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+--- Thread: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy" (/thread-1869.html)
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy" - Koen G - 10-08-2018
(06-08-2018, 03:47 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hey, Koen, any blossoms on the mystery vine?
Heheh, I haven't been able to make it to the forest in a while, the last pic is the last time I saw it. If the weather allows I'm going tomorrow.
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy" - Koen G - 11-08-2018
Bad news, it looks like our plant suffered greatly under the record-shattering draught and heat we've been experiencing, and most of it had shriveled to what looked like dead wood. Some pathetic leaves still grew on it here and there, and I snapped a picture of one twig, but that won't teach us much new I'm afraid. Also, my phone's camera performed rather poorly in the forest light conditions.
Anyway, observing this plant has led me to some thoughts about the VM drawing we're discussing in this thread.
If :
- the plant is intended to have a separate root system from the main stem
- and the drawing is somewhat reliable
- and the main stem is meant as a tree
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy" - -JKP- - 12-08-2018
Ah, too bad the plant didn't yield more information. Maybe next year.
I too tend to associate the word liana with hotter climates—it's interesting that it applies to temperate plants also.
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy" - -JKP- - 18-06-2019
I have not read it yet. I have no opinion about it yet, but voynichrevisionist has another "perspective" on the oak and ivy which I stumbled across in a Google search (I didn't know it existed until a few moments ago):
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The only part I've glanced at is the series of illustrations near the top where D draws arrows to show that the VMS vine twines in a different way. Yes it does. Does that mean the person who drew it did NOT see other manuscripts?
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy" - Koen G - 04-08-2019
From You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (image du monde). On the bottom of a page showing the Instruments of the Passion:
The twining ropes are a pretty good parallel for the way our "ivy" twines.
The pillar is one of the Instruments, used in the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. I'm not sure what the ropes are. Just ropes for constraining?
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy" - Monica Yokubinas - 04-08-2019
(04-08-2019, 10:30 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.From You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (image du monde). On the bottom of a page showing the Instruments of the Passion:
The twining ropes are a pretty good parallel for the way our "ivy" twines.
The pillar is one of the Instruments, used in the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. I'm not sure what the ropes are. Just ropes for constraining?
The symbol has always been associated with the God of Medicine and Healing You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy" - -JKP- - 05-08-2019
I looked up the history of the helical twining (in association with medical themes) a few years ago, but I honestly can't remember what I discovered. I think I remember it mostly being a simple spiral twine in the early days, and the helical version was introduced later. But I could be completely wrong.
I have seen helical twining in many illustrations of grape vines, but it's difficult to say whether the VMS vine might be grapes when the clusters are drawn more like the berries on non-edible vines like bryony and Hedera. Plus the leaves are missing (they appear to be deliberately missing) which reminds me of bryony (which loses its leaves in the winter, but retains the berries). Berries are almost never retained on grape vines because critters eat them if people don't (in fact, many animals will go for them a day or two before they are completely ripe and ready to harvest). So are the leaves missing to express something about the plant? Or to hide something about the plant... or because they are not relevant to what the picture is saying?
Koen, it's interesting that you introduced the flagellation pole. It's not something I've explored and it didn't even cross my mind that the helical ropes might be a parallel for helical vines. It's a very intriguing idea. It's makes me wonder how many other helical motifs I've missed in medieval art because I was perhaps too focused on plants.
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy" - Koen G - 05-08-2019
I suspect this plant is similar to the one I discussed in my recent blog post. While that one alludes to the crucifixion, this one is about the flagellation. Both possibly based on "instruments of the passion" imagery.
I think an additional clue is in the roots. In the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. page I linked above, they show the helix-pole with a flail on either side:
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy" - -JKP- - 05-08-2019
In my mind, I've always thought of the VMS plants as roughly divided into three groups... naturalistic, stylized, and fanciful (the word fanciful came to my mind before I started seeing it in Voynich literature).
Examples of the kind of drawing that I believe are naturalistic in the large plants section include Menyanthes/Villarsia, Cannabis, Ricinus, and Tragopogon (there are others, but these are less controversial than most).
The stylized ones look mostly like real plants but often have an element that is exaggerated (probably for mnemonic reasons) and are somewhat similar to plants in English early medieval herbals, which are somewhat stylized but still somewhat recognizable. For example, sorrel (Acetosella) in real life has leaves that look like fish. If you exaggerate this particular feature a little, you end up with something like a VMS drawing.
The fanciful ones have always puzzled me. I think of these as drawings that go beyond stylization, as though the drawing is telling a story beyond a simple mnemonic. I probably originally thought of them this way because I was having trouble identifying them (as a real plant) and because of the way they inhabit the page—they sometimes look more dynamic than the more naturalistic ones, but the more I got to know the VMS (if, in fact, I know anything about it at all), the more it seemed possible that maybe there is a story in some of them. I think the first one that really made me feel this way was the one with archway roots that reminded me of reliquary containers.
These classifications are completely theoretical, of course and I don't want to get too tied to them because some of the drawings might be hybrids, or might be simply extra-stylized rather than fanciful, but I do suspect they are not all the same kind of drawing.
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy" - -JKP- - 05-08-2019
Here's a thought that crossed my mind...
Modern calendars don't show much more than the days of the week and sometimes the new and full moons and the major holidays (e.g., Easter).
In medieval times, a calendar wasn't just a way of keeping track of time, the later medieval calendars were populated by almost-daily events and personages from the past. Saints days/feast days/days of fasting, days of prayer, (some also included the names of rulers, since they were perceived as demi-gods), etc. In the later 15th century, elaborate floral borders were added to many calendars (especially in France/Flanders).
But even though many follow the same format, they did, nevertheless, come in many different styles. Here are some examples...
This early medieval calendar (Cotton Tiberius A III) is very plain:
This very ornate Georgian calendar is in the Greek style (which was also adapted into Armenian and Latin calendars, but which is especially associated with Greek):
This early 14th-century French/Flanders calendar, in Latin and French, is more ornate than most of them, but it's a good example of all the names that show up in calendars (St. John, St. Stephen, Paul the Hermit, etc.). Notice also that it shows calendar days (31 days in January) and lunar days (in this case 30 for January). The imagery in the lower right is related to month's labors (January is frequently illustrated to tell the reader to stay in, stay warm, eat, and keep yourself alive until winter passes):
A variation on the above calendar is one with zodiac figures, but they are less common than the ones with no pictures or those only with month's labors.
For something less conventional and more visual, somewhat reminiscent of the style of "month's labors" calendars except that they are all on one folio, there is this Ottonian calendar from Germany in Latin and Greek:
So even though most were modeled somewhat the same (the most common being a page or two for each month with lists of names/events next to each day of the month), there were no hard-and-fast rules about how a calendar had to be organized.
So here's a question...
Could a subset of the plants in the VMS (I'm thinking specifically the big plants and mostly the fanciful ones) represent a visual calendar? A way of expressing something about the most important holy days that was maybe tied in with what they believed about plants?