The Voynich Ninja

Has anyone associated the quarter moon shapes lining the inside of the 1st rosette's inner sphere with decans?  I thought it was an interesting number - 37 - but I associated it with moons and powers or some such.  Also numerologically with the number #10, 3+7=10, or 1+0 = 1so that sphere to me represented likely both 1 and 10  as the starting and ending point for my hermeticum man's journey from the celestial as divine brother of god to his fall to earth as both mortal/immortal to his return to the celestial/immortality through hermeticum gnosis (and good medicine re the signatura rerum of plants, astral magic and natural magic of course!). A journey from 1 to 10 similar in some ways to the Sephiroth.

I became interested in decans through the hermeticum.  Unlike in most astrology, decans in the hermeticum are regarded as incredibly powerful daimons/gods, second only to Logos and Cosmos, and a reconstituted divine man might even be able to join them.  So I looked them up.

They number 36, governed by or governing, the 7 planets/constellations, and at least today represent 10 degrees each of a zodiac sign, and have a history going back to Egypt 2500 bc at least.  I won't go into that history here - it changed considerably over the years but by medieval times they were widely and often used in medicinal astrology, particularly in regards to the body.

This association with bodily health appeared to be related to the rebirth of Ra and or Osiris, according to a few different sources, in which the decans were responsible for leading him to the underworld, then returning him, in accordance with their function in the sky.

Rebirth!  That agreed with my original hypothesis.

If only, I thought wistfully, they numbered 37 not 36 and could be represented by quarter moon shapes...

As it turns out, they are.

36 only accounts for 360 days of the year and is often only quoted because it's tidy.  The 37th decan accounts for the 5 extra days, before Sirius appears again after long absence and begins the procession of decans again.

Moreover, pictorially, the decans ride on quarter moon boats.  The Temple of Hathor at Dendarra has a celebrated frieze on its ceiling of 37 decans riding these boats, with one of them escorting a coffin, likely Ra or Osiris, to the underworld before rebirth.
I'll try a link showing the first 18: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(17-08-2020, 04:27 AM)Barbrey Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If only, I thought wistfully, they numbered 37 not 36

This type of argument seems awfully familiar, somehow...

(17-08-2020, 04:27 AM)Barbrey Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Has anyone associated the quarter moon shapes lining the inside of the 1st rosette's inner sphere with decans?  I thought it was an interesting number - 37 - but I associated it with moons and powers or some such. 

Much easier to consider them thirty seven lunar months:
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As for the decans, the more usual division - 36 decans, but not always. The Babilonians, Chaldeans, Egyptians and some other also made division into 72 parts. Exactly seventy two "pipes" (12*6) of the central rosette can represent seventy two "half-decans", sometimes they were called:
 1. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., pictures (the Chaldeans, Pliny);
 2. aeons, luminaries (The Gospel of Judas);
 3.  paranatellonta (Ancient Greek?); 
 4. many other veiled names (names of God, angels, demons, nations, disciples, etc.)

(17-08-2020, 12:14 PM)DONJCH Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(17-08-2020, 04:27 AM)Barbrey Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If only, I thought wistfully, they numbered 37 not 36

This type of argument seems awfully familiar, somehow...

Lol.  I know!  I've run through so many theories in the last couple of months, only to find that one thing that doesn't work, leaving me wondering if I'm delusional.  Symbolism and numerology are particularly aggravating.  Slippery as ...insert swear word.

(17-08-2020, 07:42 PM)Searcher Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(17-08-2020, 04:27 AM)Barbrey Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Has anyone associated the quarter moon shapes lining the inside of the 1st rosette's inner sphere with decans?  I thought it was an interesting number - 37 - but I associated it with moons and powers or some such. 

Much easier to consider them thirty seven lunar months:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

As for the decans, the more usual division - 36 decans, but not always. The Babilonians, Chaldeans, Egyptians and some other also made division into 72 parts. Exactly seventy two "pipes" (12*6) of the central rosette can represent seventy two "half-decans", sometimes they were called:
 1. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., pictures (the Chaldeans, Pliny);
 2. aeons, luminaries (The Gospel of Judas);
 3.  paranatellonta (Ancient Greek?); 
 4. many other veiled names (names of God, angels, demons, nations, disciples, etc.)

Searcher, thanks for reply and info, and let me just say what great work you did in one thread I read with figuring out those hidden words.  

And I love the 72 pipes!  

Yes, I agree that moon symbols from a lunar calendar would be much easier, and still fit with my main hypothesis, but I am kind of biased towards decans for a few reasons, mostly to do with my general hypothesis and the lense I'm viewing the entire page through, as a hermetic cosmology and cosmogony page.  So let me explain (to myself, too, as this is a hypothesis in progress, which I believe is one purpose of this forum for newcomers to the Voynich)

1.  Sphere 1 I have identified with the Hermeticum Nous (sometimes called Cosmos), or demiurge god of Intelligence/Mind who created the heavens and world with the Word, Sphere 3, who called up and created the forms of the world from earth/water elemental matter, and the world itself, and named them (hence the earth symbol above #3, which is for the diagram's purposes shot towards the centre #5 and the world comes into existence).  

Nous's number is actually 1 or 10 so that numerology worked.  He is also called Cosmos, btw, and I like that better so maybe will call him that. He or it, has no form and is androgynous and bodiless, made of pure fire and spirit, hence the empty space in Sphere 1's middle, though he can be represented by the sun sometimes)  In the creation myth he is surrounded by Aeon (you can see why I was happy with your reply!).  But Aeon, or Time is actually in him too (just accept it - god is both in everything and outside  too is a basic tenet).  

So I believe Aeon is represented by the decans lining the inside of that sphere.

Both decans (originally constellations) and moons for months of course could be used to show the passing of time ( the lunar month was used in Egypt, Babylon, Chaldea, Persia etc., too, sometimes in conjunction with the solar year,  and often with decans included) and no one knows really where the lunar system stemmed from, though one source says the Jews took it from Egypt in their exodus).  Decans were intrinsically associated with time measurement of day and year, though art historians believe that might have been secondary to their religious ritual representations as escorters of Osiris (yearly basis) or sun god Ra (daily basis) to the underworld and back because they are usually portrayed carrying a coffin.  

I think this is why we have the sun above him (as his image, not him) rising above him, then setting directly opposite in sphere 9.  This is the life and rebirth story of the Cosmos as his image the sun, Ra, and about to be mirrored in the creation story of the Divine Man, Brother of Cosmos(or the Prime Mover, accounts differ).

So decans, as aeons, or representing Aeon, fit the story much better than 37 lunar months for me!

2.  The decans are much more associated with health.  I read the VMS as essentially a pharmaceutical manual heavily based on alchemy, astral astrology and the signatura rerum, the godly signature stamped on all living things that enables sympathetic magic through identification of form and affinities.  This is my hypothesis about the herbal pages for instance.  They might well have been copied from other herbals, but they've been stylistically altered, particularly at the roots, to identify them with the diseases they cure, as well as the bodies from which they've grown or been regenerated from (there is no true death for even plants (Sphere 8)  in the hermeticum, only dissolution of form and regeneration), hence the animal or human faces in the roots, or the stars to which they are sympathetically connected.  Their appearance is stamped as a signature that identifies their affinities or opposites.  This is claimed in the Picatrix, itself heavily influenced by the Hermeticum, and the author makes extensive use of the decans for medical magic.

In fact, each decan is identified with a particular part of the body they rule, much more thoroughly than other celestial bodies, and a whole magical/alchemical science grew up around them as prolonging life or (defying them to protect it) in that time period.  This makes sense from a Time,  Life, Death  and Reincarnation perspective.

And in terms of alchemy, in the search for the Elixir of Life for immortality, exclusive to the divine, decans would be decent representatives.  I am uncertain the VMS is going there - the Elixir of Life - even if my hypothesis proves out but it is certainly not out of the question.  After all,  most alchemy was obsessed with it or turning lead into gold, goals founded primarily on a misinterpreted understanding of the hermeticum, where man is born divine,  exactly in the imagej and with same powers and immortality as god, falls in love with Nature, falls into the mortal realm and takes on mortal form but still partly divine, -  but through learning the world and knowing the sciences and seeing god truly in Mind and Spirit, can become one with the divine (the decans are particularly mentioned) and ascend again to divinity and immortality even while living.

So that's my lengthy explanation as to why I would prefer decans to moons.  The spheres are mostly mapped out according to the hermeticum genesis, path of soul and body of man, in my mind.  And the reason this diagram would appear in the VMS is that it's a foundational worldview that connects all the sections - herbal, biological, astrological and cosmological, and likely magical (I think the recipes might include incantations)- together in a set of relationships that explains how and why this type of medical "magic" works.

So (exhausted, and thanks for bearing with me, I needed to get that out), why do YOU think there are 13 petals in Sphere #2?  That sphere should represent the zodiac and the heavens - I still believe it does - but the 13 instead of 12 is curious, just like 37 was.  I know there was a 13th constellation - so did the ancients, it's not something newly discovered as some accounts claim - but it trips me up.  For a while I thought I had it wrong and I was looking at the Trinity - Unity and Triplicity - but that didn't work.  I suspect there might be a Christian gloss for the casual but inquisitorial observer interested in heresy, just as the text was encoded.   Everything could be explained away.  Secondly I thought that maybe just as there was a 37th decan, and Divine Man spends time both with Cosmos/Aeon and among the planetary spheres before breaking through them to earth, or rising again as reconstituted divine man through them, that he might be the 13th.  And he could, but that seems forced.  So I am still wondering!

By the way, in the spirit of Hermes, who believed all gods were valid, but created by the Prime Mover, so you could find your way to Cosmos  or even the Prime Mover through "knowing" the prime god in any god, my theory would not preclude map or alternate hypotheses.  Layers!

Well if 36=37 and 12=13 then 58=59 and I definitely claim f70r1 as Saturn

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We can be the Coalition of the Deluded

Seriously though, I take it the 13th constellation would be Ophiuchus?

(18-08-2020, 09:12 AM)Barbrey Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
1.  Sphere 1 I have identified with the Hermeticum Nous (sometimes called Cosmos), or demiurge god of Intelligence/Mind who created the heavens and world with the Word, Sphere 3, who called up and created the forms of the world from earth/water elemental matter, and the world itself, and named them (hence the earth symbol above #3, which is for the diagram's purposes shot towards the centre #5 and the world comes into existence).  
Nous's number is actually 1 or 10 so that numerology worked.  He is also called Cosmos, btw, and I like that better so maybe will call him that. 
So I believe Aeon is represented by the decans lining the inside of that sphere.
...
So (exhausted, and thanks for bearing with me, I needed to get that out), why do YOU think there are 13 petals in Sphere #2?  That sphere should represent the zodiac and the heavens - I still believe it does - but the 13 instead of 12 is curious, just like 37 was.  I know there was a 13th constellation - so did the ancients, it's not something newly discovered as some accounts claim - but it trips me up.  
...

First of all, maybe I missed something, but I think the Nous is not the Cosmos. 
I have never come across 37 deсans mentioned. Of course, there are references to 37 kings, but this doesn't mean that they imply deсans. In theory, if they are mythical, they could represent 36 deсans and 1 ruling center, as in the case of the 12 aeons and the 13th aeon, but then some mention of one particular ruler must be found. For example, I have met only information about several rulers.  In fact, the 37 kings might also mean 37 lunar months. 
I would note that the number thirteen may have a few meanings, including: 
1. 13 lunar months a year;
2. 13 aeons;
3. 13 veils of the Jewish Temple;
4. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
The 13 aeons are the 13 obstacles or torments of the soul on the way to Pleroma in some Gnostic teachings, the 13 veils rather also mean veils of the material world on the way to the Most Holy. Also I can mention the later masonic pyramid with the 13 levels which, as I think, have quite the same meaning.