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I do not know what to make of it (a link on FB just caught my eye), and I'm not sure if I'm prepared to pay the claimed price of 40 euros, but for what it's worth, I re-post the link here.
At least 254 pages is something solid in existence.|
I'm not familiar with the contents of this book, nor with the background of Prof. Matarese. Her You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. claims that this presents "thirty years" of research. The annotation on Amazon claims that "
The Beinecke 408 manuscript contains many references both to the practice of seiðr and to the knowledge of our Ancestors". I hesitate to admit that I am not familiar with what
seiðr is; as for the knowledge of our Ancestors, this is perhaps a bit trivial and hence not subject for disproval.
(20-09-2022, 06:55 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I hesitate to admit that I am not familiar with what seiðr is; as for the knowledge of our Ancestors, this is perhaps a bit trivial and hence not subject for disproval.
I didn't know the term
seiðr eiðr, but it evidently refers to a form of iron-age Norse magic (see You are not allowed to view links.
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nymðe meaning "except" or "unless" -- maybe this turns up in the proposed transliteration?
Well, she has her own website, 2 papers on academia.eu and 1 Citation on google scholar.
seiðr - a type of magic which was practised in Norse society during the Late Scandinavian Iron Age.
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Hmm she wrote a little something here , it seems to mostly diss Cheshire with some additional notes on her idea that some VMS images are related to Balto-Finnish folklore
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Oops whilst writing i see pfeaster has beat me to it.
Anyways, in addition:
nymþe, nymðe, nemþe conj: unless, except :: You are not allowed to view links.
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They are pronounced like 'nymph' so maybe theres some confusion of meanings...who knows
(20-09-2022, 08:08 PM)RobGea Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hmm she wrote a little something here , it seems to mostly diss Cheshire with some additional notes on her idea that some VMS images are related to Balto-Finnish folklore
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Indeed, this is just a Cheshire rebuttal.
I say, at a minimum, one has 254 pages to be filled with at least
something, and coupled with the professor title (hinting academic background), this looks
potentially interesting. But at the balkline, I'm skeptical as always.
Thanks for the seiðr reference, looks like it's a pretty established traditional concept.
(20-09-2022, 09:31 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I say, at a minimum, one has 254 pages to be filled with at least something, and coupled with the professor title
FB: "...2) I’m the Director, CEO and Founder of the only Italian Ethnobotany Magazine; I am an Ethnobotany contract-Professor at University (and Ethnobotany is not Botany)...'e
I don't want to be a bad mouth, but I guess the large number of pages is due to the large number of pictures.
(20-09-2022, 10:50 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (20-09-2022, 09:31 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I say, at a minimum, one has 254 pages to be filled with at least something, and coupled with the professor title
FB: "...2) I’m the Director, CEO and Founder of the only Italian Ethnobotany Magazine; I am an Ethnobotany contract-Professor at University (and Ethnobotany is not Botany)...'e
I don't want to be a bad mouth, but I guess the large number of pages is due to the large number of pictures.
Ethnobotany certainly has much to offer here, I think.
I have found much useful peripheral material in ethnobotanical journals. It would be good if ethnobotanists studied the Voynich directly. It is a job for ethnobotanists. So this study could be useful.
Having said that, Ethnobotany, like a wide range of fields of study, is somewhat infected by that blight on contemporary intellectual life, the
activist scholar. In this field, activists with a neopagan agenda. Thus this book by Professor Matarrese is billed as "lost knowledge of our Ancestors":
"The Beinecke 408 manuscript contains many references both to the practice of seiðr and to the knowledge of our Ancestors, which have been erased due to the advent of Abrahamic cults and damnatio memoriae."
The Voynich space has a high population of activist scholars - most notably nationalists who are over-enthusiastic about their respective national languages, or post-colonialists intent on righting historical wrongs. Their work can be ok, but it can also be distorted by the agenda, compared to disinterested studies. Professor Matarrese's work could be good, but the blurb on Amazon suggests (to prejudge the work) it is shaped by some degree of neopagan revisionism and "lost knowledge of our Ancestors" signals a work with identitarian concerns.
The phrase "erased due to the advent of Abrahamic cults and damnatio memoriae" is sort of a simplistic neopagan caricature of the process by which Northern Europe was Christianized.
All the same, anything that might shed light on the pagan background of the Voynich MS. is valuable. (There surely is a pagan, and magical, background, imo.)
Shame fa' me, I was unaware of the concept of "ethnobotany" as well.
I agree that ethnobotanical perspective is a very interesting angle. I also agree that the annotation of the book smells certain "neopagan" bias. There may be shift towards promoting one's cultural attitudes instead of academic objectivity.
As a side note, I have no feeling of any "pagan" background in the VMS at all.
Reminds me of this woman who claimed the VM was Scandinavian mostly based on the blondness of the women. Some of the most misguided "research", in my opinion.
After all, the book deals with Germanic Paganism from page 35 to 53. So one can already make assumptions in which direction the whole goes. Well, ethnobotany. I would be interested to see how the theory makes the leap into the early 15th century.
If I understand correctly, ethnobothany is all about the relation of plants to humans, the study of how people use plants. Why could not that be applied to 15th century?