The Seasons of Life on f85r2

[Hasnain Raza Rajpar al-Sindi]

I watched the recently posted "Voynich Talk" YouTube video .. about the Seasons of Life on f85r2

That video presented some manuscripts that did indeed look like they could be "precedents" for the f85r2 illustration -- or, more likely, "cousins" of the book that the VMS Scribe used as "inspiration" for that figure.

But I remember that someone posted on this forum at least one printed German book that also had a very similar series of 4 drawings associated to the four Seasons, possibly too as a metaphor for the four main stages of life.  So this metaphor seems to have been a common "meme" in that general area, known and reproduced over several centuries.

In the "old lady" figure of that printed book, she was standing next to a lighted fireplace, and the "rosary" looked more like a light iron chain.  I though that it could be a chain that would be used to tie and drag a bundle of dry branches for firewood.  

And I thought that the "staff" looked like a light hatchet with a long handle, as a woman might use for that purpose.  

In several of the illustrations from other manuscripts the woman is holding the "staff" by the vertical part, not by the supposed "handle"; and she is not leaning on it.

The metaphor would then be that in the "autumn of life" one must gather and save resources for the coming winter.  

I think that this interpretation of the "rosary" actually makes more sense.  Why would a rosary be associated with the autumn of life, specifically? 

All the best, --stolfi

I don't have much insights about the European aspects of the rosary.

However, in Islamicate culture, the circulation of the beads of the rosary represents the turning of life and time.

For example, the Muslim Indian poet, Bedil Dehlvi says in one of his Persian poems:

Ṣuḥbat-i dil bā nafs maʿkūs būd
Subḥa injā rišta-gardānīd-o bas.

The heart’s converse with the self was turned upside down;
Here, the rosary did nothing but turn its thread.

Commentators have traditionally thought he means to compare the world and succession of moments in existence to beads circulating around the thread of time.

Just a hunch.