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Shameless possible plant mnemonic discussion & speculation thread - Printable Version

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Shameless possible plant mnemonic discussion & speculation thread - Koen G - 08-02-2017

Just a thread to bounce some plant mnemonic ideas around, which might not be worthy of their own thread. If some ideas here come to fruition, the mods can always split them off into their own thread to properly discuss the individual plant there. So in this thread some chaos is permitted as long as it's about possible symbolic aspects of the plants, and how those might help with identification.

I thought of making this thread because I had compiled an image which in retrospect was a bit too stupid. 

I call it Rise of the Plant Men, Return of the Biomancer, from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . 



   


This plant also has a rather interesting root, which either really badly drawn or super mnemonic. With its spindliness it clearly takes a different route than the common fat brown roots. No idea what it's supposed to represent though.

[Image: image.jpg?q=f32r-745-1626-444-347]

RE: Shameless possible plant mnemonic discussion & speculation thread - stellar - 08-02-2017

The man rising in this image is associated with 3 other people in 4 quadrants and I feel that folio represents the four seasons of agriculture.  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

RE: Shameless possible plant mnemonic discussion & speculation thread - Linda - 09-02-2017

not sure if this would be considered a mnemonic, since the thing that is reminding me is the representation of the thing itself, but the yellow bits make me think of individual lilac flowers, on an angle since actually there are 4 "petals", looking at the back of them, so to speak, re the early flowers, or perhaps more likely, the spent ones, due to the colour turning to goldish, and the shriveling and flattening makes it look like 3. the whole plant drawing strikes me as lilac, from the leaf shape to the opposite nature of its stem and leaf growth. lilacs have very aggressive roots  the plant is spread by suckers, hence "green" roots.

[Image: Syringa_microphylla_%27Superba%27_flower...ardens.jpg]
[Image: lilac-may-19-13.jpg]
[Image: spring_lilac-flowers_Desktop_Wallpapers_1200x900.jpg]
[Image: lilac-branch-isolated-white-14456287.jpg]
[Image: lilac+1.jpg]
[Image: Common%2BLilacR.jpg]
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RE: Shameless possible plant mnemonic discussion & speculation thread - Koen G - 09-02-2017

It could be a plant like lilac, but that doesn't explain why there's a yelliw thing on each flower which looks totally different from its surroundings. Wouldn't the yellow protrusion rather be an exaggerated form of the flower's reproductive organs?

RE: Shameless possible plant mnemonic discussion & speculation thread - -JKP- - 09-02-2017

They could be florets (badly drawn) or reproductive parts, the end of the style (pistil) not quite as badly drawn. They don't look too much like stamens but who knows... stamens are often yellow with pollen.

RE: Shameless possible plant mnemonic discussion & speculation thread - Linda - 12-02-2017

I was thinking of the shriveled florets from what was drawn, mainly from the colour.
[Image: Common%2BLilacR.jpg]
the florets do yield an essential oil. gathering the spent florets might make a more concentrated solution?

RE: Shameless possible plant mnemonic discussion & speculation thread - -JKP- - 13-02-2017

(12-02-2017, 11:21 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I was thinking of the shriveled florets from what was drawn, mainly from the colour.
[Image: Common%2BLilacR.jpg]
the florets do yield an essential oil. gathering the spent florets might make a more concentrated solution?


Lilacs have a wonderful nectar. All the kids in our neighborhood used to pull off the florets and suck them. The spent ones lose the nectar and their taste, but the fresh ones are tasty.

RE: Shameless possible plant mnemonic discussion & speculation thread - Diane - 13-02-2017

Koen and friends,
Obviously I'm happy to see how many people now accept the idea that some drawings in the manuscript are there to aid the memory of an informed reader about more complex, or more tangential information.

Things were pretty grim on that score a few years ago, and even when someone found that something similar had once been said by d'Imperio, her understanding of the subject was based on a most inapt source - Frances Yates' book.

So I hope it's ok to let people know what is meant by 'mnemonic devices' in the context of ancient and medieval custom.

First, a mnemonic is not just any kind of doodle-thing like a pen-test.  Mnemonics were always a sort of visual 'key' or cue to a much deeper or broader network of language-based (and usually of text-based) information. 

Not like imagining Mr. Fischer by thinking of a fish!  It was more like after having memorised the content of the larger Encyclopaedia Britannica article on whaling verbatim, then drawing the picture of one harpoon.

Mnemonics jogged one's memory; they didn't take the place of text-based information.  That's why the cue to the relevance of a mnemonic is often a phrase or even just one word [e.g. the Latin word 'draco' as cue to Dracaena on f.25v] . And if you can identify the word, then its language can tell us something really helpful -  beyond just the subject of e.g. one botanical image.  

Mnemonics and just how to develop memory were things carefully studied, and even taught systematically, in the centuries before printing.

So any genuinely mnemonic elements in the Vms won't have been created by individualistic whim, and cant be recognised and interpreted solely by relying on imagination and 'commonsense'; first you need to appreciate the formal medieval methods and attitudes - because that's what is likely to inform any genuine mnemonic details.

Anyone interested in this issue - I'd strongly recommend you not to define an element in any Vms drawing as a mnemonic until you're reasonably sure you understand the the historical context, and have found some other similar image used to similar purpose..these are how you can tell if you're identification of a 'mnemonic' is trustworthy or just a bit of guesswork and imagination.  

As reading... definitely NOT Yates' book which is now largely disregarded and has quite the wrong period and cultural environment for the VMS- but the books by Mary Carruthers are appropriate to the period we want, and they have revolutionised our understanding of this subject since the 1980s.  They became immediately and are still the standard references for discussion of this subject and European practice before c.1475.

Cheers.

RE: Shameless possible plant mnemonic discussion & speculation thread - -JKP- - 13-02-2017

(13-02-2017, 01:05 PM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Koen and friends,
Obviously I'm happy to see how many people now accept the idea that some drawings in the manuscript are there to aid the memory of an informed reader about more complex, or more tangential information.

Things were pretty grim on that score a few years ago, and even when someone found that something similar had once been said by d'Imperio, her understanding of the subject was based on a most inapt source - Frances Yates' book.

---


I found this incredibly hard to believe, that association of mnemonics with the VMS would be "grim" a few years ago. The VMS plants have heads in the roots, man-shaped roots (similar to mnemonic illustrations of Mandragora), beak-shaped leaves, all similar to imagery found in mnemonic contexts in traditional herbals. And those are just the obvious ones, then there are the circular diagrams, some of which are reminiscent of Llullian diagrams, which sparked a flood of interest in mnemonics in the 15th to 16th centuries.

But who knows, maybe it's true that people didn't "accept the idea" that some drawings were "there to aid the memory", so I looked around to see what had been previously written about the VMS and mnemonics and found the following:
  • In Sept. 1994, Jim Reeds explicitly refers to mnemonics in his discussion of William Friedman's textual transcription of the VMS. While this was not about the illustrations, it indicates an awareness of mnemonic concepts and their possible association with the text.
  • In Jun 1997, Dennis Stallings posted a list of plant roots in manuscripts with mnemonic associations, what he called "visual puns".
  • In Apr. 1999, Jorge Stolfi commented on the mnemonic possibilities in the letters found on some of the plants and on the mnemonic characteristics of VMS glyph-shapes classified as "dealers" and further makes references to manuscripts with mnemonic visual content.
  • In James Gray's blog about interesting and mysterious manuscripts (including the Voynich Manuscript), he makes numerous references to the different kinds of mnemonics found in these books (and provides some interesting visual examples).
  • In Jan. 2004, fusionanomaly.net commented on the Phaistos Disk as an example of acrophonic mnemonics and made an associative reference to the VMS.
  • In 2009, Philip Neal commented on Nick Pelling's blog that he had been looking for mnemonics that might help inform the VMS script. Neal had referred to mnemonics on Jan. 13, 2004 while discussing the enciphered manuscripts of Giovanni Fontana.
  • On Nick Pelling's May 28 2009 Cipher Mysteries blog, Pelling includes mnemonics in his list of possible aspects found in cipher alphabets.
  • On Pelling's Dec. 17, 2009 blog, he describes a conversation with Steve Herbelin and a number of ideas about whether f67r2 could have mnemonic associations in the tradition of computus diagrams and Pelling referred to mnemonic wheels in earlier blogs, as well (e.g., Dec. 8, 2008).


Even the EVA alphabet was designed with mnemonics in mind, choosing letters that could be easily associated with their Voynichese equivalents.


Those are just a handful of examples, but while looking around, I did not see anyone arguing against the possibility of mnemonic references, or that acceptance of mnemonic possibilities was "grim" in the Voynich community.

People certainly disagree on how to interpret specific imagery or text with mnemonic possibilities, or on which ones might be mnemonic and which ones might not, but I did not see anyone reluctant to acknowledge the possibility, or anyone denying that mnemonics exist.

RE: Shameless possible plant mnemonic discussion & speculation thread - Koen G - 14-02-2017

I'd say that more people are starting to realize that all aspects of the drawings must be taken into account, which is a good thing.

It may not be completely correct, but we have the convenion now to refer to non-botanical images in the plants as mnemonics. If they function as a visual pun to help one remember the (indigenous) name of the plant, they are still mnemonic devices.