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+--- Thread: No text, but a visual code (/thread-2384.html)
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RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 20-06-2020
Today is a special day in the Northern Hemisphere. Today is the summer solstice and marks the longest day and the shortest night of the year. No other day is as magical as this. Of all the times of the year we celebrate plants. Many ancient cultures have traditionally harvested herbs on this day or night believing them to be at their greatest medicinal value.
In Spain, one of these magic herbs is vervain (verbena). Spaniards algo give the name of verbena to the popular night parties that we like so much. It is a reminder that this herb was collected at night under the influence of the stars.
In a book like the Voynich where we see magic herbs, suns, moons and stars, the summer solstice must be somewhere. It's logical. I think it is in the script, in the numbers-symbols 8 and 4 (this last number in its old arabic form). It is not my imagination. I never write anything that I haven't seen in some contemporary document to the Voynich. There are Volvelles in which the zodiac sign of Cancer is marked with these numbers. The circle is divided into four parts.The top two of the day have an 8 each inscribed, and the bottom two of the night have a 4.
8 plus 8 equals 16 hours of daylight. And 4 plus 4, 8 hours of duration for the night. The summer solstice
If not, why are these numbers (8 and 4) repeated so much in the Voynich script?
RE: No text, but a visual code - Barbrey - 01-07-2020
Antonio, newbie here today and have spent the last hour reading the first half of your thread. I also believe the primary purpose of the text is to relay how heavenly forces, particularly astrology, affect the medicinal properties of plants. But I also think it is based, fundamentally, on hermetical and alchemical beliefs, and therefore describes the hermetical god's influence through the stars on the cycles of both soul and life regeneration. I think the rosette page is a map or diagram of the author's perception of these cycles which closely follows ideas to be found in the Corpus Hermeticum and/or very similar ideas in circulation.
That said, I think your emphasis on astrology could open up some of the script (as opposed to language) but not all of it.
Two "numbers" that you mentioned earlier might be cases in point. The number 9 for me as found represented in the spiral in the cosmos of the top right rosette, and its placement at the beginning and ends of lines, is representative of soul regeneration. It's an o shape (god or heaven) with a tail that points back. Whereas the 4o is very specifically mentioned in Caps(and represented in the bottom right rosette) in the hermeticum as the number of God and Generation of bodily life - reincarnation of plant and animal life. These are different processes - only the human soul can know god, so humans go through both soul and bodily reincarnation, whereas in plants and animals the soul is life and it is therefore a bodily reincarnation only.
I won't go through this whole hermeticum philosophy, but even if my own thoughts are totally wayward, I want to point out that just a listing of astrological and astronomical symbols, while relevant, would not appear to me to account for the "why" of the manuscript. How do stars work on plants and then the human body to prolong health and life? What's at work in the stars that would enable them to do such a thing. I always think of the cental rosette "pill bottles" that also double as places of worship as a case in point. The medicine treats the body both physically and spiritually. I think this kind of duality pervades the manuscript. Body and soul, heavenly and cthonic, etc.
These are just my thought intended to expand maybe on your own but I do think you are onto something. I'm just thinking your emphasis on the script as only astronomical signs might be too great.
Something I just discovered today because I looked up the word Aeon after encountering it in the hermeticum. These seem to be ages (accounts differ) of 2600 years or so, regarding the procession of equinoxes. We are presently in the Age of Pisces, with only two known known Ages having gone before - Aries and Taurus. I thought this was interesting if we disregard missing folios for a second, because it seems that for this reason astrologers did sometimes begin the houses in Pisces. But also, with two "known" Ages having gone before, (Pisces starts in 1 ad, which is why Jesus ended up, by coincidence, with fish symbolism, so some historical or mythical history was known about the 5000 years prior) so I wondered if that's the reason Taurus and Ares, the two known Ages, were split to differentiate the first and second halves, and why some figures were clothed (becoming more civilized?). You can't say this manuscript isn't food for the imagination!
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 02-07-2020
Thank you Barbrey for your comments.
I don't think there is a sophisticated philosophy in the VM. It just reflects the average culture of its time.
Knowing the medieval culture and looking at the VM with a broad mind you can reach the conclusion that I defend, but the prejudice of the language is too powerful. I have a lot of fun watching the most varied linguistic theories appear periodically, when the simplest thing is to think that there is nothing phonetic in the script.
The closest work to VM in its time is the Giovanni Fontana books. Fontana, an engineer, imitates the power the magicians. He just wants to imitate magic writing, but with intelligible meaning. He invents characters with lines and small circles that look like the signs we see in astral magic. But they are characters that are easily replaced by Latin letters. It's a [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]cipher that doesn't hide anything. Why?
The author of the VM, like Fontana, also imitates the power of magic, but with astrological glyphs that have meaning by themselves. The only thing that the script does is to relate, to serve as a bridge between the stars and the herbs. It works like a charm.[/font]
RE: No text, but a visual code - Barbrey - 02-07-2020
I do think it's a possibility at any rate, and I'm not really hung up on the language or script, just on the possibility that the script, not language, pattern might be deducible from the manuscript itself..
Your idea makes the whole thing an astrological treatise, but if all the "words" are astrologically-related, where are the words for plant, root, stem, medicine, processes like purification or distillation, etc. I think I believe herbal (as influenced by astrology) as the text's primary purpose, and in that case you'd need words of the plant variety, and process words to boot.
A difference of emphasis.
I wonder if "o" could be degree as well, for instance, but also wonder if cc and ii words correspond to degrees as well, but for heat, water, medicinal temperatures instead. So ar might mean boiling point, for instance, and aiir might mean two additional deviations above it. I get a distinct impression that the r with the curly top is related to fire, both astrologically and in process.
Something that might interest you from the alphabet page on f 57. I did an overlay of core symbols of the alphabet over the rosette page because the alphabet page seems to have a rosette in the middle too. And you know
that isolated label at the top of the page as if it's labelling it? No eva but looks like 8airox? I was considering "a" as ci at that point, with c a 10 and i a 1. So that translation would be "Earth (ruled by?) The 12 fires (star houses?) of Heaven. With your o as a degree that would be even more solid.
Just playing but there might be something in it for the astrologically minded!
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 03-07-2020
Barbrey, you have made me happy!
In the two years I have been on the forum, I couldn't convince anyone that the (o) of the VM script is the symbol of the degree of the sphere. Insist on that path and in the end you will see like me that there are no words, that everything is astronomical symbols.
Look at the outer circle of de f70r1. Nine (o) followed by three other symbols. No one can explain this linguistically.
What it takes to solve the Voynich is an absolutely new open-minded approach.
RE: No text, but a visual code - -JKP- - 03-07-2020
(03-07-2020, 08:02 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
Look at the outer circle of de f70r1. Nine (o) followed by three other symbols. No one can explain this linguistically.
What it takes to solve the Voynich is an absolutely new open-minded approach.
I don't think anyone has tried to explain this linguistically. If they have, I haven't seen it.
I have some possible visual explanations, but it has never struck me as particularly linguistic.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Barbrey - 03-07-2020
[quote="Antonio García Jiménez" pid='38556' dateline='1593802931']
Hi Antonio, I have no knowledge of astrology so it wasn't my first thought - I thought it was a god sign based on the hermeticum, and in a way it possibly is. Notice on the rosette page, miiddle top, the twelve houses of the zodiac, pouring lots of (o) down into the earth (large middle circle) and beneath the earth the chevrons point down to the seven pointed flower (middle bottom) representing plants. So to me that part of the page was plainly designed to show the influence of the zodiac on plants. But as it is god who influences the stars, and the stars then influence everything, I thought the pile of o's was a god symbol.
But I'm coming over toward your way of thinking. Have you ever read On Rays by Al Kindi? It's based partly on the hermeticum too. He says rays are what carry god's will/mind in the zodiac which then influence the earth. Mostly pertinent is that every star has its own properties, and certain ones will work better on certain plants, and of course when you pick things, when you make them, what they're for and your success is dependent on the plant's own elemental properties (plants have elemental rays too! - but physical), the particular star's or stars' properties manifested as rays, and it's the zodiac that helps determine all this.
I believe this text is definitely working on Al Kindi's foundation. I would have thought the influence coming from the stars would have been represented as rays, but the fact it is o's is pretty persuasive.
I wonder if, as the zodiac evolved, degrees and rays in Al Kindi's terms of light became entangled in meaning? Something to google!
I couldn't find your 9 o's. My text is not so clear in some parts and because I read on a tablet it's hard to read upside down. Are they near the top or bottom of the outside circle?
You still haven't convinced me it's all astrological symbols though! I believe there's more, though willing to concede there might not be. I'm also, after Al Kindi, unconvinced that o always represents solely a degree, or that there is no phonetic basis to what we're reading. Because star magic in medicine making seems to require proper incantations!
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 05-07-2020
Al Kindi's book es very interesting. I didn't know it.
Barbrey, it is easy to locate the nine o's in a row. They are at the top of the outer circle of f70r1. But more important than those nine o's is that they are followed by three other symbols of the script, which means that this chain of symbols is one of the script and not an ornament of the imagery or a whim of the author.
I understand your resistance to accepting that it is not a language and there are no words. It's our natural inclination. But if you think that the Voynich is a magic book, precisely a European magic book influenced by Arab magic, it is easier to accept that the whole script consists of combinations of astronomical-astrological symbols
RE: No text, but a visual code - -JKP- - 05-07-2020
(05-07-2020, 07:29 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Al Kindi's book es very interesting. I didn't know it.
Barbrey, it is easy to locate the nine o's in a row. They are at the top of the outer circle of f70r1. But more important than those nine o's is that they are followed by three other symbols of the script, which means that this chain of symbols is one of the script and not an ornament of the imagery or a whim of the author.
...
This is an assumption. It was very common for medieval scribes and illuminators to add initials within decorative elements to indicate where to put an illuminated initial or the color for a design. In other words, ornaments WERE often annotated with letters.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Barbrey - 06-07-2020
(05-07-2020, 07:29 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Al Kindi's book es very interesting. I didn't know it.
Barbrey, it is easy to locate the nine o's in a row. They are at the top of the outer circle of f70r1. But more important than those nine o's is that they are followed by three other symbols of the script, which means that this chain of symbols is one of the script and not an ornament of the imagery or a whim of the author.
I understand your resistance to accepting that it is not a language and there are no words. It's our natural inclination. But if you think that the Voynich is a magic book, precisely a European magic book influenced by Arab magic, it is easier to accept that the whole script consists of combinations of astronomical-astrological symbols
Actually I do accept the idea of symbols, that's my premise as well, and that many of them, if not most, are astrological symbols. I definitely believe it's a magic book influenced by Arab magic (and I'm making my way through these books - the primary one was Al Kindi's On Rays, and read The Picatrix yesterday - I actually think you need to read On Rays - it's quick and easy, btw, and was a major influence on Roger Bacon who went on to influence Europe himself).
But symbols can be expressed in sound. They are also often multi-layered in meaning. I am on another site posting about a possible numerical system based on the moon.
The moon governs numbers in old astrology. And the c symbol, which looks like the moon symbol, along with the i and a symbols, does not seem to be included on the "alphabet" page of 17 repeaters. So I played around with the c's and i's until they made sense as a numerical system that would work with astrology. i=1, c=2, a=3, cc=4, c-c=5, etc. I've just started looking at it but you must agree that even if there are no discrete letters, astrology requires numbers. And there are particular numbers astrology uses over and over again from 1-12. 7 is huge c-c c. 4 cc for the elements of course but if you include ether (and the VMS writer did, it's all over the rosette page connecting things) you end up with 5, the 4 elements connected ,c-c.
So if this number system is correct (likely not, I just thought of it yesterday), the c-c not only stands for 5 but is also a symbol for "elements", and both 5 and elements can be spoken in an original language, just as star and planet names can be.
Similarly, I'm currently looking at the ligatures in terms of something I read in the Picatrix yesterday. The main purpose of the VMS is medicine, selling it or teaching it, how astrology influences plants and their properties and the life enhancing or prolonging that comes from correct alignment.. Those ligatures - the double tee with one loop, the double tee with two loops, and the signpost ligature, are described almost exactly in the picatrix though they are not signs in the Picatrix. They are properties of medicine making or all hermetical magic. Similarity (two loops), difference (one loop and one empty), and the signpost - which the Picatrix actually calls a signpost - to describe the where and when of doing the magic or making the medicine. Absolute necessities in this astrological herbal because you need similarities between the correct planets and stars and the plants or your medicine will be unsuccessful, and you need to align your medicines with the best time and place to make them according to the horoscope.
So that two loop symbol could just be indicative of correspondences that will make your medicine making successful, and the single loop shows it won't be propitious. Combine these with other symbols and you've got something approaching a language already - who, what, where, how, when and why. For me, that's a language, if it answers these questions - using code, letter, symbol, whatever. Whether it is phonetically pronounceable is another matter, but I actually don't see why not if the authors had particular phonetic words in their head as they wrote each symbol.
But I think you've studied it a lot and we both agree on a lot (and you might be right re the astrology volvelle as solely responsible, which is the part I think we mainly disagree about). Forgive me for spouting off, I'm new and have too many things in my headthad that have yet to be deflated by the more serious scholars.
Can you give me an example of the kind of info a volvelle might give you and is throughout the VMS. You don't have to be accurate at all, but I'd just like an example. I mean, would it be "Taurus at 8 degrees with Saturn ascendent" kind of thing, and just rows and rows of that kind of info without explaining how it relates to plants and medicine? Because if so I'd regard 250 pages as a hoax. I mean, who would bother? But maybe I'm misnderstanding?