I'm not sure if it's definitely worth its own thread, but the faces on the last page of this manuscript caught my eye; they seem quite voynichy to me.

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1376-1425AD
Unknown location? (Supposedly later owned by "Daniel Caetani of Cremona" ~1527AD, so was in Italy at that point).

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I'm actually getting a little doubtful as I write this post... have these faces already been shared and are common knowledge? I really feel like i've seen them before but I simply cannot find them mentioned anywhere.

Hi all,

I was wondering if has been considered that the charm on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. could be a book curse? I recently realized that many manuscripts from a similar time period have something along the lines of "If you steal this book, you will be cursed!" The only problem to this speculation is that I, after a brief search, have not found any similar matches. 

Thanks

Before i begin my claim, i must say that i'm a mere layman, and so if a lot of stuff here doesn't fit findings i didn't know about, i would love to hear about that.

Now that i got that out of the way, let's look at how the folio might represent the four faculties:

Medieval academia tended to have 4 faculties: Theology, Medicine, Law and The Arts. Here i will go through (what i think) each character might represent, from most to least likely (in my opinion atleast), as well as some of my (personal and unsubstantiated) speculations regarding the nature of the folio in general.

First, for the most obvious one (imo atleast) we have medicine, represented by the guy on the right. the urine flask clearly represents a medieval doctor so i won't go deep here.

Now, the man on the bottom based on this theory would represent theology: the similarities to St. anthony are already fairly established, and i believe it could be reasonable for a saint (though not anthony himself, asthe painting here could be a generic priest or saint) to represent theology.


for the man on the left  holding a flower however, i suggest this: the man here represents the art of Rhetoric, which acts as a "representative" for the entire faculty of Arts and philosophy: i found a depiction in Cod. 2975, of rhetoric represented as a man holding a flower, with it being a pun on an older medieval book (from the 11th century) called "Flores rhetorici"     .  (however one thing to note here, is that a man gesturing here in the manner similar to the guy in the top of the folio is a representative of philosophy - this will be relevant later, and theology is represented here as the trinity, not as a saint. the manuscript given here was made in the 1460's, but it is assumed to be a copy of an older one, and the copy we have is from austria - fairly close to the theorized creation place of the voynich manuscript). I will admit that while i didn't manage to find other examples of "rhetoric directly holding a flower", i found another example of rhetoric pointing at a ring of flowers in the Regia Carmina fol. 29.      as well as an inscription near a depiction of rhetoric, represented as cicero woodworking, with an inscription near writing "Est mea dicendi ratio cum flore loquendi"     , so a rhetoric~flowers connection does exist. 

lastly, we can look at the man at the top, and finally i here suggest that this man is a representative of the faculty of Law. while i would admit this acts as a descent stretch, the finger here isn't simply pointed, but pointed upwards. as can be seen from the Heidelberg Sachsenspiegel, Cod. Pal. germ 164 from the early 14th century:
   

 a raised right hand index finger demonstrates a verdict done by the judge. thus the only "big" feature from that side of the circle coincides with Law. Here we can also look at Cod. 2975 in that manner: philosophy is depicted as the "king of the Arts" in that manuscript, and what does a king do? (especially one whose entire being is deciding right from wrong ) , that's right- he judges. 

now that i explained my chain of thought regarding that association, now it's time for a bit of speculation! what could this possibly tell us about the manuscript as a whole?
i mainly have 2 theories: 1. that the voynich manuscript doesn't discuss only medicine (as can be easily seen by the botanic paintings of unknown plants) but also theology, the arts and law. Or 2. to act as a sort of proof, either by claiming that men of different fields all support the contents of the manuscript, or that the contents of the manuscript can be applied to all sciences. 


all in all, i hope that the smell of "rhetorical flowers" here was pretty good (but not good enough to get you guys hooked completely in) and would love to hear what you guys think about this.

How is the rosettes fold out attached in the manuscript? Is it glued to the back of another page?

I made some research and couldn't find any detailed similar discussion. Sorry, if it was suggested before.

How do you find the idea that the Rosettes "map" is actually a kind of portable altar used for contacting the spirits?

As you may know from my previous posts I like the idea that Voynich Manuscript was once a bunch of loose pages used by some wandering charlatan. So "contacting the spirits" wouldn't be real, it would be a show for some silly folks willing to throw a few pfennigs into charlatan's bowl for it. He would "reveal the future" for them or get some blessing from the spirits.

There is something as almadel ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) which is exactly such an altar. It isn't the same as Rosettes but it gives some vibes:
   

In such altar there was a central place, sometimes called locus (place, point) where you put a crystal ball to contact the spirits. That would be "Heavenly Jerusalem" part of the Rosettes.




In these altars  the central point is surrounded by other points that may symbolize planets, angels, or some "points of power" responsible for different areas like health, love, prosperity, luck etc.

There were many similar diagrams which could work as well as altars in magical grimoires. I include some examples below which all are a bit Rosettes like for me. The modern stuff in the pictures was made according to much older sources like Lesser Key of Solomon.
   

These pictures are not the same as Rosettes but it isn't a big problem for me. There weren't big magical traditions and standards in Medieval Ages. Magical treatises could exist only in one copy or at most few copies. When authorities got their hands on them, they happily burnt them. Not many of them survived. So when you compare grimoires they differ a lot, give very different lists of angels and demons, desribe different ceremonies and have different imagery.

And don't forget that the Voynich artist could know they won't be really summoning spirits but rather cheating people so he could be a bit freestyling and doing it his own way.

I may write a bit more later. But as for now, how do you like the magic altar idea?

Hi,

I have been studying the text statistically the last days, and want to know if anyone else have noticed this.
I know tavie and MarcoP have shown that a line's first glyph depends on the line above, what I have found is that there is some sort of direction to this. Among d, q and y, consecutive line starts step d -> q -> y -> d more often than the reverse.

Example : 
<f79v.13,+P0>    dain.ar.olshey.dytain.qokain.checthy.okeedy.qokeedy.ror
<f79v.14,+P0>    qokeey.qokedy.okeey.qokol.sheedy.qokeedy.rolchey.qokeedy
<f79v.15,+P0>    yteedy.qokeedy.qokain.olkeey.cheokain.dy,teey.qokain
<f79v.16,+P0>    dol.sheey.qol.olkshey.qokeedy.olkeedy.qol.okaiin.oly

These are the counts for the whole manuscript:
forward:  d→q 125  q→y 75  y→d 119  (total 319)
backward:  q→d 75    y→q 35  d→y 81    (total 191)

Total the wheel moves forward 63% of the time (expected 50%). The difference is about 5.7 standard deviations from the expected. Permutation tests give the same result (p<0.0001).

Frequencies alone can not produce this, if it had fixed probablities (50% d, 30% q, 20% y) the count would be expected to be the same in both directions (0.5*0.3==0.3*0.5). 

This is valid through the whole document, not just parts of it. It could appear everywhere. 

It also seems like ONLY the line preceding the line counts. Both lines need to have d,q or y to see this pattern. If one line appears between them, the pattern disappears (or so my initial investiagation shows). It seems like the scribe looks at the preceding line ONLY when dealing with d,q,y changes. There is no hidden "counter" keeping track.

The first line of a paragraph is outside (often other glyphs). 

What I have checked:
Two transcriptions give the same result (ZL3b and voynichese.com)
Currier A,B and different scribes all follow the "rule".
It goes from start to start, not a seam between line breaks.
It is JUST the first glyph - no matter what the rest of the word is.
Currier A also has a similar rule, it seems : y-o-q-y
I can not find any direction anywhere else line to line.


What does it mean? 
It could mean that some rule is governing these letters. It *could* be a wheel that is cycled, or some sort of weighted random variable. It seems like they move forward 2 of 3 times, roughly. Backwards 1/3 of the time.

Theoretical question: If you ever had the chance to see the Voynich in person, what's one thing you would look for/prioritize that's harder to see digitally/would only come across in person?

I am putting together some data related to degrees of the zodiac and I would like to present it next to the corresponding entries in the Zodiac section. This requires me to make judgements about what those are. I have my own sense of the pages, but I am wondering exactly how much opinions vary in the community. I realize some of you all are going to reject the idea that there is an order or that they represent degrees, but for those of you willing to play along, a few questions:

1. Where do you start the count of nymphs/labels/whatevers on each page?
   
2. Do you count clockwise or counterclockwise?
   
3. Do you see the rows staring from the middle or the outside? (Or in another order?)
   
4. Do you account for the Aires and Taurus rounds in any unusual way, like the second one first?
   

1. After the double lines when in evidence; about 9'o'clock paying attention to the gallows letters in the running text for hard to judge cases.
   
2. Clockwise, with some misgivings
   
3. Start from the inside, working out
   
4. Aires and Taurus in their binding order
   

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?

New blog post: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

In this post, I identify the animal on folio 80v as a falcon (not an armadillo or dragon, etc). I also draw connection with Chaucer's story of The Squire's Tale - in which a princess receives a magical ring that gives her the ability to understand all animals and to know the curing power of herbs, which she uses to heal an injured falcon. Please follow the link for the full explanation. 

I am not necessarily saying that this story of Chaucer's appears in the Voynich, but that perhaps they both drew of an earlier tradition....but also that this animal is totally a falcon. 

Your thoughts?

All the best, 
Sherri

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