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• No text, but a visual code

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  -JKP- > 30-09-2020, 06:04 PM

  (30-09-2020, 04:07 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Can anyone really believe that the author of Tratado de Astrologia filled in all the astronomical illustrations with an abstract motif as if he were a 15th century Picasso?

  
  Yes. That was how they did it in those days. Plus it was not usually the author who did it, it was usually an illustrator or rubricator who worked with the author or with the scribe. Sometimes the author did it if it was someone who was artistic, but that was in a minority of cases.
  
  
  
  

  Quote:What common sense says and what we know about medieval culture is that these motifs are something symbolic that refers to an imagined reality: the configuration of the cosmos.
  
  If there are Vulgate Bibles with these iconological motifs it is precisely because they also allude to the idea of the cosmos.
  The Tratado de Astrologia is a key document for the understanding of Voynich's iconology. Another way of thinking is that there is an armadillo in the VM. But for that I don't waste my time

  
  Common sense says that there are many manuscripts decorated in the same way and not every dot and line is symbolic. Some are purely decorative.
  
  You didn't even know that Vulgate Bibles and breviaries also had those patterns, so how do you know they are symbolic? I don't believe they are. I have looked at many of them. They are decorative. It was a common way to embellish illuminated initials and the borders of diagrams.
  
  The only place where I've seen similar shapes (scaly shapes with dots inside and a small line or point on the end) used in a symbolic way is when they are piled up in lines or triangles to represent mountains and mountain ranges, but that does not appear to be relevant to Tratado de Astrologia.

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  Antonio García Jiménez > 01-10-2020, 07:12 AM

  That the medieval world was a world of symbolism is pretty obvious. I don't think there was any kind of decoration without symbolic meaning. The most common decoration in the margins of the manuscripts, the vine leaf, alludes to the wine and blood of Christ.
    
  This kind of cogwheel of the Tratado de Astrologia is an iconographic variant of the cloud band that we see in so many manuscripts. For example in Oresme's illustration, Rosette folio of the Voynich and also f68v3.
  
  It is misnamed band of clouds because they are not clouds but the last sphere of the cosmos before the kingdom of God and the angels. It is the sphere of the stars.

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  -JKP- > 01-10-2020, 08:01 AM

  (01-10-2020, 07:12 AM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That the medieval world was a world of symbolism is pretty obvious. I don't think there was any kind of decoration without symbolic meaning. The most common decoration in the margins of the manuscripts, the vine leaf, alludes to the wine and blood of Christ....

  
  Hebrew manuscripts are full of vine leaf (foliate) patterns. Dragons in Jewish manuscripts often have foliate tails, as well. Just because they are sometimes symbolic does not mean they are always symbolic, and if they are symbolic, they don't always mean the same thing.

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  Linda > 01-10-2020, 12:55 PM

  To me they are simply embellishments. I don't think it is a mistake to think so. Do you have a source other than your own interpretation that supports this idea that these embellishments contain symbolism of the kind you are proposing? ie cheese universe for the stars to shine through. I understand the concept, but i do not see evidence of it in the embellishments. 
  
  Even if you could show support for the idea, the designs do not closely resemble the imagery in the vms, which to me also more resemble JKP's mention of mountains than your idea of starlight holes. I do agree that in the vms the decorations are symbolic and not just freestyle doodling as i believe the Tratado designs to be.

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  Antonio García Jiménez > 02-10-2020, 07:45 AM

  Linda, don't you think that it is contradictory to maintain that the images of de Voynich are symbolic and those of the Tratado de Astrologia are a simple embellishment?
  
  In the Tratado we see this illustration: a castle in an astronomical diagram as in the Rosette folio
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  And we also see this image
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  Two tubes coming out of the star-studded celestial globe. They are the same tubes that we see in the Rosette folio.
  
  In how many manuscripts have you seen those heavenly tubes?

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  -JKP- > 02-10-2020, 07:57 AM

  I'm sure Linda will have her own impressions of this, but in my mind it's not contradictory.
  
  In the context of cartography, specific forms of scaly shapes had meaning.
  
  In the context of medieval initials and borders, scaly shapes were usually decorative and were common to many different kinds of manuscripts, not only astrology books.
  
  
  

  ---

  (02-10-2020, 07:45 AM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
  And we also see this image
   You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
  
  Two tubes coming out of the star-studded celestial globe. They are the same tubes that we see in the Rosette folio.
  
  In how many manuscripts have you seen those heavenly tubes?

  
  Could you please post folio numbers? The links always go to the first image.

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  Antonio García Jiménez > 02-10-2020, 10:16 AM

  Sorry, the castle is the folio number 108 of the digitalizaton and the tubes coming out of the celestial globe, the folio number 88.
  
  I recommend seeing all the illustrations of the codex and that each one makes his own opinion

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  -JKP- > 02-10-2020, 10:58 AM

  Quote:Two tubes coming out of the star-studded celestial globe. They are the same tubes that we see in the Rosette folio.

  
  
  I think those are poles on Tratado f88. North and south poles.
  
  The VMS structures appear to be tubes, they are drawn with dark centers, and they point in multiple directions, and are in clusters. They are quite different from the ones in the Tratado, and don't appear to be the same thing.
  
  I don't know what they mean in the VMS, but I saw one manuscript in which steam vents were drawn as pipes. Ellie has pointed out that pipes are also used for cannon barrels/gun barrels, and gunpowder (saltpeter) containers. Pipes have many meanings in medieval manuscripts.

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  Linda > 02-10-2020, 03:52 PM

  (02-10-2020, 07:45 AM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Linda, don't you think that it is contradictory to maintain that the images of de Voynich are symbolic and those of the Tratado de Astrologia are a simple embellishment?

  
  No, not really. I see the vms imagery as visual mnemonics, the Tratado imagery as decoration. I don't see anything in the Tratado designs that would make me think it refers to the tables or illustrations they surround. With the vms since we cannot read the text it is hard to say whether they go together but i will assume that they do, however i cannot see the vms imagery as simply decoration of the text since i see cohesive meaning in it without the text support. It may well stand alone. If you took the scientific parts away from the Tratado, i don't think it would be anything but pretty.
  

  Quote:In the Tratado we see this illustration: a castle in an astronomical diagram as in the Rosette folio
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  Ok so there is a castle. I assume you are attempting to equate it with the rosettes central castle. But castles are in lots of manuscripts. I do not see any interaction between the castle and the embellishments that would somehow equate them to the two superficially similar icons in the rosettes, other than whatever resemblance there is visually. Not sure what is going on with the page, can you explain what you think is going on here? What is this meant to symbolize and what does it stand for in relation to that quarter and with the scale numbers? I tend to doubt it has anything to do with either of the castles in the rosettes, but i would need to understand the page better to be able to speak directly to that. The drawing style is certainly different.
  
  

  Quote:And we also see this image
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  Two tubes coming out of the star-studded celestial globe. They are the same tubes that we see in the Rosette folio.
  
  In how many manuscripts have you seen those heavenly tubes?

  
  I don't catalog heavenly tubes since i think the tubes in the vms are more earthly in nature, so i don't know if i have seen any manuscripts of that ilk. But with regard to this example, i see them as a spit on which the heavens turn, not tubes, per se, in this instance. Nothing is meant to go through them. This diagram i think i understand. The tubes in question mark the first points of Libra and Aries respectively, where the celestial equator crosses the ecliptic. The latter defines the ecliptic coordinate of 0,0 and is considered the prime meridian from which right ascension is calculated. If i wanted to show the glyphs are not text but some sort of astral coordinates, i would work more along those lines than regarding those points as heavenly tubes. So we disagree.

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  Linda > 02-10-2020, 04:50 PM

  (02-10-2020, 10:58 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  Quote:Two tubes coming out of the star-studded celestial globe. They are the same tubes that we see in the Rosette folio.

  
  
  I think those are poles on Tratado f88. North and south poles.
  

  
  
  I disagree, i think it shows the equinoctial, given the draped ecliptic. Although it occurs to me that this example seems to show the draped side would be the other side. Might be a reference issue, not sure.
  
  
  
  

  Quote:
  
  
  The VMS structures appear to be tubes, they are drawn with dark centers, and they point in multiple directions, and are in clusters. They are quite different from the ones in the Tratado, and don't appear to be the same thing.
  
  I don't know what they mean in the VMS, but I saw one manuscript in which steam vents were drawn as pipes. Ellie has pointed out that pipes are also used for cannon barrels/gun barrels, and gunpowder (saltpeter) containers. Pipes have many meanings in medieval manuscripts.

  
  Regardless of poles or equators, the multiplicity of tubelike imagery in the rosettes would tend to point toward them being something else, removed from the so-called tubes of the Tratado page. Once that page is explained by an expert, i think it will show that these are specific points in the universe, and are therefore not possible to be the random tubes through which starlight travels to earth that Antonio has proposed them to be. Maybe the rosettes tubes are what he says, but the Tratado example is no support for that stance.
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