The Voynich Ninja

(19-11-2025, 08:35 AM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Please explain your theory in your own thread, or create one if you don't have one. Don't use mine to do so.

You disparaged my theory here first. 

All the best, --stolfi

I did it after you had already started to express your ideas in this thread. Certainly, perhaps I should have stopped you sooner.

Sorry if I got carried away.  But the issue of retracing -- and, more generally, how the images came to be, -- is crucial for the topic of this thread.  Or for any investigation about the images.  That includes also the question of how detailed and accurate was the Author's draft, how much the Scribe made up or copied from other sources, how many errors he may have made, etc.

I have seen far too many deductions miscarrying because they were based on image details, like colors and nymph headgear, that are clearly not original, or were not intended to mean what they seem to mean.  That was a terrible waste of time.  Like (as I now see) all the efforts to make sense of the text on f116v.

As I argued in my Voynich Day talk, there is no such thing as "agnostic research" about this book.  Every research effort requires making some assumptions about the events and processes that resulted in what we see today -- an "origin theory".  Thus it is prudent to at least recognize one's "origin theory", and be aware of its unproven status -- and of the implications if it turns out to be incorrect.

All the best, --stolfi

I understand that you're very convinced of your opinion. But I don't share it. I have very different ideas, and I'm just as convinced of mine. Therefore, if you continue to comment in this thread, our conversation will be a dialogue of the deaf. Logically, if someone wants to defend a particular theory, they should start a thread and defend it. Others can reject it, raise objections, or agree, but without straying from the topic.

I know that honestly many people here, like you, have their own ideas about the Voynich Manuscript and try to get them to the widest possible audience. I'm fortunate, and it seems that some, if not all, of my ideas are well-received, judging by how popular this thread is. And I'm guided by the same passionate conviction you have regarding your ideas.

Your imaginations are not „well-received“ or agreed in any way, and you are not „fortunate“:
you are clever enough to push your own thread up again and again on the first positions of this forum since 7 years, so readers stumble upon it regularly.
But the numbers of major threads are nearly all the same here:
a number of xx pages generates a 10x higher number of replies, each reply drags some 500 views. 
Being on top means a lot more views, but it does not mean even one of your theories was right or somehow accepted ever.
You can find the described relations 1x10x~500 in posts „Voynich being Chinese“, „Voynich… phonetic irish“ and even Kris1212‘ „Voynich decoded“ - this here is not about applause and click counts, and you did not win any contest yet with guesswork about Alphonso X and Panofsky-said-it.

This reply pushes your thread up to No.1 again and is worth 500 clicks - you are welcome.

(19-11-2025, 09:32 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.many people here, like you, have their own ideas about the Voynich Manuscript and try to get them to the widest possible audience

That's not at all like me.

The Rosettes page is for me a representation of the medieval universe. In previous posts I've already given some reasons why I hold this interpretation. Now I want to highlight a very important detail for this identification. It concerns the small slabs with a dot that we can see on the Rosettes, especially in the central circle.

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  These slabs most likely allude to the sphere of the fixed stars, the last sphere of the medieval universe, completely closed and studded with stars.

   The closest image to this one that I have found is in the astrology treatise attributed to Enrique de Villena, a contemporary work of the Voynich.

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  This codex contains illustrated pages with astronomical information about eclipses, the movements of the sun, moon, and planets, Earth's latitudes, etc. In the margins of these pages, one can see those dotted slabs that represent the sphere of fixed stars, which serves as a boundary for the other spheres.

I highly recommend consulting this treatise on astrology to see this detail and other very inspiring aspects of the medieval universe. It is digitized and available at the National Library of Spain.

You have said this before, about 5 years ago. I believe there is a tradition for this design in cartography, and in fact that is how i see it, standing for, as you say, slabs, in my case, of rock. May I ask how you equate slabs to astronomical items? What are they slabs of? I don't think I have seen this particular usage elsewhere, it may well exist, but i don't think anyone discussing it at the time could support the argument. 

JKP said in this thread around that time:

Quote:Ideas are important. Ideas can sometimes lead to solutions. But proving an idea is still paramount. Without proof, it's simply an idea, one that might have been considered by many people but which is an empty vessel until you fill it with evidence.

Please provide evidence. Your vessel requires a refill of substance, not a simple restatement of something that didn't seem to go anywhere the first time.

There is a six towered round building in a quarter of the circle. Do we know yet what this is all about? I think I asked then, but I don't recall if anyone knew. Can you explain what you think is going on here? What is this meant to symbolize and what does it stand for in relation to that quarter and with the scale numbers? I tend to doubt it has anything to do with any of the architecture in the rosettes, but i would need to understand the page better to be able to speak directly to that. The drawing style is certainly different.

I found another one with similar architecture, this time it is easier to understand. 



I assume you are attempting to equate the 6 towered one with the rosettes central towers, i can understand that. But I do not see any interaction between the architecture and the embellishments that would somehow equate them to the superficially similar icons in the rosettes, other than whatever resemblance there is visually with semicircle topped slabs with dots or smaller circles inside.

I went to find an image I could post, (I since added the one above too) in case someone did not look at the example you gave, as it loads very slowly for me. This one is from a page discussing the darkening of the sky at the crucifixion, so don't worry about the attached images, it came that way. I am posting to show the decorative corners with your description of dotted slabs, albeit this one is even more decorative than your presented example.



And this is what you are equating these embellishments with (except it was page 108 I think)



Are you saying that Enrique de Villena meant these decorative corners to represent the sphere of fixed stars?  Has this been mentioned by anyone else before you? Evidence, please.

I still think it is fanciful embellishment, as it is also used in the decorative initial letter as well. Filling in the void, not with stars, but with intricate doodles. In this one he adds another icon, kind of a floral x. What would these be in an astrological sense? Perhaps a heavenly boundary. Or, again, decoration. 

Here is some evidence that it is common to fill the corners of circular astrological drawings with random designs.



I agree Enrique's treatise on Astrology is scientific looking and beautiful, although i couldn't get more than a few glipses due to the pages taking forever to load on my device. However I did read that he had a reputation as a necromancer and that another of his works was A Treatise on the Evil Eye. I wonder if this colours his decorations in another light. Some of them seem to have diamonds and spades, diamonds could be argued as stars but with the spades it seems more like designs on the backs of cards. Also although I see the shapes and the dots, (which are a bit different too), they are also laid out quite differently from those in the vms, it appears to be from a different universe if we are comparing them against each other as such, even if we take them for what you say they are.

Linda, although well-intentioned, your post is a jumble of things that distorts my thinking. I believe the Rosettes page is a representation of the medieval cosmos, and I've elaborated on that idea in previous posts.

  First, we need to understand how medieval scholars conceived of the universe. For them, it was a set of concentric spheres interconnected with the sphere of fixed stars, completing the whole. What we see in the Rosettes are these spheres drawn in an extended form and their interconnections. The central sphere represents the fixed stars, and the other seven represent the known planets, which included the sun and the moon. The sphere with the castle represents the Earth. It is there that we see a T-O map.

  What's in the central sphere aren't towers, but rather luxurious vessels, as I proved with practically identical contemporary images. They are containers that hold essences and are related to those we see in the pharmaceutical section. Some are very similar. The artists most likely intended to suggest that the essences are created by celestial influence.

   On the page you linked from Enrique de Villena's astrology treatise, we see a fortress on a T-O map. This indicates the latitude of a particular city, which is why I think the castle we see in the Rosettes refers to the latitude of the location where the Voynich Manuscript was written.

   In this treatise we see in the corners of all the cosmological images a strange decoration that coincides with that of the central sphere of the Rosettes and with other cosmological ones from the Voynich. I call them slabs, but we could call them cells, bulbs, or anything else. They have a dot like those in the Voynich Manuscripts. In my opinion, they form part of the iconography of the outermost sphere of the universe, which is something closed and completely covered by stars.

   Indeed, there's no source to confirm that, or at least I haven't found one. It's my deduction based on the images. You can agree or not, but I'm trying to explain my reasoning.

My apologies regarding the jumbles. It's messy in here. I will try to be clearer and more ordered

OK. I understand the idea of laying out the spheres separately instead of concentrically, to have a better look.

Luxurious vessels of celestially induced essences, not towers, gotcha, I misinterpreted what you were equating with the chosen Villena page, it hit me that perhaps the whole page was to be compared since i saw the commonality of 6 items laid out in a circular format, and then the slabs were around that, which seemed analogous to the slab designs around the vessels. I do agree the vessels look similar to the ones in the pharmaceutical section. I sometimes think of them as towers as they poke into the realm of the field of asterisks, which I think of as starlike, so it gives the impression of height.

TO Fortress and Castle equated to the latitude origin of the respective manuscripts, cool, I understand that.

Do you know further what is being shown on on the 6 towered page you initially posted? That one is not marked as a TO map, but are we to understand the same reference of the architecture being shown in the Europe quarter, and do we know what the numbers represent? Just curious.

I did understand you were equating the slab designs in the corners with the circular slab designs in the central rosette, but I don't see enough similarity between how they are presented to equate them as you do. But you did say it was the closest you could find, so I can go with that, I can see enough similarity. I am, however, not convinced that Enrique de Villena meant them to be his field of fixed stars. 

You said

Quote:In the margins of these pages, one can see those dotted slabs that represent the sphere of fixed stars

I took issue with that, if you meant by margins, the corners around the circular diagrams. I did not and still do not see those as anything but decoration. Space filler, as in space in the corners, on the page, as opposed to a vision of the outer edge of space in the universe, is what i was trying to say. That is why I was showing that often these corners of squared circles are decorated in designs that don't necessary reflect anything upon their astronomical contents within the circles. But you have explained that it is your own deduction, so I am satisfied enough to understand it with that caveat with reference to your description of the page.

I would have thought that the outer sphere of stars would be represented by the seemingly floating field of asterisks between the vessels, which do not resemble the slab formations. The fancy nebulatory outer edge could imply we are seeing just a glimpse of it, and perhaps that it is heavenly, but as you say, it would be unbroken and everywhere, encompassing all that we see, which can't be shown in a representation with the inner spheres exploded out into their separate components, hence this seemed a way to accomplish this. How do you think of this asterisk field if the slab field represents the sphere of fixed stars? As what we see, but the slabs are behind it, offering cosmic influence in the background? It seems to me the asterisks resemble stars more than the slab designs, which is why I could think of it as what we see, as opposed to the slabs, as these are not reminding me of what I see on a clear starry night, or anywhere really, they seem more abstract than representative, if we are talking stars.