No text, but a visual code

[Antonio García Jiménez]

In 2011, the husband-and-wife team of Lincoln Taiz and Sandra Lee—renowned plant biology researchers—published an article in a specialized American journal in which they interpreted the images from Quire 13 of the Voynich manuscript as a plant physiological process. It was the first time an alternative interpretation had emerged for this mysterious section of the Voynich.

  This interpretation has the merit of linking the section of female figures with the herbal. For these authors, the naked women could represent the soul of the plant, and the green color, the sap flowing through the plant's vessels.

  My interpretation differs in that I believe the female figures are the personification of astral influence; as for the color green—while I do not rule out the possibility that it represents water—I am increasingly inclined to view it as the vital force of the cosmos that gives the plant world its color.

   Hildegard of Bingen called viriditas to the force of nature, the sap flowing in plants, the regreening power of the cosmos, and ultimately of God. Setting aside theological aspects, an author like Albertus Magnus—steeped in Aristotelian philosophy—maintained that for a seed to awaken and produce green leaves, it needs to be animated by heat, light, and the movement of the celestial spheres.