Ancient Egyptians mastered the integration of anatomical knowledge and mythological stories into artistic symbols and figures. Artistically, the Eye is comprised of six different parts. Mythologically, each part is considered to be an individual symbol. Anatomically, each part corresponds with the center of a particular human sensorium.
Many have seen the Eye of Horus (or the Eye of Ra) as a decorative motif in jewelry. Historically, the Udjat (eye of Ra) was a talisman of protection, regeneration, and health, and was often included as a funerary item:
This Egyptian amulet, from around 800 B.C.E., combines a winged Udjat eye, a lion, and two uraei (sacred serpents), thus embodying Egyptian myths. [Source: The Met, public domain]
The lion and serpent (cobra) represent authority and the more powerful or darker aspects associated with the eye goddess, who was variously personified as the mother, daughter, or consort of the sun god.
Horus was a sky deity, depicted as a raptor. His right eye was associated with the sun and Ra, the left eye with the moon and the god Thoth. In this Udjat, from around the same time period as the one above, the wing and feet of the raptor replace the lion, and are combined with a single serpent, which may represent Seth:
Egyptian amulet with horus as a raptor, together with a serpent [Source: The Met]
The Eye symbology may predate the Egyptians, but this is murky history that I know very little about, so I will restrict my comments to Egyptian interpretation of this symbol. Some of this information was passed on to people in the Middle Ages through Greek intermediaries and merchants, but I don’t know how much was known by the 15th century.
The Myth Behind the Eye
The god of storms and disorder is known as Seth (sth). Seth vied with his relative Horus for the rule of Egypt. Seth stole or injured Horus’s eye, which was then restored by Thoth. Thus, the restored eye came to represent healing and regeneration.
Variations of the eye motif were especially popular in the millenium leading up to the Current Era and, in a specific form, came to embody other concepts as well. In addition to representing the senses, the Udjat has a mathematical meaning for each of its primary contours:
The sum total of these fractions adds up to 63/64ths. There have been many theories as to what might represent the presumed missing fraction and even the measurements themselves are disputed. [Image source: The Met]
The fractions represent powers of two.
This propensity for integrating multiple interpretations into symbols with mythical significance caught my attention because it reminded me of the Voynich Manuscript. It’s possible the VMS illustrations were drawn to embody more than one concept. If so, there is a historical precedent for this, one that that has come down to us primarily through Egyptian writings and artifacts.
And there’s more…
The right eye of Horus came to represent the sun, the left eye the moon. Which means that the blotting out of a right eye could represent a solar eclipse. Ancient myths might actually be a codification of this kind of event, with “gods” as personifications of the heavens.
Can this be more directly related to the VMS?
Nymph pointing to an eye or poking or removing it, a possible personification of a solar eclipse. [Source: Beinecke 408, Yale Rare Books and Manuscripts Library]
On Folio 80r we have an enigmatic illustration of a nymph pointing to the right eye of another nymph, or possibly stabbing or plucking it out. This is a departure from many of the more smiley and benign-looking VMS encounters. Could this unexpectedly violent interaction be a symbol for a solar eclipse?
If this seems implausible, look at the object in the nymph’s hand. The Eye of Horus is simultaneously a talisman, an embodiment of ancient stories, a celestial reference, and a representation of measures (the six pieces into which the eye broke in a battle with Seth).
If the blotting of the eye represents a solar eclipse, then perhaps the item in the hand of the nymph is a measuring caliper, a reference to the multiple uses for the Eye of Horus.
Is the eye-poking scene related to the one below It?
Like the ebb and flow of the Nile river, the battles between Seth and Horus stretched over decades, with Horus sometimes teaming up with Ra. Seth is sexually indiscriminant, makes a deal with Horus to sodomize him, and leaves behind his supposedly poisonous semen (Herman te Velde, 1967). Horus, at one point, steals Seth’s testicles (although I don’t know if this happened before or after their sexual encounter).
Could this drawing below the eye-poking scene be a sly reference to Seth’s severed testicles? Yes, I know, there are three bumps, but this is the VMS, nothing seems explicitly real.
Summary
Koen Gheuens posted a plausible interpretation for the figures at the top of this folio and the idea of the nymphs representing Seth and Horus and a possible reference to a solar eclipse does not fit well with the story of Philomela. So either the context shifts, or there is a connection that is more abstract (e.g., medieval astrology/astronomy), or it means something else.
If the Philomela story is correct, then the connection via astrology doesn’t seem very strong. Procne and Philomela were turned into birds, not stars.
Could it be a context-shift? Are there precedents for this possibility?
Morgan MS M.126 (England, c. 1470) is a series of tales that includes the story of Philomela on folio 125v. On the left, Tereus cuts out her tongue. On the right, Procne takes vengeance by feeding Tereus his child (note also the fancy containers). Above the action, the women are turned into birds:
Philomela, Procne, and Tereus. [Courtesy of Morgan Library MS M.126, England, c. 1470]
On the next folio is a different story. We go from Philomela, which is more of a morality tale, to a story of gods associated with stars. Here we see Arcas about to shoot Callisto, who Juno had transformed into a bear. When he saw what was about to happen to the bear, Juno changed Arcas into a bear, as well, and placed both of them in the sky to become Ursa Major and Minor, the Great and Little bears:
Creation of Ursa Major and Minor. [Courtesy of Morgan Library MS M.126, England, c. 1470]
Two folios later is the biblical story of Lazarus, and at the beginning of the manuscript is the story of Troy. In other words, Morgan M.126 is an eclectic collection from a number of mythical, moral, and historical sources. It is possible for stories of different genres, or with a different focus, to directly follow one another.
So perhaps there is more than one tale represented on VMS folio 80r and maybe the eye-poking scene represents a different myth from the one at the top. If it does represent a solar eclipse, then maybe it is related to cosmological or astrological imagery on other folios.
There are frequent comments that folio 77r represents medieval elements in the cosmological sense, but as you can see from my recent blog, I’m somewhat skeptical. There are five openings and two of the outflows are almost the same. Plus, they could be phlegm/bile/blood or various kinds of weather (hail, wind, rain, snow). But, even those ideas didn’t completely satisfy me, so I kept trying to think of others and here is an additional possibility….
A Different Interpretation
I’ve blogged about VMS folio 77r a few times and if you read the more recent ones, you may have noticed that I have never been completely convinced that these pipes were meant to be earth, water, air, and fire. Maybe they represent various outflows of alchemical heating and condensing processes:
In other words, instead of earth, water, air, and fire (except in the metaphorical sense in which most alchemical processes were expressed at the time), this might be heat, exhaust, and either two instances of condensation, or possibly one instance of boiling and the other of condensation, since two of the VMS outflows are very similar but not exactly the same.
Many alchemical images have been related to the VMS in one way or another over the decades. Not surprisingly, since many alchemical manuscripts are enigmatic and highly symbolic.
I’ve blogged a few distillation images myself, and the two big bladder-like things have always reminded me of distillation vessels, but I couldn’t decide exactly what they might be. It was bi3mw’spost #70 on the Alchemical Symbolism thread that motivated me to go back through my notes and think about it again. Now I think these bladders might represent the sublimation process:
Similarly, the bladder-like shapes at the top of f77v have always reminded me of the she-wolf’s teats in the story of Romulus and Remus, or the chest-of-plenty on Diana of Ephesus (which I have posted in the past), but now I think there might be another explanation:
Maybe the row of teats is a row of distillation vessels and the rounded forms left and right are heating vats.
Various alchemical vessels that have shapes similar to the VMS. The one on the bottom right is similar to another snaky distillation apparatus pointed out by bi3mw on the Voynich.ninja forum.
The pipes that connect them are spiritually guided by nymphs (all of alchemy was considered to be under spiritual guidance, hence the heavy use of religious motifs in alchemical drawings). Both magic and alchemy were suspect professions, associated with black arts, so the more religious symbology that was used, the more it legitimized these occupations.
The VMS Rosettes Folio Reprised
On a subject some researchers might not believe is related to distillation processes, I’ve also blogged numerous interpretations for the VMS “map” and I’ve only written up about 20% of the ideas I’ve been working on for years. One that has been lying on the backburner is that the central rosette might be the Tower of Philosophy, related to medieval alchemy. I haven’t posted it mainly because I wasn’t sure, but putting together the distillation process represented by the 77r pipes AND some of the features of the rosettes folio, I feel more confident about this idea than I did before.
I don’t know if anyone has specifically related the central rosette on the VMS “map” folio to the alchemical furnaces of the Tower of Philosophy. Most of the time people mention locations in the middle east (especially Baghdad) or north Africa and some people consider the folio to be a form of portolan.
To me, the central rosette always looked like a sacred place (probably because of the stars and arches and the central position), but I did not specifically associate it with the sacred mountain of the alchemists until today because many places were considered sacred in the middle ages. I think it might represent both sacred mountain and the alchemists’ furnace combined into one drawing. As I have mentioned in previous blogs… the meeting place between terrestrial and cosmological realms.
Here are two examples side-by-side so you can see the similarities. Note that the tower is round, with arches, like the arches in the center of the VMS rosette with the container-like towers. It has an almost onion-dome top and at the base of the image, there are more “towers” that look like pipes:
Left: Donato d’Eremita di Rocca alchemical furnace/tower of philosophy, Naples 1624 with many structural forms similar to central rosette on “map” folio of Voynich Manuscript, Beinecke 408, Yale.
Here is a link to an earlier (15th-century) image of an alchemy furnace with tower-like parts:
Robert Fludd’s images are often posted on the Voynich.ninja forum due to their structural and textural similarities to some of the VMS drawings. They are more sophisticated, and they were created much later than the VMS, but it’s my belief that his ideas were not entirely original, that they derive from older models and thus might have some relevance.
Here is an example that is similar in shape and direction to the general outlay of the rosettes folio. It represents a cosmic battle with demons and archangels attacking and defending the alchemist in the center. Notice the “spewy” things, all drawn in similar ways, but each taking a slightly different form (think of hordes of locusts or bees or frogs as are often mentioned in biblical literature):
I’ve blogged at length about the “spewy” things in the rosettes folder, never quite knowing what they were, but only that they looked like connections between the inner and outer circles. Maybe, as in Fludd’s engraving, they are pestilences, or a metaphorical reference to the battle between good and evil (with archangels and demons taking sides).
In this Rosicrucian image with alchemical references, notice the tent at the top of the sacred hill (sacred hills are a holdover from Paganism) and the alchemists’ cave below it. The VMS rosettes folio is full of these kinds of structures, almost too many to list in one blog, and MarcoP pointed out that Ellie Velinska had suggested tents for some of the shapes on the rosettes folio. When I took another look, I realized some of the small details that originally made no sense to me might be interpreted as tent flaps. Here is an image of a sacred hill atop an alchemists’ cave (such underground laboratories did actually exist, one was unearthed under a chapel complete with shards of numerous vessels):
Speculum Sophicum Rhodostauroticum, thought to be by Daniel Mögling
The Many Plant Folios
Distillation has a direct relationship to plants and plants like Centaurea (which I think is depicted fairly accurately on folio 2r) were of specific interest to distillers of alcoholic products, both recreational and medicinal. Tinctures of alcohol not only helped preserve the plants, but they provided concentrated formulas that were sometimes more effective than herbal “simples” (basic plant parts that had not been processed by distillation).
Jakob de Tepenecz, one of the probable owners of the VMS, became quite wealthy from sales of his distilled products. So much so, he could afford to lend money to the emperor himself.
I don’t know if the various sections of the VMS are like separate booklets that have been bound together, or if they were meant to relate to each other, but IF there’s an over-riding theme, then plants would fit right in.
Astrology
Alchemy has also been related to astrology and kabbalah. Besides the three “teats” (see f77v), this hybrid creature has a star on its crown rather than the usual Christian cross. There are also stars-on-sticks radiating from the center. The image further includes references to celestial beings and signs of the zodiac:
A combination of alchemical, kabbalistic, spiritual, and astrological symbols. Note the three “teats” teats and the star at the top of the crown that are reminiscent of VMS imagery. [Source: Michelspacher, 1615]
Notice also, in the above image, the inverted T-in-O, a cosmological variant of the T-in-O that is so common in map-related writings.
So maybe the VMS is alchemical after all. After investigating it for a while, I was leaning away from this idea, but a few things clicked when bi3mw revived the ninja thread, so I decided to take another look.
In 2016, I posted several blogs suggesting the imagery around the VMS zodiac figures might be cycles of life. In medieval times they called this the Ages of Man but since the nymphs are mostly women and some of the VMS cycles are specific to women’s physiology, I thought “stages of life” might be more appropriate.
I have less doubt about this interpretation than many aspects of the VMS, but I didn’t hear much support for the idea. The nymphs have variously been interpreted as star charts, parts of a calendar, and numerous other ideas (I have other ideas too, but the one I prefer for this specific wheel is stages of life). I intended to follow up the blog with more examples years ago, and this blog has been sitting in draft form since June, but other lines of research always intrude on continuing a series so, belatedly, here it is…
Ages of Man
Before we look at Ages of Man, keep in mind that classical Ages of Man (as described by Ovid and Hesiod) focused more on the evolution of mankind from gods, titans, heroes, to iron-age man, and less on the evolution of modern humans.
In the Middle Ages, dependence on classical beliefs began to wane. The concept of the Ages of Man still retained some classical ideas, but focused more and more on the individual’s journey through time. The stages of wo-man lagged behind the stages of man, but were gradually acknowledged in the Renaissance and early modern periods.
Unwinding the Zodiac-Figure Nymph-Wheels
Below is an overview of the folio, and following that, the unwound series of nymphs I posted in April 2016 (the figures surrounding the f70v fish).
Note: In this overview, I am not entirely certain if the tipped-over barrels in the center ring, which I think of as coffins, are being entered (as the last stage of life), or exited (as the soul ascends to the after-world), so the arrows in the inner ring might have a different start-point than indicated here, but either way, the basic idea is the same, the outer wheel is maturation and middle age, the inner wheel is older age with a sugar-coated version of death or possibly one of ascension:
In 2016, I suggested this was a life cycle from pre-adolescence to old age.
Note how the nymphs in the outer ring go from skinny unpregnant pre-adolescence through child-bearing years and middle age, to tipped-over baskets that resemble caskets. The age progression and tipped-over posture gave me a hint of their possible meaning:
I believe this is a cradle-to-grave sequence, but did such a concept exist in medieval society?
Yes, very much so, and it was drawn in a variety of ways. Here are some examples…
Cradle-to-Grave Sequences
This stages-of-life diagram is a simple timeline. Note how the first figure is young, the second-to-last is hunched, and the last figure tips over.
In classical and medieval times, the ages of life were usually described in six to eleven stages…
Plato described nine stages. Isidore of Seville (6th century) lists six: infantia, pueritia, adolescentia, juventus, gravitas, and senectus.
Shakespeare eloquently counts seven:
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players, They have their exits and entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages…
Sometimes there were fewer stages. The following 13th- or 14th-century example (sorry, I couldn’t find a shelfmark) roughly follows Isidore’s classification (relative to the VMS, note the Gemini-like amorous couple in the adolescence circle):
Postscript 21 March 2020: This illustrator managed to include seven ages of man within the tiny space of a historiated initial, beginning at the bottom and going clockwise:
The seven ages of man contained within a historiated initial. [Source: Digital Walters W.171, c. 1402]
Sometimes the cycle was depicted like a generational photo, rather than as a chart. Here are two examples depicting seven stages:
From infancy to old age in seven stages, from De proprietatibus rerum, Published after Jan. 1486 in the same style as a French copy from 1485 [courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress]
In other words, there were no set rules on how to organize the drawing, or how many stages to include. As long as the idea of cradle-to-grave was present, the illustrator could draw the passage of life in many ways.
Postscript 28 March 2020: I wanted to add this depiction of the Stages of Life because it’s a bit unusual. Most illustrators tried to compact the stages into one image. In this case, the stages were spread over two different folios several pages apart, with commentary in between (Cod. pal. germ. 471):
Ages Depicted Staircase-Style
Staircase drawings were especially popular in the 16th and 17th centuries and these later examples are of interest because the ages relate to animals through verse, and four of the animals are common to zodiac sequences (ram, bull, lion, goat). This is not a direct reference to astrology, it’s probably biblical, but it is interesting because depictions in other styles sometimes include astrological references (discussed further below).
Here’s the background on some of the stages-of-life animal drawings… There are biblical interpretations about the life of man being increased from 30 to between 70 and 100 years by adding in the ages of animals who begged to live shorter lifespans to ease their lives of burden.
The idea of animals relating to the ages of man is reflected in a classical Greek poem by Babrius:
Horse, bull, and dog appear freezing before the house of man. He opens the door, receives them kindly and offers them food; the horse gets barley, the bull legumens, and the dog food from the table. The animals filled with gratitude towards the man give up part of their years in return for his hospitality. First the horse repays with his years, that is why man is insolent in his youth; then the bull, therefore the middle-aged man has to work hard; last comes the dog with his years…
—L. Landau, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 1920
Here is one of the later staircase-style cradle-to-grave illustrations. I include it because it shows how stages were increased over the smaller set from classical times:
The above drawing illustrates eleven stages with animals inset in the steps. The cradle and grave are on the ground, perhaps expressing the idea of “dust to dust”:
The verse for the child and the man of 30 are as follows:
Eh’ noch das kind fünf Jahr erreicht, Un Unschuld es dem ramme gleicht. (Before the child reaches five, it is innocent/unknowledgable about the ram.)
Mit dreißig zieht er in den Krieg, Stark wie ein Ochs, erringt den Sieg. (At thirty, he goes to war, strong like an ox, achieving the victory.)
Post-medieval cradle-to-grave illustrations often include biblical references in both the illustrations and the text, and the overall CtoG theme was included in hymns and prayers.
The Feminine Angle
Medieval depictions of the stages of life usually emphasize men, but a lightly modified version for women was created for commercial sale in later years.
This is a simplified version, without animals or verses, with a greater emphasis on marriage and children, as published in the early 19th century for women:
There were also versions with both men and women that might be more similar to the VMS. This one includes includes 17 figures (and a dog) and 11 stages:
Cradle to Grave. Based on Fridolin Leiber by Gustave May, Frankfurt, Germany, late 1800s.
Here is a similar theme from romance to old age, played out by flamboyant characters:
The Life Ages of Man, Abraham Bach the Edler, c. 1651 [courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]
The following example is more sparse than some, only six stages (or five, depending on how one interprets the top step with two figures), but includes animals, and emphasizes the cradle-to-grave aspect with a cradle and casket at either end:
Stylistically, these don’t have the same look or feel as the VMS nymphs, but in terms of content, there are other formats with larger numbers of figures. This one is populated by 24 figures on the ground and steps, plus about 24 more in the round frames, along with some overseers (including an angel and a demon). In other words, more than the VMS:
Stages of life from birth to the grave, with heaven and hell inset in the center, John Pitts, London 1811.
So those are some timeline, generational, and staircase formats, but there are also some based around wheels.
Co-opting the Wheel of Fortune Theme
Some stages-of-man illustrations borrowed from the “wheel of fortune” concept that was popular in the Middle Ages, with slight modifications in the characters. Note that this differs from most of the Wheel of Fortune drawings in that Fortuna is not present (there is a skeleton instead), there is no king at the top, and the emphasis is on maturing and aging rather than on one’s material standing, with a young boy on the left and a mostly prone figure on the bottom-right (and graves in the background):
The Wheel of Life in 10 steps with skeleton turning the wheel (c. 1800) [courtesy of http://www.kulturramtirol.at/ ]
In this Schwabian manuscript, blindfolded Fortuna is turning the wheel, but the main theme is clearly not a wheel of fortune. It represents cradle-to-grave with labels similar to those used by Isidore of Seville. An angel waits in the casket below:
Cradle-to-grave sequence in wheel-of-fortune style with seven classical stages [BSB Cgm 312, c. 1450]
The idea is also reflected in sculpture, as in this example from the tomb of Peter 1st in Alcobaça, who died later in the 14th century. Unfortunately, it is horribly defaced, but in the inner ring, you can see the Fortuna theme, and in the outer ring are the stages of life. You can make out a mother and infant in the lower left, and if you follow the figures clockwise through their life cycle, you eventually reach the prone figure under the lid of a casket at the bottom:
Mother and infant on the left in the outer ring, with stages of life running clockwise around until it reaches the crypt in the bottom-center. [Source: Alcobaça tomb of Peter 1 by ho visto nina volare, Wikipedia]
Here is a late-15th century blockprint of the stages of life as a wheel. Except for the wheel, it is similar to some of the staircase drawings:
The Wheel of Life might be the same idea as the VMS, but it doesn’t feel the same in terms of drawing style and so far there’s very little connection with zodiac figures. Are there stages-of-life drawings with astrological connections?
Connections to Astrology and Astronomy—Wheels with “Stars”
There is a variation on the Wheel of Fortune that has a stronger relationship to astrological/astronomical concepts than the previous examples. In this woodcut, Fortuna is replaced by an angel, the earth is in the center, and the seven stars or “planets”, as they called them (including the sun and moon), orbit around it.
Late 15th-century woodcut of cosmological themes (the seven “planets”) based on the general idea of a wheel of fortune or wheel of life.
The following example from the Psalter of Robert de Lisle, originated in England in the early 1300s. This is often called The Ages of Man but you might notice small differences between these early depictions and the way they drew the Ages of Man in the 15th and 16th centuries.
The general format is circular, with a figure in the center, and there is an infant in the first circle (7 o’clock) and a prone figure near the end (4 o’clock). In this way it is similar to the sculpture of Peter 1. The actual lifespan is shown in eight stages, plus a circle for the eulogy, and a sarcophagus for a total of ten. The labels mention infancy, youth, aging, and death, as was common for classical stages:
The Ages of Man, showing stages of life in a circle around a central figure. [Howard Psalter and De Lisle Psalter, British Library Arundel 83, Creative Commons 1.0 – Public Domain]
Medieval Classification of Stages
The stages in the following illustration from De Lisle Psalter are sandwiched together with Bible stories. Following the Tree of Life (the Jesse Tree) is a wheel with 12 stages of life, written as abbreviations for birth (Nasce[n]s), infancy (Infans), childhood (Puer.), adolescence (Adolesce[n]s), etc., counter-clockwise around the circle until one reaches death. In the corners are symbols for the four evangelists. The central figure is usually Jesus or God (in older manuscripts, the central figure is sometimes a personified sun):
12 Stages of Life from birth to death in the De Lysle Psalter, Arundel MS 82 (c. 1339) arranged in a wheel around a central figure of the deity nimbed. Symbols for Mathew, John, Luke, and Mark are in the corners.
Could images like this, arranged in a circle, have inspired the VMS creator to combine zodiac figures with the stages of life? The VMS is rife with illustrations that hint at concepts that have been combined, but they are not quite overt enough to be sure.
The Zodiac and Ages of Man
The idea of associating the stages of man with zodiac figures (thus creating 12 stages) may have come to us through Hebrew sources (e.g, the Midrash Tanhuman referenced by Landau, 1920).
Astrological mansions (affairs of man) are combined with zodiac symbols in the following example by Erhard Schön. They are expressed as figures within three concentric circles. The inner circle includes the seven “planets” that are present in many medieval cosmological drawings, surrounded by twelve zodiac figures, further surrounded by twelve mansions in the outer circle. Since this diagram was created by a card-maker (1515), it is not surprising that some of the outer figures are also found in Tarot cards.
The subject matter is slightly different from the VMS—it generally focuses on affairs of men, and all the zodiac figures are in one diagram, but the general format (zodiac figures combined with other figures in concentric wheels), is more like the VMS than many of the previous examples. Note how the the numbers run counterclockwise:
Natal horoscope by Erhard Schoen, early 16th century.
If you are curious about what the mansions represent, look at the seventh house (on the right, next to the skeleton) and you will see the marriage ceremony. The skeleton itself refers to death, wills, and testaments. The tenth house represents kings, generals, and other leaders. The eleventh house is not as easy to discern in this image, but it represents friendship and fidelity.
Astrological References from Eastern Europe
In Bulgaria, there are frescoes that combine several ideas, including night and day, the seasons, the stages of life, and zodiac figures.
For example, the wheel in the Church of the Nativity in Arbanasi is one of the closest parallels I’ve found so far to the stages of life wheel in the VMS. It has concentric circles of figures, a number of which are unclothed. The zodiac figures are traditional, however, are all included in one wheel, and are not of the same iconographic subset as the VMS zodiac figures, but it’s still worth keeping this fresco in mind (the labels in the green band are the months of the year). Unfortunately, the images are copyrighted so you will have to click the link.
Eastern Wheels
(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)
The wheel of life or Wheel of Becoming (called bhavacakra भवचक्र) is a prevalent theme in buddhist art, but it follows a different scheme from western manuscripts, emphasizing the idea of karma and rebirth and planes of existence, along with the different realms (animal, human, etc.). They don’t usually include zodiac figures in the same way as some of the western manuscripts and Bulgarian frescoes.
When zodiac figures are included in Wheels of Becoming, they are typically in the eastern style, composed entirely of animals and are usually symbolic of various emotions or states of being.
Many of these Buddhist wheels are later than the 16th century.
I believe the VMS wheel expresses a cradle-to-grave theme rather than eastern concepts of reincarnation.
Textual Versions of Stages of Life
Many manuscripts that include herbs, information on bathing, or astrological information are not illustrated. The same is true for Stages of Life.
L. Landau (1920) mentions a rhyming poem about the stages of life that I think is important for textual reasons related to the VMS. It is not medieval, it was written in Venice in 1554, but it stands out as an example of how languages and scripts can be jumbled together in less obvious ways, something that could easily have happened in the 14th or 15th centuries, as well.
Bodley Can. Or. 12, Neubauer 1217 (fol. 211b–213) is a slightly bewildering combination of German/Yiddish and Judeo-Italian that was not penned in Latin script—it was written using Hebrew letter-shapes even though it is not in Hebrew:
Bodleian Library, Can. Or. 12 (Neubauer 1217), folio 213, Judeo German/Italian (in alternate verses) written with Hebrew letters, probably intended for oral recitation.
Does the Stages-of-Life concept apply to other VMS wheels?
As mentioned in previous blogs, I believe that several of the other wheels have similar themes, but that they focus and enlarge on more specific stages, such as menstrual cycles and childbearing cycles.
For example, in the 2016 blog, I posted an unspun cycle from 70v (green Aries, which is on the same foldout as Pisces) that focuses on female nymphs and their journey through womanhood. I believe it begins with a pre-adolescent maturing into a woman and acquiring a large [probably pregnant] belly (and possibly stretch marks).
Notice the fancy veil on the sixth nymph. I’ve noticed a fancier veil on other nymphs in contexts where it might represent marriage (I’m not completely certain of this because diadems were often used in preference to veils, but it depended on the region and time period):
When I was researching medieval wedding customs I read that some couples lived together and didn’t get married until the woman became pregnant. The logic was that the husband-to-be wanted to be sure his fiancée could produce children. This was not the custom everywhere, there was a gradual shift from Pagan to Christian traditions that differed from region to region, but living together before marriage was not as uncommon or as counter-culture in the 15th century as I originally assumed.
It’s possible the lines on the belly of the nymphs in this sequence represent stretch marks. I say this based on looking at patterns in all the folios but I am not entirely sure this is the correct interpretation. I do think it’s worth considering, however, because the lines are never on the pre-adolescent girls or male nymphs. They are usually on the ones with big bellies or the thinner ones that follow soon after the big bellies. As far as I can tell, this sequence represents two pregnancies, perhaps to show that it happens more than once in a woman’s life.
I found it particularly interesting that the bellies in all the green Aries nymphs are prominently displayed so you can see if they are thin or large, except the last one…
Since the sequence starts with a pre-adolescent girl (I suspect the genitals are displayed above the edge of the barrel to make it clear it’s not a boy), I’m wondering if maybe the last nymph, with the hidden belly, represents menopause, the point at which there are no more buns in the oven.
Related Wheel-Themes
The nymphs around affectionate-Gemini relate to these themes, as well. At 2 o’clock, there is a lustful male (I’m pretty sure his flag is raised) with his eye on the nymph in front of him.
There are several other males surrounding Gemini, some of them clothed (it’s a bit of a leap, but I am reminded of love triangles, which were popular in medieval literature, stories such as Tristan and Isolde, the forerunner to the story of Guinevere):
I wanted to go into more detail about these other cycles, but it’s far too much information for one blog, so I’ll leave it for now and will fill in the rest as I have time.
Summary
It should be clear from the above examples, that there was no specific format for cradle-to-grave illustrations. They can be timelines, staircases, wheels, or anything else that gets the idea across. The number of figures isn’t rigid either. What is common to all of them is the progression from youth to old age, and old age is frequently represented by semi-prone or prone figures and may include various styles of crypts or coffins.
I see 70v Pisces nymphs as a cradle-to-grave theme and green Aries, Gemini, and some of the others, as subsets of the cradle-to-grave idea (an expansion of the middle years, with the focus on romance and child-bearing). It’s appropriate that the Pisces and Aries nymphs would be side-by-side, and perhaps intentional that the pregnancy cycle is on Aries, the symbol we most associate with spring.
The VMS image at the top of folio 77r is often interpreted as the four elements (air, earth, fire, and water). But there are five pipes, not four. I did find one medieval representation with a fifth component in the center called null, and some conceptions include a fifth “element” as spirit, aether, or void, so it’s not unreasonable to suppose the diagram might represent elements:
Medieval representations of the elements took many forms, from simple lists and block drawings to elaborate illuminations. Some of them take their cues from ancient writings:
Yes, even things which we call elements, do not endure. Now listen well to me, and I will show the ways in which they change. The everlasting universe contains four elemental parts. And two of these are heavy—earth and water—and are borne downwards by weight. The other two devoid of weight, are air and—even lighter—fire: and, if these two are not constrained, they seek the higher regions. These four elements, though far apart in space, are all derived from one another. Earth dissolves as flowing water! Water, thinned still more, departs as wind and air; and the light air, still losing weight, sparkles on high as fire. But they return, along their former way: the fire, assuming weight, is changed to air; and then, more dense, that air is changed again to water; and that water, still more dense, compacts itself again as primal earth.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 15
Sometimes an effort was made to relate elements to other concepts that fell into groups of four, eight, or twelve.
I didn’t want to assume the mysterious emanations from the VMS pipes were elements without investigating other possibilities, such as
traits (hot, cold, wet, and dry),
humors (black or yellow bile, blood, or phlegm), or possibly
temperaments (sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, or melancholic)
the four Anemoi (Oricus, Occidens, Auster, Borea),
seasons (spring, summer, fall, winter), or
stages of life/wheel of fortune.
In the following chart, we see Ignis, Aer, Aqua and Terra in the center, above which are the four humors, and to the right a group of hot/cold/wet/dry traits that are frequently associated with medicinal plants:
Levels of Complexity in Medieval Charts
Simple visual charts conveyed many of these basic ideas. This chart displays the elements in rings, beginning with earth in the center:
Schematic of elements earth, water, air, fire, and “aiers pur” [Huntington EL 26A3]
Noe that there are five labeled rings, with a dark-blue ring on the outer edge called aiers pur
Sometimes there is no text. The colors and shapes tell the story, or the text is separate from the diagrams:
This simple 13th-century chart interposes traits between the four elements. Later in the manuscript the same idea was drawn with slight differences, as though the illustrator were experimenting with ways to present the information:
Elements form the outer ring, with traits in semicircles between them [Bodleian Digby 107]
Arrangements varied considerably. This is one of the less common ones, from a mid-15th century medical/astronomical text. The elements are stacked within an enclosing circle in a different order from the preceding Huntington diagram, (aqua, ter[r]a, aer, ignis).
Note the marker at the top of the chart, and the numerous Latin abbreviation symbols that encircle the diagrams (characteristics similar to the VMS). This is a small-format manuscript (207 x 145mm):
Simple schema illustrating water, earth, air, and fire [Morgan MS B.27]
Another diagram in Digby 107 places the elements Ignis, Aer, Aqua, and Terra in the corners, with connections through hot/cold/wet/dry along the sides. Contraria forms a cross in the center:
Here Ignis, Aqua, Aer, and Terra are also in the corners, along with their associated traits. There are conceptual connections through the sides like the previous diagram, except that “[con]trarie” is on two of the outer connections instead of in the center, with “Remitentes” on the other two sides. Further connections have been added cross-wise to connect the corners:
Elements schematically connected through the sides and center [Misc. Alchemical XII]
Coming back to Morgan MS B.27, sometimes the elements were related to humans rather than to a schematic of the heavens, a trend that became more prevalent in the century after this was created, with the rise of humanism (which had a greater emphasis on independent, scientific thought and the individual). Note the lines in the background form a shape similar to the divisions used for medieval horoscopes:
In the next example, temperaments, traits, and elements have been further related to the constellations on the ecliptic (the zodiac constellations):
Zodiac constellations are included in the outer rim of the chart. together with other fourfold temperaments, traits, and elements [Morgan MS B.12]
The following diagram lists the elements and traits around the outer edge and the humors in spokes radiating from the center. It includes a schematic illustration of the moon, “planets”, and stars at the top (the Sun was in the middle of the planets because it was wrongfully assumed it orbited the Earth):
Morgan B27 has attracted the attention of Voynich researchers due to the little flower-shape and text within concentric circles, but I was also intrigued by the content, which includes elements, traits, plants, zodiac constellations, and month names:
Note that the month names are Ianuari[us], Februari[us], Marcius, Apprilis, Maius, Iuni[us], Iulius, August[us], Septe’ber, October, Nove’ber, and Dece’ber. The language/spelling is different, but some of the abbreviation symbols are the same as the month-notes added to the VMS zodiac figures.
Sometimes these various schema (left) were combined with concepts of gravitational forces, as in the two examples on the right. It was common to illustrate gravity as people standing on the earth on four sides with their feet anchored to the ground. The diagram bottom-right is a little different because it includes animals with the people:
Sometimes the gravity diagrams include “tunnels” toward the center of the earth or a rock plummeting into the center. The following diagram is primarily to illustrate gravity (note how the characters are slouched as though they are being pulled toward the globe):
Four people on the globe, pulled toward the Earth by gravitational forces [BNF Français 14964]
I thought it might be possible to relate the figures on VMS 57v to temperaments or one of the other groups of four, but it’s hard to explain the various parts of the drawing as a cohesive whole and I prefer K. Gheuen’s idea (I wish I had thought of it), described in this blog about the wheel of fortune:
Toward a Concept of a Unified Whole
LJS 449 has one of the more complicated charts, where everything except the kitchen sink has been crammed into one diagram. If you have read my blog about mappae mundi you may notice that this chart is oriented in the common way of the time, with east at the top, the direction of the rising sun.
The traits and temperaments are beneath the four corner circles and between them are the 12 winds. Note the space-filling “justification” squiggles between the text blocks in the outer circle:
So those are a few of the medieval concepts that might be creatively illustrated with something emanating from pipes, or perhaps in a wheel with four people with their feet pointing toward the center, as in VMS 85r2:
Could 84r2 be a diagram of gravitational forces?
Maybe, if it has been combined with other ideas (like the four temperaments), but it would be unusual for a picture of gravity to have the sun in the center unless this illustrator knew something other people at the time did not (that the core of the Earth is intensely hot, or that the Sun was a prime gravitational force in our solar system, a heretical idea).
The diagram on the facing page also has four figures, each one holding a different object (possibly an attribute), with a moon rather than a sun in the center, suggesting a connection between the two folios:
There are two full pages of text between this diagram and the next one, so perhaps this section was important to the designer in some way.
Following these textural/figural rota is the foldout “map” that nay also incorporate fourfold schemata, as discussed in previous blogs. Perhaps the four corners are fire, water, earth, and air:
Other Possibilities
Magical diagrams are sometimes organized in groups of four.
Here is a 15th-century charm against the plague from the Leechbook (Wellcome Library) drawn in a style similar to humors and temperaments:
The text in charms often consists of names of angels, prayers, and “power” words (some of which can be traced back to ancient times, while others are a mystery). Sometimes they are accompanied by medicinal recipes.
Here is a similarly constructed talisman for protection in battle:
Talismanic rotum for protection in battle [Huntington HM 64]. Charms were often inscribed on parchment or leather and worn on the arm or around the neck.
But maybe VMS 77r has nothing to do with elements (in the schematic sense), or humors, traits, temperaments, or charms. Maybe it’s part of a story.
Could the various emanations from the pipes and cloudlike textures represent hail, rain, fire, and blood as described in classical literature and biblical passages?
If so, then perhaps the figures in loges on either sides are celestial beings—God’s emissaries carrying out his wishes (which apply to several religions, not just Christianity), and the ones on the lower left of 77r might be dishing out storms, floods, and other natural disasters.
Here is a 12th-century illustration of a tempest of fire, hail, and blood:
The first trumpet, Beatus manuscript [c. 1180, The Met]
Illustrations of plagues and calamitous weather are also found in Hebrew manuscripts, such as “the plague of hail” in the Hispano-Moresque Haggadah, Castile, c.1300.
I forgot to include this image when I posted this blog. It is another example of a trumpet, lines to represent sound, prone individuals below, and a burning star. The call of the third trumpet. [Source: The Cloisters Apocalypse, c. 1330]
More of this occurs in Morgan M.644. Here the emanations are accompanied by a plague of scorpions:
As an aside, note how M.644 uses a band of stars, rather than a cloudband, to define the celestial borders (above and right). This is more like old Egyptian borders on friezes and coffins than later medieval cloudbands, but the context is the same.
M.644 also incorporates numerous groups of four, including winged beings, four discs with dark-light slightly spiraled patterns, and 24 stars in the perimeter (6 groups of 4) and, in the center, the lamb of God (looking more like a horse than a lamb):
Agnus Dei surrounded by numerous motifs in groups of four [Morgan Library, New York, Morgan M.633, c. 940s Apocalypse manuscript]
In this early Spanish illustration, there are streams and corpses and a falling, burning star, with an angel (a clothed nymph?) orchestrating events:
Streams, corpses and a burning star [Spain, c. 940s, Morgan MS M.644]
Is the same theme in the VMS? If we pretend nymphs in airborne loges are divine beings, are they working the celestial machinery?
I’m beginning to think that the VMS nymphs aren’t nymphs at all. Maybe we should think of the ones in loges as “celestial engineers” who alternately guide the viewer or orchestrate earthly events. If so, perhaps the pipes at the top of 77r have more to do with natural elements or mythical calamities than the classifications of Aristotle.
Postscript 21 August 2019: If you scan back through this blog, you will see that I posted an image of “the first trumpet” from a Beatus manuscript, with textures streaming out of the end of the trumpet. This image exemplifies the point of the blog—that streaming textures don’t have to be Aristotelian-style elements, they can be other things, including temperaments, humors, sound, messages, or biblical-style calamities.
The idea that the poofs coming out of the VMS pipes might be something other than earth, air, fire, water, and spirit/aether has haunted me for years, but it wasn’t until I started focusing on Agnus Dei, early this year, that the idea of calamitous weather hit me, as well.
I was reluctant to post this blog because I knew I had another image in my files that included not just one trumpet, but several—but I couldn’t locate it among my terabytes of VMS imagery and my blogs tend to sit for a long time in Draft mode when I can’t find a specific image, so I posted it anyway.
I found the missing image today and have cropped it to emphasize the part with the trumpets. Note how each angel at the level just above the Earth has wings of a different color, just as the emanations from each VMS pipe is a slightly different texture or color. Four of these angels have trumpets, and one is dispensing emanations from a lidded chalice (a chalice often refers to Christ’s blood as a metaphor for spirit or the Godhead), so we have 1 + 4 to possibly match 1 + 4 in the VMS “pipes”:
A row of angels between heaven and earth dispense God’s judgment by pouring spiritual redemption (a chalice with Christ’s blood captured at the crucifixion) or various forms of calamitous weather (often wind, fire, flooding rain, or hail) [BNF Néerlandais 3]
Imagine that the nymphs on either side of the VMS folio in their respective “zoomers” are angels in charge of dispensing God’s commands. Also imagine that the VMS pipes are metaphorical trumpets, and each poof out of a pipe is some sort of calamity (e.g., rain, wind, fire, hail). Fire and hail (and sometimes frogs) were especially popular in terms of heavenly onslaughts. It’s possible the empty pipe refers to wind or to spirit in much the same way as the lidded chalice of blood sometimes refers to spirit or spiritual redemption (it is sometimes also a flaming chalice).
I don’t know if this is what the pipes represent, I still think temperaments, humors, or traditional elements are possible, but since this images helps clarify one of the possibilities I haven’t seen suggested by other researchers, I wanted to share it with readers.
Postscript 13 May 2020: Here are two more drawings that illustrate how the textures coming out of the “pipe” on f77r might not be elements in the medieval scientific sense but, alternately, could be forces of nature like wind, water, fire, and hail, as suggested in this blog.
These are from the Wellcome Apocalypse (MS49) and they show the various calamities that could be “rained down” by God if people didn’t behave themselves (with thanks to Arca Librarian for pointing out that this manuscript is now online).
Note the different textures used for each form of weather:
In a recent blog, I described a few interpretations of Rotum 1 (top-left) on the VMS “map” folio. One possibility is an aerial view of a volcano. But Rotum 1 isn’t the only shape that might be interpreted as a volcano. There are other mountain-like structures on the same folio, if one views them from the side instead of the top.
The “map” folio has a wealth of textural structures, too many to describe in a dozen blogs. So this blog will focus on the patterned triangular shapes attached to the sides of the circular rota.
Rotum 3 (top-right) and Rotum 9 (bottom-right) are somewhat different, but the mountain shapes have some commonalities. Both of them are textured, with circles and blue paint in the pattern, both appear to have holes at the top, and both point toward the center of the folio.
Sometimes bumps are intended to describe rough terrain, rocks, or mountainous regions, as this example from Losbuch (15th c):
But the VMS structures are on the outsides of the circles, are more triangular, and appear to have openings at the ends with something coming out of them:
For years I have thought of these as “spewy things”. But if they were, I wasn’t sure whether to interpret them as horizontal outflows (e.g., exit spouts or natural springs), or as vertical steam vents, geysers, volcanoes, or something else.
It even occurred to me that some of them might be steaming compost piles, which might fit one possible interpretation of Rotum 9 as an irrigated garden:
Lumpy, steaming pile of manure [photo courtesy of Mark Duxberry, Youtube]
Details of the Emanations
It’s interesting that the protrusions have different patterns, and different “somethings” spewing from the openings. Here’s a close-up of whatever is emanating from the tops:
The one on the left is somewhat watery and free-form, the other somewhat circular, like the splash from dropping a rock in a pond.
The patterns on both bumps are made of circles and lines, but the one on the left is somewhat scaly and lumpy. The one on the right, more linear and smooth on the edges, with alternating small and large dots. Both have alternating sections colored in blue.
Are the textural differences decorative or meaningful? Are there clues on the page to help us work it out?
There are four shorter spewy things between the central rotum and those on each side. They have a simpler scale pattern, but does that mean they are different structures?
I have enlarged and rotated the insets so it’s easier to compare them:
They all connect to the outer rota in essentially the same way. At four points, there emerges a pile of scaly textures with something spewing out. They are not as large as those on Rota 3 and 9 and they are more similar to one another. But the emanations from each has a different pattern. From the top going clockwise, there are
alternating circles and lines, with a touch of blue paint between the rows of circles,
alternating bands, some with very light lines with a touch of pale amber, the others with short lines in the perpendicular direction, parallel tick marks in groups of three,
blank bands alternating with wider bands filled with chevron-style vee shapes, no paint, and
alternating bands of angled tick marks, each band angled in the other direction, somewhat chevron-like if seen from farther back, no paint.
Triangle, chevron, and scale patterns are common to many cultures and go back a long way. They are found in manuscript art, jewelry, and architectural embellishments:
This example from the Beehive tomb in Praesos is more than 2,000 years old:
An Uncertain Context
To me, the central rotum suggests an inverted dome, the kind that is embellished with stars, so I wondered if this rosette might have spiritual significance. The double-scalloped band near the perimeter seems to reinforce this possibility, but since the identity of the central structures is not yet certain, it’s hard to know whether the spewy things are imaginary or real.
I’m also not quite sure how to interpret the pipes. I’ve always wanted to associate them with aqueducts, chimneys, or steam vents, but it’s tempting to think of them as sighting tubes (I’m a gadget freak, so I’m always imagining scientific instruments).
Sighting tubes were in regular use in the Middle Ages, but it would be unusual for there to be so many of them. They’re not all drawn the same, some have smooth sides, with dots around the ends, and come in different lengths; others are the same length, and have a pattern of dots along the length of the tube. Unlike the vent-like structures, they do not spew or connect the rota, and they don’t quite look like chimney pipes. These will have to wait for a separate blog.
I spent quite a bit of time in the early days trying to reconcile the “rosettes” folio with Jerusalem, but every time I tried, the topological features didn’t quite fit. I wasn’t able to reconcile them with mythical New Jerusalem either.
I wondered if it might be a mnemonic map of myths.
Myths, Mountains, and Spewy Things
The interesting structures below are in the Psychro cave in eastern Crete. It has been a sacred cave since ancient times and is associated with the birthplace of Zeus. Some of the textures on the nymph pages remind me of grottoes and caves.
The myth of baby Zeus might fit some of the features…
To save him from being eaten by his father, Zeus was hidden away in a cave and raised by his nursemaid Rhea, goddess of mountain tops and forests.
The cave had bees emanating from it that supplied baby Zeus with honey. Sometimes fire was said to emanate from the cave. Could some of the structures with openings be cave entrances? Might some of the spewings be sacred bees or flames?
The interior of this cave has several textural patterns:
Photo courtesy of Ingo Wölbern, Wikipedia
Stalagmites don’t spew, but stalactites drip moisture and chemical residues, and are often associated with watery discharges. Could the VMS textures be inspired by cave formations?
The tops of mountains were often seen as sacred places, and sometimes modified to create temples. This is a Minoan artifact with VMS-like scaly structures representing a mountain:
What if the textured bumps are geological rather than ornamental or mythical…
Natural Structures that Spew
There are volcanic structures that spew gases and mud, and the patterns on the sides can be quite varied. Geologically active areas exist in many regions, including Romania, Yellowstone park, Azerbaijan, China, Sicily, Naples, and some of the spa regions in central and eastern Europe. Even Antarctica has towering gas vents sheathed with ice.
Here are some mud volcanoes. Note the varied textures:
Some mud volcanoes splash, as powerful gas blurps out the mud. Others ooze and slowly drip down the sides. The texture changes as the material dries, and is partly molded by local weather conditions. Could the lumps on Rotum 3 and 9 represent different kinds of mud volcanoes, or two different stages in their formation?
Mud vents would fit well with the bathy themes in the VMS. In Naples and the Aeolian Islands near Sicily, people bathe in mud pools. Cleopatra is said to have enjoyed the mud baths in southeastern Turkey:
Could They be Vapor Without the Mud?
Fumaroles, which emit clouds of gases, vary considerably in shape and texture, as in these Google Image examples:
A fun fact about fumaroles is that they sometimes blow smoke rings.
I thought the circular formation above the bump on Rotum 9 might be a stylized splash, as in the mudbath image posted earlier, or a loud sound, but perhaps it’s the birth of a smoke ring.
I can’t post this Rights-Managed image, but here is a link, so you can see an example:
There are many fumaroles in Iceland, Yellowstone and Lassen parks, El Tatio, Dominica, Naples, and Sicily. These photos illustrate how varied they can be:
Relationships to Other Folios
I like to look at things in context and the VMS is more than a map-like foldout. There are textures in the bathy and cosmological sections similar to those on the rosettes folio.
Could there be a relationship between the structures in the VMS “map” and other textural folios like 86v, or do the bumpy textures on 86v represent something completely different?
Is 86v a Different Kind of Information?
There are textural groups in each of the four corners of 86v, and emanations as well. But it is much simpler, overall, than the rosettes folio, and there are humans and birds on the left and right sides.
The structures at the top might be weather-related or celestial (assuming this folio has a “top” and a “bottom”). Those at the bottom resemble stylized mountains or island tors. They are quite dynamically slanted toward the center, slightly off-kilter. One of the humans appears to be hiding. The VMS rosettes folio has an explanatory, practical feel to it. This one has a more narrative feel.
If it is narrative, can we guess what it is?
I have a lot of ideas about this, but I’ll choose three as examples…
Here’s one possible interpretation, according to an ancient myth:
But there are other possibilities, like this one:
Excerpts from The Gods and Religions of Ancient and Modern Times by Bennett
Or perhaps something like this:
The last one is based on the book of Revelation. It describes the cataclysm that occurs when the Sixth Seal is opened.
Apocalyptic scenes of the Sixth Seal, like the one below from Getty Ludwig III 1 (c. 1255), traditionally show the sun and the moon and sometimes a cloud-like division between heaven and earth. The heavenly bodies drop stars like figs (note the star shapes and snowball shapes). The people hide in the mountains (often there are two mountains resembling giant termite mounds, one or both with a tree):
This more traditional image is stylistically different from the VMS, but ignoring the style, the enigmatic 86v has some of the same narrative flavor as other medieval illustrations.
As a side note, the theme of sun and moon within a defining cloudlike band is very ancient, as in this pre-Hellenic Minoan artifact illustrating rites in a sacred grove (notice also the many textures):
The same sun/moon/cloud-band motif can be seen in the 12th century Eadwine Psalter (which I’ve discussed on the Voynich.ninja forum):
The Eadwine Psalter has some elements similar to 86v, including emanations from the heavens, and trees, birds, and hilltops:
Note how each wall has a different pattern, even though they are essentially the same kinds of walls. Is this what is happening in the VMS, or are the textures meant to convey differences?
In the VMS, I get the feeling that the varying textures in the big bumps on the “map” folio and those on 86v represent different (or somewhat different) things. The patterns in the emanations from the smaller bumps however (the ones in the insets), might be purely decorative.
Summary
One blog can’t even begin to introduce the subject of the VMS textures—this only scratches the surface. The important thing to remember is there are many ways to interpret the same drawing, and it’s not enough to look at one folio, others should be considered as well..
Postscript 6 March 2019: I mentioned termite mounds in my article, but forgot to include the picture and search link.
Termite mounds are quite sophisticated and diverse in size and texture and some of them resemble the ventlike shapes in the VMS. Some even have regular patterns of holes around the sides. They don’t “spew” from their tops, but if the VMS mounds are meant to be horizontal rather than vertical, then the entrance and exit of insects, like termites, ants or wasps, might be represented by a variety of textures pouring out from a hole.
Termite mound in Namibia [Photo by Olga Ernst, Wikipedia]
I have already posted examples of paragraph markers that resemble stars or flowers that are similar to those in the margins of the Voynich Manuscript. But VMS stars also occur in other places, like the hands of nymphs. Astrology seems an obvious source, since astrological symbols and stars are explicitly illustrated, but might there be other, less obvious inspirations?
I searched marginal drawings and medieval paper-marks, some of which have star- or flower-like designs that look like stars on sticks (a possible reference to the star mace). The drawings of Hildegard von Bingen also feature symbolic star imagery:
I also sifted through banners and coats of arms, and there are many stars, too many to narrow down a specific design or location.
Family emblems for Albertini, Anallarius, and Barbalanius in a Vatican Library manuscript illustrate star motifs.
Stars are everywhere, which makes it difficult to point to any one source, although it might be worth mentioning that they feature prominently in the emblems of the Waldeck family (note the “ck” ligature in the name of the estate):
Alchemical manuscripts contain a great deal of star imagery, as do books of kabbalah and magic.
But are there less obvious sources?
What about marks like these that include stars, stars on sticks, and sometimes even marks that resemble 4o or reverse-4o…
These are merchant marks, in essence, the medieval version of corporate logos and trademarks. The example above is from 1393 from the Prato archives. Here are further examples so you can see the variety of shapes and how they were combined:
Merchant marks were ubiquitous. They were used to mark sacks, stores, carts, documents, walls, and even the food sold in markets, such as bread and butter.
Note how the angled shapes are similar to the numeral 4 that came into use in the 15th century, as the older, rounder 4-shape evolved into a straighter sharper glyph. The 4o combination has been observed in a number of medieval ciphers. The source might be the abbreviation for “quarto”, but perhaps marks of trade that combined the “4” shape with a variety of other shapes served as inspiration as well.
Trade marks were not always straight and angular, sometimes human figures, animals, or flowers were included and, of course, stars, as in these examples:
I included the nymphs-in-buckets because, in a way, the collection of heads reminded me of the white Aries folio in the VMS, with its colored and clothed nymphs. I’ve often wondered if these represented doctors and midwifes, in keeping with health-related themes, or perhaps professors, philosophers, or the nobility. I also thought it might be a family tree, a genealogy, since it was not uncommon for illustrations of family trees to include figures in loges, similar to the VMS “buckets”.
But maybe they have nothing to do with medicine or family trees. Perhaps they are inspired by merchant symbols, or represent a catalog of important business contacts. Even if it’s not the most likely explanation, I like to keep an open mind.
A question about Robert Brumbaugh on the voynich.ninja forum caught my attention, so I searched out a published article about his decipherment of Voynich Manuscript star names. In Brumbaugh’s article, he refers to the nymphs in the zodiac-symbols section as “souls” and proposes glyph-to-numbers-to-alphabet substitution to interpret the labels. To demonstrate his system, he deciphers folio 70v with the two fish (Pisces).
This commentary is a response to Brumbaugh’s 1976 article, “The Voynich ‘Roger Bacon’ Cipher Manuscript: Deciphered Maps of Stars” published in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes.
The Basic System
First Brumbaugh assumes the VMS is a natural-language substitution code and converts the VMS glyphs to numbers, then converts them to letters (without any interim processing). If he were adding or multiplying or otherwise processing the numbers, then numeric conversion might be necessary, but since he’s proposing nothing more than a substitution system, he could just as easily have gone straight from glyphs to letters without the unnecessary interim step.
That’s not my main criticism, however. The extra step might be a practical adaptation for feeding Voynich glyphs into a computer and doesn’t affect the outcome, which is the most important thing. Unfortunately, Brumbaugh’s system takes so many liberties with interpretation of the glyph-numbers, it comes across as a theory-driven decipherment rather than objective cryptanalysis.
Brumbaugh begins with the premise that the labels are star names, even though his decipherment does not match any well-known star-name systems currently used or cited in medieval texts. His explanation for this is that they must be names for a proposed system, or what he calls “alternate astrolabe nomenclature”.
He then describes his substitution system, which first converts VMS glyphs to numbers and then provides alternate character-interpretations for each number:
Applying the System to the Fish Folio
Brumbaugh uses the Pisces folio to explain how he deciphered the star names in the center of the rota and the inner circle, going clockwise from the top.
To save you time, if you plan to read the article, I created a diagram of Brumbaugh’s substitution assignments so that you don’t have to struggle through the minutiae, as I did, trying to figure out which of Brumbaugh’s substitutions apply to which labels in the VMS (click on the image to see it full-sized):
Summary of Robert Brumbaugh’s “decipherment” of a supposed alternate system of star names. His system is based on a significant amount of subjective interpretation of glyph assignments, spelling, and assumptions about the content of the labels. He also asserts that each VMS glyph occurs in two shapes (and thus would be assigned the same number).
Note the inconsistency between the tokens and Brumbaugh’s interpretation of them. He claims there are only five star names in the inner section of the Pisces labels (these are the free-floating labels, not the ones written within the lines), even though he “deciphers” six names and then claims that they repeat (and one of the repeats is supposedly the inner “Alfred” label).
Note in the diagram above that the supposedly repeated tokens (including “Alfred”) do not match the original tokens—the glyphs are quite different. His explanation for this is that they are alternate spellings and that there are two shapes for each character.
If you follow through the substitution process, you might notice that whenever Brumbaugh runs into a token that doesn’t fall into place within his system, he changes the glyph assignments and proposes alternate readings. For example, EVA-l is given four different interpretations in the four first labels (“d”, “m”, “x”, and “s”).
He also claims the labels are misspelled and need to be corrected (the misspellings he proposes are not especially consistent with the kinds of misspellings one actually finds in medieval texts).
He further claims that when a similar token occurs later that it’s an alternate spelling of a previous star name, without giving an explanation of how he would know when a similar token is or is not something previously given and supposedly re-spelled.
I don’t know how this article got published. Maybe the academics reviewing it did not have access to the VMS photostats and thus were unable to check Brumbaugh’s logic and published it on trust (or published it because the VMS was a hot topic), but there are big holes in the logic that should have been addressed before it was published.
Summary
Is Brumbaugh completely wrong or is there something to salvage?
Might the VMS be numbers? Yes, it’s possible, but not in the way Brumbaugh describes it as a simple substitution code. He’s only using numbers as a convenient way to describe the data—the numbers are converted back into letters without any arithmetic processing.
Might there be alternate interpretations of some of the VMS glyphs? Yes, that’s possible too, but not in the arbitrary way Brumbaugh reassigns glyphs to suit his theory. To wrestle the tokens into pseudo-star-names, he reassigns spelling, ignores crucial differences between tokens, imposes meaning on selected parts of the labels, and even claims this was an “alternate” star-naming system, all of which are questionable approaches to empirical research.
Might more than one glyph represent the same letter? Maybe, assuming the VMS is natural language, but duplicate glyph-assignment would have a significant impact on entropy and further complicates the process of decryption (not just for the cryptanalyst, but also for the person who created the text in the first place).
Brumbaugh’s research has not had a significant impact on contemporary Voynich studies, as far as I can tell, and now I understand why. Like so many other “solutions”, it depends on a number of unproven assumptions, and a significant amount of subjective interpretation.
Is the spirit of the VMS illustrations embodied in crafts from the 1860s? I wanted to include these images in previous blogs about rayed designs here and here, but a disparity of 450 years is significant. If you believe in the VMS-as-a-modern-forgery theory maybe you don’t find it strange that a medieval manuscript resembles 19th-century textiles, but if you’re confident it’s from c. 1420, it may leave you peering at details for hours.
Medieval cultural exchange between east and west typically occurred through men. Women stayed home to feed and raise the children while men took perilous journeys by land and sea that often lasted three to six years. For those less inclined to brave searing deserts or savage seas, Arabic-speaking traders in north Africa and the Middle East served as intermediaries. Thus, Europe acquired astrology from Egypt and the Levant, numerals and exotic spices from India, ivory and ceramics from north and west Africa, and many illustrative and medical traditions from the Greeks.
In contrast, textile embroidery was practiced mainly by women in rural communities who had less access to ready-made city wares (note, it was not uncommon for men to weave, but embroidery was usually left to the women). Living in isolation from men and often being barred from education, women developed distinctive vocabularies, and sometimes their own writing systems (e.g., the Nüshu phonetic script from China).
They also developed their own illustrative traditions, passing down skills and ideas from mother to daughter. Unfortunately, textiles embellished by women were of a practical nature, they were used for clothing, food covers, and bed linens, and would wear out in a generation or two, leaving few records, and the ideas behind them were orally transmitted, making it difficult to study their origins and evolution.
The Quilts of East India
Kantha is an ancient Indic embroidery tradition, but it is difficult to find examples more than 200 years old. Most of those in museums are from the latter half of the 19th century, but the way the decorative, repetitive elements are combined is not dissimilar to the VMS.
Common themes in kantha textiles include rayed designs, flowers, starbursts, family, flora, and fauna. You can even find cloudband shapes, circular diagrams similar to western depictions of the earth and stars, and circular rows of scales and points like those on the VMS “map” folio. Remember, these are 19th-century creations, so there was more exposure to outside influences, but they nevertheless retained many historic patterns.
These are some typical rayed designs:
And some stylized plants similar to menorah-tree-of-life images, from two different quilts:
In the fauna category, elephants, snakes, birds, monkeys, and hoofed animals were popular and there are occasionally boars, sheep, and smaller cats. Being so close to China, one might expect dragons, but mythical animals were rare compared to those based on life:
In the following detail, note how the peacock feathers were drawn, almost like tubes or spikes. Even though the subject matter is different, the way it was expressed reminded me of the VMS plant that has roots with “bolts” and the rayed design on folio 69v:
Here’s a shape (left) that might be hard to recognize, until you turn it in the other direction, and add the rest of the picture and then it is less similar to the odd shape in the top-left corner of f116v as it seems at first glance. Even so, it’s an unusual way to draw a tail:
One critter that might be of interest to Voynich researchers is the long-necked maneless cat (possibly a tiger or leopard, although the tail is like that of a lion). Like many western medieval images of lions, it has a human-like face. Note that the rider is sexually ambiguous, dressed like a man but possibly having breasts.
Horses with riders are fairly common on kantha quilts, but a person riding a cat is infrequent, and similar to the astrological symbol for Leo in middle-eastern manuscripts. There is even a reference to God in Arabic on one of the quilts. In general, however, references to astrology (other than suns, moons, and stars) are not common in the kantha textiles of this era, so the image may only coincidentally resemble the middle-eastern Leo:
Storytelling in Kantha Textiles
Some designs are narrative, commemorating special occasions, journeys, Hindu legends, and daily activities:
Imagine if these ladies were nude. It’s not exactly the Baths of Pozzuoli but it is an example of repetitive use of female figures:
In fact, some of them are nude from the waist up in a quilt of a similar style:
Could these ideas have reached the west in earlier times?
This kantha quilt (below) caught my eye because there was a certain aesthetic that emerged in southern France in the early medieval period that included “spinner” flowers (similar to those below right) and a stronger emphasis on deeper, brighter, warmer shades. I mentioned this in a previous blog about troubadors (some of which may have been Roma). There is a hint of this style in a few of the VMS flowers, as well:
More About the Circular Motifs
The following image, on the same kantha quilt as the long-necked cat, includes an infurled scalloped shape similar to a cloudband. Note also the dots inside the “scales” and the row of pickets around the outer edge, each with a spot attached to a string. The VMS “map” page has a number of similar patterns:
There are many instances of overlapping scale textures in the VMS. Scale patterns were common to many cultures, including Persian, Chinese, and many others, but it was interesting to see that scale and flame patterns are also found in the Bengali kantha:
It’s not surprising that kantha from southern Asia have a mandala-like quality, but there are also distinctive differences between the mandalas associated with monasteries and those created by Bengali quilters. Many of the monasteries are Buddhist. Today, the religions in Bengal are split east-west between Islam and Hinduism (with only about 8 to 27% overlap). Not long after these quilts were made, a sizable portion of the east Bengalis moved farther east to Assam.
Summary
It was not my intention to draw direct parallels between 19th-century Bengali textiles and 15th-century manuscript drawings, but I was struck by the similarities when you look at some of the repetitive decorative elements.
For years, I’ve searched the world for strong overlap, without much success. It’s easy to find a few examples here and there, but not all in the same place, and yet these interesting images occur within a dozen textiles.
Even when I scoured the cultural traditions of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Malaysia, and western India (many times since 2007), I didn’t locate as many similarities as I did in the Bengal/Bangladesh region, which surprised me because Bengal is near Nepal and SW China, and eastern India was never ruled by the Greeks and Romans in the same way as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Trade with this specific area was almost nonexistent in 15th-century Europe.
The odds of mostly rural Bengali textiles reaching the west are quite small (the Roma are said to be from the Sindhi area near the Pakistani border, not from eastern India, so it doesn’t seem likely they brought these). The designs are specific to the Bengal region (Pakistani, Afghani, and Persian textile designs have more in common with each other than with Bengal quilts), and whether it’s coincidence or not, they share a certain design aesthetic with the VMS in the way that repetitive textures are drawn.
Even if there’s no connection to the VMS, I thought you might enjoy them… you almost expect a string to connect the hands of these figures to the star-like medallions nearby:
J.K. Petersen
Copyright (c) 2017 J.K. Petersen, All Rights Reserved
![[Pics of medieval family emblems.]](https://voynichportal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/FamilyEmblems.png)
![[Pic of Waldeck family emblems]](https://voynichportal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/WaldeckEmblems.png)
Alchemical manuscripts contain a great deal of star imagery, as do books of kabbalah and magic.
![[Pic of medieval and renaissance merchant marks.]](https://voynichportal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/MerchantMarks.png)
