybe it is both. The all have hot springs nearby and they are all central to winemaking regions. Lesbos has is known for wine making from Homeric times. Marseilles is located in a wine making region that includes the entire bay of Lion, for which the barrel below the nymph stands. And the barrel could take on the idea of a vat of grapes along with the mnemonic for the bay of Lion, the duality of this also being so for the greater region. Lyon is central to the Rhone Valley wine making region, and that same valley is the cutoff of the Alps. Lake Trasimeno is an endoheric lake, the largest lake in the peninsula, and has a wine making region surrounding it.

Note that my identification of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as Lyon is due to it depicting two navigable rivers (tubes) and that one has sulphur (coloured yellow) and is represented as almost an island, which kept me from understanding it for quite awhile. But it is located next to a diagram of the Ligurian Sea and the Alps, and so is exactly well placed. 

From wiki:
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The Romans recognized that Lugdunum's strategic location at the convergence of two navigable rivers made it a natural communications hub.
...
The Presqu'ile (French, meaning peninsula, literally a combination of words presque (almost) and ile (island) is the heart of Lyon, France.
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Note also that the Saone comes from the north, where there is no sulphur mining noted today, whereas the Rhone flows right through an area where it is mined. 
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It is the vms that told me to look that up, and it appears to be so. 



Thinking about the duality of heat and wine, i think about the first settlers to the regions. Here you had heat, good soil, vegetation, and fresh water. You could live there, without too much technology, even in the midst of an ice age...

(29-12-2020, 01:44 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This finding could lead to the assumption that the nymphs themselves are partly the embodiment of "substances". The "headband" could be a kind of marker in which state the individual nymph is currently.
For example, the red "headband" could stand for heating, not only a state but a process.

I do agree that the nymphs are the embodiment of substances, but for me they are literally water nymphs, the substance  being water. 

I see the adornments as more descriptive in nature. Further mnemonics within the water nymph mnemonic itself, related to the main mnemonic device being employed.

I agree with the heat connection, although as i mentioned there could be other connotations.

(30-12-2020, 05:41 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is of course also a possibility to see the colors as elements. I tend rather to regard green and blue as liquid substances and yellow as solid substance ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ). But red would be fire/heating in any case. So there would be four components instead of four elements. I base my assumption on the observation that green and blue are indeed both liquids.
 
As for the great work, as far as I know, in the late Middle Ages there was a reduction from four to three levels ( the yellowing was dropped ). The division into seven or even twelve levels is of course also possible but does not have to be. I have found in my recent research even a very "simple" recipe from the late Middle Ages that is translated from Greek to German just eight (!) Lines of text long. All that is used is mercury, sulfur, "clay of art" ( ? ) and some pure gold (1:10). So gold making was sometimes very quick and easy

I'm not saying that in Q13 necessarily the great work is shown. There are also some other options, for example "aqua ignea rectivicata" or "aqua vitae".  One was usually content with the four times distillation for ordinary remedies.

Blue water
Red fire
Green earth, as in the minerals that make up rock (that are in sea water because the earth mixes with the water)
Yellow doesn't work out to air, though, unless sunlight stands for air? But as you said the yellowing was dropped? Sulphur and gold seem to be referenced, so there is that possibility.

But blue is also air, air plus earth begets water...which seems to be shown in the quire by the blue nebuly lines and the blue rock strata. Green is earth but green is also water... yellow is also fire, sulpher brings on these connotations.

Hildegaard von Bingen's universal man shows the earth being rained on, which combines the ideas of air and water.


I could see some correlation happening in this manner.

In the corners of the Fra Mauro map, there are diagrams which connect the worldmap to the elements, the zodiac, the ecliptic, and the garden of eden. I see the elements and eden being involved with quire 13.



With the earth as yellow covered by green water, air blue and outer fire, i think the colours work out well while still mixing around somewhat.

(30-12-2020, 11:39 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Blue water
Red fire
Green earth
......

Of course, one can also relate the colors directly to the elements.Especially the illustration on top of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. allows this assumption. I tend to associate the colors with alchemical substances, but this is only a guess.  It should be noted that each substance was always assigned to the properties of the elements (for example, the fiery volatile Sulphur and the watery and viscous Mercurius ). After all, the perfect balance of the properties should always guarantee the success of the work, whatever the goal was

bi3mw, I've seen you use the wink emoji (  ) when talking about alchemy's goals in several posts now. I'm pretty sure I'm in on the joke, but I wanted to make sure: You're referring to the fact that a lot of alchemists seem to have been scammers sharing secret recipes for making passable fake gold, right?

(31-12-2020, 01:14 AM)RenegadeHealer Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.bi3mw, I've seen you use the wink emoji (  ) when talking about alchemy's goals in several posts now. I'm pretty sure I'm in on the joke, but I wanted to make sure: You're referring to the fact that a lot of alchemists seem to have been scammers sharing secret recipes for making passable fake gold, right?

Well, I used that wink emoji in the last post because I realized that I ended up back with the elements. I actually wanted to argue for my point of view but in alchemy you quickly get from one point of view to another. Systemically, this is here from one level (substances) to the next higher (four elements).

In general, I would assume that there were charlatans among the alchemists who were out for "quick money", but the recipe I described in post #19, for example, is so crude (and short) that even the inclined readers might have realized how little useful the implementation is.
On the other hand, alchemy was without question the pioneer of modern chemistry. To reduce them to would-be goldmakers would be unfair. The improvement of distillation, for example, is an achievement that the alchemists could claim for themselves. The invention of European hard porcelain came later, though more by accident. Black powder is also an alchemical (re)invention. There are certainly other examples that I can not think of at the moment.

The idea of inner alchemy, that is the idea of a development of the personality, is certainly difficult to evaluate. That lies in the eye of the beholder.

Well observed bi3mw !
Googling about revealed this:
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(No idea how accurate that website is)

Red     : Yellow bile
Blue    : Black bile
Green  : Phlegm
Yellow  : Blood

My problem with the idea that alchemy is involved is that i don't see how to relate it to what i see, and don't see how the narrative would go if it were about alchemy instead of what i see. My lack of knowledge on the subject doesn't aid me in this. So how would that narrative go, beyond the idea of mixing things together, or separating them out?

Is the inner alchemy idea related to matching up humors with temperaments?

(01-01-2021, 04:32 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My problem with the idea that alchemy is involved is that i don't see how to relate it to what i see, and don't see how the narrative would go if it were about alchemy instead of what i see. My lack of knowledge on the subject doesn't aid me in this. So how would that narrative go, beyond the idea of mixing things together, or separating them out?

I wish I could understand the picture language on Q13 so far that I could construct a conclusive sequence of events from it. Since the picture language stands however outside of the tradition of the alchemistic way of representation one can only try to transfer the process of the production of a, let's say "Auqa vitae" as well as possible. This is without question a very laborious undertaking, but in my opinion possible.

(01-01-2021, 04:32 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Is the inner alchemy idea related to matching up humors with temperaments?

I have here a definition of inner alchemy:

Quote: 
The European tradition of alchemy considered inner alchemy, in accordance with the hermetic principle as within, so without, as part of the alchemical work. The alchemist identified himself with the prima materia and performed in the mind the same processes to which he subjected the substances in the external alchemy.

I imagine that the alchemist, for example, while staring into the fire for hours during a practical process, tried to put himself into the state of "spiritual purification". So there should be a kind of transfer from the practical to the spiritual. So it is not about the temperaments, but about spiritual states.

(01-01-2021, 04:32 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My problem with the idea that alchemy is involved is that i don't see how to relate it to what i see, and don't see how the narrative would go if it were about alchemy instead of what i see. My lack of knowledge on the subject doesn't aid me in this. So how would that narrative go, beyond the idea of mixing things together, or separating them out?

For now, I can only say about such associations: evaporisation, condensation, mixing, reaction, dissolution, separation, distillation. To make a strong theory, one need to know what these substances are, and obviously the knowladge of chemistry would be helpful. If it is a process of preparation of the base for herbal tinctures, for example, "aqua vitae", mentioned by bi3mw in the previous post, it would be quite natural, because its use can be described in the chapter with the "small plants and roots... and jars".

Quote:Is the inner alchemy idea related to matching up humors with temperaments?

Since ancient times, people have tried to make copies of heaven on Earth. On the one hand, this is part of the worship of the gods, the fulfillment of the will of the gods, on the other hand, the effort to be involved in the divine. This went on for a very long time, people built temples repeating the mysterious structure of the universe, performed rituals associated with astronomical cycles and phenomena, tried to understand the nature of the world and its creation, in order to feel their divinity, repeating Creation within the framework of their small world, therefore it was believed that to create something divine, including the fruit of the Creation - the Philosopher's Stone or Elixir, can only a harmonised person who has revealed all the true secrets of the universe and nature, and therefore - him/herself. All the processes whether phisical, spiritual or universal were equated and came down to the same principles. I think these You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. describe the concept briefly.