The Voynich Ninja

Has there ever been some discussion about the fact that the astrology pages seem to have no depiction of the wandering stars ( planets ). The planets were the most significant of the celestial objects for astrologers. Their unusual passage through the sky has always been a fascination for them, who could, through interpretation of their position, foretell events and the destinies of individual people. Such interpretation of the signs was a valued skill in that time. And rather than being a heretical subject was actually lawfully permitted when in the hands of authorised practitioners. So it does seem a bit odd that the VMS, which seems to portray itself to be a compendium of the secret sciences, should not mention them.

It does suggest that either the authors were unfamiliar with the subject ( in which case it might be equally so with the other topics, which would make the content of VMS empty and valueless ), or did not care too much to make the VMS accurate ( likely under the artificial construction hypothesis ).

How would we know that there are no depictions of planets?

(23-07-2025, 09:24 AM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Has there ever been some discussion about the fact that the astrology pages seem to have no depiction of the wandering stars ( planets ).

Page f67r2 has been nicknamed "the seven planets", but I cannot figure out why.

IIUC there were five "wandering stars" visible before the telescope: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.  Six if we count the Moon; seven with the Sun.  I don't think anyone would have counted the Earth as a planet (which, IIRC, means "wanderer" in Greek).

On page 67r2, there is a  central star with 8 arms, and what seem to be 7  labels around it.  There is a line of dots emanating from one of the rays, that may mark the start of the list. The labels are

1. s air
   
2. sorar
   
3. CTheey
   
4. okodar
   
5. oepChod
   
6. s aITHhy
   
7. osar oran
   

Five of these seem to be associated with gaps between rays of the star. The other two (2 and 3) together span three such gaps.  

However, after poring long at the Zodiac and Starred Parags pages, I became almost convinced that the Scribe did not pay any attention to the number of rays in each star.  I believe that he just kept adding rays around the core until he filled the whole turn.  Sometimes that would be 6 rays, most commonly 7 or 8, a few times 9, once 10. 

So the Author may have intended the star to have 7 arms instead of 8, but the Scribe did not even count them.  Or maybe the Author did not ask for the star at all, and that was just a bonus decoration provided by the Scribe.

Quote:which would make the content of VMS empty and valueless

Or maybe that section is not really about astrology, but about some other topic related to stars, sun, and the Moon -- a topic where planets did not deserve more space in the diagrams than a list of names.

A major topic of Culpeper's Herbal is which plants are "under the influence of" which planets.  Yet the book has no astronomical diagram showing the planets, in fact no diagrams at all.  And, IIRC, no description of the planets and their motion.  Culpeper evidently assumed that these details were common knowledge that people could get from other sources.

All the best, --jorge

oshfdk has a helpful blogpost on planets in 67r2 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., in particular comparing the positions to a similar diagram in De Sphaere Mundi.  The discussion thread about it is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

And I still think it's highly likely that 7 nymphs from the Cancer Zodiac folio are the planets too, based on the high level of statistical similarity between the 7 labels on 67r2 and the 7 labels of these nymphs. I think I computed the probability of this being a coincidence a couple of years ago, and came up with something like 0.6%.

If they are the planets as identified, they appear roughly in the order of diminishing average brightness (Sun/Moon, Jupyter, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Saturn), with the Sun (or the Moon) wearing a crown.

Here's my chart from 2023.

[attachment=11070]

Also, a label very similar to the Sun/Moon labels ytoaiin/ytoar appears on a leaf from f2r, reading something like ytoailch.

(Edit: I updated the image with comments in orange, highlighting counts of various sequences, which I think strongly suggest that 7 labels on f72r3 and f67r2 represent the same set of object, possibly planets.)

And there is an additional piece of evidence linking opalal and opcholdy.

[attachment=11069]

You can read the whole comparison You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., including my attempts to compute the probabilities, but note that there is a lot of not very relevant text there, at that time I wasn't sure whether I should focus on investigating the manuscript or just writing a blog