Voynich's anatomy

[Linda]

First of all, Linda, thank you for your interest in the thread

Thank you for responding! 

1. You want to write different wording so you thwart the reading of it by fooling people into wasting time trying to decrypt to match the thing it looks like.

As I understand it, you mean to rewrite the same book but encrypt it so that a person would try to decipher it...
No one is stopping me from putting your encrypted text aside and reading the original version of the book, right?

No, i mean write something else, it could be on the same topic or completely different, i meant that the drawings could just resemble balnealogy on purpose to stop people from understanding. Perhaps if they want to understand they try to compare the texts of balnealogical texts with that of the vms, but they will be thwarted.

2. You want this as your Rosetta stone, so that someone can decrypt it, and then apply what they have learned to the rest of the book.

Why torture the reader?
If this is an unknown language, translate the text into a European language so that it can be read.
If this is a cipher, then such Rosetta Stones won’t help, as they don’t reveal anything about the encryption algorithm.

That I do not know, but it convinces me it is personal and not meant to be read by others. I do not think the Rosetta stone is the case here, I think it is the thwarted one. 

Which lake do you mean the brain turns into?

The lower lake on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is shaped like a brain. The armadillo might also represent the brain, or perhaps some other organ — I don’t know.

Ah I see now! For me the armadillo is an Ibex in the shape of the Alps, and that page discusses the other Alpine lakes and rivers. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is the Caspian and Aral Seas to me, and is the first page of the Asia & Africa section, but not the actual first page of the quire.

I think once the iconography is identified correctly, you can see through the fact that certain things might look like other things, and they won't look like that anymore, because you will see their meaning instead of what they resemble.

At present, we have unconvincing similarities between balneology and alchemical instruments or something similar (standard alchemical allegories cannot be traced. If you don’t understand what I mean, look at the Ripley scrolls), with anatomy, and with... balneology itself.

To me it is something different again, but I maintain that the alternate takes are from going by what it looks looks like, and not by meaning that is cleaned from noticing the commonalities in the iconography and determining what they stand for. I am working on a long description of these, I hope to post it soon, I think I started that post years and years ago!

The most mysterious book tells the story of naked women bathing in various lakes in Italy, right? Apparently, the author had nothing to do, so he decided to sketch his favorite plants, his favorite lakes, his favorite women, his favorite stars, his favorite city (Rosettes), and his favorite obscene songs, which he left until the very end of the manuscript. Why not?..
I believe that such a literal interpretation of the illustrations in VMS is mistaken and... for the most part, meaningless. Even if you prove to me that an Archimedes’ screw was indeed depicted there, you won’t be able to connect this illustration with the other illustrations.
Even the lakes...

Well, I think some are lakes, some are seas, some are salt lakes, some are bays, none are ever of the same type unless they are shown together, and then some which are shown together are still different. I do think Italian lakes are included but it is not about Italy per se. I think the Rosettes are similar, and encompass the same area, which is to say the ecumene that is found in most ancient mappa mundi. 

I don't think there is an Archemedian screw. I think that drawing on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that you see as a stomach is a shoreline and shows the convoluted sailing route to go between Lesbos and the Turkish shore. The bathtub would be the bay in which Izmir (aka Smyrna) is located, because it is in a bay that extends past the bay that would be considered part of the stomach, or sailing route, in this case. 



Can you see that the semicircle motifs can be analogous to the three promontories on the shore? That the bathtub can be the Izmir bay, and the drain section could be the little bay that is separated from the Izmir bay by another promontory? The siltiness makes sense there too, there are lots of beaches. The nymph is just there to show all of it is the same water. There is a little bit of mountain motif behind the nymph, there are over 130 named mountains in the Izmir area, so this works too. In 1415 and again in 1426 the Ottomans took this area, (It had previously been considered Greek) so this could be recent news from the perspective of the artist. The rest of the page is also regarding places bordering on the Aegean Sea. It is not perfect, but they did not have satellite images to go by either, plus they put their own ambiguity to it, which has been very successful, it seems. But I think this is what is portrayed not only because of a direct comparison, but because i see the whole thing as a periplus, and no area is left out. So I find that somewhat convincing, myself. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. continues the periplus by showing the Sea of Marmora, and highlights Constantinople, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. makes it a centrefold. 

In my interpretation there is one, marked by the short yellow tube on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Someone interpreted You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as two sulfur sources. But I don’t remember who or where. In any case, that’s exactly who I had in mind.

Oh, f84v, I don't know where the sulphur springs are supposed to be, but in my interpretation they are two volcanic lakes in Italy, so that could also be possible, they were formed by the collapse of the magma chambers below them. The northern one is the largest volcanic lake in Europe. If you kept following the stream downward, (although it is not a real river or stream, it just connects similar waters, so just follow the direction between the actual lakes, which is more of a 45 degree angle) you might arrive in Rome, about 32km to the SW. The previous page is the Tyrrhennian and Adriatic seas along with another lake of a different origin, which is central on the peninsula and northeast of these two. They are all the largest lakes on the Italian peninsula.

but is the largest in the region, which also happens to be the region that some people think might be the origin of the vms, given the swallowtail merlons, etc., in fact one of the castles on the Swallowtail map is right there, near the sulfur spring. 

This is actually an interesting coincidence. But you can find many similar lakes under the shape of a curved oval from VMS. 
Or maybe it’s just a puddle after the rain?  

Well, I don't think there are too many lakes shaped like this, especially at this size. Notice that if you flip the yellow thing into the water, that peninsula there is where the sulphur springs and castle are, and if you tip over the vms version to match the tilt in the photo, that it puts the area in a more comparative setting.



I suppose it could be possible it's a puddle, but in this case the line at the top of f80r, I see as a shoreline, with analogous items on it that match the upper western Mediterranean shore, and in reality this lake is on that line if you extend the line into the land, although at a much smaller scale, and in a different orientation, but if you turn a map so that the shoreline is straight like that from about Cartegena to Pisa, you will see that Lake Garda would be about central on top of the Italian peninsula. That is why I think the page that follows You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. with the seas and central lake, so that those two pages work together to show both the Alpine regions and the peninsula and surrounding seas altogether. This is followed by Adriatic sea's far shore (note that in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. it has been stripped of imagery on that side), and the Danube watershed on the other side of the mountains from there, seen at the same time as the Aegean shores below that. The Black Sea and Sea of Azov ends up getting you to the Baltic and Atlantic to get back to where it started in Portugal, or alternatively getting you to the Caspian, then to Armenia, the fertile crescent, Persian Gulf in Iran, Indus river in Pakistan, Gujurat in India, Gulf of Aden, Red Sea, and the Nile.

Would you believe that?

I hold this position on VMS — I don’t believe in anything and I don’t declare anything to be true. I may find something convincing, but that doesn’t make it true. The anatomical interpretation is good because it applies to the entire section and allows for many parallels to be drawn.
So my answer is both yes and no.

Of course, we still don't know, i appreciate that you have an open mind. But I hope to show soon that there are lots of coincidences that make me feel like I am on the right track. For example, on F76v, why do you think the green water is drawn at an angle? Sloppiness? Because when I align the river motif at the top of the drawing with the actual river that i think it portrays, the analogous water body is situated at the same angle. That has to be more than coincidence, doesn't it? It certainly leaves me with a case of confirmation bias that is going to be difficult to overcome in order to believe we are talking about nothing but stomachs and brains. In any case, we probably won't know anything until we figure out the text. 

Thanks for asking about alternative theories and taking the time to discuss my identifications with an open mind, i appreciate the opportunity to explore the differing ideas. Until more concrete theories develop, i guess that is all we can do, to discuss and explore the various ideas. I still keep the anatomical line open, mostly because so many other people seem to believe in it quite strongly. But i see it as more of a congruent possibility, moreso because Ellie Velinska's identifications had worked out from foot to head when I put them in my page ordering, which i thought was also very coincidental. But now there are far more different body parts and alternative identifications of differing drawings being the same body parts, so it is getting more murky and difficult to reconcile the anatomical theories, for me anyway.