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No text, but a visual code - Printable Version

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RE: No text, but a visual code - R. Sale - 16-06-2023

The one-to-one comparison you suggest creates an appearance of similarity that might not be entirely warranted. Before comparing the Rothschild Canticles codex illustrations with other manuscripts, let's look at how the spiral technique is used in other RC images. There are about a dozen. And a number of these have multiple examples in a single illustration.

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Then there's this:

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RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 16-06-2023

Yes, I have chosen an image only because it is enough. In this codex there are many illustrations with spirals in celestial bodies and in all of them the meaning is the same: the movement of celestial objects. It is a way of graphically expressing that they move, that they are not static,

Is there another interpretation? If there is, I would like to know it.


RE: No text, but a visual code - R. Sale - 17-06-2023

While motion seems implicit in some of the illustrations, in other illustrations not so much. But in the set of examples, all display the same artistic technique. Spiral lines occupy the inner circle. Black lines on gold, but they do not seem to have a standard pattern of arrangement.

If the RC patterns represent motion, what motion do they represent? Is it external motion, from place to place? Or is it internal motion, to spin on an axis. Visually, the spiral seems to indicate spin. So, the illustrations of the RC attribute axial rotation to the sun and the stars. But is that something that would have been chronological in the RC era?

So, if it is motion, what motion is it? And if they are doing something, what are they doing? Perhaps they are supposed to be emanating light. Apparently, the RC spital technique didn't catch on like the wokenband / cosmic boundary. Many examples in RC.


RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 17-06-2023

To spin in an axis? Axial rotation of the sun and the stars? Would someone in the Middle Ages think that?

Honestly, many times I think that it is not that the Voynich or medieval thought is especially difficult, but rather that we insist on complicating it.


RE: No text, but a visual code - R. Sale - 17-06-2023

Those are the same concerns that I was suggesting. Do the spiral patterns in the RC indicate axial rotation? Or is the suggestion of axial rotation a concept that is anachronistic to that time? I may be mistaken, but it would seem to be a modern interpretation imposed where it did not exist. But if that is true, then what is the explanation for the spirals?

Difficulty can be in the 'eye' of the beholder, so to speak. Medieval thought can be non-scientific, irrational and superstitious, not to mention potential inconsistencies between different historical sources. Something as simple as a nebuly line cannot be properly interpreted, if it cannot be recognized and named.


RE: No text, but a visual code - R. Sale - 17-06-2023

Motion seems like a good idea, but the problem is that it cannot be defined. What moves? Which motion is shown? There has to be something - if this is true.

What other alternative? So, knowing that the valid explanation of solar radiation was unrecognized back then, the most common analogous interpretation of solar processes would have been *fire*. Fire swirls and reaches outwards. The RC circles are representations of fiery disks.

As far as the VMs cosmos - it's not Andromeda. If the outer part replicates Shirakatsi, then there is some inherent motion involved in the changing phases of the moon. However, given the way it was used, in the creation of a hybridized enigma, it is difficult to believe that its actual astronomical properties were really relevant.


RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 18-06-2023

Let's not complicate things. Everything is simpler.

The spiral arms that we see in the circles are just a clever way of representing movement. Naturally, movement from one place to another. By drawing the curved arms that illusionistic effect is produced. Any other interpretation is anachronistic.

Let's look at the Voynich spiral, f68v3:

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There is a T-O map in the center. Surrounding the earth we see a circle of stars and the wavy line that marks the cosmic boundary. In the outermost part there is a circumference that joins the arms of the spiral with the map of the earth.

What is the most reasonable interpretation of this? Simply, that the spiral represents the circular movement of the stars around the earth.


RE: No text, but a visual code - nablator - 18-06-2023

(18-06-2023, 09:09 AM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What is the most reasonable interpretation of this? Simply, that the spiral represents the circular movement of the stars around the earth.
The spirals link the external circle with the inverted T-O map (Earth) and the area filled with blue dots (atmosphere?) and stars under the undulating celestial boundary. Since everything in the celestial domain rotates and Earth does not, it is understandable that the links drag behind and are represented as spirals. In my opinion they materialize the path invisible celestial water takes on its way back to Earth, in the tubes handled by the nymphs in Q13, isolating the water from the fiery nature of the heavens. It could be seen as an attempt to depict the cycle of water in the medieval cosmology framework.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. Genesis 1 (King James Bible)

It was all a big mystery. Do the celestial waters rotate or not?

De rerum natura by Isidore of Seville (Isidorus Hispalensis):

Quote:CAPUT XIV. De aquis quae super coelos sunt.

1. Haec est Ambrosii sententia:  « Aquas super coelos sapientes mundi hujus aiunt esse non posse, dicentes: igneum esse coelum, non posse concordari cum eo naturam aquarum. Addunt quoque, dicentes rotundum, ac volubilem, atque ardentem esse orbem coeli, et in illo volubili circuitu aquas stare nequaquam posse. Nam necesse est, ut defluant, et labantur, cum de superioribus ad inferiora orbis ille detorquetur, ac per hoc nequaquam eas stare posse aiunt, quod axis coeli concito se motu torquens eas volvendo effunderet. »

2. Sed hi tandem insanire desinant, atque confusi agnoscant, quia qui potuit cuncta creare ex nihilo, potuit et illam aquarum naturam glaciali soliditate stabilire in coelo. Nam cum et ipsi dicant volvi orbem stellis ardentibus refulgentem, nonne divina Providentia necessario prospexit, ut inter orbem coeli redundarent aquae, quae illa ferventis axis incendia temperarent?

ChatGPT translation:

Quote:CHAPTER XIV. On the waters which are above the heavens.

1. This is Ambrose's opinion: "The wise men of this world say that waters cannot exist above the heavens, saying that the heavens are fiery and the nature of water cannot be reconciled with that. They also add that the orb of the heavens is round, movable, and fiery, and that water cannot remain still in that movable circuit. For it is necessary that they flow and fall when that orb is turned from the higher to the lower parts, and thus they say that they cannot stand still, because the axis of the heavens, turning rapidly, would pour them out by rolling them around."

2. But let those people finally stop their madness and confusedly acknowledge that He who could create all things out of nothing could also establish that nature of waters with a glacial solidity in the heavens. For since they themselves say that the orb shines with blazing stars, did not divine Providence necessarily foresee that water should overflow among the orb of the heavens to temper those burning fires of the axis?



RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 18-06-2023

Citing the Bible and Saint Isidore for the Voynich cosmology is totally anachronistic. At this time it is Aristotle's cosmology from the physical point of view that is relevant, and Ptolemy's as a mathematical model. 

There is no more water in the firmament. The water that falls to the Earth is a meteorological phenomenon of the sublunary world, according to Aristotle. I think that the creators of the Voynich, educated people of course, would know Aristotelian cosmology well.


RE: No text, but a visual code - R. Sale - 18-06-2023

The problem is that the VMs representation is not an Aristotelian cosmos. Aristotle had the seven planetary spheres and the circle of fixed stars. Ptolemy added the epicycles, etc. The VMs cosmos has none of that.

The cosmic boundary defines the limits of perception. Beyond that, the wheel and curved spokes may imply a circular motion, but the outer structure itself has only one original, historical source (as far as I have seen), and that is Shirakatsi.