The Voynich Ninja

Quote:Anton, think of it the other way. If you want to draw something in the root to remind you that this plant is used to encourage celibacy, what do you draw?

That's a tricky question. But I'm not sure that I would draw monks in the first place. Most probably, I would draw something that would illustrate the concept in general, like maybe a man estranging himself from a woman, or perhaps some well-known symbol of celibacy. I would be unlikely to draw two persons of the same sex to illustrate celibacy.

That celibacy was expected from monks does not mean that celibacy is the only thing remarkable about monks. In fact, the essence of the monk is that he estranges from the world in order to serve God. The oath of celibacy is not the only oath of a monk.

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Why two heads?

My ideas:

1) decorative symmetry
2) twins
3) some underlying "story" about two persons

Any more ideas?

(15-05-2019, 04:39 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Any more ideas?

It's true that monks will not firstly invoke the idea of celibacy, but I can imagine that the concept of celibacy would equal "monks" for some people. Like I said before, if we do go with the celibacy thing then there may be two bulbs because a certain part of male anatomy also has two. Although they would be separated by an unhealthy distance

Celibacy would be more manifesting if the two heads were of different sexes. Then they would be opposed to each other, kept at a distance. Can we say that one of these two is male, and the other - female?

NB as the Finnish biologist points out, the left one is sad, the right one is smiling. Note the line of the mouth.

Did they shear the nuns? I have no idea if they did... I know they were supposed to crop their hair but how short that was, I don't know.

The water lily had two primary uses: sedative and slightly narcotic.

I would expect a more visible tonsure were these to be monks. 
I think the hair is important but how to analyse? 
There are two possibilities :they are a fashion statement (as
 always, it depends upon the date of creation as hair styles changed dramatically) or they are cultural references (monks or figures of antiquity).
So... Are H and T typically depicted with short hair? Or are we looking at English men, who tended to wear their hair shorter to distinguish themselves from the Irish and Normans? 
Or can we even say that we can see short hair at the front and the root forms a pony tail?

Here's a Franciscan monk c. 1430s, English:



Francesco d'Este, c. 1460





England, c. 1480, don't know if this is a layperson, nobility, or cleric but probably nobility or professional (craftsman? does the ring/hammer suggest a goldsmith?):




From looking at a few of these (not a lot), I'm guessing above the ears is usually a monk and covering the ears, non-monk.

In my experience, the tonsure (bald spot on top) is the only reliable way of spotting monks by their hair style.

As for the root heads, in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I found a reference to this plant (by MarcoP):
Bodleian Library MS. Canon. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

There are also You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. shown here and in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (e.g.).

There are quite a few medieval herbals with head roots, fish roots, snake roots...

• After looking at a lot of fish roots, I realized that most of them stood for aquatic plants (once you recognize the plants it's easier to see what the roots mean).
  
• I discovered that snake/serpent/dragon roots had a lot of different meanings... sometimes it meant that the plant had "snake" in its name, or a snake-shaped root (like Bistorta). Sometimes it meant that the root was used to treat snake-bite. So, for snake roots, it was a little harder to tell why the snake was in the root unless you definitely knew the identity of the plant, but it was possible to figure out quite a few of them.
  

• The head roots were harder to distinguish as per meaning because a number of them were in manuscripts that lack plant labels or which appear to refer to mythical plants. Sometimes the head root looked like it might refer to the name of the plant, sometimes it looked like the head might refer to the moon rather than to a person. They were tougher to decipher than the fish roots and the snake roots.
  

I have a list of plants with head roots. I haven't seen Marco's examples yet and I can't take time to look up my files until after work, but I'll try to do that later.