Princeton University quoting JKP

[-JKP-]

who says they are lobsters?

not saying they are krill, but just for instance...

It's obvious Linda those two little lobsters are in the voynich for the Cancer Astrology section!

Stellar, do you know what a crayfish is (and how many different species there are)? Crayfish also turn red when they are cooked. And by the way, most of the time when I talk about this image, I call it crayfish/lobster (you can look back on the forum and see that I usually mention both) because the drawing is not accurate enough to know which one it is, but if you notice the two "cee" shapes on the back (the cervical groove)—this feature is usually more distinct on crayfish than on lobsters.

Something I have noticed is that MOST of the zodiacs from the south, especially around the Mediterranean (and some from the coasts of France and England) depict Cancer as a crab, and a large percentage of zodiacs from inland and mountain areas depict Pisces as a crayfish. Since crabs are saltwater and crayfish are freshwater, this is not surprising. The illustrators that live near salt water may be choosing a crab over a lobster because they are familiar with both and the name of the Constellation is "Cancre/Cancer/Krebs/Crab".

Out of 442 zodiac cycles, 250 used crayfish/lobsters rather than crabs and those depicted in landscapes (like many of the French zodiacs), often were drawn in rivers (which are fresh water, and thus crayfish).



I do not know whether the VMS illustrator drew the crayfish from exemplars or from life but I guessed that it may be drawn from memory (of a picture or of a real crayfish) due to the unconventional placing of the legs. If you were copying directly, it's unlikely you would make this mistake. If it's not deliberate, then it is either a sign of something a little skewed in the illustrator's perception (or in the illustrator's understanding of anatomy), or... it's a deliberate anomaly. If it's deliberate, it's pretty cryptic. I can't think of a single thing it might signify to shift the legs in such an unusual way.

And it doesn't matter whether it's lobster or crayfish, the diagram is not detailed enough to distinguish the difference, either way it is anatomically incorrect—the VMS legs are coming out of the tail rather than the mid-body and even though I searched diligently for examples of it being drawn this way, and collected 250 of the crayfish variety, mostly from zodiac wheels, I have never found another crayfish or lobster drawn with the legs coming out of the tail.


I haven't been able to find any other reasonably competent drawings of crayfish/lobsters with legs coming out of the tail, even after a pretty diligent search. Unless someone else comes across one, the VMS appears to be unique in this way.