Cribs in the Voynich MS

[MarcoP]

If I had to pick the best candidate for a crib in the VMS, it would be the label doary next to the cluster of seven stars on f68r3, which just screams Pleiades (also known as the Seven Sisters) to me.

Also, I've seen a theory that proposes this diagram depicts a solar eclipse that happened in the 1400s, and that the curved line represents "the dragon/serpent of the eclipse", based on a painting from an old Indian temple. In case it's correct, the label oalcheol under the line could be a crib for the dragon.

We don't really need to go to India to see a dragon messing with seven stars: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

When I posted the Indian painting You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in 2017, I listed these points as possibly interesting parallels:

• the diagram is divided into regular radial sectors;
  
• the division in four equal quarters is particularly evident;
  
• the Moon appears at the center of the diagram;
  
• an S-shaped curved line appears in the top-left quadrant;
  
• the curved line reaches the moon at the center of the diagram;
  
• the other extremity of the line, towards the outer circumference, is linked with several celestial objects (in the case of the Madurai painting, the exact number is uncertain, but they could be seven in both illustrations).
  

In my post, I also added a longer list of significant differences between the two diagrams.

This parallel really contradicts the idea that the seven stars are the Pleiades; it could possibly rather suggests that they are the seven planets or maybe Ursa Major. Anyway, I still believe that the interesting side of this diagram is not so much "a dragon with seven stars", but the position of the snake inside a circular astronomical diagram divided into four equal sectors.

   

Currently, I think that series of potential cribs that include a number of labels in a fixed order are potentially much more useful. The best ones possibly are those mentioned by Rene at the start of this thread: the mansions of the moon in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and (even better in my opinion) the names of the zodiac signs in f67r2. The seven planets in f67r2 are also good candidates, but here the order is not fixed. In the past years, I spent quite some time trying to match the supposed zodiac signs to lists of zodiac names in various languages, but this of course did not lead anywhere. This task is particularly manageable, since you only have 12 possible positions, two directions (clockwise, counterclockwise) and a limited number of language families (since the name of the signs in Latin or Slavic languages etc. tend to be similar). Considering 10 language families, there only are 12*2*10=240 combinations.