The Voynich Ninja

I'm working on a short blog post about nymph attributes, and I realized I had never looked properly at these guys before. Image contrast etc. has been altered:


Now there are some weird things about them. For starters, I think the faces are drawn in a different style than those in the other nymphy sections. They are all clothed. They all have two items, which is highly exceptional. How I interpret the items, very tentatively:

Top left (my image): container, product (bread? vegetable?) or gold?
Top right: container, cereal crop
Bottom left: holding yellow globe in one hand, pointing to an object with writing (??) with the other.
Bottom right: yellow thing in one hand, not sure whether the top part belongs with it, in that case it looks like a vegetable. White globe in the other. One can argue that the white globe is part of the background, but the way the hand is held suggests to me that it is an item.

Interestingly, a white globe is also held by this figure mentioned recently by Davidsch:


In both cases, the globe is held up in the figure's right hand (proper).

So what are your thoughts about these nymphs? Has the "writing" been studied before? It almost looks like som kind of tablet...

Koen Gh,

you may find Nick Pelling's page about this interesting. He analyses the four figures in comparison with those in another folio (86v4) and also provides a cleaned up version of the images (where the scalloped background has been removed):

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Some people (Pelling, and Anton You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) suggest that the two folios, which are both on the back of the 9 Rosette map page, could be connected, with one being sun-centric and the other moon-centric. But opinions differ on this question, as you can see in the thread discussion I just linked to.

Regarding the bottom left figure: Is he pointing? I agree that his finger looks extended but it seems to me that there are several dots coming out of his hand which might indicate that he could be sowing seeds or throwing salt or something.

Thanks VV. It's interesting to see that Nick also thinks there may be a link between not only the Moon and the Sun quartet, but also the ones on f57v. His conclusion seems to be, however, that nothing much is known so far. And this does make sense:

Quote:If you strip away the decorative ‘papellony’-style fish-scale detailing from f86v4, you end up with two circular diagrams side by side, one with a sun at the centre, the other with a moon at the centre. I honestly find it hard to believe that something so distinctive arrived here ex nihilo: this pair must surely have come from a prior document somewhere.

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Also, you may actually be right about the sowing, it's hard to see. Someone quoted by Nick actually interpreted the whole thing as a square object held by the nymph - which seems the least likely to me.

Previously I thought of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. figures as of male ones. Privately, I tried to link them to apostles, but with no consistent result. Now, with the magnified images produced by Koen, I am inclined to think that at least one of the figures is female (1st image, top right)!

Here's a problem with the proposed identifications of this sort. Various things come in fours. Apostles, seasons, what have you. It's an interesting conjecture, but what else is there? What else does the text contain that supports any particular supposition? And without such support, the identifications are always somewhat superficial.

The reason for the problems of identification is that the drawings can be evocative, but they lack the necessary detail to provide a precise and exacting conclusion. VMs illustrations have various interpretations, in part, because they are ambiguous. What is the source of this ambiguity? It might be poor artistic skills, perhaps cultural differences, but consider this.

If the VMs version of the 'Oresme Cosmos' had been illustrated with the type of elaborated nebuly line, like the one found in the VMs Central Rosette, instead of the plain line that was used instead, the two illustrations would be even more similar.

If the heraldic identifications of VMs White Aries had been plainly left on the page as is, instead of being tucked into a circular illustration, the historical representation might be a bit clearer.

Proposed identification needs further support. That is provided by multiple, objective, positional confirmations. This example also provides a demonstration that the use of ambiguity is intentional, as well as the use of visible factors defined by traditional placement to confirm proposed identifications. Visual similarity, when combined with positional confirmation, can then produce a much stronger ideological identification.

Incidentally, 'papelonny' is a traditional term, a pattern designation, applied exclusively to a traditional, heraldic fur. It derives from the French word for 'butterfly.' Overlapping scale patterns outside of heraldry are just that, scale patterns and nothing more.

As far as starting an investigation of the attributes of the 'nymphs', start with the VMs Zodiac.

(14-10-2016, 06:37 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm working on a short blog post about nymph attributes, and I realized I had never looked properly at these guys before. Image contrast etc. has been altered:


Now there are some weird things about them. For starters, I think the faces are drawn in a different style than those in the other nymphy sections. They are all clothed. They all have two items, which is highly exceptional. How I interpret the items, very tentatively:

Top left (my image): container, product (bread? vegetable?) or gold?
Top right: container, cereal crop
Bottom left: holding yellow globe in one hand, pointing to an object with writing (??) with the other.
Bottom right: yellow thing in one hand, not sure whether the top part belongs with it, in that case it looks like a vegetable. White globe in the other. One can argue that the white globe is part of the background, but the way the hand is held suggests to me that it is an item.

Interestingly, a white globe is also held by this figure mentioned recently by Davidsch:


In both cases, the globe is held up in the figure's right hand (proper).

So what are your thoughts about these nymphs? Has the "writing" been studied before? It almost looks like som kind of tablet...

Maybe is helpful for you ,
the translation of text from image is in the picture bellow 


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sidanno, when you reply to other posts, could you please delete the parts that are not relevant rather than repeating the entire previous post or, at the very least, reduce the size of the images (or both).

(14-10-2016, 06:37 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm working on a short blog post about nymph attributes, and I realized I had never looked properly at these guys before. Image contrast etc. has been altered:


[deleted for brevity]...

Top left (my image): container, product (bread? vegetable?) or gold?
Top right: container, cereal crop
Bottom left: holding yellow globe in one hand, pointing to an object with writing (??) with the other.
Bottom right: yellow thing in one hand, not sure whether the top part belongs with it, in that case it looks like a vegetable. White globe in the other. One can argue that the white globe is part of the background, but the way the hand is held suggests to me that it is an item.

Koen, the bottom right object looks like a plant to me too, especially when I first saw it, but it also occurred to me, if these four images perhaps represent four different religious or ethnic denominations, then the bottom right object that looks like a plant might be a branched candle holder (similar to a menorah) and the round part might be the base rather than a root-ball, depending on the angle. It's a long shot, but if the illustrator were trying to not make things too obvious, it might be drawn this way and yet still be understood by the originator.

I don't think it's necessarily the best idea, but it's a possible alternative.

JKP: not impossible, since at least two of the other figures are holding a man-made object in one hand. Though then again, food also seems to be a theme. 

I wonder if we are supposed to be seeing the same figure in an implied sequence. For example I just noticed that if you line them up in order, they perform a full turn:



I just started at the "sowing" one and went counter clockwise. You can read the image from right to left to go clockwise, and basically start anywhere. It is not very clear which perspective is meant, but this is how I see it: facing left, facing back, facing right, facing front.

(02-11-2016, 09:11 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.JKP: not impossible, since at least two of the other figures are holding a man-made object in one hand. Though then again, food also seems to be a theme. 

I wonder if we are supposed to be seeing the same figure in an implied sequence. For example I just noticed that if you line them up in order, they perform a full turn:



I just started at the "sowing" one and went counter clockwise. You can read the image from right to left to go clockwise, and basically start anywhere. It is not very clear which perspective is meant, but this is how I see it: facing left, facing back, facing right, facing front.

I agree that food does seem to be a theme and it's not surprising. Food is a big part of religion, and abstinence from food a big part of religion as well. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim customs all revolve around food, especially bread, wine, and others. So do many ethnic traditions that are not explicitly religious. Regardless of a person's cultural heritage, it will be full of references to certain traditions and iconography based on food as appears to be the case here.