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No text, but a visual code - Printable Version

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RE: No text, but a visual code - Koen G - 17-01-2022

We discussed this before You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., almost exactly five years ago.


RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 17-01-2022

I have included in my last post the opinions of 20th century researchers such as Panofsky, Father Petersen and Mary d'Imperio because I share many of the things they said. Personally, I am sorry that they are no longer with us, because I would have liked to know their opinion on my theory.

Regarding Panofsky, the most qualified of them from the iconological point of view, he said the following, as I read in the excellent page of René Zandbergen:

   The Voynich appears to include first a general cosmological philosophy explaining the medicinal properties of terrestrial objects, particularly plants, by celestial influences transmitted by astral radiation and those spirits which were frequently believed to transmit the occult power of the stars to the earth.

Curiously, two decades earlier, in 1931, the first time Panofsky saw the book, he was right to date it better than the second time. But this had to do with the fact that he came to give a margin of credit to the American identification of the sunflower.

Although the first time he did not explicitly mention his hypothesis of astral spirits, he did show that this was what he thought because he said that the Voynich was possibly the surviving book of two volumes: the plant and star half of the work which doubtless include also beasts and stones


RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 23-01-2022

Are the colors used in the Voynich significant? Do they serve to interpret the images iconographically? 

Apparently, the colors do not surprise us. We see green predominate in the herbarium, blue in the cosmological pages together with yellow for the stars, and ocher for the roots in the so-called pharmacological section.

The biggest problem of interpretation is in Quire 13, the one with the misnamed nymphs. Here we see blue and green, the blue mostly at the top of the page which, together with the wavy lines simulating clouds and structures that represent ceilings, lead us to think that the female figures come down from the sky. We see green not in the tubes, but in the bulges or pools. The impression is that the liquid is water. It could be, but Mary d' Imperio pointed to another interpretation.

She described the similarity between the plumbing in the section of female figures and the way the roots and stems are drawn in the herbarium and noted the following:
  
  Some form of humor, essence, moisture or sap seems to be of primary importance in the doctrine expressed by these pictures

What magnificent insight! 

The green color may represent the sap of herbs, which links all sections of the book


RE: No text, but a visual code - Koen G - 23-01-2022

This "insight", while possibile, betrays lack of familiarity with medieval imagery. Green for bodies of water was extremely common. Anyone familiar with this custom would not see a reason to look for weird explanations.


RE: No text, but a visual code - Aga Tentakulus - 23-01-2022

@Koen
From that point of view, I can't agree with you.
He also uses blue paint in the same area. Now it looks like you want to show differences in the water.
But I think we've been through this somewhere before.


RE: No text, but a visual code - Koen G - 23-01-2022

It is possible that they intended to reflect a difference. This still doesn't mean that we are looking at herbal remedies or sap: both green and blue are normal for medieval water.


RE: No text, but a visual code - Linda - 23-01-2022

I believe the colours in quire 13 do in fact show differences of water, blue for fresh, including lakes, rivers, runoff from mountains and originating in clouds, green for saltwater lakes and seas. I also do not see anything that points to it being sap, you would think if that were the case there would be an example attached to a plant drawing to signify this, yet there is only one plant in quire 13, and i think its use there is symbolic, not botanical, plus there is no sap nor water drawn in conjunction with that one either.


RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 23-01-2022

The idea that the green liquid painted in Quire 13 could be sap is from Mary d' Imperio and I find it very suggestive. Especially since it has the virtue of relating all parts of the codex and agrees with Panofsky's opinion that the Voynich is a book of herbs and stars.
Of course, the green color could also be water, which would not change Panofsky's interpretation too much, which is consistent with medieval thinking: It is the stars that provide herbs with everything they need.

I find it more difficult to interpret the blue color of Quire 13 only as water. We see blue used in the manuscript in relation to the sky, in the cosmological pages and in the Rosettes. Here in the different circles we only see the blue and yellow color of the stars. It clearly looks like an original representation of the medieval universe


RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 25-01-2022

All Voynich imagery is connected. In my opinion, if you know how to interpret the images iconographically, the solution to the mystery of this book will be closer.

Look at this image of the Pisces sign in f70v2:

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All the female figures are inside or coming out of that kind of cannon tubes

Why is it the first sign we see in the book? Because Pisces, the month of March, heralds spring and the herbs and flowers begin to sprout in the fields. We then see the signs of Aries and Taurus repeated because spring is in full splendor.

Look at this other image of Quire 13 in f78r:

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They are the same cannons tubes drawn on the Pisces page. It is as if the female figures, which are an allegory of the spirit of the stars, were thrown.
 
They are also the same cannon tubes that we see in the Rosettes, a representation of the celestial spheres.

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RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 30-01-2022

I live in Madrid, a city at latitude 40º N and an altitude of 700 meters above sea level. I hardly see flowers at this time of year in parks and meadows. We are under the sign of Aquarius and we have passed that of Capricorn, the coldest months of the year, January and February. These signs, Capricorn and Aquarius, are not in the Voynich, but it has its internal logic that they are not. It is not because someone ripped the sheet, but because in winter we hardly see flowers and in the Voynich most of the plants we see have flowers.
  
If the book as I believe was made in northern Italy, Austria, Switzerland or southern Germany, at a latitude of 45º to 50º North, the wild flowers seen in winter must be very few or non-existent if you are not at sea level. This is the reason why the zodiacal section begins with Pisces and the reason why Aries and Taurus are repeated: to underline that these are the months in which the plants begin to bloom, spring in those latitudes