The Voynich Ninja

I've posted many images here and on my blog that show the "four rivers" of paradise. But this 13th-century mappa munda (from the BL Map Psalter) is different. It has five rivers:



The four that are usual are phison, geon, tigris, and eufrates (which you can see on the right). There are numerous spellings for these rivers but the names are more-or-less the same on most maps.

But this map also one called "ganges" on the left. Now wait a minute... that's India. Do they mean a different Ganges in the Middle East?

Nope, I'm pretty sure they mean the Ganges River in India, which flows from northern to eastern India, because there are clues in other parts of the map.


If you look to the upper right of the rivers, you will see something that looks like buildings with smokestacks. These are oracle trees, or possibly a combination of oracle trees and temples (they look more like blobs than trees).

So what do these have to do with India? They probably trace back to the mythical adventures of Alexander, where he visited the oracle trees (talking trees) in India, one was male (called the sun tree), the other female (the moon tree).  This drawing is a bit unusual because the sun tree is frequently on the right in most European illustrations. Here it is labeled on the left.

The trees are described as being in a circle (this attracted my attention because sacred groves all over Europe, especially northern Europe, are frequently in a circle, and the container-like towers on the VMS central rosette are also arranged in a circle).

Two of the trees could talk (in Indian and Greek) and would do so at daybreak, noon, and nightfall. To enter the sacred place, you could not bring iron (weapons). So, this place in India was revered in a way similar to the western reverence for Eden or "Paradise". Eden was often placed at the top of maps. On this map, the oracle trees share a place next to Eve and Adam in the central circle from which the rivers are flowing.

The prognostications from the trees did not favor Alexander, they "predicted" his death, but the myth lived on for hundreds of years, tucked away in these little bits of drawings and labels that are found in some manuscripts and some maps that are not directly associated with the Alexander chronicle.


It's also interesting that this combination of the sun and moon and a tree was a part of hermetic tradition in the west, perhaps an adaptation of the oracle trees to which the other "planets" were added:



In Rosarium Philosophorum, we have sun and moon trees:

  

I thought this was interesting too because the way the suns and moons are arranged is more similar to the Assyrian tree of life:



Source: British Museum, Image © Barnaby Thieme

This tree of life was considered the center of the cosmos.


Here are the Hebrew sephirot arranged as limbs on a tree:



[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]This reminds me of the arrangement of some of the more stylized VMS plants.[/font]


And here is a sacred lake and grove on an island in Estonia (courtesy Pt, Wikipedia). Nine craters were created by a meteor strike about 3,500 years ago:



Visitors view it from a platform partway up the hill (after all these millennia, it is still considered sacred).

When something is sacred, a cosmic boundary is often drawn around it in medieval illustrations. And note the little rocks that are more apparent when the water level is low. This reminded me of the middle-right rotum on the VMS rosettes folio. Could the VMS image refer to something like this? with a cloudband to indicate a holy place?


Is it possible that the VMS rosettes folio is not really a strip map (which has always been my favorite interpretation) but perhaps a record of 9 different sacred places collected together on one folio?

Maybe the oracle of Delphi (Corycian cave) is represented by the top-left rosette: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

The term Oracle tree was new for me, and very interesting.

pinging back:

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Saint Cecilia in a bath of boiling water, detail of the altarpiece showing Stories of Saint Cecilia,

The standard number of four rivers of paradise is a common tradition. The addition of the fifth river, the Ganges, is indicative of an alternate source of geographic information. The information found in the stories based on the life and conquests of Alexander the Great are a source of such information.

Alexandre de Bernay, aka Alexandre of Paris, is the apparent source of the summarized four part version of the story of Macedonian history, which he composed in French in the 12th century. 

In the first half of the 1400s, (C-14 dates), the story of Alexander the Great emerges again. The stories of Alexander the Great are a part of the work of Jehan Wauquelin of Mons in Hainaut, (d. 1452). He was patronized by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy.

Would you look at that? Another connection to Burgundy just sitting there.

There was an alternative theory, that there were actually five rivers, and these correlated to the five wounds of Christ. This later developed into a five rivers of human senses theory. However, I think the fifth river was normally given the generic name of paradise, although I suppose the famous river of the Ganges could have been associated to it.

I see no question that the Ganges was intended to represent India and little doubt that the various versions of the Alexander Romances played a significant part. I read there was a version known in 9th century England, so this influence is early and widespread. The other factor is - to what depth? It's a fact, concept, idea that has repeatedly been overlooked, ignored, forgotten and swept under the rug by everything from historical nationalism to plain old ignorance. The Graeco-Indian kingdoms are hardly a topic of hot conversation.

You've always got to ask, who's doing the thinking?

The VMs uses history, cosmology, heraldry, religion and mythology to make certain references which many earlier investigations did not consider adequately. Not only is there a situation based on a lack of awareness and difficulties of access to 'discarded' information, the VMs also imposes its own unique form of representative ambiguity.

Is there a proposed connection between the Alexander Romance information and the VMs?

What i see in quire 13 is an older ecumene than would be current in the 15th century. It goes as far as Gujarat in India, yet with mnemonics that indicate far greater knowledge of the shapes of the shorelines, more along the lines of portolan chart information. 

This could be possible commentary on old maps being difficult to compare to the portolan charts, this being a hybrid of the two, kind of like a mnemonic portolan marginal map. It might be trying to give common ground to people who understand one but not the other. Or it could just be a factor of information trickling, not everyone catches up. Late 14th century maps like the 

The Psalter map is being pretty close to showing that same ecumene, except the Ganges would take it a bit farther. I think that is what the nymphs with rings are about, they point in the directions of areas not outlined, like anything north of Lake Constance, or east of Gujarat, again showing that there was knowledge of more, albeit not shown. I am thinking that the east of India is not shown because there is not much precedent for showing it, and the north of Constance area is not shown because it is the area most familiar to the makers. Ie you don't generally need a map of your home town.

It is thought to be a smaller copy of the Ebsdorf map, and both of these have parts that look like tubes for rivers, which would fit as precedents for the tube rivers of quire 13. The Ebsdorf, i just learned, was interested in bishoprics. When i just now saw a map of bishoprics from 400AD, they also looked familiar, and seem to match the regions i speak of with regard to the nymphs of quire 13. It is also interesting because the region surrounding Ceuta was included in Hispaniae, and the Alps were included with Genoa and Venice in Italia annonaria,  just as the vms has suggested to me. So i will look into that further.



I think the four or five rivers of paradise have been eschewed in the vms in favour of those that are known to actually exist, although i see hints at possibilities for the other two. Pishon might be the now dry water erosion in Arabia, shown as the spray on fish nymph's hand, Geon might now be the Persian gulf, shown as the tube or log within that water body. I do think the Indus is included, and the Nile, among others.

Thank you also for the Oracle tree information, i see them everywhere now!