Color of the water on f79v as an indicator of religious cleanliness

[Not_A_Corncob]

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.



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?

[Stefan Wirtz_2]

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.
[..]

Is she really holding the (only) cross?
No. This gesture is more a refusing or putting away that cross.

For comparison: the next figure clearly holds a kind of ring - the draftsman was not unable to draw a hand in a holding position. He just didn‘t it for the first person and the cross.

So that may not be some message of Christianity, but right the opposite.

[Linda]

For me the green water is salt seas, the blue water is freshwater lakes, or runoff from a mountain. Tubes are rivers or shipping lanes that follow shorelines. 

If you really wanna know what I think, read on. I appreciate the opportunity to gather my current thoughts on this page.

On You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I see:

1. A nymph who holds a cross-staff in a 45 degree angle upward toward the right side of the page. This could be interpreted as trying to measure something either very high on earth, or in the sky. To the east? The way she holds it, is actually similar to how you would hold a cross staff with your hand, but it is not in the right position to measure with it, which would be with your eye very near the other end, it is as though that part is missing, that is why it looks to some like she is pushing it away or throwing it. Maybe it is combining various ideas.  Anyway, a cross-staff is an early navigational tool used to measure altitude or the distance of an object above sea level or the horizon, dated 400 BCE - 1500 CE, Although they continued to be used into the 18th century, then they were replaced by better tools. Could "she" be using it to point the way to high things? i.e she is not looking, she already knows. 

2.
I think the parasol looking thing above her is a river system.

3. 
The finial at the center of the river system,  indicates volcanoes are involved, whether they are active or dormant. 

4. 
The nebuly lines says it's marshy in places around or under the influence of its delta. The river system has over time drained into the Gulf, helping to create it.  

5.
That is why she is in a bathtub looking thing attached the the cut out piece of tube, because bathubs are bays, tubes are rivers. Then below that there is an even bigger bathtub, being affected by the silt of the previous occurrences. 

So where is this? As a hint, the page previous seems to me to represent the Euphrates and Tigris joining together, flowing into the Persian Gulf, with Logman, as he has been called in this forum, inside, being the mnemonic for the rest of the the shore of the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz & the Gulf of Oman, and the shore of Pakistan, each about equidistant as shown by the upright dividers, and it is a pretty straight shipping shoreline (thus treated like a river with one shore) with the exception of the SoH and the shore of Oman, for that, look at Logman's arms for the mnemonic to drawing that portion.

Where are we on f79v? The Indus River system is the next thing past the curve in the shoreline after the long straight bit. Its rise is in a high rift created when the Indian continent merged with Asia. So the height story makes perfect sense to be mentioned, although evidently there is a higher river along that same rift to the East. Then we have the Gulf of Kutch and the Gulf of Khambhat, which are the next two features on the same shoreline going south.

6.
The nymph in the second tub points a ring toward the interior of India, it could be either a sociopolitical ring, ie further you will find different rulers and people. Indeed this area described did trade differently but more exclusively with the west, whereas the rest of India traded moreso with the East. Or it could mean "there's gold in them thar hills". The other ring also points to a place known for gold, and also being ruled by a different group than the one pointing, on f80v.

7.
With her other hand she points across the sea to the Gulf of Aden. The angle of her arm seems a good indicator of the angle of this crossing.

8.
When we go that way, we have 3 main choices, Persia, Aden to the Red Sea, or along the African coast. We choose the central choice. 

9. 
This allows us to choose from various ports along the way, ports are the shorter tubes, or river deltas.

10. 
So here it does a bit of obfuscation in that the Gulf of Aden joins the Red Sea from the other side than the one shown. I have my thoughts about this but I would need to prove that anyone could see the things I have correlated so won't go into that here. Anyway I do believe this lower body of water is the Red Sea. The layout has shifted from north up to east up.

11. 
The nymph is the first human, she incubated in the fish's mouth as per Anaximander's idea to explain how humans could have survived in an inhospitable prehistoric world (he was one of the first geographers, whose extent of the world ended at the Red Sea) and now the hard armour of the fish cracks and she can leave the fish and live on the earth as an adult. The earth in that area is pocked with volcanoes, but this could very well mean it was a comfortable place during the ice age, for instance.

12. 
Other animals represent volcanos and volcanic islands that occur or occurred in and around the sea on the southern end and to the west.

13.
The two gulfs to the north of the Red Sea are softened into slight bumps in the shore. However this was a trend in portolan maps of the time. Take a look at the Catalan Atlas Red Sea from 1375, but they were even more blunted in the Angelino Dulcert versions of 1339, 1325 etc.



Are your eyes uncrossed now, or did I make it worse?

[Rafal]

I would agree that the water colour is important. I had similar conclusions independently some time ago.

Many people say that Quire 13 (balneological part) is probably the most advanced part of Voynich Manuscript, the latest done but also the most bizarre.

When you look at the plants, at first glance there is nothing weird with them. Ethel Voynich lost many years for trying to identify them. Only quite recently people started talking loudly that possibly they are unexisting, fantasy plants.

The same is with astrological diagrams. They seem normal for a medieval manuscript. Only when you struggle for a long time to understand what they precisely describe, then you notice that there is something wrong with them.

But balneological section strikes you with weirdness from the very beginning.

And I feel that it is actually telling some story, even if the text is meaningless. Fake plants and diagrams may mean nothing but here it is about "something", possibly quite abstract. It is however hidden in the very personal symbolism of the artist that doesn't copy existing tropes so it is hard for us to read these symbols.

My feeling is that we have "good water" - blue and "bad water" - green here. 

Good, blue water: life giving, healing, refreshing
Bad, green water: sewer, decay, illness

I may refine this concept and write more about it in the future.

[pjburkshire]

For me the green water is salt seas, the blue water is freshwater lakes, or runoff from a mountain. Tubes are rivers or shipping lanes that follow shorelines. 

If you really wanna know what I think, read on. I appreciate the opportunity to gather my current thoughts on this page.

What is the big picture?  Do you see Quire 13 as a creation story?  If you see a creation story, of what culture/religion?

[Not_A_Corncob]

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.
[..]

Is she really holding the (only) cross?
No. This gesture is more a refusing or putting away that cross.

For comparison: the next figure clearly holds a kind of ring - the draftsman was not unable to draw a hand in a holding position. He just didn‘t it for the first person and the cross.

So that may not be some message of Christianity, but right the opposite.

This is a really interesting thought.

Taken from that angle, it could represent someone's fall from grace. She rejects the cross, gives in to idleness and vanity, finds herself in a tight spot and ultimate gets down in the muck.

---

Are your eyes uncrossed now, or did I make it worse?

I love the detail you put into your reply! I admittedly do not totally follow your logic here, but I love the idea of the tubes representing rivers. Are there other examples from the area and time period where this sort of symbolism is used?

[RadioFM]

I'd caution against reading too much into it. We don't know who did what coloring or when, what guidelines they followed when coloring, what the manuscript meant to them, and so on. 

As with the plants, we don't know if color annotations were followed diligently, or if the original author(s) had a specific coloring scheme in mind, for that matter. Perhaps that a painter resorted to a secondary color because they were running short of a main pigment.

[Linda]

For me the green water is salt seas, the blue water is freshwater lakes, or runoff from a mountain. Tubes are rivers or shipping lanes that follow shorelines. 

If you really wanna know what I think, read on. I appreciate the opportunity to gather my current thoughts on this page.

What is the big picture?  Do you see Quire 13 as a creation story?  If you see a creation story, of what culture/religion?

A tour of the old world by water, like Pliny or Strabo's ecumene, or actually more like Hecateus, especially in that it goes around Europe and then around the closer parts of Asia and Africa. It doesn't seem to leave much out. I only see the creation story of Anaximander insofar as the incubation of humans in fish, to explain that drawing, but overall I think the nymphs are meant to convey regions that developed over long periods of time, because they involved staying in place, rather than being nomadic, living in contact with a particular water source. We could be talking Roman or Phoenecian settlements, as opposed to the timing of the vms creation. I think quire 13 is a periplus that can be reconfigured into a portolan style map, if one has seen one before. The Gujurat gulfs in India are the farthest eastern extent shown, the farthest southern extent is the rise of the Nile. It requires reconfiguring the pages into a different order than bound. I see a lack of culture or religion, it whittles that idea down into humanity.

[Linda]

---

Are your eyes uncrossed now, or did I make it worse?

I love the detail you put into your reply! I admittedly do not totally follow your logic here, but I love the idea of the tubes representing rivers. Are there other examples from the area and time period where this sort of symbolism is used?

Thanks, comes from seeing more each time I look, and I just keep looking. If only I could see the text that way.

I have found precedents for tubes as rivers, I mean, almost any river is drawn as parallel lines, and especially if the pigment is applied mostly to one side, you get a 3d look to it. Most rivers are drawn larger than life which emphasizes the effect. The greatest of all of these was being worked on in the 1440's, so slightly beyond the carbon dating, which seems feasible to me. The Fra Mauro Map, but I have seen publishing dates from 1450 to 1459, so that is starting to push it.

This lets you see it very closely, there are other maps in there to check out also.
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However, the 1234-1240 Ebsdorf Map is also quite tubey.


The Matthew Paris Map of England 1250 is quite tubey also.
Note the green sea and blue rivers.

Who know how many copies might have been made of these styles, and who knows how many more existed at the time. 

It may not have been used in the same way, with nymphs whose hands just fit in most rivers, (which I think means they physically have to perform upkeep of some type to keep it flowing) to some deltas where that may be able to stand in those containers. When they hold pieces up, it means the rivers rise, and cause flooding.

[Rafal]

I made a post about woman eaten by a fish in another thread:
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I find it quite possible that it is some depiction of Hell.
It agrees with logic "green water = bad water".