28-09-2026, 11:15 PM
Hey everyone!
Apologies if this page has already been done to death. I just keep looking at the tubes pages and thinking about what they might mean.
I kept thinking about how odd the water is. In some pages, it's blue! In others, it's green.
I was thinking about how stoic some of the green water people looked, and started looking at other manuscripts.
Laufenberg's regimen of health has a depiction of what I think is Jesus' descent into hell, but please correct me if I'm wrong. My medieval German is, uh, not conversational.
Here is the image in question: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Now, I have yet to find a 15th century manuscript that depicts hell as green, but it got me thinking about similar concepts.
On f79v, on the top left, there is a woman with a cross under an umbrella shape. I cannot tell if the shape is meant to represent a basin of pure water, or the firmament.
![[Image: image.jpg?ref=f79v&q=f79v-255-64-423-357...&caption=1]](https://www.voynich.ninja/extractor/image.jpg?ref=f79v&q=f79v-255-64-423-357&w=423&h=357&resize=1&output=jpg&padding=0&border=0&paddingColor=white&borderColor=black&caption=1)
Notice how she is standing upright, holding a cross.
Below her is a woman lounging on her back, wearing some kind of head covering and some kind of wring, bracelet or shackle.
![[Image: image.jpg?ref=f79v&q=f79v-249-297-475-48...&caption=1]](https://www.voynich.ninja/extractor/image.jpg?ref=f79v&q=f79v-249-297-475-485&w=475&h=485&resize=1&output=jpg&padding=0&border=0&paddingColor=white&borderColor=black&caption=1)
She is being sprayed in the face by the water up above, which is a little funny.
Below her, the water comes out green.
![[Image: image.jpg?ref=f79v&q=f79v-249-720-297-50...&caption=1]](https://www.voynich.ninja/extractor/image.jpg?ref=f79v&q=f79v-249-720-297-504&w=297&h=504&resize=1&output=jpg&padding=0&border=0&paddingColor=white&borderColor=black&caption=1)
It's interesting to me that the water coming into this basin is green, but the water in the other pipes is still blue. The figure on this tier doesn't seem to be immersed in water at all!
From below this section, it looks like blue water comes out of one spout, but then the other tubes feeding into the funnel have green in them. Below that, you have the green water splashing down into the green pool that has the fish eating the woman (or mermaid, per other threads) and the various beasties.
![[Image: image.jpg?ref=f79v&q=f79v-254-953-409-89...&caption=1]](https://www.voynich.ninja/extractor/image.jpg?ref=f79v&q=f79v-254-953-409-890&w=409&h=890&resize=1&output=jpg&padding=0&border=0&paddingColor=white&borderColor=black&caption=1)
Water used as an allegorical substance wouldn't be out of the question in the medieval world. The bible has lots of references to ritual cleanliness, living waters, and the like. The exordium magnum cistercience refers to the cistercian order as a pure fountain. I do not have a facsimile of this document, but this paper on medieval water symbolism has a translated quote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
"""
Here begins the narrative of the beginning of the Cistercian Order, how our fathers left the monastery of Molesme in order to recover the purity of the Order according to the Rule of St Benedict and founded the fertile house of Cîteaux which is the mother of all our houses, since from her, as if from the purest fountain, the rivers of all the churches of our Order flow (Burton and Kerr, 2011: 21, italics in original).
"""
folio You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has more water imagery, this time seemingly only of clean water. Right near the top, we see a woman in a hair covering on top of either a cistern or possibly a smaller version of the figure on the previous page, which I took to be either a cistern or a representation of the firmament.
![[Image: image.jpg?ref=f80r&q=f80r-597-34-389-323...&caption=1]](https://www.voynich.ninja/extractor/image.jpg?ref=f80r&q=f80r-597-34-389-323&w=389&h=323&resize=1&output=jpg&padding=0&border=0&paddingColor=white&borderColor=black&caption=1)
At this point, I'm starting to go cross-eyed from zooming in on all these tubes and ponds to inspect the water color and the faces of the people within the water, so not sure if I'm getting tunnel vision on this one.
What do you all think?
Apologies if this page has already been done to death. I just keep looking at the tubes pages and thinking about what they might mean.
I kept thinking about how odd the water is. In some pages, it's blue! In others, it's green.
I was thinking about how stoic some of the green water people looked, and started looking at other manuscripts.
Laufenberg's regimen of health has a depiction of what I think is Jesus' descent into hell, but please correct me if I'm wrong. My medieval German is, uh, not conversational.
Here is the image in question: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Now, I have yet to find a 15th century manuscript that depicts hell as green, but it got me thinking about similar concepts.
On f79v, on the top left, there is a woman with a cross under an umbrella shape. I cannot tell if the shape is meant to represent a basin of pure water, or the firmament.
Notice how she is standing upright, holding a cross.
Below her is a woman lounging on her back, wearing some kind of head covering and some kind of wring, bracelet or shackle.
She is being sprayed in the face by the water up above, which is a little funny.
Below her, the water comes out green.
It's interesting to me that the water coming into this basin is green, but the water in the other pipes is still blue. The figure on this tier doesn't seem to be immersed in water at all!
From below this section, it looks like blue water comes out of one spout, but then the other tubes feeding into the funnel have green in them. Below that, you have the green water splashing down into the green pool that has the fish eating the woman (or mermaid, per other threads) and the various beasties.
Water used as an allegorical substance wouldn't be out of the question in the medieval world. The bible has lots of references to ritual cleanliness, living waters, and the like. The exordium magnum cistercience refers to the cistercian order as a pure fountain. I do not have a facsimile of this document, but this paper on medieval water symbolism has a translated quote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
"""
Here begins the narrative of the beginning of the Cistercian Order, how our fathers left the monastery of Molesme in order to recover the purity of the Order according to the Rule of St Benedict and founded the fertile house of Cîteaux which is the mother of all our houses, since from her, as if from the purest fountain, the rivers of all the churches of our Order flow (Burton and Kerr, 2011: 21, italics in original).
"""
folio You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has more water imagery, this time seemingly only of clean water. Right near the top, we see a woman in a hair covering on top of either a cistern or possibly a smaller version of the figure on the previous page, which I took to be either a cistern or a representation of the firmament.
At this point, I'm starting to go cross-eyed from zooming in on all these tubes and ponds to inspect the water color and the faces of the people within the water, so not sure if I'm getting tunnel vision on this one.
What do you all think?