12-10-2016, 06:11 AM
I've been down a bit of rabbit hole over the last couple of days which others may have already been down. In particular I think Marco posted about Alfonso X's Lapidario before, but from that thread I'm not sure how deeply he investigated, as the thread petered out.
I was looking once more at the Zodiac folios, in particular Taurus. The Taurus Light and Dark folios are both marked "may" in, as often remarked, a later hand. There are 15 figures in each Taurus folio, for a total of 30. However, as we well know, May has 31 days, so the figures probably don't represent days. I thus went in search of 30-way splits of Zodiac signs ....
Looking at the old Spanish illustrated manuscript:
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which is a treatise on astrology and the importance of stones/gems etc., we can see a circular Taurus diagram with 30 divisions. Each of these divisions is associated with a stone, of a noted colour, and one or a few stars in a constellation. There is a lengthy description of each division, it's stone, its stars, the various ailments the stone cures, when the stone should be used et cetera. There is a Spanish transcription of the text here, which I found very useful (combined with Google Translate):
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Since a plausible language match to the month spellings as written in the Zodiac folios is Occitan, a region of Spain., there seems to be a compelling regional match here, but I can't quite figure it out. From what I read, Alfonso X assembled a team of scholars from all world regions, who worked on documents on a variety of topics. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. says of the Lapidario: "The Lapidario is a thirteenth century Castilian translation sponsored by King Alfonso X el Sabio, the Learned. The translation was done from an Arabic text which in turn is said to have been translated by the mysterious Abolays from an ancient text in the "Chaldean language""
Anyway, my first approach was to try to match the colours of the headgear or tunics of the clothed figures in the Taurus Light folio to the colours of the first and second fifteen stones mentioned in the Lapidario. It's a little tricky, because although the stones are numbered, we don't know which is figure 1 in the Taurus Light folio, and whether the inner ring precedes the outer. Even so, the patterns of colours in the stones sequence might reveal a match. I drew a blank.
My second approach was to try to match the names of the stones with the labels on the figures, to see if there was some correlation between the label length, or its initial glyph, with the stones' names. Very tricky.
Some of the stones that appear in the Taurus set of 30 also appear in other Zodiac signs in the Lapidario. For example, the ninth stone in Taurus is "esmeri(l)", and esmeril is also the third stone of Libra, and the second stone of Aquarius.
This leads to the obvious question: is there a Figure in the both the Voynich Taurus and Libra roundels (Aquarius is missing) that shares the same label? If so, might that label be "esmeril"? And, are there other stones that appear in more than one sign which might be matched to duplicate stones in the Lapidario?
As an aside, regarding the stones and colours, I was struck by the third stone of Taurus, called "camorica", which is scarlet in colour and associated with the Pleiades.
Has anyone else looked at all this before and found anything more concrete?!
I was looking once more at the Zodiac folios, in particular Taurus. The Taurus Light and Dark folios are both marked "may" in, as often remarked, a later hand. There are 15 figures in each Taurus folio, for a total of 30. However, as we well know, May has 31 days, so the figures probably don't represent days. I thus went in search of 30-way splits of Zodiac signs ....
Looking at the old Spanish illustrated manuscript:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
which is a treatise on astrology and the importance of stones/gems etc., we can see a circular Taurus diagram with 30 divisions. Each of these divisions is associated with a stone, of a noted colour, and one or a few stars in a constellation. There is a lengthy description of each division, it's stone, its stars, the various ailments the stone cures, when the stone should be used et cetera. There is a Spanish transcription of the text here, which I found very useful (combined with Google Translate):
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Since a plausible language match to the month spellings as written in the Zodiac folios is Occitan, a region of Spain., there seems to be a compelling regional match here, but I can't quite figure it out. From what I read, Alfonso X assembled a team of scholars from all world regions, who worked on documents on a variety of topics. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. says of the Lapidario: "The Lapidario is a thirteenth century Castilian translation sponsored by King Alfonso X el Sabio, the Learned. The translation was done from an Arabic text which in turn is said to have been translated by the mysterious Abolays from an ancient text in the "Chaldean language""
Anyway, my first approach was to try to match the colours of the headgear or tunics of the clothed figures in the Taurus Light folio to the colours of the first and second fifteen stones mentioned in the Lapidario. It's a little tricky, because although the stones are numbered, we don't know which is figure 1 in the Taurus Light folio, and whether the inner ring precedes the outer. Even so, the patterns of colours in the stones sequence might reveal a match. I drew a blank.
My second approach was to try to match the names of the stones with the labels on the figures, to see if there was some correlation between the label length, or its initial glyph, with the stones' names. Very tricky.
Some of the stones that appear in the Taurus set of 30 also appear in other Zodiac signs in the Lapidario. For example, the ninth stone in Taurus is "esmeri(l)", and esmeril is also the third stone of Libra, and the second stone of Aquarius.
This leads to the obvious question: is there a Figure in the both the Voynich Taurus and Libra roundels (Aquarius is missing) that shares the same label? If so, might that label be "esmeril"? And, are there other stones that appear in more than one sign which might be matched to duplicate stones in the Lapidario?
As an aside, regarding the stones and colours, I was struck by the third stone of Taurus, called "camorica", which is scarlet in colour and associated with the Pleiades.
Has anyone else looked at all this before and found anything more concrete?!
