The Voynich Ninja

More pics of the Armadillo girdled lizard:

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And a paper on German studies of reptiles in South Africa:

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(06-04-2016, 10:35 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can't say what the VMS illustrator means by the nebuly but every medieval manuscript I've seen with nebuly has meant heaven or heavenly or "of heaven" or some spiritual presence.

A picture of a lion could be a bestiary animal, a zodiac animal, a heraldic animal or an animal from a chronicle, but as soon as the illustrator added nebuly or wings, it represented St. Mark, the evangelist or something "heavenly" or godly, depending on the subject at hand.



I agree with you that nebuly weren't added as random design elements. In those days, they had meaning, the same way a halo or royal orb in a picture had meaning.

Hi JKP, I agree with what you write. VViews' illustration from Aristotle is an example of the fact that "heavenly" can also mean literally "of the sky" and the nebuly line can represent an actual "physical" cloud. Of course, since dead pangolins etc. are not usually found above clouds, the image is most likely to be interpreted as allegorical.

BTW, the British Library site describes the Aristotle image as f. 140v: initial 'P'(ost) of a scholar pointing at the sky with falling rain and a head spewing fire from clouds. 
Aristotle's treaty is about meteorology and the animal is possibly meant to represent lightning.
Another possibility is that the BL is wrong about fire-spitting and the animal represents the wind. In another treaty (On the Universe) Aristotle wrote: Wind is also called breath, a word used in another sense of the vital and generative substance which is found in plants and living creatures, and permeates all things.

(07-04-2016, 08:07 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(06-04-2016, 07:49 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Come on guys, let's be real for a second. It's not a sheep and much less a ram. There are just too many arguments against that interpretation.

Come on Koen Gh., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is explained by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Could you consider applying the same standards to your ideas as to those of other people?

Koen Gh. Wrote: All kinds of things appeared with nebuly lines, and wavy lines appear also in other settings.

I see two possibilities:

1. You know of numerous other examples of animals with nebuly lines. Then you should share them for discussion.

2. You don't know of numerous other examples of animals with nebuly lines. Than the above hand-waving statement is unfounded, misleading and most likely wrong.

Marco, the standards I apply to my own work are much stricter than the ones I'm using here. I am consistent in the source of the imagery I select (preferably Hellenistic art, but when that is unavailable earlier examples, later Roman copies or other relevant sources) and provide an explanation as to how this could relate to the rest of the section: the mythological image is a pronunciation hint to Greeks for the foreign plant name. When an element doesn't match, I mention it, and keep looking to find a better explanation. For example, in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I explain that the stance of Nike's wings can be better explained by a common image of her on Hellenistic coins, which seems to have influenced the way the plant was manipulated. In the same post I also explain why I think specifically Hellenistic imagery was used as a source of inspiration. Your hand-waving statement is unfounded, but if you have remarks about specific aspects of my work, I'll be very happy to address them.

I'm trying to uncover a symbolic layer in the plants in this specific foldout, and my methodology is consistent. What the sheep proponents are doing here is bring on images from different times and traditions to say that this scaled, green, hornless creature is a ram. Even the image you produced in the beginning shows how obviously this creature is not the same. The beast in your picture differs from the Voynich animal in all crucial aspects: it has a hairy pelt, curled horns, a straight back, longer legs, a different tail...

Edit: about other things appearing with nebuly lines, just going back to the previous page in this thread I see lions, a bird and a fire-breathing creature.

So about these nebuly lines...

I've been looking for them and was pretty convinced that they denoted the celestial/divine/supernatural.

That was until I found this 13th C illustration, where the "nebuly line" (I mean that is the same shape, right?) is merely used to show the contour of a bedsheet.... and once again, medieval art threw all my certainties out the window!

Oxford Mellon College Ms 249, f2r:




From what I can understand, the lion is supposed to represent disease/fever/pain oppressing the person in bed. Here's a link to the page if you want to have a go at reading the latin/anglo-norman text: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I'm not sure I would call those nebuly lines.

They are usually somewhat symmetric and more rounded and connected than the ruffles in the bedsheet.

I agree JKP, the ones we see on the Voynich page are much better defined. That's why I put "nebuly line" in quotes. I'm not sure how else to describe this type of line.

I just wanted to add this as an example, among the many other things proposed in the thread. I wanted to emphasize that medieval art can be very surprising in its way of depicting things, that there are many possibilities, and none of us can know for sure what the artist meant to represent. In the voynich image, there is a nebuly line, but there is also a squarish shape within it. For all I know this could also be the frilly edges of a cushion.

I don't really have an opinion so far: could be a reptile, hedgehog, sheep/ram, armored dog, catoblepas or other supernatural creature... To me everything is of equal validity at this point.
IMO, until somebody cracks this code, we're better off keeping an open mind about things, and gathering as many visually similar-looking motifs as we can, to avoid locking our minds up in a conceptual box.

Agreed, VV. What I like about your example is that it shows one has to be careful with interpreting patterns. The biggest difference between the bed lines and the other wavy lines is that those in the bed are interrupted. 

Irregularity and lack of symmetry is another thing, like you guys say. The sheet lining is the most irregular of all, but I would say the Voynich line is also less regular and symmetric than the "standard" nebuly line.

The comparison of the VMs illustration with the Tubingen ram is not a really bad example. Nor is is a really good example. There are certain points of comparison that are similar. And the example provided stands until a better comparison can be discovered.

This is a two part comparison. The identification of the animal in the VMs illustration is clearly the more difficult aspect and therefore the weaker part of the comparison. The nebuly lines are simpler, but there are ways to go wrong here as well, with wavy lines and ruffled fabric. I believe Don of Tallahassee had an example where the hem of a dress was represented with nebuly lines. A reasonable use for the physical pattern, but a potential loss of the associated connotations, which directly evolve from the word cloudy, whether atmospheric, celestial or cosmic. And the lines along with their connotations constitute the better part of the artistic technique know as the wolkenband. There are a multitude of examples in the Apocalypse Tapestry.

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Just one of many images Don brought to that discussion - a broader look at nebuly lines.

But back to the matter in question, where there is a significant aspect of comparison that is not in the current conversation. And that is the use of paint. And although it is faint in the VMs illustration, it is still clear that blue paint has been applied to the pattern of the nebuly lines. And it has been done so that the parts of the nebuly line where the bulbs extend downward get the paint. And comparing with the Tubingen ram, here as well the downward bulbs are blue. How will it be if we add this as a requirement in our search criteria? Pretty ding-dang difficult, I suspect.

What I am looking at is not so much the VMs artist's ability to precisely replicate an image, but the ability to evoke the recognition of an image, like the Oresme cosmos. The precise image and the less than precise image can both serve to illustrate a certain concept, identification or idea. And this concept, once it has been communicated and accepted by the reader, functions in a very similar manner, regardless of the precision of the initial image. I now tend to place less emphasis of the subjective qualities of the illustration and more on the objective placement of the elements within the illustration: the lines placed below the animal, the placement and the color of the paint. Those are objective facts.

So let's turn the two part analysis into a three part analysis. In the comparison of visual similarities between VMs and the Tubingen ram. The animal comparison is poor. The nebuly line comparison is at least adequate. And the color and placement of the paint is good. One might even say surprisingly good. So that's two and an little fraction out of three, which is pretty good on the VMs scale.

As an alternative to focusing on the difficulties of matching the animal and ignoring the nebuly lines and the paint, what if we focus on the lines and the paint, where the correspondence is good, and pay less attention to the comparison between the animals? The challenge then, still, is to find a better animal with equally good lines and paint. However, in the reality of the situation, there may not be an adequate, satisfactory example extant.

The thing to do with multiple interpretations is to examine all possibilities and determine which options are conducive to further relevant investigations and which options are dead ends. Let the results determine the potential validity of the interpretations.
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R. Sale, I was about to focus on the line. I came across a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on a blog aptly called "some Voynich ideas", where the author shows quite a number of these wavy lines from all around the Voynich Manuscript. In his examples, I noticed something peculiar. The lines like the one interpreted here as a "nebuly line", usually have a slight slant to them; the 'bulbs' lean a bit to one side. Why is this? Was the author unable to draw decent wavy lines? 

Well, the opposite is true. Have a look at the leaves on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. plant. Look at those lines. A clean, perfect, straight, symmetrical wavy line if I've ever seen one. So he was able to draw this kind of line well in plants, where one would expect more organic irregularity. Given this information, I would assume that the slant in the other lines is intentional. But why?

That reminded me of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by Diane, in which she discusses Athena's aegis (protective cloak) in relation to this pattern. So I won't be saying anything new here, just showing it in a different way. It is clear that these lines in the VM are not Athena's cloak. They lack the snakes and they lack Athena. But it does seem clear to me that this pattern was recognized by those familiar with classical art, and that it may have been evoked in the VM. The symbolism would then be that of a (divine) protective barrier or something similar. I've gathered some examples from different Greek Athena representations below:



Below, I compare the wavy lines from four images, rotated and scaled where necessary to allow for easier comparison. 
1) example of aegis
2) line from f80v
3) plant edge from f50r
4) nebuly line from image posted by Marco



Finally, a side remark, which I'm sure has been noticed before. Another common pattern from Athena's aegis should ring a bell as well:

Just my personal opinion...

the indentations in the cloak don't look like nebuly lines. I believe the pattern is meant to mimic or evoke the shapes of snakes and snakeheads (a very popular visual motif at the time in both Egyptian and Greco-Roman art), as they do in other parts of the garment and the garment accessories.


I've looked at countless images with nebuly and what distinguishes most nebuly lines is that the inner part and outer part are usually curved (or curved with a scalloped margin) and mostly symmetric in terms of the ins and outs. The snake-shaped cloak edges don't follow that basic "formula", nor do the bedsheet folds. The other examples do.