Mainly for people who have heard about bathing literature and the 'Salernitan' school but not seen much of the texts.
In about c.1474, a work credited to Arnauld of Villanova is known as the Salernitan Rule of Health (often called 'Flos medicinae' or 'Lilium medicinae' ) and has a bit about bathing in it. An early print edition of the Latin text, entitled Regimen sanitatis ad regem Aragonum is available (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. )
This Regimen... is supposed to be that of the Salerno Medical School but in the parallel translation, at least, the paragraph about bathing is preceded by a curious paragraph about coffee - "curious" because in 1474 coffee wasn't called coffee yet and was unknown in Europe. A parallel translation of that paragraph (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
In about the thirteenth century coffee was being drunk in the Yemen as stimulant, much as soma (ephedra) had earlier been used around the border of Persia and northern India; but it would be fully four hundred years more until coffee was used in Europe - according to the Cambridge World History of Food (Vol.2).
Quoting the Oxford English Dictionary , the wiki article says:
Quote:The word "coffee" entered the English language in 1582 via the Dutch koffie,You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. borrowed from the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.kahve, in turn borrowed from the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.qahwah (قهوة).
So what does that imply about the source and date for the work attributed to Villanova, and for the same work's 'bathing' section?
It's easy to think of excuses/reasons/theories.. e.g.
*the nineteenth-century translator misread/misunderstood the Latin; * the coffee paragraph was interpolated from Rhazes (not so likely because he called it bunchum which a Latin of Europe wouldn't have known meant coffee, even in 1474); *the coffee paragraph was included by Arnaud on the advice of immigrants who had come from somewhere a good deal further to the east than Salerno;
The last is certainly posssible, given a number of other works (including the Vms) which reveal a line of transmission between the Yemen and Spain or southern France.
But then, if an east-to-west transmission might (maybe) bring knowledge of coffee westwards by 1474 - if the paragraph is original - then should be suppose the same for the 'ladies'?
Does that mean the word 'coffee' was known to Arnauld? Really?
Here's the bathing section of the work - not much to it.
Posted by: R. Sale - 21-11-2017, 01:00 AM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- No Replies
It seems clear that the three-part cosmos of Oresme differs significantly from the standard representation that showed the sun and moon and all the known planets. The three-part representation is not wrong, within the perspective of geocentric systems. It is, however, excessively simplified. It’s like a cosmic illustration for dummies, ironically being presented to the French King Charles V, ‘the Wise’.
An interesting discovery in the investigation of Nicole Oresme is the fact that although the name is referenced twice in the 1960 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, there is no personal biography for him. While this could have been an oversight, it seems more likely that it was a judgment based on Oresme’s perceived lack of significance. And if Oresme lacked significance in 1960, then what about earlier, in the time of Voynich and Newbold? If the Oresme illustration had been known then, why would VMs You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. have been interpreted as the Andromeda galaxy? And if the VMs is a Voynich forgery, how does an unrecognized representation of the Oresme cosmos get used in the forgery process.
This conundrum is very similar to the situation found of VMs White Aries. There was a historical connection between Ottobuono Fieschi and Roger Bacon. White Aries shows the Fieschi connection with the origin of the Catholic tradition of the red galero. The intention of WMV was to promote his manuscript as a book by Roger Bacon. Yet this relevant supporting information was never used or mentioned – as if it were unknown – because it was unknown. So who put it in the manuscript?
So far there is no cosmos like Oresme’s that is similar in schematic plan and in the design detail of the parts - *other than what is found in the VMs.* Furthermore, the VMs offers an opportunity to improve the comparison with the Oresme illustration, if the reader is willing to substitute the scallop-shell cloud band from the VMs Central Rosette. Many are not willing, apparently, to consider that possibility. And that is not necessarily invalid, if it were based on a single instance with no other examples. But the VMs is replete with examples of trickery. There are various places that present cogent motivation to get off the train and abandon a line of investigation. That is the purpose – to deceive and to conceal. Intentional ambiguity is used to dissuade the investigator. The optical illusion of VMs White Aries is the prime example. The separation of the cloud band from the other parts of the cosmos (f68v) is another. The quasi-heraldic patterns on the tubs in the outer ring of VMs Pisces provide certain clues and at the same time attempt to dissuade the half-hearted investigator before reaching the papelonny patterns – assuming the investigator has a sufficient knowledge to recognize and name the evidence presented. And the clear presence of that evidence has not even been accepted for what it is because the modern perspective is not properly informed on the valid facts and specific details of well-known traditional and historically verifiable information that was familiar in certain scholarly circles at the time of the VMs creation.
There has recently been a notable increase in the discussion of the VMs cosmos illustration of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and the comparison of the cosmic depiction in Oresme BNF fr. 565. It seems clear that there are some interesting potential similarities that may benefit from further investigation and discussion.
The first consideration here, however, is the schematic depiction of the cosmos in various medieval representations for the time between Sacrobosco and Regiomontanus – or anything roughly between 1200 & 1500 CE. It currently seems to me that most of these cosmic representations follow along a ‘planetary’ schematic model. They depict the earth in the center, surrounded by the successive orbits of the known medieval ‘planetes’: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn and then encircled by the fixed stars. This is essentially the same model as the “Music of the Spheres”.
This is not what we see in the Oresme illustration. This depiction of the cosmos is based on a different schematic representation. Here the image in the diagram has been simplified to three different parts. These are: 1) the earthly core, 2) the starry field, and 3) the surrounding cloud band.
Now, of course, there are similarities between three-part model and the planetary model, because they are using some of the same information to depict the same subject, a geocentric representation of the cosmos, but there are also some significant, obvious differences in the Oresme version. And these same differences in that schematic depiction are also found in the VMs representation. The VMs, with its labeled and faintly marked, earthly core, the surrounding stars and the nebuly line (the most rudimentary depiction of a cloud band – by definition), certainly follows the three-part model shown in Oresme much more closely than the schematic construction of the multi-layered, planetary model.
A third cosmic representation, that follows the three-part schematic model fairly well, can be found in an illustration from the “Holkham Bible Picture Book” [BL Add MS 47682] from England c. 1327-1335. (Posted to the VN by MarcoP) As such, it surely predates Oresme. The model is similar though each of parts (from Holkham) is a little different. The central core is large and dark. The stars are there, but only as a scattering mostly above the core. And there is a distinct cloud band, which is a significant part of this model, but in Holkham the cloud band is mainly found to be based on a wavy line (not nebuly), though there are a few bulbous examples on either side of 3 o’clock. This is clearly not the more elaborate, scallop-shell pattern used by Oresme or found in the VMs central rosette. The ideological combination of the central rosette cloud band and the central parts of the VMs cosmos can only promote an even greater similarity with the Oresme representation.
There has also been a related line of discussion in regard to the description and interpretation of the central part of these diagrams. The VMs has a couple ‘labels’ and a few lines of writing, but other than that it consists of a circle crossed by a horizontal diameter and a radius line that extends vertically upward. The fact that the radius extends upward, rather than downward, may appear to be minor, but it has the effect of turning the world upside down. If the VMs illustration is a representation of the world divided into three continents as shown in a standard T-O map, then this VMs representation is a T-O map that has been inverted. And some have gone so far as to interpret the VMs ‘labels’ as Europe, Africa and Asia.
However, in the central core of the Oresme cosmos, the illustration is first divided horizontally, and then the upper half is divided into two quarters. This matches the VMs as it is. Nothing needs to be inverted. Furthermore the Oresme illustration is painted in a way to make clear that this is not a division of geographical continents. It is an elemental division of water, earth, and air. And this appears to be a fairly standard sort of representation, with water taking up the bottom half, air to the left and earth to the right in the upper part. Do the ‘labels’ in the VMs cosmic illustration correspond to these same elements?
What the comparison of VMs and Oresme does show is that both cosmic representations follow the same schematic plan – the same three parts in the same sequence. And where there are opportunities for variation, either in the division of the central sphere or the pattern of the cloud band, the actual representations show more of a corresponding similarity. And it is a similarity that can be strengthened virtually beyond doubt by the combination with the cloud band pattern of the VMs central rosette.
[As to the combination of representational elements from separate pages of the VMs, some will probably want an inflexible rule against it. Consider, however, the dual representations of Aries and Taurus. Two images of Aries (or Taurus) on separate pages combine to make a pair. The medallions of the first five houses of the VMs Zodiac combine to make a series of five pairs across seven pages. Multiple page combinations are clearly an option in the VMs. Consider the nature of VMs Gemini. It shows a man and a woman, not the representation of Castor and Pollux, that might be expected in the Zodiac. Are these fraternal twins as brother and sister? Or is this a wedding? A play on the hieros gamos, perhaps? Or is there another interpretation? Twins are a pairing that share a common origin. A marriage creates a corresponding pair that originates from different sources. Can the scallop-shell patterned cloud band from the VMs central rosette be married to the VMs cosmos of f68v? It can only occur through the auspices and the details of the Oresme illustration of the cosmos.]
In the investigation of the cloud band, relative to the Oresme-VMs comparison, the ninja collective produced a variety of interesting material. Basically, it shows (IMHO) that cloud band patterns were primarily idiosyncratic; each artist had a unique version – with a single exception for the use of the scallop-shell pattern which occurs in the Apocalypse Tapestry, the Oresme cosmos, some of Christine de Pizan, the VMs central rosette and elsewhere. Perhaps it would now be of interest to take a look at how the earthly core is represented in all the cosmic diagrams of this time (c. 1200-1500). What is the distribution of various representations, whether geographic, elemental, pictorial or other? Were elemental cores or cloud bands used with planetary diagrams? Any contribution of medieval cosmic images is appreciated.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
will help to identify the plants and there voynich names. It is full of interestin writing systems. In my eyes that alone is magic and perhaps we find there a hint for voynichese. Who knows.
Look for example at the page for pepper: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
What could it be and why would it be above this nymph? I've likened it to certain things before but I'm unable to fully understand its significance. What do you think?
Posted by: R. Sale - 10-11-2017, 09:18 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- No Replies
Despite the flurry of recent publications, the same old questions remain. Does the VMs possess any comprehensible, ideological content? Does it make any sense? If so, how has that content been transmitted? And, given that content has been so difficult to discover, how can meaningful content be found and interpreted? For more than a century, the VMs has remained an enigma. This will not change, – because the VMs was created to be an enigma. The VMs purports to represent the ‘reality’ of an unknown time and place and a most curious culture, but this is a fictional reality, something that was never existent. The whole appearance of a foreign cultural reality is a deception. It’s a job well done – something that would have been incontestable in the late medieval era. The manuscript clearly presents as a fairly normal book from an strange and abnormal source, but it is the opposite. It is an enigma.
What is it that has so long delayed the discovery of comprehensible, ideological content in the VMs? Let’s consider the possible use of encryption. Here it appears we will find that the state of sophistication was not advanced very far and that any recoverable methodology appropriate to the dates of the VMs C-14 chronology would be easy to discover. Even if we expand the field to include proposed, natural language translations and all the other linguistic efforts regarding the VMs, there are only a few things of potential significance to be seen. There is only enough statistical data to indicate a fair probability that dismissing the written text as meaningless could well be a mistake.
Now let’s consider the use of wool. Wool comes from the old saying, ‘to pull the wool over someone’s eyes,’ meaning to trick, to deceive or bamboozle etc. It’s an idiomatic expression. The first thing to say about wool pulling is this. So long as we do not see the wool, the wool is working.
If we cannot see the ideological possibility of reconstructing Oresme’s cosmos from VMs parts, then the wool is working. Of course, we first must be familiar with the illustration of Oresme’s cosmos and we also need to find the VMs parts and evaluate their compatibility.
If we cannot see the pairing paradigm established and validated at the start of the VMs Zodiac, and borrowing a relevant law from Deuteronomy, then the wool is working. The pairing paradigm actually has a certain extra quality of strength to it because it requires both parts of the pairing to be present in the VMs. In other words, an internal to internal combination. This contrasts with other paradigms which have one part in the VMs and the corresponding part in some other, outside source, either known or even unknown. IOW, an internal to external matching.
If we cannot see pairing and heraldry in the tub patterns of VMs Pisces and Aries, then the wool is working well. Pay close attention to the heraldic furs.
If we cannot find the optical illusion on VMs White Aries that presents a dualistic interpretation of the direction of orientation for the two blue-striped patterns, then the wool is still working wonderfully. Without radial influences, they become a pair.
If we do not know the history of the origin of the tradition of the red galero in the ecclesiastical heraldry of the Roman Catholic Church and we miss the traditional, objective, positional confirmations in the VMs illustrations, then guess what?
If we do not know the name, definition or appearance of some obscure heraldic fur omitted in many current references, then heraldic canting is simply impossible, (We have no idea what we don’t know.) and the wool is really working big time. The pun is a combination of pattern, language and placement.
If we want to find understandable, ideological content in the VMs, then we need to possess the relevant, traditional information and the necessary historical facts to get beyond the wool. The wool has been intentionally used to create obfuscation, but the underlying reality, even though appearance may be ambiguous, is not contradicted. The stripes are blue. And further confirmation is achieved through an objective determination of the standard, traditional placement of the relevant elements, given hierarchical, heraldic and other appropriate considerations.
The connection of a blue-striped tub pattern and the inner example of Stolfi’s marker is not ambiguous. However, it is the second, paired example of this type of marker that designates an unusual segment of text, one that is unique in all the VMs Zodiac for the number of word repetitions. There are triple and double word repetitions in this segment.
From the patterned marker (Outer ring of VMs White Aries):
olkeeody okody okchedy oky eey okeodar okeoky oteody oto otol oteey ar ykooar aiin aekeeey okeo keo keody okeodar chy s aiin oto keoar or ar al otol al shckhey oteeeodar oteody otol aiin shoekey sal al ald cheeokseo q!orky choly
[This is my retyping of the transcription from voynich.nu.]
In the text segment, ‘okeodar’ is used twice, ‘oteody’ is used twice; ‘oto’ and ‘ar’ are both used twice, ‘otol’, ‘aiin’ and ‘al’ are each used three times. Seven different words are repeated in this circular band of text. So this gives a couple potential patterns based on the number of repetitions and on the sequence. And there is the particular sequence, ‘al otol al’, which is the same construction as ‘day after day’ or anything similar. Could such a text be instructive or religious?
The internal to external comparison clearly is more difficult when a candidate for comparison has not been discovered. But there are degrees of difficulty for this discovery based on the nature of the paradigm. The pairing paradigm must also apply to any proposed external text as a comparative candidate. The prime comparative characteristic is based on internal content, not on peripheral form. Thus the evidence needed to substantiate the paradigm will be much more definitive and easily spotted – distinctive in a way where non-contenders are easily identified to narrow the possibilities – if there were any.
But first, let’s take the wool from our eyes. This is comprehensible, ideological content in the VMs. This is standard, traditional and historical information, derived from appropriate medieval sources, and it interprets the VMs content as containing paradigm elements that are compatible with certain historical facts and persons dating to an event in 1251 CE and is also related to the origins of a current heraldic tradition. This establishes historical grounding past and present. The presence of the necessary elements is not accidental or fictitious. Of course, it is obscure to us, it is intended to be hidden from those who would have known it best as a part of their own world. It is hidden; it is intentionally obfuscated; it is disguised by an illusion. Just take the wool off and there it is – comprehensible, historically validated content.
Posted by: Diane - 10-11-2017, 01:27 AM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- No Replies
Julian Bunn long ago explored a possibility that the Vms text might be music notation; Nick Pelling and others early considered the text a product of cipher-wheels. In a post called 'Weaving the Voynich' I spoke about colour wheels as counterpart for segmented circles and so so....
What follows isn't an argument about the Vms.
The interactive diagram comes from an article treating the interrelation of African rhythms, Pythagorean number theory, modern music theory and analytical studies. It's here because you might find it as delightful as I do.
Check the sound's on and press 'play'
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Full article:
Richard Cohn, 'A Platonic Model of Funky Rhythms*, MTO, a Journal for the Society of Music Theory, Vol. 22, No. 2, (June 2016)
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
At different times Pelling, I and perhaps numerous others have recommended Jocelyn Godwin's work in any study of medieval music and cosmology.
Quote:MOD NOTE: Split from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
(08-11-2017, 11:43 PM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
As example: a curator from the Getty Museum likened the formation of centres in the calendar to mosaics produced in late Roman/Byzantine-ruled Syria. At much the same time, Sam G. noted that mosaics in late Roman/Byzantine north Africa show similar characteristics to another of the calendar centres. The two regions are linked - historically and culturally - from long before the Byzantine period, and it is common culture rather than official rule which chiefly influences forms in art.
...
All zodiac-related astrological concepts and symbolism originate from this general area, regardless of whether it's French astrology, German astrology, Spanish astrology, English astrology, north-African astrology, Syrian astrology, etc.
It doesn't matter. where you look today, you will find the imagery largely unchanged for thousands of years... astrological imagery dates back to the Egyptians and the Chaldeans, primarily to the south and eastern Mediterranean, so of course there will be mosaics, frescoes, friezes, and other forms of imagery influencing subsequent astrological and calendar-related symbolism in other parts of the world.
People were surprisingly mobile in early history and they brought their culture, their artists, and their manuscripts with them. A huge number of Ethiopian Jews settled en masse in France. A very large number of Scandinavians (Lombards) colonized southern Italy and northern Africa. Many Portuguese settled in Korea. Many Romani migrated from India to Europe. Millions of Europeans settled in North America, in the days when an Atlantic crossing was long and very perilous.
I really don't understand your argument. Just because astrological imagery originated in the Mediterranean doesn't mean it stayed there.
I hope I'm not mistaken in crediting JKP with this - I first read it in a blogpost of his - but the idea of engineering has recently cropped up in connection with discussions of the 'bathy-' section.
As some may know I think the assumption that the ladies are to be read allegorically in the calendar but literally in the 'bathy-' section is an assumption adopted without sufficient pause for thought, and I do not subscribe to it.
However, that said, the matter of geometer-as-engineers has cropped up again in connection with discussion of the tripartite sphere motif in Latin medieval art. As I've just indicated by my recent post, Oresme settled on the negative side of the question about whether or not the earth rotates on its axis, saying it was ultimately a matter of belief or faith. And it is in that context that the image of Christ in Judgement over the world starts to have the tripartite sphere rather than the traditional book.
That there was any argument at all is interesting and even the wiki article notes that the earth's rotation about its axis was asserted within the 'Abbasid period by muhandisīn: that is, geometer-engineers.
I find this of great interest, tying in with a number of factors, not least the inclusion in the Vms of a schematic diagram of the qanat. I realise that the identification has not met much positive response, but I have no doubt that's what it is meant for - the 'starfish' motif is used consistently to mean the highest point: of earth or of heaven.
But in any case, I thought that I should mention a book in which the Greek and the classical Latin terms are given, and a clear description of the Romans' technical notations. Note that among the Latin terms are 'calix'... cf. cup... and tubuli fictiles for earthenware pipes.
(Some 'ancients' among my readers might recall my deducing that the sort of pipe we see in the 'ladies' folios, pipe marked with regular lines of dots or short dashes - is intended as reference to terracotta/earthenware pipe, though here again the imagery in this context might not have been meant to be read with utter literalism.
Technical terms in
John Gray Landels, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (1978).
At the risk of being tedious, I'll say here again that people who make pictures are thinking in words - and if one can identify the words informing the expression of an image, it can be very helpful for correct interpretation and correct identification of source culture and period.
![[Image: image.jpg?q=f76v-178-269-241-436]](https://voynich.ninja/extractor/image.jpg?q=f76v-178-269-241-436)