(12-03-2026, 11:15 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The VMs has survived more than a century of proposed interpretations. You may know the story of Newbold's interpretation of the VMs cosmos (f68v3) as Roger Bacon's telescopic representation of the Andromeda Galaxy. The façade is something that is seen but not properly understood.
If the solution to the VMs is like finding a needle in a haystack, then you'll be looking at a lot of hay. Hay is the façade. And given the material removed from the VMs already, the needle could be long gone.
The fact that the VMs cosmos is easily passed over by investigators who are not familiar with the comparative historical illustrations [and who, in their right mind, would be familiar with those manuscripts??], it is that lack, that absence of information, that is the façade. That is what hides the reality disguised in the artistry.
1.
Thanks for clarifying that sentence. Now I better understand why you were asking the question and it is a good one to ask. I did not actually know much about the Newbold interpretation, but reading about it, find it utterly unconvincing and for good reason it has been debunked. I did not know that even in the VM research some have espoused "micro coding" solutions, let alone "galaxy" interpretations.
Unfortunately, such efforts (like more recent decoration or hoax theories, whether textual or visual), while understandable, only take time away time and attention (of even their own espousers) from more fruitful explorations. I wish them the best while not having any interest in engaging with them.
One way to answer your question is by using your example of f68v3, which I believe (as you know better) has been found by VM researchers as having been inspired by Oresme's diagram. Another way is to comment on your façade/secret or haystack/hay metaphor.
I will comment briefly here on both but hopefully in more detail later when I am ready to share any bird's eye solution I may have.
2.
When we use the metaphor haystack/hay, we can imagine it as itself existing in different ways. One way would be to imagine the hays as parts mechanically separate from the whole, or imagine them as organic parts of the whole. This is where limitations of the metaphors or analogies we use can cause confusions when we want to use the visuals of the VM as the primary field for investigation.
In a commonly metaphor of the haystack as separate hays, to find a hay would be more challenging admittedly, since the hay is regarded as not also co-existing with and in other hays. But if the hay is considered to be organically linked, then any place in the haystack can give us hints to that particular hay, and vice versa. This is the same situation with a façade/secret duality.
In the case of the VM visuals, I think what we have is an organic whole of visuals, not Newtonian separate billiard balls of them. There is a relation of superposition between the part and the whole, each of which is also the other, and therefore can help find the other.
This is one reason I have noted that short attention spans cannot solve the puzzle, since they tend to treat each part as if it can be learned by itself. If we treat hay and haystack in terms of a particle/wave non-duality, then finding the hay can be easier, since any other hays offer hints to its locational meaning. The haystack is the hay, the façade is also the secret we are looking for.
3.
f68v3 is hinting to more than just its own chart. It is pointing to the whole of VM's visually expressed astrological imaigination. It is a building block of the whole book.
The bulge on the left in the center of the diagram is not an incidental "stupid scribe" decoration error. It is of the essence to the diagram, and in many ways to the whole manuscript's reason for existing.
Obviously the author could draw a perfect circle, judging by the wider chart circle. She did not, and this has a lot to do with the number of stars in each section. All have five. The left section has six. The bulge, however, may not be because it has one more star. It may be that it has one less than it should be, that is, seven stars of the Pleiades cluster. The missing star's story as part of the Pleiades mythology, therefore, becomes now an organic part of the haystack of the Voynich manuscript.
So, the chart is pointing to a cosmic birth chart ailment that needs to be healed in the chart of someone. So, we cannot understand this f68v3 without considering other charts of the VM, since they are telling the story of a talismantic effort being made to heal an astrological challenge faced by someone.
4.
This is where the radical critique of Oresme is being depicted in f68v3.
In his chart, the elements of water (bottom half), earth (right top quadrant), and air (left top quadrant, where birds are used for its depiction), are suggesting that even if the earth rotates, all elements are rotating with it. Although he himself did not fully endorse it, he suggested that the sphere's turning above may be a result of the earth turning itself.
Critiques said if the earth turns, air would be left behind causing winds in a way that is not seen. Oresme counterargued that air also turns. That is why he has all of them at the center of the diagram.
But the critique by the VM of Oresme is taking the notion of the air around the Earth and therefore the question of wind generation to a wider spiritual level. She is reminding him that there are also spiritual winds involved that go even behind the cosmic nebulae, to God himself.
5.
Oresme also was skeptical about astrology, suggesting that since the motions of planets cannot be exactly measured (since he thought that mathematically they followed irrational numbers) astrologers could not exactly locate (let alone predict) motions.
In f68v3, the author is challenging the view that earth or even cosmic motions can be understood apart from the broader divine participation. It is not about just quantity, but also of quality. She is radically critiquing that view as a part of her spiritual philosophy of nature, visually expressed. She is truly demonstrating her brilliance in that diagram.
So, she is depicting a whirligig/spinner wind of spiritual influence that goes beyond the nebulae circle, depicting how the motions are subjected to a greater spiritual whole that can aid in healing disharmonies in cosmic motions and even collective and individual birth charts, such as the the bulging deformity related to the "weeping sisters" Pleiades cluster in a birth chart. The sisters have faced troubles, and are in need of a healing.
She is offering, in other words, a deeply holistic, feminine, critique of Oresme, affirming that there is truth to astrological influences (in her view in the mindset of her times), including the role humans can themselves willfully in resisting the challenges faced in tendencies found in astrologically perceived realities (again, in the mindset of their times).
6.
It is feminine, because it is refusing to separate human procreative nature from spirituality and from human personal lives and willfulness, since, in her view, by way of relating spiritually to God and angelic star souls, one can participate in governing one's personal and collective lives. She is telling her sister(s), "You can be godesses of your country/world" (Aga Tentakulus).
That is why "words" are used in the charts, as if being part of the divine plan. Prayers and spiritual effort are not just reflective, but transformative, of the realities faced by humans.
So, "air" being left behind as a challenge to Oresme's scheme itself critiqued by way of a wider reminding of the readers of the spiritual winds that can help harmonize human world as well as individual birth chart challenges.
She is offering a conceptualist critique of Oresme, I think.
William Ockham (Occam) was inclined toward a conceptualist view of reality, meaning that in his view our thoughts are not just reflective, but are and can be transformative of the realities we face.
So, the author is also in this respect siding with that viewpoint, and for this reason the Voynich manuscript is not just telling a story, but is trying to heal a historical one in both contemporary as well as a longer term legacy keepsake.
The hay to be found, therefore, is the haystack, and vice versa. The façade offers the key to the secret of its parts, and vice versa.