The Seasons of Life on f85r2

[pjburkshire]

So, what language do they need to know?

Most likely it was the native language spoken by the students the author/editor wanted to teach.  I think the author/editor of the Voynich Manuscript invented an alphabet, not a language.  It is possible that it was a language or dialect that is no longer spoken by living people.

I do not know the language but my best guess at this time is that it was a West Slavic language.

(1) The earliest known location of the manuscript was the area that is now the Czech Republic.

(2) Two women have claimed that some of the words seemed familiar to them.  One of the women knew the Slovak language and the other knew the Moravian language.

(3) The native language of Jacobus Horcicky/Sinapius de Tepenec/Tepenecz was probably Moravian or something close to it.

The only language that I know is American English.  I struggle to read Shakespeare and the Voynich Manuscript is older than the works of Shakespeare.

The only thing I am certain of is the general meaning of the non-plant illustrations in Quires 9 - 13. 

I have been posting here intermittently since early 2024 and I have posted my ideas many times.  I have given up hope that anyone here will listen to them and I am not interested in continuing that debate.  I only came back today because I wanted to let Koen know that I agree with the idea that he presented in his recent video.  I know he doesn't agree with my other ideas.

[Bluetoes101]

(2) Two women have claimed that some of the words seemed familiar to them.  One of the women knew the Slovak language and the other knew the Moravian language.

Endless people have claimed words seem familar to them. Picking the ones that suit an idea is no more scientific than deciding which colour crystals cure which illness.

[ololololo]

I do not know the language but my best guess at this time is that it was a West Slavic language.

These are indirect evidences, not linguistic ones. This does not prove that Voynichese is West Slavic.

(1) The earliest known location of the manuscript was the area that is now the Czech Republic.

The earliest mention is in Northern France, where the names of the months were written.

Two women have claimed that some of the words seemed familiar to them. One of the women knew the Slovak language and the other knew the Moravian language.

Ahmet Ardıç also said that the words are similar to Turkish. Is he right?

The native language of Jacobus Horcicky/Sinapius de Tepenec/Tepenecz was probably Moravian or something close to it.

How is this supposed to be related to VMS?

[pjburkshire]

The native language of Jacobus Horcicky/Sinapius de Tepenec/Tepenecz was probably Moravian or something close to it.

How is this supposed to be related to VMS?

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[ololololo]

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If Sinapius were speaking in Russian, could we say that VMS is written in Russian? 
The question is this.

[pjburkshire]

This thread is about Imagery.  I came here to talk about the illustrations on f85r2.  For discussions on the language of the text, I recommend the section for that topic.

[ololololo]

Okay 
But this idea, as I remember, isn’t new. There was already a suggestion that it might be a diagram of the four stages of life, copied from some manuscript, as far as I can recall.

[pjburkshire]

Yes, the idea is not new and it was not originally mine.  I saw the idea some time back and I thought it made sense.  As Koen commented in the video, good ideas often get buried in the tsunami of dreck.  When I saw the new video, I was delighted that Koen agreed with it and had even found very nice references to support it.  Before I created my first post yesterday, I did a search to try to find conversation about the new video but I didn't find anything.  The video is here:

Voynich Talk
I found pee in the Voynich Manuscript.
Sep 23, 2026

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This video is based on a presentation I gave at the Beinecke library for a small group of professors and academics interested in the Voynich Manuscript (January 2025). Despite the true-yet-infantile title, this research is one of the more solid pieces of evidence we have for potential sources used by the Voynich artist.

[Linda]

I came here to ask for the video location as I did not see the seasons of life as a title. I did see the title I found pee, so thank you, I would never have guessed that is what you were talking about. 

I have to note that a glance at this page does not appear to differentiate the age of anyone there other than the use of a cane for what seems to be a female character, but that seems more to stabilize her diagonal stance, (which I believe has a precedent elsewhere, which I think comes from a very different type of source material). Perhaps the figure at the top seems somewhat aged as well with a big nose and receding hairline. What order of aging do you see here?  Left right up down? What kind of seasonal flow is that? 

I never thought of the container to be one of pee. It is not a flask. It seems more like a Pilgrim bottle. If it was supposed to be a flask of pee, why not draw it like all other such flasks are drawn. Instead it has a tiny opening with a stopper.  Perhaps it is still a bottle of pee. It is actually the only item in the drawing of that figure I do not see referenced in the source material I am speaking of, it would infer something though. 

The female figure seems to be female because of her jumper/dress/apron. I think that might be the important part. Also, why garlands instead of the rosary? How does that make her aged? Seems more like disabled but spry, than aged.

For whatever its worth, I could only find one garland drawing from the 15th century, the garland is coincidentally in the form of a rosary, but it is from 1490. It has lilies on it too and says la vie eternelle. 

Book of Hours
France, Paris, 1490-1500
MS M.7 fol. 44r

Not sure how they go with the fountains, is it the fountain of youth?

Anyway I will go with my own take for now, the matches would need to be far more convincing for me to think of it as the ages of man.

[pjburkshire]

I am not clear on what you are calling fountains.  I think you are talking about the arched or curved lines in the four corners of the page.

f85r2_f86v4_f86v6

I have no idea what they are.  They are a little bit blue.  They seem to originate from the deep blue around the sun in the center.  They go out and arch over and then go back inside the outer circle of words.  I guess "fountains" is as good a name for them as any.

The fountain in the upper right goes in the opposite direction (Clockwise) of the other three (Counterclockwise).  Is there significance to this or did they just want more space for text for the person holding the spherical vial (or whatever it is)?  Maybe they are just decoration and have no symbolic meaning.  I don't remember seeing anything like them anywhere else in the manuscript.  Something else to add to the mystery.

The blue around the sun is a mystery.  Why would the sun be in water?  Or, is the blue supposed to be sky (air) and not water?  Fountains of air?

Having the sun in the center of f85r2 and the moon in the center of f86v4 makes me think the two pages are a pair of opposites -- but of what?  Day/Night, Light/Dark, Life/Death, Youth/Age, Heaven/Hell?

The moon page also has four figures holding mysterious objects -- including one that looks like a spherical vial.

If the creators of the Voynich Manuscript were copying from other sources, they may not have copied exactly as presented in the originals.  They may have copied different elements to craft their own story.