The Voynich Ninja

Thank you, VViews!
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. hosts a large image of the Yale copy You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (1570 ca).

In this case, the figures hold flasks, as you said. There are seven towers labeled 1st-7th imbibing (imbibissio): apparently, the towers represent phases in the alchemical process.
Immediately below, a similar "pool" has four corners with jars corresponding to the four elements.

Quote:The idea that the jars might represent the elements is interesting. Of course, a major difficulty is that six elements is a strange number. Four is normal, five appears sometimes, but six seems difficult to explain. 

Quote:You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. hosts a large image of the Yale copy You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (1570 ca).

In this case, the figures hold flasks, as you said. There are seven towers labeled 1st-7th imbibing (imbibissio): apparently, the towers represent phases in the alchemical process.

Some of alchemists assigned four stages of the Great Work, which well agried with the conception of the four elements.

• You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., a blackening or melanosis
  
  
• You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., a whitening or leucosis
  
  
• You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., a yellowing or xanthosis
  
  
• You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., a reddening, purpling, or iosis
  

Later phases were expanded to 7 (7 planets) and, even, 12 points (Zodiac), etc. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
But, anyway, the number 6 in alchemy is always the number of the Great Work (six days of the Creation), so, some found the explanation of this number in alchemical/magical context, probably, to attach value to every point of this number, therefore 4 elements became 6 elements (components): water, fire, air, earth, dark and light.

For information.

Earlier there was an assumption about Orthodox churches on this outlet. These domes are covered with tulle with stars. In Orthodoxy there is a holiday of the "Protection of the Blessed Virgin" on October 14, when the Virgin Mary spread over the praying people, the canopy and siege of Constantinople was lifted.

Test First Post

I have over 200 images of domes that I amassed in a dome-collecting orgy in March 2009. Unfortunately, I can't upload them because most of them are images from personal sites (tourist pictures) that are not in the public domain. It's also not possible to link them because many of the sites have disappeared or changed.


But I can make comments about a few of them.

As has been mentioned, the Greek Orthodox churches have many domes with the gold-star-on-blue theme. This theme shows up in other churches, but it particularly prevalent in eastern Europe.

The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. domes have some interesting themes, some of which include wheels, and four figures at each of the "corners", similar to the VMS in their positioning, and of interest is the fact that the decorative pillars holding up the upper portion of the domes almost look like pipes on the south dome and look like decorated buckets in the east dome. The central dome has a Christ figure surrounded by gold-on-blue 8-pointed stars with dots in the center. The Genesis dome is a series of panels almost like a circular series of cartoons.

The Menabuoi dome has a zodiac cycle with a crayfish-style Cancer.

A number of the domes have openings with light shining through them. Most of the radiating and flowing or spiritual flows of air or water or whatever they are in the VMS seem very water or steamlike, but if any of these wheels are inspired by domes, it's possible that sunlight or moonlight are "flowing" through or from some of them.

The Ruhobod dome, Charminar, and San Moise domes have interesting raised lines on the outside a bit reminiscent of the container-like shapes on the central rosette.

They're too recent to have inspired the VMS, but the "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.", the Moscow You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. domes (the smaller ones that are tall and narrow, the lower ones) are closer in shape to the rosette "containers" than most architectural examples. Notice that if earlier forms of this style of architecture inspired the VMS that the crosses that usually top them have been expressly removed.

I also collected many Islamic domes but they were less similar to the VMS than the ones mentioned above.

(15-06-2017, 01:40 AM)Jake Cross Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Test First Post

Well done Jake. Were you unable to post before? We have some systems into place to automatically ban spammers, which may affect normal new members under certain circumstances. 

JKP: how common are large, almost completely globe-like domes on relatively narrow towers? This is most obvious in the rightmost tower on the central rosette, but all six towers suffer from this to some extent. They are not cupolas, half-globes. Instead, they are completely globular. 

In atleast one Arab writer, the word for "domes", qubbat, is used to denote the planets...

(15-06-2017, 05:54 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....

JKP: how common are large, almost completely globe-like domes on relatively narrow towers? This is most obvious in the rightmost tower on the central rosette, but all six towers suffer from this to some extent. They are not cupolas, half-globes. Instead, they are completely globular. 

In atleast one Arab writer, the word for "domes", qubbat, is used to denote the planets...

Not common at all in the 15th century, onion domes were only just starting to catch on later in the century. It has to do with technology. The rounded domes, like the end of a thumb, were not uncommon, especially in W. Moorish and SE Islamic areas, but figuring out how to incurve the bottom of the dome was a technical achievement and setting them on long narrow towers was not common for onion domes until later.

Still, one can see precedents in the eastern world with regular (non-onion) domes on towers around Constantinople, and in parts of the SW Mediterranean, and these styles caught on and clustered along the Eastern European corridor where Christianity spread north through the Orthodox church, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries.


Because these domes were not common until the 16th century, it's difficult to determine whether the VMS rosette domes are architectural (inspired by early examples of Islamic domes), or whether they were inspired by smaller items (urns, spice jars, blown glass, etc.) that can more easily be shaped like onions.

(09-06-2017, 01:08 PM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In one version of the Ripley scroll (Bodleian MS Ash Roll 53), there is a structure which presents striking similarities to the central rosette. There are no jars in this one, but in many versions of the scroll, the figures atop the towers are holding flasks.
Interestingly this particular version was discussed in a 2016 talk by none other than Alexandra Marraccini.
Unfortunately, the date of this version is 1600.
Still, I think it is a relevant parallel, because the number of "towers" varies regularly  (4, 6, or 7) in different versions, so if this is the basis for the Voynich image, it could be based on an early version I don't know about.
Nice frog and nude figures too

Given my interpretation of the Central Rosette one problem I see is that the Central area is not drawn the way water is in the rest of the 9 rosette foldout. The 6 objects around the Central area I interpret as ciboria. As ciborium is essentially a chalice with a lid. A chalice is a "footed" cup normally with a "pommel" around the neck of the cup. This is particularly obvious in the far right "ciborium". What are presented in this drawing as walls in the Central Rosette I interpret them as the rim of a crown. So I interpret this as a crown surrounded by ciboria. The tiers of the Central Rosette I interpret as the tiers of the Popes tiara with the rim of a crown at the bottom of the final tier. The "pipes" I interpret as cannons. I believe the Central Rosette to represent the Pope. For a more detail explanation refer to my posts on Nick Pelling's blog.

Thanks to all who have posted to this thread.  Lots of fun reading.

I do think, though, that we mustn't lose sight of the fact that a different style of drawing, before the modern era, normally means a different milieu,  and unless one identifies that first, then what one may start to describe is not what the imagery was intended by its maker to convey, but rather what has popped into one's own head on seeing it.

The usual way to start trying to understand difficult pre-modern pictures is to identify where, when, and among whom we find drawings made in similar style.

Once that is done, it is possible (sometimes only after a substantial amount of reading) to know pretty well what the original enunciator intended to convey, in the terms of his or her own environment.

I think one pretty obvious issue here is that of scale. How do we determine the scale the maker assumed we'd read here?

Koen is right to notice that there are similarities in the way the two sets of these forms are expressed.  I'd be asking, then, whether they are just a set of conventions in art, here applied in drawings intended for objects of very different size (tower versus container for vegetable matter), or whether what is so often being read as a 'tower' was intended to express a much smaller object. Then there are the other routine issues of significance, purpose and cultural overtones to be considered and researched ... once you know who, where and when we find  pictures drawn in this specific style. 

It's far too early in the history of art to imagine imagery as the unique expression of an artist  - to the point where one could posit a Latin artist producing images so very unlike any Latin art, even of the 15thC

After all, we need to know what the images meant to the makers, not what they mean in the context of whatever theory we might prefer.

The constant failure of the study, since 1912, has been to seem to talk about the imagery, but to be really talking about a theory based on rather a lot of unexamined assumptions.  In the usual way, we'd focus first on the specific issues raised by this imagery, such as why, and where, and when you get pictures of closely similar style... and then what such imagery meant to those people who made them.

It's fairly obvious these are not in Latin European style, I think.

I know that I'm always nagging about first principles, and standard methodology. But I have to say it was also drummed into me from the first stages of study and training, and proven of value when working in the field.

For what it's worth.

Quote:Once that is done, it is possible (sometimes only after a substantial amount of reading) to know pretty well what the original enunciator intended to convey, in the terms of his or her own environment.

I think one pretty obvious issue here is that of scale. How do we determine the scale the maker assumed we'd read here?

From my point of view, it is obvious that the Rosettes "map" relates to some liquids and processes with them (distillation, Earth and/or Cosmic water circulation, water engine    , etc) 
No difference in time or culture can hide this obvious detail. We can see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., its You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., possibly, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
To be honest, if I would consider the VMs in modern context, I'd think that it represents the same things that Theodor Schwenk described in his You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 



That's the way it is!