The Voynich Ninja

I've been posting a bit lately about how I think the plants on the foldout 89v_1_2 are special. They have been drawn in an ambiguous way, so that they can be seen both as plants and as representations of scenes or figures from Greek myth. On my blog, I argue that these images likely had a didactic function, helping traders to memorize the local names for a number of important plants and products.


Today, I started posting on the last group on this foldout, which might be the most convincing plants mnemonic wise. They represent Heracles (Hercules) and two creatures he famously fought: Cerberos and the Hydra. I've put up the first post about the leftmost plant, which I identify as teak, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Tomorrow I'll get Cerberos and the Hydra online.
As always, comments, questions and criticism are welcome

I just published the analysis of the double image in the second plant: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

For those who read my post on Hercules, this rotated image should already reveal a bit:

Third one is up: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

It took me a while, but I finally found an explanation for these guys:



It's rather image-heavy so I'll just link to my blogpost: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Next, a complete analysis of this plant, including its label. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

davidjackson - I'll reply here to your comment You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. 

This plant you think may be cucumber is the one next to "Hercules" and "Cerberus", and I describe it as the Hydra You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
The root in the middle splits in two because when you chop off a hydra's head, it grows back as two.

The reason why the two remaining heads ostentatiously cross each other, i.e. swap places, is because you have to swap the syllables of the word "Hydra" to approach the foreign plant name. That is why the label, as I read it, starts with "Ra". 

I haven't identified the plant itself yet, but your suggestions are options. My prediction, based on mnemonic and label, is that it will be an Indo-Iranian plant name that starts with /ra/ or /la/. /R/ and /L/ often get interchanged.

I just read Koen's blog post here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I would suggest that instead of spreading Hercules' deeds across all the pharma section for unknown reason (for sure, the author's intention was not to tell the story of Hercules), the Hercules story serves the mnemonical purpose of grouping plants in order to memorize the necessary ingredients of a recipe. In other words, the following chain of thought is in place: the story (Hercules) -> the members of the group (the deer, the dog, the hydra) -> the exact plants.

Several questions can be posed here:

1) How is a story associated with the particular recipe?
2) How are members of the group chosen (e.g. why these particular three feats of Hercules out of 12)?
3) How are these mnemonic markers associated with plants (perhaps via the heads/tails concept that I once proposed, with the leaves referring to the plant name, and the roots referring to the story, with the leaves-to-roots association established by the Herbal section, in which case this association can be purely formal, not meaningful for a plant taken per se)

Curiously, all three group members in the Koen's example are starting with the letter H: the hydra is Hydra, the dog is Hund, and the deer is Hirsch. In English, the same holds true, because the deer is Hind at the same time. I would doubt that this is the universal principle though, because that does not fit for the top row of the same folio. The lion would start with L, but the stables or sewage (as Koen interprets it), would not.

I would like to point the likely possibility that not all recipes allude to Hercules. For example, the top row of f89v1 would have a partial match in Samson's deeds as well. Like Hercules, Samson did slay a lion with his bare hands. The leftmost shape with seven "sub-roots" is a match for seven plaits of Samson cut off by Delilah. I'm not sure for the shape in the middle, but honestly it does not look like stables or sewage neither.

Thanks for your interest in this matter Anton. I definitely think something is there, but I also understand there is some resistance to this as the drawings are small and, well, primarily plants.

I will reply when I get home, but I want to point out already that the posts in this old thread reflect my early views. They are overruled by the recent blog post you linked.

For the language implicitly underlying the mnemonics, I would in the first place consider Latin. If the makers were schooled in Italy, then chances are they learned Latin through study of Ovid (among other authors of course, but in this period Ovid was extremely popular in schools). This means that they were familiar with the Latin text on a linguistic level, they had spent time and effort studying its words. For this reason, I think a Latin wordt might be prompted at the sight of the mnemonic. Though this is, of course, not certain until we know what exactly is going on in this section!

Whatever the case may be, I think there are a few arguments against ordering by initial letter. One being that the plants tend to be thematically similar per page. Go through the section and you will notice: some pages are all roots, some are very green, others in between, others are very thick in symbolical imagery. The ordering appears to be by type, both botanically and in the extent of symbolism.

I think you are definitely right that it's not all about Hercules. The next step I would like to take is to find out first which other mnemonics are applied, which folios are "affected", what their original order might have been, if there is some sequence... But I must admit I am easily discouraged by this kind of exercise nowadays. I am struggling with the fact that it necessarily moves into the realm of speculation and is easily (and perhaps rightfully) dismissed. I haven't figured out yet how to deal with the conflict between the obvious presence of symbolism and the uncertainty of their correct interpretation.

OK, I need to study this thread in depth and I haven't yet.
However, if memory serves me, some of the plants on these pages are duplicated in large on other folios. Have you found this to be true?