The Voynich Ninja

Antonio, what would the astronomical coordinates align to in your view?

Would they be the coordinates of the stars themselves? Then they would have to align with the location of the viewer, on Earth, right? And a time to view them at those coordinates, or at least be found in relation to a fixed point of some kind that is viewable by all, or at least many.

Or, could it be data for computing the position of the Sun, Moon and planets relative to the fixed stars? That i could see, it has been done several times, the Toledan tables is an example, coordinates with Toledo as the viewing place.

The Alfonsine tables of 1252 were an update of the Toledan tables



Quire 13 i see as geographical and hydrological, with the nymphs standing for the human aspect of the geography, the societies that lived there. They are gigantic in relation to the waterbodies shown, you would be able to see them from space, if they were real. 

As each place can be a set of coordinates on a map, or listed as directions and distances in a rutter, they can also have astronomical coordinates. When sailors set off to a far place, they aligned themselves with navigable stars. These could be what are on f68v1 and 2. There is a modern list of 58 navigable stars of which 19 are of first magnitude...these numbers dont fall too far from those in the above mentioned pages, the circles in the middle of some could denote first magnitude.  

1995 Nautical almanac



The stars kind of do come down to earth, or come up from it, in a visual sense, without the need of tubes et al, depending on the direction you look, from where, and when you look. So i could see some form of astronomical coordinates being involved, but we have to keep worķing on how that could have been achieved and what the meaning would be ascribed to said coordinates.

To understand the VMS we have to get rid of the modern science after the XVII century and to try see it as children.
  Of course, the stars need the pipes and tubes to reach the Earth and give its virtues to the herbs. The best illustration of this is the Rosette page, where we see the celestial globe full of holes with tubes that look like cannons. The eighth sphere connects thus with the Earth. 
  And the city that we see in the Rosette page with the Italian city shape is Arim, the city in the center of the Earth described by Johannes de Sacrobosco in 'De sphaera mundi'.

(23-03-2019, 09:39 AM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.  And the city that we see in the Rosette page with the Italian city shape is Arim, the city in the center of the Earth described by Johannes de Sacrobosco in 'De sphaera mundi'.

Thanks for bringing that up Antonio Garcia Jimenez,
I had forgotten about Arim/Arin; it was mentioned back on Stephen Bax's site a few years ago in relation to another Voynich page (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ).

Whether or not I agree with your theory about the text, I think the writings of Sacrobosco are certainly something that keeps coming up in relation to Voynich imagery, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was indeed some connection there.

(23-03-2019, 02:50 PM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Whether or not I agree with your theory about the text, I think the writings of Sacrobosco are certainly something that keeps coming up in relation to Voynich imagery, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was indeed some connection there.

I agree with that statement. 

For that reason see no need for star tubes in order for stars to come to earth, you only need a turning sphere, doesnt even matter if it is the earth or sky that turns. 

Antonio, I am seeing it as a child, the stars turned around me from my perspective. But i didnt think tubes were involved.  As they turn, they either rise or fall onto the horizon ie it looked like they touched the earth, even though i knew they were just out of sight, since they would come back again each day, but that knowledge also told me that means they touch the earth everywhere, if you include every possible perspective, kissing the earth at everyone's horizon. That is where you get the idea of the four people standing on the earth perpendicular to each other, because you start to understand other perspectives are different from yours.

The times these happenings have occurred have been tracked and tabled for various locations. The volvelles we have been looking at did the same things with the sun and moon. These tools were time and direction keepers. 

I am trying to combine your idea with mine, not refute your idea, i would like to see it work. You said you didnt know how it worked, so i am trying to say this could be the way the volvelle idea could be involved with the star coordinate idea and not just be imaginary magical coordinates of unknown origin, based on wiggly tubes to earth, (which is kind of unsolveable and leaves your theory hanging, as far as i can see), but instead they could be real ones that give actual information, which could lead to a meaningful solution. Your theory about the stars affecting the herbs loses nothing but the tube part, instead of these, it becomes straight line coordinates of sight, ie there are your coordinates, it seems to me that the tube part of your theory is in the way of your seeing the very coordinates you predict to exist. But i could agree with it perhaps being a symbol of those coordinates, especially if obfuscation were the intention for that choice, ie to move you away from thinking of straight lines, to make it seem a more difficult calculation than simply directions and times and perspective.

Vviews, i was thinking about your purse identification, and i think it is possible to work that view in with mine too, although on the surface they don't seem to agree. A purse is for taking with you the things you need with you out in the world to get by. My identification of that same imagery are symbols that are time, direction, and astronomical location related. They are also symbols for the tools required for navigation during a journey, for instance, star and planet tables and volvelles to help with time and direction. (Caput draconis, which is what i think the red part denotes, is the ascending node, one of the types of occurrences tabled with respect to the moon, and spindels spin and point and count time and fate, and so do volvelles). 

At least, spindels point in the vms, the rest is associative with existing literature, just like we are including concepts of Sacro Bosca, and i think many other concepts are thus incorporated, was just talking about various authors mentioning Pyrrha, and the vms seems to mention her, does that pull them all in? It seems to, given the other commonalities in their conceptsö. Oresme is another example with possible reference.

I find so many of the images morph in this way, and it seems more than a function of not really knowing what it is, but instead layers of symbolism on a theme, in this case one of a journey of some length, that it would behoove one to prepare for by taking what you need to get there. A bag of tricks, so to speak. Purse vs tools, or purse with tools in it? Tubes delivering star spirit to plants, vs rivers delivering rock silt and volcano ash (and what was all initially star dust) to the plants, it can all be correlated into varying layers of explanations of the workings of our world.

I think that when perspectives start to align, it means we are heading toward the actual meaning. So, what more can we agree on, or fit together from different perspectives, to see a larger whole?

Sorry Linda but I have an very empirical mind, I only do hypothesis based on what I see. And what I see in the VMS are tubes everywhere. I see them in the Rosette and in the so-called astronomical, cosmological and biological sections. I see tubes, pipes, barrels...It is the machinery of the universe, with many interconnected spheres. Nothing special. What the author of imagery did is an imaginative interpretation of the medieval cosmology theory.
 Any hypothesis about the meaning of the imagery has to take into account this obvious fact.

(24-03-2019, 10:32 AM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Sorry Linda but I have an very empirical mind, I only do hypothesis based on what I see. And what I see in the VMS are tubes everywhere. I see them in the Rosette and in the so-called astronomical, cosmological and biological sections. I see tubes, pipes, barrels...It is the machinery of the universe, with many interconnected spheres. Nothing special. What the author of imagery did is an imaginative interpretation of the medieval cosmology theory.
 Any hypothesis about the meaning of the imagery has to take into account this obvious fact.

I am sorry too, since i will have to diverge from this view. To me these things are more earth based, tubes are rivers, pipes are mud volcanoes, barrels are architecture. Although i see some astronomical imagery, to me this is just part of explaining the physicalities of the Earth. That all of the imagery you mention is cosmological is less than obvious to me, i see it as more of a history of humanity than of the cosmos.

I wish you luck in furthering your theory, i will be interested to see if you are able to explain how a star coordinate system can be built out of the text and still correlate with your view of the imagery. I tend to doubt it could result in a verifiable system, since hours of daylight would suggest it to be earth based, yet you balk at the idea of linking it to earthly locations.

Of course everything depends of the interpretation and everyone sees different things. But we have to try not to get carried away by the imagination.
  I return to the so-called text. If I see with my eyes in the outercircle of the f70r1 nine (o) in a row: ooooooooo followed by other glyphs, how am I to believe that this string is part of a language or a cipher. It is an astronomical diagram. The logical thing is to think that the scribe is drawing some degrees of the sphere, little circles that we also see in the center of stars.
  The string of (o) is preceded by dots as if the scribe had wanted to simplify the work of drawing so many (o). The same dots I see them in the so-called text in some extended gallows.
 This is what I see. I don't see alphabet letters anywhere.

(24-03-2019, 07:30 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Of course everything depends of the interpretation and everyone sees different things. But we have to try not to get carried away by the imagination.
  I return to the so-called text. If I see with my eyes in the outercircle of the f70r1 nine (o) in a row: ooooooooo followed by other glyphs, how am I to believe that this string is part of a language or a cipher. It is an astronomical diagram. The logical thing is to think that the scribe is drawing some degrees of the sphere, little circles that we also see in the center of stars.
  The string of (o) is preceded by dots as if the scribe had wanted to simplify the work of drawing so many (o). The same dots I see them in the so-called text in some extended gallows.
 This is what I see. I don't see alphabet letters anywhere.

Or it is a bunch of candies, the artist likes to eat them one at a time after lining them up. He doesnt like the hard centres so he puts those back in the line. 

Seriously, i dont think anyone is saying that particular example is a word, but saying so doesnt make it an astronomical diagram, either, nor does logic lead to that conclusion, your imagination does, since i dont see anything to back up the claim, other than your own followup statement. I am not even sure the large circles themselves are astronomical, the blue and green paint may indicate it is water based, maybe showing tides, waves, and water levels.

What about the lariiiii riirii  part? did they get tired of the dots too, so they stuck in random letters or numbers?

I think you have to go further than you are going with it. What degrees of what sphere are being shown and what do they correlate to?

It is one thing to say 4s and 8s and os and dots are involved in some sort of astronomical coordinate system, it is another to show that it is, how it works, what it means, and that there was intention to show what you have outlined.

What do 9 o in an arc mean? How does the fact that an o resembles the centres of some of the stars relate? Is it 9 stars in a row? Why? Where are they? Why would only these be shown this way? What importance do they have?

This is a paper of David A. King, great expert on astrolabes.

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The astrolabe depicted has 21 star-pointers with the name of the stars derived from its Arabic name. In more than half of them a curious symbol 9 is used for an hard letter C, even though the engraver has not done the same with the names of Zodiac signs.
 In pages 44-47 of the document, David A. King explains that the 9-like number is used as abbreviation in Latin, but on this astrolabe the 9 is used as a letter of the alphabet, what seems "to constitute the first and perhaps only evidence of this particular phenomenon".
  King relates it with medieval Spanish epigraphy, but two colleagues of his that he quotes think that it's a whim of the engraver.
  I think that the engraver wanted to imitate inside the name of the star the shape of the star-pointer.

It is the second time that I see a glyph of the VMS (9) related with the star-pointers of the astrolabes. The first one was the glyph EVA-m without (i), the same as EVA-g without ©

The 9 abbreviation symbol is sometimes used like a letter of the alphabet when there aren't enough letters. I don't see it often, but I have occasionally seen it used this way. I didn't collect samples because it didn't strike me as unusual at the time.