10-07-2021, 09:59 PM
Searcher and Koen (and almost everyone else), I do think you are onto something, and that your interpretations and my own, for that matter, are not incompatible at all. The most likely candidate for author of the VMS, after all, given other writings of the period, is a Christian Hermetist. I was convinced of the hermetic piece, and Koen has persuaded me of the Christian. So I've done a little more research.
One point that R.Sale brought up: I think most of us incline to the idea the author is being intentionally cryptic in both text and image. I certainly believe it. But I do wonder if the apophatic tradition is not also at play here as part of its intentional mystery. (Thinking about the empty mandorla, the empty path, absence of identifiable religious figures).
I mean, apophatic imagery is almost an oxymoron, but it's possible an attempt might account for some of the choices the author has made. ( And I don't know about you, but I have from the beginning considered the text's absences one of its more intriguing aspects. Empty spaces in the text, for instance, or the almost total absence of five-pointed stars, or hard geometrical shapes, or men for that matter. If I totted just these examples up, I'd say we might be looking for a male magician of the Pythagoran school! And maybe we are, who knows, but where does that get us?)
As I said, I had noticed these, and other, absences - I think I made a list somewhere - but if there was a tradition of this kind of writing back then, I didn't know of it.
But since reading Koen's blog, and reading a bit on my own, I think there is an interesting possibility here that the, very possibly Christian, author is consciously using ideas from the apophatic tradition of inferred presence from absence. You are much more experienced Voynich researchers than me, has this been raised as a possibility, and regardless, do you think something like this might be at root here?
One point that R.Sale brought up: I think most of us incline to the idea the author is being intentionally cryptic in both text and image. I certainly believe it. But I do wonder if the apophatic tradition is not also at play here as part of its intentional mystery. (Thinking about the empty mandorla, the empty path, absence of identifiable religious figures).
I mean, apophatic imagery is almost an oxymoron, but it's possible an attempt might account for some of the choices the author has made. ( And I don't know about you, but I have from the beginning considered the text's absences one of its more intriguing aspects. Empty spaces in the text, for instance, or the almost total absence of five-pointed stars, or hard geometrical shapes, or men for that matter. If I totted just these examples up, I'd say we might be looking for a male magician of the Pythagoran school! And maybe we are, who knows, but where does that get us?)
As I said, I had noticed these, and other, absences - I think I made a list somewhere - but if there was a tradition of this kind of writing back then, I didn't know of it.
But since reading Koen's blog, and reading a bit on my own, I think there is an interesting possibility here that the, very possibly Christian, author is consciously using ideas from the apophatic tradition of inferred presence from absence. You are much more experienced Voynich researchers than me, has this been raised as a possibility, and regardless, do you think something like this might be at root here?
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