+- The Voynich Ninja (https://www.voynich.ninja)
+-- Forum: Voynich Research (https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-27.html)
+--- Forum: Analysis of the text (https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-41.html)
+--- Thread: No text, but a visual code (/thread-2384.html)
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 08-09-2022
If I am not mistaken, I believe that attention has never been paid to how cosmological diagrams represent the movement of the celestial spheres. Looks great on f68v1, f68v2 and f68v3:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
On the first folio, on the right, the movement is represented by a drawing that resembles the blades of a hydraulic mill. The blades are alternately painted blue to represent day and stars for night. The moon is drawn on the sun, whose rays protrude from the lunar head.
In the central folio the four blades full of stars look like those of a windmill of the time. And finally, on the left folio, in the center of which is a T-O map, we see eight spiral arms that produce the illusion of movement.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 11-09-2022
Something that never ceases to amaze me is the number of Voynich solution proposals that only deal with the script. The codex is a set of illustrations with supposed text, not just a book with a weird script. I maintain that the script is just an astronomical code, but as part of a global interpretation that includes the images. Everything within the culture of the moment in which the book was made.
I understand that there is skepticism with my solution, but at least no one will deny me that I try to give a total and coherent solution to the entire codex, not just a part of it
RE: No text, but a visual code - Hermes777 - 11-09-2022
(11-09-2022, 09:56 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Something that never ceases to amaze me is the number of Voynich solution proposals that only deal with the script. The codex is a set of illustrations with supposed text, not just a book with a weird script. I maintain that the script is just an astronomical code, but as part of a global interpretation that includes the images. Everything within the culture of the moment in which the book was made.
I understand that there is skepticism with my solution, but at least no one will deny me that I try to give a total and coherent solution to the entire codex, not just a part of it
Agreed. A comprehensive solution must account for the text and the illustrations. And I personally agree with you that the two are inextricably connected, but among many researchers it is not a settled matter.
In the extreme case, there are those who think the illustrations are merely decoys that have nothing to do with the text and script. Others, as you say, proceed to study the text as though it has no necessary connection with the illustrations. Your proposal, Antonio, has the virtue of being coherent and unified and doesn't require any disconnect between word and image. That's what attracts me about your proposal and approach. After all, these strange drawings and the strange script are both in the same work.
I'm inclined to think the script and language were crafted specifically for this work and to go with these illustrations. I detect a global design, a single project.
But what is the exact relationship between the text (script) and illustrations?
In the very centre of 67v do we see one of the herb illustrations making the shape of a Voynich script glyph [l]?
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 15-09-2022
I am more and more convinced that the Voynich is a science book. But a medieval science book, which is something different from what we understand by science. Medieval science is something very close to natural magic, to the occult powers of nature.
The magicians created some indecipherable characters whose mission was to communicate with those powers. For the ecclesiastical authorities, those characters were the mark of the devil. The science of that time, so close to magic, also created strange characters but with a rational basis, mathematical if you will.
It is not easy to explain but I sense that behind the VM script there is an astronomical system that wants to be a rational explanation of how herbs acquire their medicinal virtues. The characters or glyphs that make up this code are not diabolical, but have a rational basis in the movements of celestial objects.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Hermes777 - 15-09-2022
(15-09-2022, 04:09 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am more and more convinced that the Voynich is a science book. But a medieval science book, which is something different from what we understand by science. Medieval science is something very close to natural magic, to the occult powers of nature.
The magicians created some indecipherable characters whose mission was to communicate with those powers. For the ecclesiastical authorities, those characters were the mark of the devil. The science of that time, so close to magic, also created strange characters but with a rational basis, mathematical if you will.
It is not easy to explain but I sense that behind the VM script there is an astronomical system that wants to be a rational explanation of how herbs acquire their medicinal virtues. The characters or glyphs that make up this code are not diabolical, but have a rational basis in the movements of celestial objects.
Both "science" and "magic" and the habit of posing them as antithetical are modern, or more exactly post-Enlightenment, categories, whereas our manuscript is undoubtedly premodern and is a work of traditional cosmology. The defining characteristic of traditional cosmologies is that they are sensitive to the ratios rather than quantities of nature - they are harmonic rather than arithmetic - and map parallelisms across hierarchical orders of ontology.
Any modern education will train us not to do that, from an early age. So it is a difficult mode of thinking to acquire or simulate for us. Premodern mental habits will note and make much of the fact an orange looks like the setting sun, whereas we are trained not to notice it or to say "so what?"
For this reason we find it very difficult to get into the mind of the author of the Voynich Ms. and it is also difficult to explain what is going on in the work because it is outside of our framework. (By nature we are the same creatures as medieval man, but certainly not by nurture.)
For practical purposes, what that means is that the Voynich cosmology will operate by "correspondences" (parallelisms) whereby, for instance, certain herbs and flowers "correspond" (are parallel to) certain stars. The quest is to establish what corresponds with what? Typically, though, there are longer series of parallels, so it gets complex. It is clear that in its circles and charts the Voynich MS. is setting out a system of correspondences between different orders of nature.
The level of correspondence that is usually overlooked is the meteorological. We see it in the Voynich. It has completely dropped out of Western astrology, but we find it in other traditions such as Tibetan astrology (where there are celestial winds and so forth.)
As far as the text is concerned, it seems to be a systematic lexicon (procedural generation) organised into sets (lines, paragraphs, pages) according to topic, without syntax - and the sets may not be much more than lists of formulae. I suggest that as well as astrological the formulae (vords) can also be elemental, i.e. they are not always celestial coordinates as you describe them.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 16-09-2022
I see Hermes777 that you have a good knowledge of medieval culture. Indeed, the difficulty of solving the Voynich is that it requires a deep knowledge of the medieval mentality.
Naturally, 15th-century man knew that herbs needed water and good soil to grow, but the reason some herbs had medicinal virtues is a magical process that has to do with celestial influence. What medieval science does is imitate magic to explain that mystery, but it is a rational imitation that mathematizes nature. You speak of the harmony of the cosmologies of the time; yes, they are geometric. Astrology establishes geometric relationships between celestial objects to make its predictions.
What I believe is very simple: The VM script is an astronomical-astrological system that establishes relationships between the sun, the moon and the stars to explain the celestial influence on herbs. And I don't think there is anything else. Just a structure that mimics language to give the appearance of text.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Ruby Novacna - 16-09-2022
(16-09-2022, 03:27 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The VM script is an astronomical-astrological system that establishes relationships between the sun, the moon and the stars to explain the celestial influence on herbsIn this case, shouldn't our "text" have the same structure of the " botanical " pages, like the same number of lines and the same terms in the same order?
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 17-09-2022
If there was an order in the script it would have been discovered long ago. There are only some rules, but there is no order in the succession of words or groups of glyphs. This may be because each herb has its own astronomical configuration, as seems to be deduced from the last section of the book, where each paragraph is marked by a star.
The impression you get from looking at the script is that you can delete groups of glyphs and even entire lines and it won't change a thing. I think it is because they are chains of astronomical symbols that do nothing more than move in a circle to reproduce celestial movements. But you can cut the chain where you want or add more glyphs if you want.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Hermes777 - 17-09-2022
(17-09-2022, 08:48 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If there was an order in the script it would have been discovered long ago. There are only some rules, but there is no order in the succession of words or groups of glyphs. This may be because each herb has its own astronomical configuration, as seems to be deduced from the last section of the book, where each paragraph is marked by a star.
The impression you get from looking at the script is that you can delete groups of glyphs and even entire lines and it won't change a thing. I think it is because they are chains of astronomical symbols that do nothing more than move in a circle to reproduce celestial movements. But you can cut the chain where you want or add more glyphs if you want.
The mystery of it is that the words (vords) are highly structured and formed under tight restraints (rules) but there is little or no syntax at the higher level. The vords are tight like algebraic formulae and are gathered into lines, paragraphs and pages which have little internal grammar: rather they just seem to be lists of such formulae. That is, we have unstructured lists of highly structured units (vords). And yet the distribution of vords is not random: there is some system. The organising principle seems to be internal to the vords; certain glyphs and syllables adhere across word spaces or belong to certain environments. All of this is very unlike natural languages.
But if vords are just formulae (of coordinates or whatever) then why are they not arranged systematically, say in columns and rows, charts, tables? Instead, they are arranged to look like words in a running text as if a natural language. Why? And how is one to read these lists of formulae? And what of labels?
It is easy to make a case that vords constitute an artificial, systematic lexicon made by some means of procedural generation (volvelles, grille etc?) but it is much harder to explain how they are deployed, grouped, distributed and arranged. Ok, vords are astrological coordinates. But how do they work? How does one use these coordinates? There are no ready answers to this, and very few plausible explanations, but that is really the challenge. We can explain vords, perhaps, but not the higher levels of the text.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 19-09-2022
I agree with your analysis. I don't know how what I think is an astronomical coordinate system works. I do have a hypothesis as to why the script is structured as a running text.
The reason may be to pretend to be a language of knowledge, such as Greek, Arabic or Hebrew at the time. At the beginning of the fifteenth century the Greek language was beginning to be recovered by the educated people of the West. I guess very few college students could read Greek, much less Arabic or Hebrew. In astronomical-astrological matters, these languages were the predominant ones.
I think that in the VM there is that intention to create something similar to a language of wisdom.