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[split] What is "a Zodiac" and does it apply to the VM section? - Printable Version

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RE: [split] What is "a Zodiac" and does it apply to the VM section? - Koen G - 03-12-2017

Rene, in the opening post you asked the following:


Quote:Could anyone please come up with a definition of 'zodiac', in such a way that one can understand why the zodiac section in the Voynich MS would *not* be a zodiac???

Has this question been answered to your satisfaction?

RE: [split] What is "a Zodiac" and does it apply to the VM section? - ReneZ - 04-12-2017

Koen, sorry, but no.

The discussion is almost surreal.

The people whose opinions tend to be most referred to and valued in this forum are Erwin Panofsky and Alain Touwaide.

Panofsky, who was an art historian, saw a zodiac and compared it with the astrological drawings in the manuscripts of Alfonso "El Sabio".

Touwaide, a science historian specialised in medical manuscripts, wrote in 2016:

Quote:Questa parte del manoscritto è seguita da un'altra, fatta di tabelle, ruote astrali e asltri dati zodiacali che evocano l'astrologia e di consequenza l'astronomia e i meccanismi imperscrutabili delle sfere eteree,....


Also, two authorities on astronomical/astrological MSs have looked at the Voynich MS. Their opinions are well known.
Prof. Stolot:

Quote:I have inspected the VMS at Beinecke. The signs of the Zodiac do not present problems - they are simply not of the Arateia type but were modernized.


Prof. Blume wrote in a private E-mail to me that he confirmed her opinion. He added that his books concern manuscripts with all constellations, while the Voynich MS only includes the zodiac.

We can add the Yale facsimile where Ray Clemens (curator for early books and manuscripts) mentions the zodiac illustrations in his Preface, and Zyats et al in Section 3.

One can hardly get a better set of references.
I cannot understand why one would insist on ignoring all that. It's like detaching oneself from reality.

RE: [split] What is "a Zodiac" and does it apply to the VM section? - Koen G - 04-12-2017

Rene, we are still talking about two different things, as I tried to explain in my previous posts here. 
When we ask "can we call this a Zodiac", the question is about terminology. And as I showed in my first post of this thread, there are definitions of what "a Zodiac" is: one circular or elliptical diagram with the signs. The VM section shows signs on separate pages, so there is simply no way it can be "a Zodiac", even if all the signs were proper, in the right order and the right amount. 


It is "something else" using the signs of the Zodiac. Just like a horoscope is not "a Zodiac", it's a horoscope. It may contain a Zodiac diagram, or part of it, but the whole thing is not a Zodiac. 

This is a Zodiac:

[Image: 05e48aa1c1ccb955cce7161f715726ea--astrol...-signs.jpg]

This image also contains a Zodiac:
[Image: 20120220-Ptolemy_zodiac.jpg]

This one too:
[Image: mithraic_relief_representing_hi.jpg]



The Voynich section most definitely does not contain a Zodiac, and it even more definitely is not a Zodiac. Both you and Diane keep mixing the discussion about the word Zodiac with the discussion about the Signs, but those are different things. 

You won't get a series like this without connection to Zodiac imagery. But not everything which uses Zodiac signs is a Zodiac, while you keep saying that it is. 

This discussion is almost surreal.

RE: [split] What is "a Zodiac" and does it apply to the VM section? - -JKP- - 04-12-2017

My understanding is that a zodiac is a celestial region (in a sense, a "band" in the sky) that includes the conventional designations for named constellations associated with the ecliptic.

It never occurred to me that it mattered whether they were drawn in a circle, written as a list, or drawn as a series, since pictorial and written references all refer to the same area of the sky where certain stars are visible. A circle is a good way to depict them since they cycle, but if you strung them out, they still refer to the same region and same constellations of the zodiac (our view of this band in the sky).


There are actually 13 constellations in the zodiac (the region of the sky), but one got dropped because 12 is so much easier to work with mathematically when drawng a circle or computing things (and possibly also because the concept of God was associated with the number 12).

RE: [split] What is "a Zodiac" and does it apply to the VM section? - ReneZ - 05-12-2017

(01-12-2017, 09:15 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is not a Zodiac, it's a calendar. Wikipedia calls it Faltkalender mit Monatsbildern.

[Image: 604px-Faltkalender_mit_Monatsbildern.jpg]

Actually, wikipedia calls it "Monatsbilderzyklus mit Tierkreiszeichen"
   
i.e. with Zodiac signs. These month cycles exist both with and without illustrations of the zodiac signs.

RE: [split] What is "a Zodiac" and does it apply to the VM section? - -JKP- - 05-12-2017

The months' labors cycles existed in manuscripts long before zodiac-symbols were added and even after zodiac-symbols became popular, they still appeared in a minority of calendars.

I've collected over 500 zodiac-symbol series (both circular and sequential), but I had to search 20 times that many calendar-related manuscripts to find them.

RE: [split] What is "a Zodiac" and does it apply to the VM section? - ReneZ - 05-12-2017

Of course, there is much more to be said about this.

First of all, when seeing the illustrations of the zodiac signs, one should not think in terms of constellations but in signs. The two became completely detached from each other due to the effect of precession. Constellations have irregular forms, some are large and some are small.
The zodiac signs were used for the computation of celestial events, and in fact for star coordinates. Each zodiac sign covers a region of 30 degrees on the celestial great circle that is the ecliptic. This is essentially the path of the Sun plotted against the sky.

Nowadays, star coordinates are expressed with respect to the celestial equator, using two angles called Right Ascension and Declination. In Ptolemy's star catalogue they are expressed with respect to the ecliptic, using two other angles, namely longitude and latitude.
Longitude is measured along the ecliptic, and latitude away from it.
The advantage of this system is that, at least to the accuracy in ancients times, precession only affected the stellar longitudes, as a linear function of time. All old astronomical tables were recomputed for different epochs using this principle.


The longitude is expressed using two quantities, namely:
1) the corresponding zodiac sign
2) the degrees within this sign, from 0 to 30.

Thus, the first stars in Ptolemy's catalogue, belonging to the little dipper, have longitudes expressed as:
Gemini 2, Cancer 25 etc.

It is possible that the meaning of the zodiac section in the Voynich MS is intending to represent a calendar, but we don't know.
It is possible that it represents some horoscope-related information, but we equally don't know.
It is finally possible that it represents astronomical information, but again we don't know.

All we know for certain is that there are the illustrations of the zodiac signs.

RE: [split] What is "a Zodiac" and does it apply to the VM section? - Searcher - 05-12-2017

If we don't know whether it is a calendar or a horoscope, or a natal chart, or something else, we can call it Zodiac or astrologic section easily.  Smile

RE: [split] What is "a Zodiac" and does it apply to the VM section? - -JKP- - 05-12-2017

Zodiac symbols seems more reasonable to me than calendar.

There are 10 zodiac symbols, in sequence, easily recognized and consistent with styles for the time. Even the long necks are not especially unusual.


Is there anything that we can definitely associate with a calendar? Maybe, if it's an old calendar where they divided the months equally into 30 divisions, but as I mentioned upthread, that could just as easily be a zodiac reference of 30 degrees, so we can't say for certain there's any reference to days.


In my view, the marginalia is irrelevant. I think someone was trying to decipher the VMS (as also appears to have happened on the first page), and wrote in month names associated with the zodiac signs, perhaps in hopes of finding those words in the mysterious text. I doubt that they have anything to do the actual intention of the pages.

I see no clear evidence of a calendar. The images surrounding the centers are certainly not month's labors (except of the gestational kind). Calendars are to keep track of time. If these symbols are horoscopic rather than time-keeping, then pinpointing time might matter, but keeping track of it is not its central purpose.

RE: [split] What is "a Zodiac" and does it apply to the VM section? - Koen G - 05-12-2017

(05-12-2017, 09:09 AM)Searcher Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If we don't know whether it is a calendar or a horoscope, or a natal chart, or something else, we can call it Zodiac or astrologic section easily.  Smile

That's basically my opinion at the moment. We don't know what it is so it's okay to call it Zodiac section, I don't know anything more convenient. 
My issue is that the main participants in the discussion don't properly distinguish between "a Zodiac" and "Zodiac signs", greatly confusing things. If Rene asks for a definition which shows why "the zodiac section in the Voynich MS would *not* be a zodiac?" then that's misleading because the section cannot be a Zodiac.


Rene: the file name said folding calendar with month images (free translation from German) but "Monatsbilderzyklus mit Tierkreiszeichen" similarly illustrates my point. A Monatsbilderzyklus with Tierkreiszeichen cannot be a Tierkreis, while you would call it so.