Centre of stars

[davidjackson]

In a moment of madness I started double checking the numbers mentioned in this poll: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Of course, all the numbers seemed correct.
However, a number of these stars appears to have a washed out circle in the middle, so I'd like to discuss that, as well as the fact that many of the unpainted ones also have a dot off-centre.

An example of the washed out circles in the centres (f103r) - see it? I don't remember any discussion being made of this before


There's also the fact that a number of stars have dots in the centre of them (f103r again)


Any thoughts on why this might be? Is it a failed ink that has faded over time?

[ReneZ]

David,

this is a faded yellow pigment. I mentioned elsewhere that Abigail Quandt, who was instrumental in identifying the so-called "Archaic Mark" as a modern fake, has also looked closely at the Voynich MS.

She provided this explanation, and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

[davidjackson]

Oh right! I remembered the pigment, but thought it referred to something else. Thanks for clearing that up.
Now we just need to decide whether the occasional dots in the clear circles reference something.

[VViews]

Hi davidjackson,
As I realized when I was counting the red/not red stars, the fully red stars are only present on very few pages, namely:
103r, 104r & 108r.
The question of star colors (and other things such as star tails and folio order) is discussed at ciphermysteries in a really interesting You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. from 2010.
That still doesn't tell us what it all means, but I find his suggestion that some of these stars, particularly those on f103r&v, might be later additions, very interesting.
I also like the idea that the top star on 105v, which is part of an elaborate gallows shape, would be the true beginning of this quire.

[Anton]

I wonder whether he began with full colouring the red stars, but then moved to just colouring the centres for brevity. In that case, this might mean that 108r should be moved forward into the place of the third bifolio in the quire, instead of f105r. This would also mean that he produced upper left sides of all bifolios in succession: 103r, 104r, 108r, and so on (see Rene's chart here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ). Which probably makes sense: you take a bifolio, write a page, let it dry and work upon the next bifolio in the while.

One can argue that ochre is applied as blots from the very beginning (no full-coloured ochre stars, are there?). But that might be attributed to various properties of red and ochre. Red may be something which is easy to paint the whole star with (such as ink), while ochre - something which presents problems (watercolour, don't know).

[-JKP-]

The differences in stars are also reflected in the star maps, but the dots in the center MIGHT be purely practical. If you are planning to add in a number of stars in certain places, it's much easier to get them positioned correctly if you create the dots first and then go back through them and add the outlines, the paint, etc.


MAYBE the dots refer to a different kind of star (e.g., brightness, movable, fixed, etc., but they might something else like perhaps a level of importance for items other than stars), but maybe the dots are just for positioning them.

[Koen G]

In any other manuscript we would see these stars as mere decorations or the doodling of a bored scribe. Is there enough reason to assume that they aren't?

[VViews]

Koen Gh,
"In any other manuscript..."
In which type of manuscript do we find such illustrations?
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In the medical texts of Arderne the tailed and untailed stars (some with dots) are not purely decorative or doodling. They refer to something in the text.
In Hunter MS 135, as pointed out by MarcoP in his comment to my blogpost, they are referenced in the text by the expression “signum depingitur” (a figure is painted). They usually illustrate a flower or a medical condition (fistula) mentioned in the medical text.

However, these are not systematic like those in Q20. What can be systematic is the tails (see Hunter MS 185 in my blogpost), which act as a marker for each remedy.
Going back to Nick Pelling's post, he also argues that the stars could act as an "item" marker.