30-06-2021, 06:05 PM
30-06-2021, 06:05 PM
30-06-2021, 06:49 PM
Floating compasses were around in the 12th century. I'll see if I can find the references. People knew how to stroke needles on lodestones and then float them to find magnetic north (or the Pole Star, they assumed it was pointing at that).
30-06-2021, 07:09 PM
30-06-2021, 07:21 PM
Oh yes. Loads more inaccurate, that's why later on purpose built compasses were all fixed in the centre. But you can try it yourself with a home-made floating compass.
30-06-2021, 09:36 PM
The T/O map could be split into "Asia" for the large half of the circle. Then the quarter facing towards the centre of the page would be "Europe" and the other quarter would be "Africa". That is the standard layout arrangement of regions on a T/O map. It would fit with the idea that most of the page is associated with Europe.
01-07-2021, 12:38 PM
I feel I need to write a blogpost. I will hardly explain all my idea about the Rosettes and its orientation in two words.
01-07-2021, 02:33 PM
(29-06-2021, 10:37 PM)Barbrey Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And it is interesting that Searcher mentions the Hermeticum because that's where I derived this idea (and Searcher, we can't discount extant copies of the Poimandres before Ficino's translations; there were hundreds of different tracts around of different Hermetica, and even some suggestive passages that Roger Bacon had a copy - which is how I ended up reading Bacon!)They write that the Asclepius was known in Europe before the Corpus Hermeticum, I'm not sure about the Poimandres, but maybe the East was familiar with its fragments. Anyway, we can begin with Greek philosophers, including Plato, Proclus, Plotinus, etc.
But the Hermeticum is based on Aristotle, other Greeks, gnosticism, Egyptian and Judaism, maybe even early Christianity, in its creation account, so all these ideas can be found elsewhere.
I'd consider interesting the text of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. survived in fragments from works of later Greek philosophers, although it is rather about fire then water.
2.
Theurgists assert that he is a God, and celebrate him as both older and younger, as a circulating and eternal God, as understanding the whole number of all things moved in the world, and moreover infinite through his power and of a spiral form. (Proc. in Tim. 244.—Tay.)
3.
The mundane god, eternal, boundless,
Young and old, of a spiral form.
It is possible to find more when one wishes and has time.
In general, I have an impression that the author of the VMs wanted to reflect motion in his illustrations, including the nymphs with their poses and directions (zodiac section, Quire 13) and, of course, the cosmological section and the Rosettes. I think he / she got this well, and, on some degree, it is also unique.
Quote:You might wonder why a setting sun instead of a moon was used to symbolize darkness and the answer is the moon didn't exist.Alternative history or something else?
01-07-2021, 07:59 PM
In my interpretation, the rosettes are a mnemonic portolan chart, which goes along with quire 13 which is a sort of mnemonic periplus.
I think it is correct to look at the rosettes on the diagonal to get full details, (in addition to looking at it in various other directions, like the direction of the text, etc) but the TO map being tilted when looking on the diagonal is also a clue that it is not north, but NW at the top when you do that.
That 45 degree angle keeps recurring in quire 13 also, and or 135 degrees, with regard to orientation of some bodies of water, etc. If you are looking at the rosettes on the diagonal with TO map at the top (which i do believe is a proper TO map with Europe Africa and Asia in their standard places, because the riverlike connotations leading to it make sense to me also), the analogous way to look at a standard map of today, or portolan chart of the time, is with the boot of the Italian peninsula arranged as north south. In that way you get some more detail on what is more north or south, east or west of each other in terms of the areas discussed in the rosettes and causeways.
And yet if you turn it to go with a north up map, you lose some of this perspective, because the north south aspects of some things are lost, ie the middle rosette on the north side is not the northernmost place, but it is oriented to north when held in that direction.
Thus the corners, as currently bound, would be:
SW NW
SE NE
Diane had said the clock looking thingy was a south marker, and as much as that fits for me, i can find no evidence of it, so i believe Koen is right about the north marker, but not that it points north per se. Rather, i think it describes the origin and direction of flow (north) (as opposed to northwest) of the Nile, thus it can be seen as a north marker but from the south, from the origin. Africa does continue to the southeast of the Nile Delta, but there is more to the south, in the direction of the Nile. The iconography of the mountains of the moon (often shown on old maps as the origin of the Nile), an inverted v shape with circles (lakes) attached could give context to what is north also, and so the shape does double duty. With TO map at top it is simply upside down, the most southern thing on the map, which makes sense to be outside of the Nile delta rosette since it is so much further south and there is so much more area between than shown in any other single rosette. Thus to me it stands for all the rest of (known or previously charted) Africa besides the Mediterranean shoreline that is shown on Portolan charts. I even think it is possible that the wording around it states that Asia and Europe are to the north, and to the south of this origin spot is unknown.
I think it is correct to look at the rosettes on the diagonal to get full details, (in addition to looking at it in various other directions, like the direction of the text, etc) but the TO map being tilted when looking on the diagonal is also a clue that it is not north, but NW at the top when you do that.
That 45 degree angle keeps recurring in quire 13 also, and or 135 degrees, with regard to orientation of some bodies of water, etc. If you are looking at the rosettes on the diagonal with TO map at the top (which i do believe is a proper TO map with Europe Africa and Asia in their standard places, because the riverlike connotations leading to it make sense to me also), the analogous way to look at a standard map of today, or portolan chart of the time, is with the boot of the Italian peninsula arranged as north south. In that way you get some more detail on what is more north or south, east or west of each other in terms of the areas discussed in the rosettes and causeways.
And yet if you turn it to go with a north up map, you lose some of this perspective, because the north south aspects of some things are lost, ie the middle rosette on the north side is not the northernmost place, but it is oriented to north when held in that direction.
Thus the corners, as currently bound, would be:
SW NW
SE NE
Diane had said the clock looking thingy was a south marker, and as much as that fits for me, i can find no evidence of it, so i believe Koen is right about the north marker, but not that it points north per se. Rather, i think it describes the origin and direction of flow (north) (as opposed to northwest) of the Nile, thus it can be seen as a north marker but from the south, from the origin. Africa does continue to the southeast of the Nile Delta, but there is more to the south, in the direction of the Nile. The iconography of the mountains of the moon (often shown on old maps as the origin of the Nile), an inverted v shape with circles (lakes) attached could give context to what is north also, and so the shape does double duty. With TO map at top it is simply upside down, the most southern thing on the map, which makes sense to be outside of the Nile delta rosette since it is so much further south and there is so much more area between than shown in any other single rosette. Thus to me it stands for all the rest of (known or previously charted) Africa besides the Mediterranean shoreline that is shown on Portolan charts. I even think it is possible that the wording around it states that Asia and Europe are to the north, and to the south of this origin spot is unknown.
01-07-2021, 09:46 PM
Regarding the T-O map, they used to mess it all up, so it cannot be said for sure which sector is what continent. We discussed that elsewhere in the forum.
But one would expect it to be consisitent throughout the MS, I believe.
But one would expect it to be consisitent throughout the MS, I believe.
01-07-2021, 10:15 PM
(01-07-2021, 09:46 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Regarding the T-O map, they used to mess it all up, so it cannot be said for sure which sector is what continent. We discussed that elsewhere in the forum.
But one would expect it to be consisitent throughout the MS, I believe.
You are right that occasionally "Europe" and "Africa" are swapped. However in the vast majority of cases that I have seen the half circle is "Asia" and from the point of view of the half circle, "Europe" is above and to the right and "Africa" is above and to the left.
In fact if anybody were to ask me which word in the Voynich I could best guess the meaning of, I would say, EVA-asal is "asia" as we read in the T/O map on the Rosettes folio. Note here EVA-al is joined, so I don't think the first EVA-a of the word is the same character as the second EVA-a. This is almost worryingly simple. Is this to say that in this specific context EVA-a is "a", EVA-s is "s" and EVA-al is "ia"? I don't know, but it is possible. Of course that is not to say that this simple mapping applies universally throught the manuscript, though it is possible.