The Voynich Ninja

Now that I have a readable copy of the Latin Picatrix (many thanks to Marco), I am fascinated by how much the drawings differ from the actual description in the text.

The general feeling in the historic community seems to be that the panel of images was drawn by the same person who scribed the text, but when you read it, you get the feeling the illustrator was maybe given a brief description and could not necessarily read the text.

[attachment=1473]

The three figures represent the three decans of Aries (based on eastern astrology).

• There rises in the first face of Aries a man with red eyes who is looking forward. In the image, one sees black eyes looking to one side (red paint was available but wasn't used). He's the only figure who doesn't look like he's looking front.
  
• He is described as making broad gestures but the illustration has his arms simply hanging at his side.
  
• His great white cape/cloak is tied around him with a rope. That suggests to me that the cloak is tied at the waist by a rope (or maybe at the neck), but the illustration seems to indicate otherwise. It shows it hanging free, supported only by a rope around his head (which is unlikely to work in real life with a cloak of that weight and size, head-ropes were typically for short hat-like cloths that don't weigh so much and are less likely to be pulled off). I'm not even sure the rope is tied to the cape, it looks like the cape is on his shoulders and the rope is tied around his hair.
  
• He is supposed to be standing on one foot. This could have been drawn better, it looks like he's missing a foot, but maybe the person didn't know how to draw that.
  

• In the second face of Aries is a woman in red garments wearing a cloak, with a face like a horse, very angry (in eastern astrology sometimes a horse rather than a woman is used). This woman is no more horse-like than the other figures and does not appear angry, she has a small smile. She has only one leg, but it almost looks like she has two and is standing on one of them.
  

• In the third face of Aries is a red and white man with red hair (his hair is less red than the "white" cloaks of the two other characters and it looks like the red was used to indicate a shadow rather than the color of the hair since there's only the tiniest bit brushed across the top). He is supposed to have a sword in his right hand and a staff in his left. That's obviously not a staff on the left, it looks more like a lumpy sack full of something. He is said to be clad in red garments. So, the man is red and white with red hair (this actually reminded me of a friend who has pale skin and a lot of red freckles who has very red hair). In the drawing, the tunic is not red, it is red and white, and the man is not red and white, he's white. I don't think the bit of red on his cheek counts because the other two figures have more red on their cheeks than on the one on the right.
  

So... we have a fairly clear description of the figures which the drawing does not match. It looks to me like the man has one leg and the woman is standing on one leg, which is backwards from what it says in the text.

Maybe the illustrator only had a notion of what the drawings were supposed to be, explained briefly by the scribe/translator, and used other drawings as examples to get the general idea on paper.

Thank you JKP,
your observations are very interesting. Some might be the result of the limited competence of the illustrators, but others are really difficult to explain.

(07-07-2017, 09:27 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

• In the third face of Aries ... He is supposed to have a sword in his right hand and a staff in his left. That's obviously not a staff on the left, it looks more like a lumpy sack full of something. He is said to be clad in red garments.
  

For this specific passage, I see that the Arabic version seems different (p.70 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

A black man with red hair and a grim look, wearing a wooden bracelet and holding a hanger with red garments hanging on it.


The Latin to English translation I posted above is ambiguous. Actually, in the Latin it is clear that it is the man to be "wrapped in red cloth."
On the other hand, in the Arabic it is the staff (here called a "hanger") that has "red garments hanging on it". But in the Arabic, no sword is mentioned (instead, there's a bracelet, which might be related with the circular object in the Schifanoia fresco). Even more confusing, I guess.

While this chapter (Book II.2) only lists the first three decans (those of Aries), chapter Book II.11 describes all the decans. Chapter 11 is the one illustrated by the better quality images. They are arranged in columns like this:
1a 3a
2a 1b
(In the attached image, the woman with the child is the first decan of Taurus).

We have four textual versions of the three decans (Latin ch.2, Latin ch.11, Arabic ch.2, Arabic ch.11).
In Latin ch.11, the third decan has the ring (armillam) and the sword. 
In Arabic ch.11 (p.145 of the English translation) it's basically the same (bracelet and sword).

In Krakow Picatrix f.193, the ch.11 third Aries decan holds a single weird object, that includes a ring. But no sword.

That's interesting, Marco. So that sack-like thing in his hand might be red garments (I would never have guessed), which would match more closely to the Arabic version than to the text that actually accompanies the drawing.

(09-07-2017, 09:49 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That's interesting, Marco. So that sack-like thing in his hand might be red garments (I would never have guessed), which would match more closely to the Arabic version than to the text that actually accompanies the drawing.

Yes, that's what I think too.
I edited my previous post with more confusing stuff

Interesting indeed. Might this indicate that this drawing actually accompanied an earlier version of the text? As I mentioned on JKP's blog, there is a clear Jewish influence in them  - see Beth Alpha mosaics.

(09-07-2017, 10:03 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Interesting indeed. Might this indicate that this drawing actually accompanied an earlier version of the text? As I mentioned on JKP's blog, there is a clear Jewish influence in them  - see Beth Alpha mosaics.

My personal opinion is that there is a clear no-idea-of-human-anatomy influence

(09-07-2017, 09:40 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....

In Krakow Picatrix f.193, the ch.11 third Aries decan holds a single weird object, that includes a ring. But no sword.

I wonder if that weird thing is a yoke?

As Nablator already pointed out in another thread, one finds a text passage of the Picatrix in this composite manuscript:
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Compared to two passages in the Picatrix:
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I find this fact rather astonishing because I have never stumbled across excerpts from Picatrix in composite manuscripts ( I have already seen quite a few ). Do you know other examples ?

For what it's worth (and marginally OT) :
it strikes me that the handwriting of BNF Lat 10272 is rather similar to the reconstructed handwriting in a recent blog post by JKP:
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Quote:ReneZ: For what it's worth (and marginally OT) :
it strikes me that the handwriting of BNF Lat 10272 is rather similar to the reconstructed handwriting in a recent blog post by JKP:...

Yes, except for the g and the extra-long curve on the VMS column-text ascenders, it's quite similar.

I'm going to stick my neck out and make a guess (before looking at the manuscript) that it was written sometime between 1498 and 1508.

This style of text was used into the late 1500s but... it looks to me like the folio that's posted in this thread might be parchment (based on the wrinkles near the inner margin), and the use of parchment was just about obsolete by the early 1500s. So... that's why I'm thinking very early 1500s (or very late 1400s, turn of the century).


This weekend, when I have time, I'll sample this one.