The Voynich Ninja

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Don,
Thanks for going to so much trouble.  As always, I'm concerned about the absence of any apparent effort to set such propositions within any historical or artistic tradition.

For example I can find no justification for Edith Sherwood's assertion that any part of the image represents a 'bear claw'.  For one thing, bears (in the strict sense) have toes of even length.

I know I'm beginning to sound like the town grump, but the lack of rigor in most writing about the imagery troubles me - I cannot see how it can be productive or helpful in the longer term, or positively assist those working on the written text.

Perhaps some of these interpretations may prove true, but I should trust them far more if they were the conclusions of serious investigation in terms of art, history and the habits of some specified time and place - and proven to belong somewhere.

I guess the great thing for most people involved is that there are no penalties for being wrong, and no client's money on the line. 

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Don.
You define You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. "Lunaria annua".
I see the root of this plant as an octopus, leaf-floats (bobber). In sum, it indicates an aquatic plant.

Don,

I have a similar opinion of things in the VMs Zodiac. Mnemonic devices devices are similar to heraldic devices and even overlap in some instances. In some cases these devices in the VMs may be hidden or disguised, but that's a bit problematic.

You remember the old Groucho Marx disguises: black glasses, feathery eyebrows and mustache. The thing about devices is that you either *get it* or you don't. It's pretty much clear cut. It's not that the image on the page has changed. It's the interpretation of the image that has changed. It's the recognition that the images can be interpreted and named according to traditional methods that would have applied to the creator(s) of the VMs. In the same way that a pair of papelonny patterned insignia (a traditional heraldic fur) sits and has long sat in the VMs Zodiac illustrations.

And there is another problem, and that is one of misdirection. The VMs is not a book that is designed to explain in a clear and modern way. It was intended to record in a disguised and obfuscated manor. It is intentionally obscure. But behind the illusion there is a traditional reality and a well-known historical reality in a hidden construction.

(06-10-2016, 06:40 PM)Wladimir D Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Don.
You define You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. "Lunaria annua".
I see the root of this plant as an octopus, leaf-floats (bobber). In sum, it indicates an aquatic plant.

Wladimir, those are two animals facing each other, but clearly not lions like people say. There are 12 arms, that's too many for an octopus.

You can see an octopus in this plant:
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It has eight arms, a "head", and even little "suction pads" on the arms.

Below that octopus is a squid, and left of the octopus is a jellyfish. 


Don
Like I said before, you have a good eye for finding meaningful parts of the images, but everything in the imagery speaks against them being created by an English speaker. 

Also, speaking as a linguist now, I'm afraid that the chance is very small that all the names you propose for your plants were the primary names for those plants in one specific area during the 15th century.  Names for plants, birds, insects... can vary from one village to the next a couple of kilometers further.
So if you looked for 15th century attestations of the names you propose, and can track the areas where they were found, you could theoretically limit the place where the MS was produced to a rather specific area. But I'm not sure if that's possible.

The hypothetical convergence of this sort would potentially suggest the author's frame of reference. Where the MS was produced is a separate matter.

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Don,
I mean you no ill-will. I have a long memory for kindnesses, and have not forgotten your courtesy and appeals for basic courtesy on the second mailing list.

That I hold different opinions from you about the imagery in one, not-cosmically-important fifteenth century manuscript should not be taken as a declaration of war or feud.

I do not feel as confident as you that the plant identifications you offer when decoding the written text are solid enough to be then retrospectively applied to an interpretation of the imagery in the botanical folios.

I do not see this hesitation on my part as anything other than a certain reservation.  Just as I know you have reservations about the extent to which I rely, in forming my own assessment of the Voynich imagery, on academic matter which exists outside the parameters of Voynich studies. 

Let us not take such differences too much to heart.  There was a time, not all that long ago, when we lived in blissful un-wareness that this intriguing manuscript existed.