Rosettes as a ... magic altar

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Just yesterday I found a nice match of a magical altar and Rosettes It comes from The Key of Solomon: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. It's 19th century printed edition but the imagery is probably much older

Well, at least it is looking at that fold-out from a different angle! 

Seriously, I find that a mildly interesting idea.  Wikipedia says that the concept is old enough.  The Angels once instructed John Dee (through Kelley) to build a divination table that, from memory, looked generically like that - square, with incised geometric lines, Hebrew characters, those "spectacled" magical characters from the alleged Enochian language, etc.

The circles in the altar are signed "Censer". ... a vessel used to generate smoke during religious or magical ceremonies ...  Actually I don't think the Voynich Manuscript owner really used censers with Rosettes. The parchment would get instantly dirty from the smoke and you couldn't clean it. But he could be inspired by such or similar design.

The eight peripheral Rosettes definitely do not look like drawings of censers, and they do not look like marks showing places where to place censers during a magical ritual.  Although they seem to be of roughly of the right size (~10-12 cm diameter) to hold small Catholic censers.

But the six central "onion-roof towers" nonono "cosmic drug jars" in the central Rosette could perhaps be the Scribe's attempt to draw a circle of censers...

As for the dirtying concert, it does not apply.  Incense smoke is white an thin, and would have risen on its own, like cigarette smoke from an ashtray.  It would not have left any "dirty" residue.

All the best, --stolfi