Medieval thought is very allegorical and symbolic and this quality is transmitted to iconography, which on the other hand can be naive, the work of children. We see it, for example, in one of the VM plants with a root that resembles the body of a beast.
In the case of the luxurious containers on the Rosettes page you can see this almost childlike characteristic. The author has drawn some kind of claws at the base of the containers. It is a way of alluding to the fact that they are in the air, in the sky, and their claws serve to hold on. I think it is important to understand this medieval mentality that gives all its meaning to the iconography of the VM.
I am not in favor of making any categorical statement, but I am in favor of stating the degree of probability of each interpretation. In the case of these containers, which we also see in different shapes in the pharmaceutical section together with leaves and roots and other parts of the plants, the most likely interpretation is that they store the beneficial essences of those plants, and that this essence is created with the help of the stars, in accordance with the medieval astrological mentality.
I say this from time to time for new forum members, even though it gets repetitive.
I believe that the script is an astronomical-astrological notation, the glyphs being pictograms or ideograms that represent the sun, the moon, the stars and positions in the ecliptic with different configurations. I think the very shape of the glyphs is an indication of this. But I think the greatest proof that the script is precisely that lies in the correct interpretation of the imagery.
For me, interpreting the iconography leads to that conclusion. I think that all the images in the different sections of the Voynich point to the same message: medicinal plants or herbs receive that benefit from the zodiac stars. That's why I think the script is just a set of celestial settings.
It is an astronomical-astrological notation, Antonio, but the task of determining how it works remains. I've been consulting some relevant people in the field of Hellenistic and Traditional Astrology - which is experiencing a revival in astrological circles. They report that, unfortunately, there is no comprehensive study of pre-Renaissance astrological notation, and most studies concentrate on Hellenist texts from late Antiquity. There is some good work being done, such this article by Deborah Houlding:
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Texts and charts and the diversity of astrological practice prior to the standardization of the Renaissance is still relatively unstudied. I also suspect that the notation in the Voynich is an eccentric hybrid of Latin and Greek conventions making it all the more difficult. I am hoping, though, that the Voynich system has a model in some other work. You have pointed to the Ashmole ms. That is a good place to start. Onwards.
Hermes, you are right that script is a notation that we don't know how it works.
The article you have attached is very good because it shows the astrological symbols of the zodiac. I thought they had been created coinciding with the birth of the printing press, but I see that they were already in use during the Hellenistic period, at least some of them. Since these symbols were not known during the Latin Middle Ages, it makes me think that they were known throughout the 15th century when a multitude of Greek manuscripts were recovered, at the beginning of the Renaissance.
I believe that the Voynich script is prior to the knowledge of those symbols. For me it is an attempt to create a scientific language with pictographic and ideographic glyphs. That code, in my opinion, was aimed at explaining how astral influences work in plants that have medicinal properties. That there were herbs that could heal had to be seen as something from heaven.
I think a good method of approaching the Voynich script is to reflect on the shape of the glyphs chosen by the authors of the codex. Why do they have that shape and not another?
Why are there glyphs that are repeated up to three times and others are not, why are there glyphs that maintain a certain symmetry, why are there others with a similar shape that complement each other, why this obsession with the symbol [c], why the glyph [o ] can be omitted?
All these questions and more should be prior to any transliteration of the glyphs into letters of the alphabet.
(19-09-2024, 06:53 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All these questions and more should be prior to any transliteration of the glyphs into letters of the alphabet.
I cannot agree with that. These questions can be addressed very well after the definition of a transliteration alphabet.
(19-09-2024, 06:53 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.why this obsession with the symbol [c], why the glyph [o ] can be omitted?
Here, I am not sure what you mean. the symbol
e is not much different from the symbol
i in that it can appear several times in a row. I do not know of any obsession.
The glyph
o can only be omitted in very specific cases. This assumes that the term 'can be omitted' means that the omission results in another valid word.
To the contrary, the symbol
e can usually be omitted, and the same with several
e in a row.
As far as I know, in almost all cases where there are two
e 's, one can be dropped leading to a valid word.
Examples:
In the word
chol one
cannot omit the
o . One can, however, omit
ch.
In the word
chedy one
can omit the
e. One cannot, however, omit the
ch.
(This is all apart from extremely rare exceptions).
I am not saying that replacing glyphs with letters of the alphabet is not useful for analysis. What I'm saying is that by doing so there is an obvious risk of assuming that script is a language. I believe that thinking that we are dealing with a language, whether natural or encrypted, is the greatest prejudice that exists in Voynich research. It is very logical that we, men of the 21st century, think this way, but with a very rare codex from the 15th century it is not only possible but probable that there is another way of interpreting the script.
There is a clear intention in the design of the glyphs by the authors. There is a clear symmetry in several of them, for example in the gallows and the benches. It is as if the authors thought in two halves, in a mirror. That's why I think they are reproducing positions and objects on a sphere.
If I believe that the script is an astronomical notation system, it is for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the codex is not a simple herbal, it is an astrological herbal.
There is enough evidence to think that the glyphs in the script mean something on their own. In other words, they are symbols. An indication is, for example, the uncertainty in many cases about the spaces that separate the chains of glyphs. And another indication is folio f57v, where we see many glyphs alone that in the so-called normal text are accompanied by other glyphs forming chains that look like words.
I like to think of the script as the Lego game. Many pieces are interchangeable and can be put on and taken off in any order forming chains, but other pieces have to fit in a certain way and only in that way, such as the glyphs that always begin or end the chains.
Let's think about the benches. They are comfortable preceding the glyph [c], but other symbols are not. This makes sense if you think, as I do, that all glyphs that share this shape are the symbol of the Moon.
Quote:Let's think about the benches. They are comfortable preceding the glyph [c], but other symbols are not. This makes sense if you think, as I do, that all glyphs that share this shape are the symbol of the Moon
It would also make sense if the benches were just ligatures to better parse (or distinguish/disambiguate) the concatenation of three individual
eee acting as a single glyph, from the concatenation of a merged
ee + a third, unrelated
e.
Such a feature would come in handy, for example, when parsing/decoding codewords "21oe4" and "3oe4" that, written using roman numerals, would both be mapped to something like "IIIoeIV".
I believe that any slightly complex code to interpret the script is completely anachronistic. And what we must not forget is that we are interpreting an illustrated book, not just a script. A codex that has a considerable astrological-astronomical part. That's why I think my interpretation is probable, because it is not limited to the script but also takes into account the imagery.
In my theory the imagery explains the script and vice versa. Both complement each other.