The Voynich Ninja
No text, but a visual code - Printable Version

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RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 02-09-2021

The problem with the Voynich is that the imagination runs wild and everyone sees what their personal inclinations make them see. Imagination is a runaway horse.

Let's be positivists. What do we see when leafing through the book? Herbs and cosmological diagrams with the sun, the moon and stars, many stars. There is almost nothing else. Everything we put to that is the fruit of our imagination.

The only thing that breaks the scheme are the nude ladies from Quire 13. But only apparently because they are also stars. I am not the first to say it. An authority like Erwin Panofsky said it last century. I think it deserves some thought.


RE: No text, but a visual code - R. Sale - 02-09-2021

"Imagination is a runaway horse." I like that. It's called pareidolia. You see what you want to see. <So they say.> Like a face on a piece of toast or those infamous cloud bunnies. It all depends on the interpretation of information. And that, in turn, depends on the 'quality' of that information. There is also a matter of perspective, whether things are characterized in general, or whether they are examined in detail. 

If we remove the linguistic aspects from consideration, what do the illustrations tell us? Where is the visual code? What is the visual code? How is it presented in the VMs? Examples relating to the potential interpretation of heraldic insignia can found in the tub patterns on the VMs Pisces and Aries zodiac pages. There is a nymph in the inner ring of White Aries that has a red hat and sits in a tub with blue stripes. Is this a runaway imagination or the interpretation of a specific historical situation? If it sat by itself, chances might be even, but it is also disguised. However, the traditional interpretation does not sit by itself and it is confirmed in a number of ways, including proper hierarchical positioning, most favorable heraldic placement, and the papelonny pun. It's all in the details of heraldic code, ecclesiastical tradition and historical events. The VMs structure exists even if the recognition does not.


RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 03-09-2021

When I talk about visual code I mean the script not the imagery. It is as simple as that all glyphs are astrological symbols. For example, the glyph c is the symbol for the Moon and when we see cc, ccc, it is simply that the Moon is moving. For me the script reflects the movement of the sky.

Why do I believe this? Because I have a global idea of the message that VM images convey. Not one detail or another of any page but a comprehensive idea of all images in the book. For me this message is the power of the stars, of the heavens, to create all kinds of herbs, those that we know and those that we still do not know


RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 09-09-2021

Taking years looking at the Voynich forces you to delve into medieval culture, provided, of course, that you believe that it is an authentic and genuine document. I think it is and what surprises me is that there are people who think it is a hoax. 

If I think it is a genuine document it is because by forcing myself for years to study medieval thought, I have realized that this book fits perfectly into that thought.

But you don't need to have a master's or doctorate. Just have common sense. If in a book you see herbs and cosmological and zodiacal diagrams together, and only that, the most probable thing is that the authors think that both elements are related, because they also share the same strange script.

And why that strange script? Well, because it corresponds to those strange herbs that nobody recognizes. Not even the authors knew what to say about them, only to invent a code to put them in correspondence with the heavenly influences.


RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 14-09-2021

One question that anyone who studies the VM asks is why the author drew herbs that do not exist. He did it deliberately and if someone now thinks he recognizes any, it is because inevitably out of 130 invented plants, some have to resemble an existing one.

At the time herbs were drawn realistically, as reliably as possible so that there were no errors in identification. Look for example the Tractatus de herbis, contemporary of the Voynich.

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Sometimes in a more natural way, other times more schematically, the objective is to identify the herbs well, which also have their names next to them in several languages.

In the VM herbs are invented. They have no names and nothing can be said about them. The script we see is just a simulated language


RE: No text, but a visual code - Linda - 15-09-2021

Well, i see more than one alternative view being possible. I find the idea of the plants being drawn completely fancifully for the purposes of illustrating some astrological code of star - plant associations harder to understand than someone doing so for the purposes of fraud, ie to sell a manuscript but having no information to copy, so they make things up. Ie none of it would mean anything, it would just look vaguely like something familiar, like a narrative, or a collection.

Are you suggesting both the diagrams and the code are nonsense? Or that the code makes some sense to someone? Because you have said things like that it shows medieval thought, but if it was nonsense that seems to go against that idea. I am just trying to understand. Is it supposed to be a stream of consciousness type of thing? 

Quote:Sloane 4016 (its shelf-mark in the British Library), hails from the Lombardy region in the north of Italy and is a copy of a similar work by a figure called Manfredus, which itself was a version of the late 13th century codex known as Egerton 747. As Minta Colins writes in Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Traditions (University of Toronto Press, 2000), as opposed to these early versions, this sumptuously illustrated 15th century copy was most likely created with the wealthy book collector in mind rather than the physician, as "the primary scientific purpose had by then given way to the bibliophile's interest".
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I find this and the vms more similar than dissimilar, i still had to look for recognizable words to know what things were actually meant to represent, more realistic drawings have been drawn much farther in the past. If anything i think the vms wins for most realistic water lily. Last one is Sloane 4016, which seems the least realistic.

[Image: 4b4b221aa2660e22aef5338ece2f8168.png][Image: TH-4f03356b4e2fc-560-308.jpg]

What if the vms is partially a copy of something similar to that perhaps no longer exists, that wasn't meant as art, but as personal mnemonic reminders, so as to keep the information to oneself, or a select few. Perhaps it was information not allowed to be copied, perhaps it was fine to copy it but they were afraid of providing the information somehow to those they did not wish to.


RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 15-09-2021

It is very possible that what is drawn on the Voynich is a water lily. Possibly there are four o five more plants that can be recognized without a doubt, but they are the exception that proves the rule, the fact that 95% of the herbs drawn in the book are invented.

Why did the author invent them? The only guide we have to give an answer is the other half of the book, which is cosmological in content. And the most likely answer is that it is the stars that have created those rare herbs, because that answer fits well with medieval thought.

The script is not a phonetic but a visual language because it cannot be otherwise. There is nothing to say about these unknown herbs, only to put them in connection with the sky through an astronomical code that uses certain rules. It doesn't make sense to us but it does make sense to a medieval man.


RE: No text, but a visual code - Aga Tentakulus - 15-09-2021

I'm not sorry, but it's the other way around. It is the 90% where are realistic. The problem is the exact allocation.
If I take yarrow as an example, there are about 20 others where look about the same. wild turnip, motherwort, .....
Even specialists have to take them in their hands and smell them. One looks almost the same, but is highly poisonous.

You try here with such statements to strengthen your theory, where in my experience neither hand nor foot has.


RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 16-09-2021

I don't know  what your experience is, but I see that you are from the theory of North American botanists who identified many herbs as coming from Mexico and that therefore the script is an ancient Aztec language.

The problem is that you will have to explain how a parchment from the 15th century according to radiocarbon dating and an European manuscript agrees with this pre-columbian theory.


RE: No text, but a visual code - Aga Tentakulus - 16-09-2021

??????