The Voynich Ninja

The bottom left as hell/Hades is problematic for me. We have a field of stars with something in the middle, which means this takes place in the sky. The thing in the middle is similar to certain representations of the celestial North Pole, as I've shown in the blog. Moreover, the emblem would make for a bad clock, there are eight divisions, not twelve, and the point where the hands are fixed is very far off centre. (Also I think someone commented that they didn't use a second hand yet). I didn't necessarily think it was a compass, but I found David's explanation of the way a water compass will drift to the North rather convincing.

(10-07-2021, 10:56 PM)Barbrey Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Word of God is like a wind on the waters 
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Egypt

Seems to me this would support the upper righthand rosette being south. The Nile flows south to north, such that the Egyptians thought of north as down and south as up. Furthermore, the southern wind brought warm air to Egypt and the Levant, allowing life to thrive. So to the native inhabitants of Egypt it makes sense that a higher power which willed life into being, would popularly be thought of as residing "somewhere south of here", and sustaining us creations with a constant flow of life-affirming grace from the south.

I remember reading the novel Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, which involves a crew of special forces astronauts boarding and entering an apparently crewless alien starship that has coasted into our solar system. It's pretty much a McKendree cylinder, which is a massive drum that rotates fast enough to simulate gravity on the inner surface of its curved face. One of the main characters, standing on this surface and facing in the direction of rotation, looks at the upsloping land ahead of him, expecting to see hills that give way to sky. But instead, to his great astonishment, he realizes that no, the upsloping land becomes the sky. I can't help but wonder if this is how at least some Egyptians conceived of the place of the stars and their inhabitants in their cosmology — so high up, as one travels south, that the world curves up and over the place where we live, allowing the goodness of heaven to both flow down to us from a southernly direction, but also rain down on us every now and then. As above, so below indeed!

I came across this idea when I was exploring a different mystery — the purpose of the air shafts in the Great Pyramid of Khufu. As much as I wanted to believe they were part of a ram pump, making the pyramid into a public fountain or the constant source of a hauntingly deep bass reverberation, the answer I found most convincing came from an actual credentialed historian of Ancient Egypt, who was fairly familiar with the worldview of the Egyptians around Khufu's time: The shafts were for the celestial waters which flow down onto our land from the south every night. The southern shaft is an inlet to flood the tomb of the deceased pharaoh, float his soul, and pour out the north shaft carrying the soul, on the northern journey downstream and back up to the heavens. Water sloshing around in an agitated or rolled cylinder (or a torus, like a hula hoop or the vestibular system of the inner ear), is the easiest way I can picture this cosmology, though I have no idea how historically accurate this might be.

If this whole Christian Hermetic (possibly apophatic) line of thought is on the right track, it wouldn't surprise me to find that the rosette for north, which I say is the bottom lefthand one, at the very least references the Nile Delta / land of Goshen. This was where the waters, winds, and divine graces drained into the sea, and from there presumably back up to the heavens.

I'm a big fan of both Hermeticism and apophatic theology, and happy you brought it up, @Barbrey. I think both are mental exercises that can be a big help to the right people in being at peace with themselves and the world around them. Psychotherapy, particularly cognitive behavioral therapy, has an undeniable influence from the mysticism of the world of classical antiquity. It's not surprising that many psychotherapists I've known share a relationship of mutual respect with practitioners of arts that are explicitly mystical even today (for example, Zen). Both are forms of inner alchemy, aimed at enacting an inner change, which in turn motivate actions which change the external world. From people I've spoken with, and my own experience, reading apophatic theology puts one in a very similar mindset as pondering a koan. Good stuff.

Yes, that "clock" has created a lot of controversy, I know, though I didn't know the second hand was an anachronism. I've never seen a truly satisfactory explanation for it.  But I stand by my idea that these outer, disconnected symbols are part of a frame narrative (and yes frame narratives were big in literature back then, witness Chaucer for one) pre-dating the creation of the cosmos.  Supercelestial realm, God and the Big Bang, God and Nature (re Aristotle and Hermeticism) or what you will.  

But a clock image doesn't really make total sense either, because if it designates Time at all, it should be eternity, not measurable time.  Time didn't exist. And that "clock" has 8 sets of 3 lines with broader separations between.  So I asked myself if I wanted to designate eternity, or aion/s, etc with an unrecognizable symbol but a hint nevertheless, I might draw a circular dial with markers but no numbers, 24 'marks', consistent but not sequential, with something that looks like a sundial or compasses.  

But I'm open on that symbol, except, as I said, that it should, like the other outer symbols, represent something from before creation.

What a beautiful post, RenegadeHealer!  I almost felt I was there when you described those scenes.  You are a writer!  

For myself, I'm a skeptic of the first order, but in researching Hermetism last summer, I could see why it was so attractive to the intellectuals and scientists of those ages, because it celebrates learning. A main precept is that  learning as much as you can about the world around you is the same as worshipping God and wisdom is the main route to God.  Think of the sense of freedom that must have conferred on intellectually quashed science and philisophy nerds of the time. I can totally see why Isaac Newton was a hermetist.  And someone should really study his debt to hermetism for his notions of change, motion and calculus. 

Moreover, the apophatic tradition closely mirrors the hermetic tradition.  Become wise and good enough you see God in everything and nothing - the route to wisdom, salvation and everlasting life.  So yes, I believe  apophatic/hermetic notions of presence from absence might very well play a part in the VMS construction . I'm so glad you agree!  I might actually follow up on it.  I'd really like to find examples of apophatic imagery (somewhat oxymoronic, as stated) in medieval texts but not too much has been labelled as such, aside from the mandorla darkening towards its middle (another reason for the moon imagery?).  But I haven't even really started, perhaps there is a treasure trove awaiting us!

Btw, a really good article could be written about the VMS as an apophatic artifact that would not need to jeopardize any scholarly careers.  I've been out of academia for a few decades now but I might research the topic for a short article and send to my former university, or just publish on academia.  I mean, what might be one obvious reason for the VMS's cryptic text:  a way of speaking the unspeakable.  Very post-modern even if rooted in Christian discourse, and hence infinitely publishable.  But if anyone else wants the topic for publication just let me know.  I'd rather read it than write it as I'm pretty lazy.

I think you should write it - there are only so many topics one can dig really deep into.

Yes, you've got your hands full, Koen.  It would have taken me two years to write your latest blog post, and two years before that just to think it through. The thing is I don't need to publish anymore but well remember the difficulty of finding original, publishable topics during grad school, so I'll leave the question open for a bit while I read up.  I just read an article a couple of hours ago that said apophatic studies is a new hot topic across all fields in the humanities.  Who knew?  I had never heard of the word till doing more research in follow up to your blog just a week ago.

I agree with Koen — I think you're well qualified to explore this line of inquiry, Barbrey. I'd read your paper just for the historical background you're able to find about capturing the principles of apophatic theology in visual form. Although I'm familiar with it as a verbal exercise, I have no idea what precedents there were, at the time the VMs was written, for illustrating such concepts.

Thank you for the compliments about my writing — I'm a pretty verbal thinker; writing (both fiction and nonfiction) and philology are big hobbies of mine, and I'm a "lawnchair linguist", who originally wanted to be a linguistic scholar or interpreter. The text is what always captured most of my interest about the VMs, naturally. Still, I avidly follow and greatly respect the work of visual thinkers like Koen Gheuens, Yulia May, Diane O'Donovan, and Marco Ponzi, who are using historical iconography to find precedents for the VMs's illustrations. Reading these folks' blogs feels like stepping into a Dan Brown novel, except better.

I'm thoroughly convinced that the iconographic and cryptographic analyses of the VMs need each other; I don't think either one will be able to solve the mystery without evidence from the other.

I agree and appreciate everything you've said, RH, except I get fatigued thinking about writing an article.  I'm very bad with photoshop too.  If I'm at all qualified, it's in literary analysis, myth and archeology, not the usual suspects for Voynich studies.

Koen, I keep thinking about the "clock" and apophatic imagery, and perhaps your idea of Ecclesia and the actual physical church mapped onto the rosettes page.

I am sure you are aware of images of God the Geometer.  My understanding is that one such image was on the front cover of the Old French Bible for over a hundred years, 13th and 14th century.

The VMS "clock hands" are rounded on the ends.  But if they were not, you'd have a pair of compasses, and with or without  an image of God beside them I bet everyone of the age would say, aha God the Geometer.

Another thing I like about that Bible image - God's foot extends beyond the frame!  Signifying pre-creation - the planning stage.

Nice little marriage of Christianity, Hermeticism and apophatic imagery.  If the ends weren't round.

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Fixed that image for you.

I agree it's an interesting parallel, if it weren't for those little circles. And apart from the emblem, there is something about the bottom left rosette that looks shapeless, primeval. It would also make a nice complement to the supposedly "inverted T-O map", which would then signify the separated state of water, air and land.

Those circles make the thing hard to explain in most cases. The only thing it reminds me of is the way they would sometimes draw constellations as circles connected by lines. There are examples in Latin manuscripts, though I can't provide one off the top of my head.