Some time ago I wanted to answer here, but my study led me to a new blogpost because of the big volume of information. Although it was very hard time for thorough work for me, I at last concentrated. I couldn't consider "six figures" separately from the rest details in the central rosette, therefore my post was aimed to examine all hidden meanings of the details of images and quantity of certain details. Nevertheless, you can find my answer in it.
You know that I think that this page is to represent the Water of life or, at least, some operations or circulation of liquids. So, of course, I consider them as vessels. I can't be accurate whether the scheme implies cosmic or earthly meaning, probably, both of them, anyway, I'm inclined to think about alchemical or gnostic teachings.
I'd be glad to know your opinions on this.
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Koen.
Just for the record, here is a list of the posts where I shared some of my research from the the first, exploratory, phase - that is, those which include mention of the 'containers' in the map or the 'leaf and root' section. Blogger always listed posts from most recent to earliest - one reason I switched to wordpress for most of the work I decided to share online after mid-2011.
Anchor, lotus and northern India, Findings 17/04/2012
Scenario 2: The Lakhmids and Seleucia-Ctesiphon (pt1) Findings, 19/12/2011
In my opinion..Pt 2, Findings, 19/12/2011
Dull stuff: Pros and cons. Unproven. Things to do.Findings (17/12/2011)
HOW old is this design!? Findings, 28/11/2011
Plant id: fol. 100v-ii ... Cycads (27/11/2011).
Note - for the historical record which is so badly muddled by fake and misleading attributions and so forth - it is necessary to document with accurate names and dates, whether of an honest researcher or a outright charlatan. With the 'Cycads' id, mine was the original mention of such a plant which is not native to western Europe. At that time, a certain 'Steve D' was picking up others' work as a 'new idea' and not only omitting mention of whose idea it was, but deliberately fudging the issue by announcing the 'new discovery' shortly after at Santacoloma's mailing list and then apparently re-assigning the new identification to another, randomly-chosen, folio. It was a period of high madness in Voynich studies, and the cycads were just one of perhaps as many as a dozen original conclusions of my own which created an enthusiastic, if inappropriate response in Steve D.
Note to moderators. Documenting any history requires accurate attribution to their source not only such things as plant ids but the works, writings and deeds of other Voynich-writers. Mentioning persons by name is the very stuff of history just as omitting specifics serves political agendas better than academic ones. It's called 'a censored record'.
Back to Koen and first-stage posts (cont):
Twenty five years in Asia: Nicolo de' Conti, Findings (21/11/2011)
'Nicolo de' Conti & the Vms: an interlinear - Pt.1: Impulse', Findings, (09/11/2011)
'In my opinion', Findings, 04/11/2011
"What we know..." 26/10/2011
'Notes relating to the script and language of the Vms' 21/10/2011
fol 86v Stones: retrospective 2, 15/07/2011
Plants...of the Periplus - 9 [Orphiment .. Rice] F16/05/2011
Plants ...of the Periplus - 6 [Myrrh and bdellium] 11/05/2011
Plants and goods of the Periplus Mare Erythreum - 5 [Frank/Incense.. Ivory] Findings, 11/05/2011
'Plants and selected goods included in the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea - Lists', Findings, 19/04/2011
Nearing the end of Year 1. ...post-in-progress 19/11/2010
Focus on Pyramus/Ceyhan, 15/09/2010
Surveying the ms: Folio, Quire and Stylistics, 18/08/2010
Details 1. fol.86v the great towers, 17/07/2010
[Updating...] Dating the pictorial content and style 15/07/2010
Containers II: Glass? (fol.88) 10/07/2010
Marking time: Jar on fol.88v 09/07/2010
Marking Time: re Plants and Calendars, 08/07/2010
Directions and Emblems -South - fol.86v (astronomical) 03/07/2010
Nabatean Agriculture excerpts: 01/07/2010
Dating Summary, Findings, 19/06/2010
Pegs Poles and Parasols V: (fol.78r) Oil and Wine 19/06/2010
The Sun - Part I - (fols 68r-i and 68r-ii; 69v-iii) 08/06/2010
Crossbowman and limitani 04/06/2010
Just checking... 23/05/2010
Updated: Red containers and esparto 12/05/2010
Bull and Lotus: comparing Barhut and the Beinecke manuscript. 07/05/2010
Faces III: fol.67v(i): The whorl - points of Orientation 03/05/2010
Hi Yulia,
I believe that two of the three tarot cards you posted are XX Century replacements by U.S. Games Systems Inc for their edition of the Cary-Yale (Visconti di Modrone) deck. All the Visconti-Sforza decks are incomplete and publishers have created different replacements for the missing cards.
As stated in You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. now at the Beinecke library.
Also You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. (the Juggler or Magician, according to later esotericists) is preserved at the Pierpont Morgan collection, but missing in the other decks. In particular, the idea that the symbols of the four suits are displayed on the Bagatto's desk (as in the card you posted) was conceived at the end of the XIX Century, I believe by Gerard Encausse aka Dottor Papus.
The two of cups appears to be genuine (now at Accademia Carrara in Bergamo).
Thank you very much, Marco! I will replace the wrong images. It must be Visconti Tarot like these:
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The images itself are too obscure, but they depict that shape of the Cup that I meant.
Hello Diane! You give the titles of your posts but not the links, how can we read them?
Hi Ruby
Thanks for the response - a very fair comment. After offering my work for a decade I grew tired of its being re-cycled without proper attribution. Protests and so on having no effect, the only option left was to close it down. Sorry.
I'd like to make a few general remarks about method. First is that one has to consider everything about a drawing; the practice of isolating a detail from the rest, and then hunting for 'like' bits from generally un-like manuscripts is (IMO) unfortunate and in the long run unproductive. But that's my opinion and others have theirs.
In my posts, I had cited the style of 'spice boxes' as early as 2011, and specifically some traditional forms long maintained by certain families of Jews who had for centuries held a monopoly over silverwork in the Yemen. The forms for those spice boxes may have come, with their exotic contents, into the possession of European Jews, from some of which the so-called German spice boxes developed. Their origin, in fact, is as ritual objects within the Jewish tradition. The fact of their being in silver is important, but that connects with the economic history and trade aspect of the study. The other important point is that we also find incense burners of that region which have comparable form. So too, by a separate line of development, the sort of containers used for scented liquids and other forms of container including nested offering-boxes - these last closely akin to some of those in the 'leaf and root' section. Now, with relation to the Vms, the common region for vessels of such a sort supports indications from all sections of the MS (bar a few late-stage additions) that we have them from an area connected to Europe by lines of east-west commerce and intercourse, but where they were well-known and in common use. Thus, their being set around the map's centre as 'towers' refers (IMO) to the idea of 'the lands of incense' while their presence in the 'leaf and root' section is intended more literally. This isn't an idea that sprang immediately to my imagination It is not a 'theory' but the conclusion of research into comparative iconography, historical studies, cultural studies and so forth.
I do not think it unexpected that we should find the occasional echo of some similar thing, here and there, in a later western work, but nor is is unexpected that these occur in contexts and in the midst of other forms and style of drawing quite incompatible with the Vms'.
Marco's example of fanciful architecture is most interesting because it suggests that the maker of that image drew deliberately on a near-eastern, and perhaps specifically Jewish, object as his model. The time is right, and so too is the work's belonging to England of that time. Very nice find.
Diane!
Mention of some object, event, place, etc. in one's work doesn't have much value for any researcher and scientist, it doesn't promise any progress in a study. Mention itself won't help with deciphering and understanding of a subject, as you know. Therefore you and any other researcher makes conclusions, builds own theory based on own observations and/or of others, comparisons and another needed information.
If any part of a theory or a theory wholy (not an attribute, not a separate object with common definition) is grabbled from yours or anyone's else, then it is a breach and a dishonorable deed. If someone independently suggests a similar theory, but yours was earlier, of course, you can inform that person that your quite similar or the same theory was discribed earlier on the forum or at your blog.
Maybe, I'm not well informed, but I didn't meet anywhere something similar to your theory or suggestion (as you discribed in the previous post above).
As I understand, you closed your blog for that reason that you revised your theory and decided to make some changes there. Maybe, I'm wrong.
So, make progress of your theory, find more evidences, keep trying!
Sorry guys, I haven't had much time to really delve into subjects these last few weeks. Searcher, I think the parallel with these vessels you propose is plausible. At least, it seems plausible that a vessel of this type, a chalice with an ornate lid, is present in the MS.
Now if you look at your examples from an ergonomic point of view, it's clear that their base has been designed to be held in one hand, like a grip.
But if you look back at the composite image I made in the first post of this thread, with this in mind, a different picture emerges. The inset vessels from the small plants look like they could be handled this way. But only one of the towers does. The others have a much thicker base.
I wonder if this might be another case of visual synthesis, an artificial layering of meaning. Towers and vessels.
(09-11-2018, 12:36 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
I wonder if this might be another case of visual synthesis, an artificial layering of meaning. Towers and vessels.
I don't know if I was right or wrong (or hasty in doing so), but that's how I read it, both towers and vessels in one symbol.
Searcher - thank you for your comment.
I do not create theories and I did publish the details and bibliographic sources and reasons for the conclusions I reached. I shared that information over almost a decade and it is certainly unfortunate that material was usurped and misused in a way that was counter-productive. I expect that many just imagined that my research conclusions were no more than the general sort of hypothesising and guesswork etc.
I absolutely agree that speculative narratives are not the way to provenance a manuscript or understand imagery. I rarely need to resort to them, and we place little value on them in my profession. Evidence-first conclusions may still be mistaken, of course, but the method and process is documented as the work progresses, and a great deal is demanded before the conclusions are drawn. A conclusion must accord with every aspect of the primary document's evidence: including demonstrable consonance with our present sciences of manuscript studies, iconographic analysis, and the relevant fields of history, including economic history and the history of cultural exchange (to name two). With all the reading which had to be done, I really had little time for speculation.
On the other hand there is a reason that a sort of 'assertive-speculative' style is used in discussing the Vms where it is not to be found elsewhere. The approach finds its first flowering in a paper written in 1921 by Wilfrid Voynich. Such was its effect that from that time onwards even trained scholars have abandoned their own discipline's formal standards. O'Neill's paper about the sunflower, for example, is an obvious and extra-woeful case in point.
In my opinion the 'Wilfrid-approach' is regrettable because by omitting reference to sources used to form the
initial 'notions', and then only mentioning items that appear to lend them credibility, the speaker or writer shifts all attention from the supposed object of study to the personality of the speaker.
In effect, the reader is no longer permitted to evaluate the material; they are only permitted to conform to and believe what they are told by a
personality . Proofs for the speaker's
initial premises are invariably absent, and to question those is invariably to risk socially-motivated responses. So to ask (for example) why Wilfrid imagined the content's composition was contemporary with the object's manufacture would not have met with any lucid and historically verifiable explanation, but one more along the lines of 'you will believe it because I say so - and I'm an important person '.
Each in their own way, people such as the Friedmans and Prof. Brumbaugh adopted the same 'Wilfrid style' - which wasn't so remarkable in those times as it appears against the backdrop of modern historical and manuscript studies. Much of what is imagined for this manuscript is either historically, technically, or culturally impossible - and demonstrably so. The disproof may not exist in Voynich-related writings, of course.
We've long needed a detailed critical commentary on that paper of 1921, including the continuing impact of various unfounded assertions and assumptions. Whether it will ever be permitted for a 'Voynichero' to write such a re-evaluation without being accused of lese majeste, I couldn't say .