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Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
- Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
-
Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
Aurara84 > 20-05-2018, 01:48 AM
Disclaimer: I’m a relative newcomer and certainly haven’t discovered every theory out there regarding the VM’s imagery so if I’m just going over old ground or stating the obvious, I apologise (and please point me in the direction of a proper analysis of this theory!). I wanted to share my thoughts with you here as I haven’t come across this explanation anywhere yet, even though it jumped out to me when I looked over the manuscript as a whole. I’m a visual artist and so, while my theories may not be particularly scientific, I know imagery!
I believe the bathing women could be a symbolic way of illustrating the biological functions and anatomy of plants. The big green "baths" could be leaves, the tubes / pipes are the stems through which water is carried through the plant (the green "water" in the "baths" is the same green used on the majority of leaves in the entire plant section, and the baths' shapes are leaf-like, see page f81r). I would propose that this document uses the women as an allegory to help us understand how plants function biologically.
Take page f77r. At the top, there is a horizontal green stem with cut-off offshoots, showing us that water travels through them, possibly food, gasses or waste products too (see the 4th offshoot). The woman at the top left of the page is standing in what looks a lot like the roots of some of the plants on the botanical pages. Are her and the women beneath her working away collecting water/nutrients from the soil and sending them up the correct tubes to different parts of the plant?
On page f78r, the two elements at the top corners of the page are inescapably flower heads or seed pods of some kind (a little bit like those on the botanical page f18v). The little "collars" all along the tubes are like sections of the outer stem, cut away to allow us to see what flows through the middle of them. The two green pools could be leaves; their fluid-like green colouring make me think of chlorophyll (I know, this wasn’t discovered until the 20thCentury, but still, we can all see leaves are green!). This would also explain why the tubes seem to be filled with blue and be letting blue water (?) into the baths/leaves, and also perhaps why the bath/leaf on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (with the walls and windows) shows blue through the windows and green on top; the leaves are fed with water through the stems and hold it within their structure.
Another way of looking at it may be that the women represent a way to communicate the notion of a substance or essence that is the life force which animates these plants, a sort of ‘vital force’ (maybe even intelligence) which gives things the spark of life and elevates them from their basic inanimate state into something which is alive. Are the green pools on this page (f78r) a zoomed-in section of something smaller than a leaf? Could they be a cross section of the stem itself, showing it is filled with water (or life), and the women are the author's way of understanding how plants contain life, or a life force, and have the agency to live and feed themselves/grow? They do remind me of cell diagrams from my gcse biology class.
[Side note: I’ve just read the post titled “It’s newer than you think” (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) about the similarity of the VM cylinders to 17thCentury Spanish microscopes and, while I’m not ready to let go of the idea that the manuscript is pre 1500, I can’t shake the impression that some of the VM illustrations are very similar to microscopic cellular / biological diagrams (pages f85v1, v2, r3, r4, r5 & r6).]
Page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is another where we can see what looks like buds or flowers of some kind at the top of the stems, and various women (or the plant's life force) arranged about the plant's stem. They are standing in little cup shaped lumps, very like what you see on plant stems at the points that leaves grow out from.
The illustration on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is so much like a rose hip / seed pod that I'm sure I must just be repeating (in a very garbled way) what someone else has already described far more eloquently. The manuscript may be explaining how plants reproduce, as well as how they drink, and eat. There are hints at a sexual function for some of the parts of the plant in the botanical pages: page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has what looks a bit like two labias nestled in the root system. Then there's the snakes/worms penetrating the roots on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (I know these are likely explained by the symbology of herbal properties/poisons as they crop up in other herbal manuscripts but they’ve also been a phallic metaphor since, well, forever). It also doesn’t seem odd that the author may have believed plant reproduction happened at the base of the plant/top of the roots; roots are leg-like and if we compare plant structure to the structure of the human body it equates perfectly. It also keeps the plant’s sexual function underground and out of sight and I’m guessing medieval thinking, especially religious thinking, would prefer it that way.
Question: I’m not a medievalist or a historian of botany and my inadequate internet searches on when exactly the sexual functions of plants were beginning to be understood have proved fruitless (no pun intended). Does anyone know when and how plants’ reproduction was described in the 15thCentury and earlier? I’d love to know!
It may be that the author believed that the inherent life force was actually present in water, which may be why, at the bottom of page f79v, we see what looks more like a lake, with animals coming to drink and a mermaid (?) swimming in it. Perhaps the manuscript combines this belief with a textbook-style approach to describing how said water is taken up into plants and gives them life to grow and reproduce. The use of mini people running about inside plant stems to make them work reminds me of children's biology books that explain how your immune system works using the idea of little soldiers fighting off the bad guys to keep your body safe from infections etc. Not such a bad way of explaining complicated ideas to people who have never been introduced to them before. It sort of reduces the abstract idea of an animistic or life-giving force, to a mechanical one. It reminds me that the 15thcentury was a time when ideas about science, religion, a mechanistic view of the world, animism, spirituality, biology and mysticism were all very fluid and often clashing/combining in a multitude of ways.
Another point to make is that, if this text is intended as an explanation of the biological processes inside plants, it makes sense to me that not all of the plants have to necessarily be exact specimens. It may be that they are using some real plants, mixed in with others that just use generic growth patterns and forms to illustrate how the structure/biology is arranged/functions in different ‘styles’ of plant.
And of course, all the people are women. If they do depict the life force that animates the plants, it makes sense that they are women, given our reproductive capabilities!
Lots of the posts I’ve read on this forum, whilst looking for any mention of the idea that the women are a way of visually communicating the presence of a life-force (or more simply, how the plants survive by taking up water/nutrients through the roots and distributing it around the plant) actually fit very well with this reading. The more I read the more I’m convinced.
I would love a discussion on this. Am I talking rubbish? Is this an existing theory and I just haven't come across it before? Am I just dumbing-down the conversation?! And again, apologies for my less than scientific way of looking at this. I don’t have many facts but I’m fascinated!
Laura -
RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
MarcoP > 20-05-2018, 06:05 AM
Welcome, Laura!
I came to know of a similar theory thanks to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. It is presented in a 2011 article by Lincoln Taiz and Saundra Lee Taiz titled "The Biological Section of the Voynich Manuscript: A Textbook of Medieval Plant Physiology?". You can read it at page 19 of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. In terms of references to medieval science, this article is one of the best works about the Voynich I have read. -
RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
Aurara84 > 20-05-2018, 11:28 AM
What a fantastic article! Thanks for the link.
This quote stood out to me:
[Albertus] first established that in general leaves were formed from an ill-digested mixture of a watery vapor and a dry earthy excrement which was exuded or exhaled from pores in the stem, propelled by a certain generative, formative power within the plant.
– From Reeds, 1980, p.352
If we look at the tube at the top of page f77r, the 4th outlet looks like it could be this "dry earthy excrement" being "exhaled from pores in the stem", or at least showing that it is something travelling within the plant stems.
I'm very happy to have found my own thoughts reflected in this beautifully researched article. It's really interesting to read about the medieval view of how plants function, something I couldn't find much on when I looked. The likening of water and nutrients travelling through plants to the steam rising from bath vats is also an interesting similarity when considering the VM.
I've got lots to be thinking about!
Not quite sure how to attach an image to this thread (it's not online). I've been working on a design for a Voynich-inspired repeat pattern for fabric. I've dissected and rearranged parts of the VM illustrations into a plant-like structure which illustrates this theory (not finished yet, but I'd like to share).
And thanks for the info Marco! -
RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
Aurara84 > 20-05-2018, 11:44 AM
Also... What a fabulous mix of science and religion. Very fitting for the 15th Century! -
RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
Koen G > 20-05-2018, 11:53 AM
Welcome to the forum, Laura!
The more organic-looking drawings in the manuscript are certainly among its most mysterious still. In the past, several people have seen them as representations of human organs and body parts, but I don't remember having read such an in depth comparison to plant parts as yours.
I don't have enough time at the moment to go into it in detail, but I'll explain how you can attach an image already
First, you must be in full reply mode, so not in the "quick reply box" that appears under the thread. To access this, either press "New Reply" or the "Preview Post" button.
Then, under the box where you can type your post, there's an "Attachments" box, there you can select your file (button on the left) and when you've done that, press "Add Attachment" (button on the right). You can then choose to insert it into your post or just leave it as an attachment that will show up underneath it. -
RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
Paris > 20-05-2018, 02:19 PM
(20-05-2018, 11:28 AM)Aurara84 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Not quite sure how to attach an image to this thread (it's not online). I've been working on a design for a Voynich-inspired repeat pattern for fabric. I've dissected and rearranged parts of the VM illustrations into a plant-like structure which illustrates this theory (not finished yet, but I'd like to share).
Welcome Aurara84,
I asked this same question a few months ago.
Koen Gh. answered me.
You have all the technical details in this thread :
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. -
RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
bi3mw > 20-05-2018, 06:03 PM
(20-05-2018, 01:48 AM)Aurara84 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.... Does anyone know when and how plants’ reproduction was described in the 15thCentury and earlier? I’d love to know! ...
I remember Boethius. In "Consolatio Philosophiae" he describes in the third book (Liber Tertius) :
Quote:lat: Iam uero quanta est naturae diligentia, ut cuncta semine multiplicato propagentur.
engl: Again, how great indeed is nature's care, that all things should be propagated by the
multiplication of seeds.
The views of Boethius certainly reached into the late Middle Ages. The description of nature influenced the way of thinking at that time ( and later scribes ). I don't know an old, technical description of plants’ reproduction. -
RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
Aurara84 > 20-05-2018, 10:42 PM
Interesting, I've heard of Boethius but don't honestly know much about him or his writing. So now you've set me off on a path down 6th Century philosophy, eek! -
RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
Aurara84 > 20-05-2018, 10:56 PM
Okay, so here's a work-in-progress shot of my repeat pattern based on this theory of the VM. I've dissected the illustrations and rearranged into a plant-like structure. It's by no means finished, and is most definitely not a "correct" plant; it has seed pods, a dandelion-like seed clock, flowers, an orchid-like flower/organ, plus obviously the leaves and roots all on one plant. Definitely needs a lot more work but would love to know what you think, and if you have any suggestions re. other elements that would be good to include or things you think should be corrected. Negative feedback also welcome, and feel free to ignore this post if it's not relevant to the discussion!
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RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
-JKP- > 21-05-2018, 12:10 AM
I thought it was very refreshing when Koen showed up with a new and different way of interpreting some of the nymphly marginals as Konstellations, not just an different idea, but one that may have some merit, and (since I haven't read Taiz and Taiz and thus haven't previously encountered the idea of pool pages analogizing plant biology) I had the same reaction when I read your post, Laura.