The Voynich Ninja

Edit: forget about these images, it's all about tendril face now (see next post).

Two random images I noticed:

First one on f29v, slightly rotated. Little towers? I'm not sure.
[attachment=193]

Second one on f43v, rotated 90°. First it looks like a snake, but if you consider the paint, it seems to have more of a bird's beak. Perhaps something like a swan?
[attachment=194]

Also, I noticed something funny in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . The tip of the vine is long, wavy and weird looking overall. In the below image, I just made the area to the right of the vine a bit brighter, and well, see for yourself.



Now I don't want to say that this is intentional. It's very easy to interpret a bunch of wavy lines like a face in profile! What do you guys think?

(27-03-2016, 12:15 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Also, I noticed something funny in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . The tip of the vine is long, wavy and weird looking overall. In the below image, I just made the area to the right of the vine a bit brighter, and well, see for yourself.

...

Now I don't want to say that this is intentional. It's very easy to interpret a bunch of wavy lines like a face in profile! What do you guys think?

Koen, it certainly looks like a face. Whether it is a face, hmmmmm, I would say the drawing style of the profile is not the same style as used in the other drawings in the manuscript and thus it's probably coincidental, but it's one of those things to keep in the back of one's mind as a possibility.

Koen,
That's a tendril, marking the plant as a climber - a vine or liana - though I doubt it's a liana.

Diane, thanks for the vocabulary, sometimes me no many English

I fully agree that it's a tendril, kind of like on grape plants. A vine seems like a logical conclusion. 

What I found weird about it though, is that tendrils generally don't curl that way. They will curl up in a spiral, kind of like a snail's shell, or curl more or less regularly, just like a spring. I haven't been able to find a tendril that behaves like this, sometimes large waves, then sharp narrow ones, then a rather straight part. It's not very natural.

Which again, is not to say that I think it's meant to represent a face. It could well be a coincidence.

There was a serious proposal some years ago suggesting that the scribe had manipulated words in one of the text only pages into the likeness of his face.
A medieval ASCII art self portrait is how it was described

(28-03-2016, 05:45 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There was a serious proposal some years ago suggesting that the scribe had manipulated words in one of the text only pages into the likeness of his face.
A medieval ASCII art self portrait is how it was described

Haha! Well, points for originality

This reminded me more of the vase illusion, where you can see a shape in the negative space. I wonder if there are precedents for such "illusions" in older art...


You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. actually has a similar example:




Here you can either see a map of Idaho in the white, or an unintended face in the brown area.
If you look again at my edit of the Voynich face though, you'll see that it's much "cleaner", which is the reason why I won't just dismiss this as a coincidence just yet.

It is a tendril, but plants that typically match this drawing in other ways, don't have a particularly long tendril at the terminal point, so it's entirely possible the tendril has a symbolic role, just as some of the roots have a symbolic component.

The best argument against it being intentional so far is that it wouldn't match the drawing style of the other sections at all. That's a valid point, but on the other hand I've argued before that some symbolical elements in the botanical sections deviate significantly from the standard Voynich style. My favorite examples are this surprisingly accurate You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and this You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. which puts all other Voynich hands to shame.

Possible elements in favor of an "intentional face" interpretation that have been named so far are:

- The tendril does not curl like natural tendrils.
- The tendril is much longer than other Voynich tendrils.
- There is overwhelming evidence of other symbolic plant parts in the botanical sections.
- It looks much "cleaner" than accidental face shapes (see the IDAHO example).

I would like to add to that the observation that usually these accidental faces don't show clear facial traits. If you look at the examples I took from the Wiki, the vase faces look as generic as can get. The IDAHO face looks like a leprosy victim with an overly large forehead.

Have you tried matching it to a photo of Wilfred Voynich himself?