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| [split] Roots and Eagle heraldry |
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Posted by: Koen G - 19-07-2022, 11:28 AM - Forum: Imagery
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As a heraldic image, the VM eagle (if it is an eagle) would have its wings "splayed", like Sigismund's, so that is something they have in common. However, the division of the VM's feathers is decidedly un-heraldic. In heraldry, the large feathers are in the mid section (blue), hanging under the wings. The feathers in the red section are either absent or small. In the VM though, the top feathers are larger than the ones in the mid section, and they extend well above where the creature's head would be.
In heraldry, the tail generally goes down first, and then outward. For example, in the case of Sigismund's seal, you can see that there is first a vertical column, and then almost horizontal feathers. In the VM, we see something completely different, and you will be hard-pressed to find a heraldic eagle that looks like this.
I'm not saying that these differences must be explained, maybe this is just the best way to draw a heraldic eagle in a root. But I don't find the resemblance as straightforward as some people claim.
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| Text and context |
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Posted by: Hermes777 - 16-07-2022, 01:17 AM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (45)
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I entirely appeciate the virtues of tackling Voynichese context-free - such studies are of course necessary and valuable - but I don’t understand why people can be allergic to bringing context to the conundrum.
My methodological model calls for an alignment of text, context and subtext, and I happily alternate between taking a microscope and then a telescope to the problem. The difficulty is a bit like that posed by particle physics: the laws that govern the micro level don’t knit with the laws that govern the macro. The quest is for a general theory.
Contextually, I am led to the conclusion that the language in question must be/should be/ought to be, Ladin. Others have come to the same conclusion. I am strongly of the view that the contextual evidence points to that.
But textually, the text doesn’t map to Ladin (or any other known language.) On the face of it, it least of all resembles a Romance language. There are decypherment theories abroad about “Old Latin” to which Ladin might conform, but it’s a stretch. Nothing like that fits cogently without a lot of massaging.
Nevertheless, I think what we see is an attempt to create a writing system for Ladin. I suspect our problems might lie more with the script rather than with the language.
Moreover, from context, I expect the content to be a sort of survey, with a lot of measurements and numbers generated by systematic studies, which may explain why the text seems like a sort of artificial lexicon with excessive repetition and combinatorics. Such things are less a feature of the language and more the result of the content.
I then test contextual hypotheses against the context-free reality of the text. If there’s no way to legitimately construe the data to the proposed context, it’s back to the drawng board.
But I certainly want to narrow the search with a contextual frame and think that constructive speculation about context is an important part of the slow two-step towards a solution.
I watched Stephen Bax on Voynich Ninja recently. I share some of his views. The script could be an attempt to craft a writing system for a previously oral-only language (he cited the Armenian script as an example.) He makes useful comments about that scenario.
His priviso is that it is a language community with an intellectual need for a script – at which point he wanders off to talk about Hungarian.
That is the point at which I want to apply a contextual focus and argue that Ladin had such an intellectual need in the relevant period (and in a region that is a strong candidate as the relevant locale.)
I am encouraged to discover that there is evidence that Ladin was first put to writing in limited ways as early as the 1300s (although our first extant samples are from 1700s.) The Ladin were overtaken by history and never formed a viable national identity, but there were times when Ladin was not as marginal a tongue as it is today.
The specific context I point to is the 1450s when Nicholas of Cusa was prince-bishop of Brixen and very famously came to blows with Verena von Stuben and the Ladin speaking Benedictine nuns of Sonnenberg, a squirmish in which the Ladin of Val Badia were the meat in the sandwich, as the saying goes. (It’s the same period in which the Ladin and their traditions were the focus of the rising tide of witch hunts.)
In any case, I readily admit the difficulties of matching the text to this (or any other) context. (And my own limitations with linguistics.) But for me, that is the way forward: text/context/text/context. Focus in. Stand back. (Bearing in mind the complications of subtext. There has to be motive, not just means and opportunity.)
Again: context-free studies are great. But I think it is useful to bring a contextual lens – or many – to the data, back and forward, searching for an unforced and cogent alignment.
The research problems are manifold. For a start, the modern presentation of Ladin is not a revealing guide to the language in the 1450s. Can anyone direct me to previous Voynich-Ladin studies that might help, even if to show how little it resembles Voynichese?
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| Arches of the Virgin |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 15-07-2022, 07:38 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
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Arches of the Virgin:
To be honest, I didn't know that the Virgin had arches. Not till just the other day. The arches are an architectural structure on the north side of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Other than their early origin, nothing much is said about them. And apparently, they are difficult to photograph fully, being in close quarters. Of course, someone who had been there would know about the Seven Arches of the Virgin.
Or, maybe, they lost one.
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| Core conundrums? |
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Posted by: Hermes777 - 14-07-2022, 02:17 AM - Forum: Voynich Talk
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Let us suppose an intelligent and inquisitive person who has never seen the Voynich ms. is shown it and allowed to peruse it for five and only five minutes.
What are the peculiar and unusual features to be noticed on such first impressions?
I think there are three:
1. The nymph section.
2. The fold out map.
3. The script.
On first impressions we have a medieval herbal with an astrological section and, it seems, recipes for herbal preparations. Nothing unusual in any of that (until we look closer.)
But turning to the nymph (baneological) section is a WTF moment. It is when we reach page 75r that we realize this is not just an ordinary (if somewhat rustic) herbal.
I think the foldout map is a big surprise as well. First impressions must tell us that it is important to the whole work. It is unusual in itself and obviously a stand-out feature.
It is the script, though, that is most peculiar. On first impressions, given five minutes, we would think, quite reasonably, that it is written in some European language. There seem to be words and paragraphs and running text. But the script is entirely unfamiliar.
After looking at it for five minutes there is only one question to be asked: Why is it not written in Roman script?
There are, indeed, so many peculiar features of the Vms, upon closer inspection, and its peculiarities are so overwhelming, that it is useful, I think, to look at it with fresh eyes now and then, as if for the first time.
For me, these are the matters that are really begging for answers. I can explain an astrological herbal no matter how odd, but the nymphs, the map and the script place this work beyond the pale. That is what I see when I ask: what is wrong with this picture?
The script is the real mystery. Even if, on first impressions, I suspected the work is a cipher, or gibberish, I am left wondering why someone has invented a script for the purpose? Wasn’t scrambling the text concealment enough? Why has someone gone to the trouble of designing and deploying a new script?
I suspect this mystery is connected to the other peculiarities, the nymphs and the map, and that a single explanation will explain all three.
I am wondering what others might cite as the conspicuously peculiar and unusual features of the work, the core conundrums?
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| Krebs & the crayfish |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 06-07-2022, 07:37 PM - Forum: Astrology & Astronomy
- Replies (3)
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"Krebs! Krebs!!", I say. I think we may have one on a line. This is new to me, so any leads on prior discussions are appreciated.
It seems obvious now. The German word, 'Krebs' for lobster, crab, cancer is the key. It's the same as the family surname. That's a great example of heraldic canting. So, does that same sort of heraldic interpretation carry over to the VMs? Nicholas of Cusa was clearly in the same chronological space as the C-14.
Interesting to note in his bio that he was briefly in Paris in 1416. That was the year that the Duke of Berry died in Paris. The three Limbourg brothers also died that year. With all the violence in Paris in those years, of course he left.
If the interpretive connection to the VMs holds, it adds another example of contemporary heraldry being used in the VMs. A red crayfish in VMs Cancer may be no more significant than the red hats and blue stripes of VMs White Aries, or the mystic ring and cross held by the nymphs, or the Oresme cosmos, or the myth of Melusine. It's an indicator of something the VMs artist knows.
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| Nicholas of Cusa: Latin analogy |
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Posted by: Hermes777 - 04-07-2022, 11:39 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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I've posted this elsewhere but I think it is relevant here. I am of the view, for sundry reasons, that Nicholas of Cusa is the brains behind the VMs and Voynichese. Turning to his writings, there are many suggestive passages that might help us think usefully about the text. Here is a passage from Cusanus that I find enormously intriguing vis-a-vis the Voynich:
One element universally enfolds within itself three elements; but the three elements generally enfold within themselves nine elements; and the nine specifically enfold within themselves twenty-seven elements. Therefore, the cube of three is the specific unfolding of the oneness of each element. But the species enfolds its own specific elements, just as the specific Latin language has its own specific elemental letters. Although these specific letters are few, they are of inexhaustible power. Hence, just as a Latin sentence consists of certain very universal letters, of general letters, of somewhat specific letters, and, lastly, of very specific letters—all contracted to the Latin sentence—so too every sensible-particular is like a complete sentence.
Conjectures, 95.
Here we see Cusanus' development (refinement) of the traditional analogy between cosmos and text, known as the stoicheon analogy, its classical source being Plato's Timaeus. I think we need to appreciate this type of thinking in order to understand what is going on in the VMs. Every sensible-particular is like a complete sentence (and so vice versa.)
Jasper Hopkins, the Cusanus expert, cannot make much sense of this passage - it is not a natural or familiar division of the Latin alphabet - , but Cusanus is dividing the letters of Latin up into four (Platonic) categories graded from general to particular. It gives us an important insight into how Cusanus was thinking about language.
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| A Cusanus Ladin Hypothesis |
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Posted by: Hermes777 - 04-07-2022, 12:33 AM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (38)
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Being a retired academic with way too much time on my hands, I have applied myself to the VMS full time for the last six months or so. It’s not the first time; I often included the VMS as a topic when I taught an Honours program in ‘Lost Texts and Apocrypha’ in the years 2000-2010. I’ve studied it over time and now in some depth.
I have a fully developed contextual reading of the work and an hypothesis regarding its authorship, contents and purpose that I’d like to share here. I regard the hypothesis as very solid in itself (or at least sane), and apply it as my paradigm for tackling the real challenge, the reading of the text. On reflection, establishing the context and the author is the easy part; working out exactly what the author has done in the text is admittedly more tricky. In my methodology the task is to get text, context and subtext to all align. Only then will all be clear and a ‘solution’ emerge.
I’II call the hypothesis the Cusanus Ladin Hypothesis. Here are twelve points, each of which I think is defensible and together constitute a plausible case.
Argument: Nicholas of Cusa is the mind behind the Voynich manuscript.
1. The Voynich ms. is from the mid 1400s. (My hypothesis requires a date perhaps a decade later than the carbon dating.)
2. The Voynich ms. is from alpine northern Italy.
3. The Rosette map - the key to the work - depicts the Rosengarten mountain region of the Dolomites (and, crucially, the symbolism of the Alpenglow.)
4. The nymphs depicted are from the mythology of the Ladin people of that region.
5. The illustrations in the manuscript reflect the ancient herb gathering traditions of the Ladin people of alpine northern Italy.
6. In contrast to the illustrations, the text and language in the Voynich ms. are highly artificial constructions that seem generated by complex, systematic methods.
7. The text could not have been made by rustic herb gatherers from the remote valleys of the Rosengarten mountains. It is the creation of a highly educated mind. The script and other factors suggest the author was a humanist scholar.
8. The type of system used to create the Voynich text is highly suggestive of the systems of Ramon Llull. (Ars Magna)
9. In the relevant period, the main advocate of Ramon Llull’s methods and the great humanist scholar of Llullism, collector of Lllull’s works, was Nicholas of Cusa.
10. Nicholas of Cusa was made bishop over the relevant region and people (Bishop of Brixen) in 1450 and served in that role for about eight years. (It was a turbulent but still very creative phase of Cusanus' life.)
11. In the writings of both Llull and Cusanus there is discussion of applying the Ars Magna to herbalism and medicine and the natural sciences generally.
12. Summary: In the illustrations we can identify the herbal traditions of alpine northern Italy. In the text we can identify the systems of Ramon Llull. The person who links these two identifications is Nicholas of Cusa. He was the Llullian scholar, a Christian humanist, who was in a position to have a prolonged encounter with the relevant herbal tradition.
Conclusion: Therefore, the manuscript is likely to be a project of Nicholas of Cusa undertaken during his time as Bishop of Brixen. It brings the Ars Magna of Llull to a preexisting herbal tradition from alpine northern Italy.
It follows: To decipher the text, we need to understand Nicholas of Cusa’s use of the Ars Magna of Ramon Llull and how he might have applied it (or his own developments of Lllullism) in this case.
We have a capable genius, the right type of mind, in the relevant region, in the relevant period, with plausible motive. It is a circumstantial case but, I think, a strong one.
* * *
Important additional context: the work is Christianizing. It is a Christianization (Christian humanism) of the native Ladin herbal tradition (and its mythology) made in the context of the rising tide of witch-hunts in the region. (Which Cusanus resisted.)
Surmise: The work is likely to concern measurements in the natural sciences - the nymphs are shown measuring – and is an application of Cusanus’ rather mystical theories regarding weights and measures as well as cartography and his other non-theological preoccupations well signalled in his lesser writings and dialogues with the “layman”. A key work is his Conjectures.
Languages: The natural language that goes with the traditions depicted in the illustrations is what we today call Ladin but at the time would have been regarded as a primitive Latin, and was entirely unwritten. I propose that Ladin (a vulgar Latin with Rhaetean fusions) is at least in the background of the work. (I don't propose the text is a simple mapping of Ladin.) Otherwise, Nicholas of Cusa has Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Catalan, German, Italian and a smattering of others within his range. Even such an artificial construction as Voynichese must have a natural language underpinning it.
Note well: I doubt Cusanus himself put nib to vallum, and he is not the illustrator. It was not a private folly. But I do believe it was his project.
I am well aware I am not the first person to throw the name ‘Nicholas of Cusa’ into the ring. I am personally satisfied he is the author and the mind behind the work. (I resisted the identification at first, but I think it is an unavoidable conclusion.) The script and the text is his. The quest for me is to work out precisely what he has done (and perhaps with whom?)
I do not think Voynichese is an encryption even though Cusanus, as a diplomat, certainly would have been familiar with all the standard methods of his day. More generally, I do not think the text was intended to conceal. I don't detect a subtext of concealment. We only think that because we lack the key to read it. It is more likely to be pastoral in intent. I suspect its linguistic mysteries may have more to do with some concern for the illiterate Ladin.
What I add to the identification of the author is the proposal that the work comes out of his pastoral encounter with the Ladin people (herb gatherers) from the remote alpine valleys (probably in the context of their pilgrimages to Saben, ancient centre of the bishopric.)
I spend my days exploring this hypothesis, searching for a way into the text through this context. (I join that long list of researchers who are all very confident they are on the right path.)
RB
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| Vocabulary size by Illustration Type |
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Posted by: RobGea - 03-07-2022, 03:30 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (16)
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Vocabulary size by Illustration Type (Using slightly modified ZL2a transcription, uncertain spaces as spaces)
Any and all Errors are mine, the folllowing description sounds more complicated than it is  .
In the EVA format there is a variable $I for Illustration type.
The Herbal Type was further split into 2 types, Herbal_a and Herbal_b following LisaFaginDavis allocation of folios by Scribe.
Herbal_a is defined as having EVA $I = H and its folio is ascribed to Scribe_1.
Herbal_b is defined as having EVA $I = H and its folio is ascribed to any Scribe except Scribe_1.
Here the words in the folios of the same Illustration type were collected giving a total word count for each of the 9 types.
Within each type, replicated words were removed, creating a set of words where each word is counted once, this is the vocabulary of that Illustration type, the 'type_vocab'.
Then for each word in the 'type_vocab', if that word apppeared in any the other 8 type_vocab's , the word was removed. creating an 'unshared_vocab'
The 'type_vocab' contains the words that appear once or more in folios that have the same Illustration type.
The 'unshared_vocab' contains words that appear once or more ONLY in folios that have the same Illustration type.
Any word that appears in more than one 'type_vocab' is removed completely.
For instance the word 'daiin' appears in several 'type_vocab's and because of that it does not appear in any of the 'unshared_vocab's.
Key: Herbal_a ( Ha ); Herbal_b ( Hb ); Stars ( S ); Balneo ( B ); Pharma ( P ); Astro ( A ); Zodiac ( Z ); Text ( T ); Cosmo ( C ).
Code: Type, total_words, type_vocab, unshared_vocab, unshared_vocab as % of type_vocab, Rank
Ha, 8054, 2516, 1460, % 58.028 R1
Hb, 3522, 1353, 474, % 35.033 R8
S, 10851, 3072, 1662, % 54.101 R2
B, 6376, 1471, 618, % 42.012 R4
P, 2555, 1132, 472, % 41.696 R5
A, 876, 611, 238, % 38.952 R7
Z, 1291, 767, 343, % 44.719 R3
T, 3108, 1279, 448, % 35.027 R9
C, 2213, 1101, 436, % 39.600 R6
Observations:
-HerbalA has the most unshared words, as expected because it is CurrierA.
-Pharma is also CurrierA so its position at R5 is unexpected.
-Stars at R2 is 10% higher than the next rank, an anomaly with no obvious explanation.
Speculations:
One possibility is the Stars section is discussing something that is outside the range of the rest of the text.
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