Do Split Gallows have rules?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

When asking if they're more than decoration, I have to ask myself this: Is there currently any substantive proof that anything in the Voynich isn't just decoration?

Even if you don't believe the SPS=SBJ claim, the word structure and other text statistics are too complicated and consistent throughout the manuscript to be just decoration.

As for the figures, I believe that many of the details (including all the nymphs, the stars in Zodiac and Recipes, and the jars in Pharma) are just decoration.  But other details, like the "organs" in Bio and the plant sketches in Pharma do not look like decoration.  

The problem is telling the two apart.  For instance, the four human figures in the "stages of life" figure f85r2 were apparently copied from a German almanac, but the Artist misunderstood them.  So how could that figure have come about?

Maybe the Author intend to the diagram to depict the four seasons or stages of life with those specific metaphors from that German almanac, and thus gave the almanac to the Artist to copy it from.

Maybe the Author intended the diagram to represent the four seasons or stages of life, but had no specific metaphors for them.  He looked through his books, found that almanac with illustrations for the four seasons or stages of life, and thus told the Artist to use those images.  Maybe he specified with image should go in each slot, or maybe he did not understand or care about the metaphors and so let the Artist choose the slots.  (Then those figures would be "semi-decorative".)

Or maybe the Author intended the diagram to represent the four elements/humors/cardinal directions/whatever, and just told the artist to draw four human figures in the quadrants, purely for decoration. And the Artist looked through the Author's books, found a diagram with four human figures, and copied them.

All the best, --stolfi