No text, but a visual code

[HermesRevived]

This manuscript is interesting because you can see the symbols of the planets and the symbols of the zodiac on the same page.

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It can be seen how the symbol of the moon with the horns to the right was already standardized.

This codex is from the second half of the 15th century and therefore we see the zodiacal symbols. It is interesting to know that they did not exist before. At least I haven't seen them. In the years that the Voynich was made they did not exist and that is why we see the drawings and names of the zodiacal signs but not the symbols.

Zodiac symbols were most likely born with the printing press due to the need to reduce work.

All of the astrological symbols were known previously, but they settled into the existing system in the Renaissance. But why? Surely, there is a greater need for symbols, shorthand and abbreviations in handwritten manuscripts on vellum, which are more laborious and expensive to produce than printed texts on paper? Why does the printing press create the need for the symbols? No doubt, it helps standardize them, though. We might speculate that the Voynich is from the phase, prior to the printing press, when there was already a search for a convenient astrological notation. The stimulus is likely to be the increase in astrological information from old and new and exotic sources and from better instrumentation. It is notable that none of the symbols that became standard are prefigured in the Voynich.