The Voynich Ninja

(26-10-2017, 04:09 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And if you keep misrepresenting my arguments we won't get far either. I mean of the intended audience. What modern viewers recognise or not is irrelevant in understanding the intention of the image.

You confirm I am not misinterpreting: we just see things differently. You believe you know what the intended audience would have recognised; I don't. The best I can do is try to document myself and, on the basis of the evidence I read and observe, tentatively approximate the approach of late-medieval people. I am always bound to go wrong.

I believe that what we modern viewers can recognise is totally relevant: it is the only basis for our understanding of the intention of an image. The rest (what we cannot recognise) is by definition out of reach and the realm of pure fantasy.

We disagree, no big deal.

Here are a few examples of sitting figures with outstretched arms.

The one from Florence (baptistry of San Giovanni) is a Pantocrator Christ. This pose is not infrequent. Christ is not sitting on a throne, but on a rainbow.
TheYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is the story of a horse who becomes king. In this scene, he is enthroned.
The Lombard relief represents You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Like the Pantocrator, this is a common subject.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is an allegorical poem. The second personification sitting on a rainbow seems to echo the Pantocrator composition.

(08-05-2016, 01:29 PM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'll just throw this in as an additional possibility about this image:
I find this illustration has parallels in the study on the Livre d'Ethiques I linked to in my post about poses, which you can read You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .
Specifically I see a parallel between the structure of this image and that of the iconography depicted in figures 12A & 14:
At the center there is Virtue with her arms extended to both sides. On either side are the Vices: Excess and Default. Closer to her are the personifications of Good Will and Knowledge.
In the Voynich there are five labels also. It could be interpreted as Virtue in the Center, Default on the left, Excess on the right (note that the left nymph stands in a rather simple tub compared to the right nymph, which stands in a more ornate one).
Immediately to the left and right of the central figure there are two labelled tube ends: these could be Good Will and Knowledge.

I think Vviews is right in considering the symmetric structure of the composition relevant.

• The fact that Christ Pantocrator has a pose similar to that of the central nymph has been mentioned above. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. contains the Commentary on the Apocalypse by  Beatus of Liébana. There are several illustrations that can be compared with the central nymph and in a few cases the figure of Christ at the centre is accompanied by two symmetrical figures (angels, in this example, together with two symmetrical groups of three haloed saints? each).
  
• Liber ad honorem Augusti is a work by Petrus of Eboli (the author of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). This illustration represents emperor Fredrick I and his sons Henry and Philip. This parallel is particularly close to the VMS illustration because it only includes three people.
  
• The Lorenzetti fresco in Siena is a moral allegory (as the examples discussed by Vviews). In this case, the symmetrical groups are more complex, each including an angel and two men.
  
• The black and white illustration is one of the images mentioned by VViews (12a).
  
  

These parallels could help us understand more of the meaning of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. illustration. The sitting figure at the centre seems to always be more “important” than the two figures (or groups) at the sides. His/her open arms seem to project some kind of “power” or “protection” on the figures at the sides.
The “pipes”, “tubs” and “fluids” remain substantially unparalleled by these examples. The Beatus illustration at least includes prominent non-human features: the circular frame around Christ, the two large discs (Sun and Moon) at the bottom. The Voynich "pipes" are quite different and clearly deserve a deeper investigation. Moreover, it seems that in the VMS the labels apply to the pipes rather than to the nymphs. This is of course a major difference from the other examples: in the other cases, labels apply to the human figures.

This Voynich imagery has always struck me as looking like a uterus (with fluid), ovaries (on the sides) and mammary glands (as in the Romulus and Remus she-wolf).

One thing I didn't know until more recently, is that they believed, in the 15th century, that the mammaries were connected to the ovaries (or uterus) by a "tube" or something tubular, to dispense the milk—a direct connection, so to speak (as opposed to the milk glands being in the breasts and anatomically separate from the uterus).

This drawing, if it is meant to be biological on some level and a depiction of female anatomy, would be consistent with that 15th-century belief.

Cassiopeia occupies one of the most prominent locations in the Milky Way belt. And Galaxy mythology links it to a stream of animal milk. Just to say, the teats and streams of white liquid are very appropriate to Cassiopeia. 

This doesn't exclude an anatomical reference though, since I hold that these images are explicitly layered by design. My real objection is, as I wrote in my latest blog post, that the specific organs as they are evoked here, do not correspond at all to the way medievals thought about these organs. We recognize them because exposure to modern medical diagrams has engrained specific shapes in our mind of the carefully isolated, idealized organ. 

I have not been able to find an early 15th century depiction of the ovaries or uterus yet in which the horizontal properties are emphasized like this. Or anything close to our modern image of these organs, which the VM structure resembles. If such an early 15thC  (or earlier) image were found, it would provide some basis for the organic theory.

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We have this drawing (not a painting) about anatomy of a woman made in 1508 by Leonardo da Vinci.

Paris: for all we know, the VM image is a hundred years older than the Da Vinci drawing. It was only after the VM was made that the changes in European culture reached the momentum required for Da Vinci to draw such an image.

(07-11-2017, 08:04 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Cassiopeia occupies one of the most prominent locations in the Milky Way belt. And Galaxy mythology links it to a stream of animal milk. Just to say, the teats and streams of white liquid are very appropriate to Cassiopeia. 

This doesn't exclude an anatomical reference though, since I hold that these images are explicitly layered by design. My real objection is, as I wrote in my latest blog post, that the specific organs as they are evoked here, do not correspond at all to the way medievals thought about these organs. We recognize them because exposure to modern medical diagrams has engrained specific shapes in our mind of the carefully isolated, idealized organ. 

I have not been able to find an early 15th century depiction of the ovaries or uterus yet in which the horizontal properties are emphasized like this. Or anything close to our modern image of these organs, which the VM structure resembles. If such an early 15thC  (or earlier) image were found, it would provide some basis for the organic theory.

I agree, I very much suspect the images are layered by design and I think the central figure quite possibly could represent Cassiopeia.


But the ancients were not ignorant of anatomy, only human anatomy. Dissecting humans was taboo (just as shooting a Christian with a crossbow was taboo, or studying geomancy was taboo), but there were no prohibitions on dissecting dogs, and every butcher in every marketplace knew all the basic organs because they "dissected" animals every day.

People in the Middle Ages did have whacky ideas about how organs were connected, about how fluids were composed, about how they flowed (they were wrong about blood flow and, as mentioned, some believed that milk flowed from the uterus to the breasts). They were wrong about "humors", and confused about what happened during pregnancy, but they did know the basic parts. Many people bought their meat live in the markets, walked them home, and butchered them themselves. Some of the medical schools dissected animals as part of the course-work.

Dissecting humans was taboo ...

 That is utterly wrong

(08-11-2017, 09:28 AM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Leonardo didn't come out of nowhere, there was a long history of anatomists and I think the Voynich author was part of it, another, better documented case  are the   herbals and someone like Mattioli

Dissecting humans was taboo ...

 That is utterly wrong

I was surprised to see you say that because I have so often read that it was. So I looked around and discovered that it depended where you were. Apparently Italy was one of the first regions to open up to dissections (some of the medical schools simply defied existing edicts) and the Paris medical school engendered a more liberal attitude. The rest of Europe, from what I can tell, followed more slowly. Some excerpts...


"Dissecting humans was forbidden in the Roman Empire, so people such as Galen used the bodies of apes. In both the Islamic and medieval Christian worlds, dissection was culturally taboo."

Aristotle did dissections, but apparently not of humans.

Galen wrote books on anatomy, but apparently used animals (Barbary apes) rather than humans for his dissections.

The Council of Tours (1163) spoke against human dissection in the sense of prohibiting the boiling of bones (which was actually a good thing since it reduced rot and disease, but people objected to this form of "desecration"), but the edict was interpreted more broadly than the original intention. However, it was possible for scholars to apply for an exception.

"Human dissection does not seem to have been practised regularly in the pagan, Jewish, Christian or Muslim cultures before the end of the 13th century..." (Katherine Park)

The Salerno medical school in southern Italy apparently defied the church edict and, in the early 13th century, performed human dissections.

Anglicus (13th c) discussed human anatomy, but I don't know if he based this on humans or animals.

The first anatomy text based on human dissection was written at the end of the 13th century by an Italian, the first manual on dissection was published in 1315.

There was apparently dissection of humans in northern Italy (I didn't know this, I had read otherwise). Leonardo's drawings of anatomy were not made public until after his death.

Northern Europe was more resistant.

In 1564, Andreas Vesalius (who published a milestone book of anatomy in 1543 and had studied in France where there was a more liberal attitude toward dissections) received a death sentence from the inquisition for doing a human dissection (detractors claimed the heart was still beating) but it is said the king intervened and supposedly sent him off on a pilgrammage to Jerusalem (others say he voluntarily left).

In 1565, physicians were given permission to dissect human cadavers at the London Royal College of Physicians.