Rosettes as a ... magic altar

[Rafal]

And I would like to add one observation.

The Voynich artist seems to use a lot of references for his art. He copies and mixes stuff from books about:

- herbals
- bathing (De Balneis)
- bestiaries (Buch der Natur)
- machines and architecture (Taccola)
- possibly religious books

But if he wanted to make a book about fortune telling and contacting spirits he possibly  lacked one crucial referrence.
He lacked what he really needed - a book about fortune telling and contacting spirits

If he was some student or low level monk then he couldn't find such a book in the university or monastery library. It was a suspicious stuff and any respectable library wouldn't hold it. They would be rather eager to burn it.

So he needed to rely on other books and some verbal hints from the charlatan who had seen such things at other charlatans but wasn't able to borrow such a manuscript for a while.

It may expain to some part why the imagery isn't obviously related to fortune telling and spirits. The artist possibly was asked to draw something that he had never seen. Imagine that someone asks you to draw illustrations to the book about the life of Buddha and all you have seen are illustrations about the life of Jesus. What would you draw? Would the viewers identify the person from your illustrations as Buddha or rather as Jesus if they couldn't read the text?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Just yesterday I found a nice match of a magical altar and Rosettes It comes from The Key of Solomon: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. It's 19th century printed edition but the imagery is probably much older

Well, at least it is looking at that fold-out from a different angle! 

Seriously, I find that a mildly interesting idea.  Wikipedia says that the concept is old enough.  The Angels once instructed John Dee (through Kelley) to build a divination table that, from memory, looked generically like that - square, with incised geometric lines, Hebrew characters, those "spectacled" magical characters from the alleged Enochian language, etc.

The circles in the altar are signed "Censer". ... a vessel used to generate smoke during religious or magical ceremonies ...  Actually I don't think the Voynich Manuscript owner really used censers with Rosettes. The parchment would get instantly dirty from the smoke and you couldn't clean it. But he could be inspired by such or similar design.

The eight peripheral Rosettes definitely do not look like drawings of censers, and they do not look like marks showing places where to place censers during a magical ritual.  Although they seem to be of roughly of the right size (~10-12 cm diameter) to hold small Catholic censers.

But the six central "onion-roof towers" nonono "cosmic drug jars" in the central Rosette could perhaps be the Scribe's attempt to draw a circle of censers...

As for the dirtying concert, it does not apply.  Incense smoke is white an thin, and would have risen on its own, like cigarette smoke from an ashtray.  It would not have left any "dirty" residue.

All the best, --stolfi

[Rafal]

But the six central "onion-roof towers" nonono "cosmic drug jars" in the central Rosette could perhaps be the Scribe's attempt to draw a circle of censers...

I haven't thought about it but it is a nice idea which could be followed.

The Rosettes have a lot of these "bubbles". I guess most people would agree that they are clouds. I attach a picture from nearby page with rain falling from the clouds:
   

These clouds could surround heavenly Jerusalem but could be also the smoke from the censers.
And if you think that they are not censers but apothecary jars then clouds are hard to explain.

Notice also how central rosette is connected to other rosettes. There is some flow from it to the other rosettes, not the other way around. I marked it with an arrow.

Maybe it's the smoke from the censers going to other rosettes and maybe it's some magic energy???

[DG97EEB]

Is that a person hugging the stream with something coming out of his fingers? How have I never noticed that?

[Rafal]

Yes, there are some quite hidden guys, possibly wind/weather gods or something like that.

[Dana Scott]

Or perhaps its a reproduction referral to male fertilization/pollination?

Regards,
Dana Scott

[Linda]

Is that a person hugging the stream with something coming out of his fingers? How have I never noticed that?

Hmm, a stream? I think of it as a mountain spire, made of compacted sediments. What is coming out of his fingers is more sediment. Dust unto dust? Dust unto mountain unto dust...

[cencei]

Just a thought on the production process of the large foldout map: As far as I know, (at least) the nine circles were outlined/sketched with an actual compass (the drawing tool, not the navigation tool). So... at some very early point in the process of drawing the page, it would have very much resembled one of those Key-Of-Solomon diagrams.

So... It's not impossible that maybe the VMS authors re-used someone's shabby old magic parchment altar, but instead of erasing the previous owners' drawings, they chose to just hide them in plain sight?

[Linda]

The Rosettes have a lot of these "bubbles". I guess most people would agree that they are clouds. I attach a picture from nearby page with rain falling from the clouds:

Notice also how central rosette is connected to other rosettes. There is some flow from it to the other rosettes, not the other way around. I marked it with an arrow.

Maybe it's the smoke from the censers going to other rosettes and maybe it's some magic energy???

Interesting. I don't see them as clouds, I always thought of them as rockpiles, or mountains. What comes from them towards the outer rosettes could still signify smoke, in that I see it possibly being related to some kind of volcanic transfer, but beneficial lying insofar as fertilizing of plants, for instance, and mostly because of some of the other motifs in the spray lines matching similar usage in quire 13, where i also get the feeling there are volcanoes involved due to the further iconography there (f78r, with what seems to be hot springs, the design around the tub is similar to the lines going to the blue rosette with the fishtail design, and also incorporated into the rosette below that).