Category Archives: The Voynich Zodiac Wheels

Weighing in on Libra

Stylistic Variations

Medieval scribes were copyists. Before the invention of the printing press, it was difficult to mass-produce text other than by carving woodblocks or creating ceramic molds that could be impressed into wax or clay, both of which were inefficient, laborious processes for texts of more than a few pages. So they copied by hand, one letter at a time.

Medieval scribe copying a manuscript (Vatican Reg. Lat. 12).

Many of the copied manuscripts were sacred texts and it was considered sacrilege to alter the wording. Exact copies were encouraged and in some cases required by cultural law (as in the Hebrew Torah).

Since the idea was to reproduce the book as closely as possible, not to create an original composition, the basic template was often the same and regional patterns can be recognized, some of which can help us trace the origins of a manuscript.

That’s not to say there was no room for originality. Often the text was accompanied by embellished initials or illustrations, and variations were introduced by some of the more creative (or rebellious) individuals, variations that were then copied by subsequent generations.

Copying Zodiac Symbols

Drawings offered a little more leeway for artistic expression than the text. Over the centuries, zodiac symbols have been drawn or sculpted with small variations that point to certain regions or illustrative traditions. Ancient zodiacal figures, based on Pagan or Mithraic beliefs (which were broadly disseminated by Roman soldiers), often depicted figures as nude or dressed in scanty togas, while those from the late middle ages more often were clothed.

Animal symbols underwent small changes, as well. Capricorn started out as a seagoat with a distinctive fish-tail, and gradually took on a variety of forms, including goats in shells, goats with dragon tails, or a naturalistic goat with four legs. Cancer could be a crab, crayfish, or lobster. Scorpio was originally a scorpion but was later shown in some areas as a lizard or dragon. Sagittarius could be a centaur, satyr, or human figure.

Tracing the Traditions

Over a period of several years, I collected hundreds of examples of zodiac cycles. Almost 400 of them were western-style zodiacs (most of them full cycles with 12 signs). After comparing them for stylistic patterns and trends, I was surprised to notice a change in the depiction of Libra in the early 12th century that I haven’t seen others remark upon but which may tell us something about the VMS.

Libra in Hand

Roman-style Libra with male figure, c. 9th century St. Gall, Switzerland.

Prior to the 12th century, Libran scales were usually held in the hand of a human figure, except in a few instances where space was very constrained. There are a number of exceptions where the scales are shown alone, including

a Roman mosaic in Tunis
the 9th century Leiden Aratea zodiac, and
an 11th century mosaic in Otranto Cathedral (south of Brindisi, Italy).

But these are exceptions rather than the rule—scales-only Libras are less common than those where the scales are held by a human or human-like figure (usually a Roman god), as will be seen from examples that follow.

Exploring the Imagery

Male Libra holds scales aloft in this Carolingian zodiac from the Reichenau monastery, Germany. Image courtesy of the Vatican Library.

Prior to the 12th century, most treatises on astronomy and astrology were not illustrated, but there are some and they derived from Greco-Roman styles.

The painting on the right is from a Carolingian manuscript, illuminated at the largest scriptorium in S.W. Germany. The face has been damaged, but based on the clothing treatment of other figures in the cycle, the figure holding the scales appears to be male. This example illustrates that the figure-with-scales imagery was in use in central European manuscripts by the 9th or early 10th century, but that local styles of dress had not yet been incorporated into zodiac drawings.

About 200 years later, something changed and that change appears to center around southwest Germany.

What stands out after comparing hundreds of sets of pre-1500 zodiacs is a temporal and geographic cluster of Germanic zodiac signs that depict the scales alone (mostly in missals and psalters but also in medical and astrological texts). There is also a 13th-century zodiac from Georgia without a figure that could be an isolated example or which might be related in some as-yet undetermined way to the others that I have included in the diagram below.

In the following chart, I have grouped the images according to whether Libra includes a figure (top) or only the scales (bottom). It is further organized according to approximate date of creation (exact dates are not known but are probably correct within about 10 to 70 years):

I thought I had found a 12th-century example of scales without a figure in the Soissons Cathedral stained-glass windows but then discovered that most of the glass had been replaced in the late 1800s.

[Addendum: I forgot to post this map that accompanies the above chart, which shows a sampling of the approximate temporal/geographical distribution of these symbols. I include it now (May 7, 2016)]

As with most research, the above chart, assembled over several years, is still a work-in-progress. Nevertheless, some interesting patterns are apparent between approx. 1130 and 1460:

Most zodiacs signs were enclosed by circles unless they were a spoke in a zodiac “wheel”. A few were on plain backgrounds. By the 15th century, some were becoming more elaborate, especially those from France.
Zodiacs in Frankish and English manuscripts typically feature a figure holding the scales (Trinity B-11-5 from Normandy is an exception to this general pattern) until around 1460.
The figures holding the scales are usually standing, except those from Persia and possibly Armenia, which are usually sitting cross-legged.
Libra images in traditional Roman garb are usually male. Others are usually female.
By the mid-13th century, most of the zodiacs are drawn with medieval dress rather than Roman togas.
Ancient Roman zodiacs were often created in tile or stone, but Carolingian-era and early-medieval zodiacs from English and Germanic regions (Germany, Switzerland, Austria and northern Italy) showed up frequently in manuscripts, whereas Frankish zodiacs tended to embellish physical structures such as churches (stone-carved portals and stained-glass windows were popular).
Before 1455, scales without figures were mostly Germanic.
Simple versions of scales without figures don’t show up with any regularity in England, Italy, or France until about 1260, and even then they were a distinct minority compared to those with figures.

The Missing Link

In Bodley Ms 614 and Digby 83 (both English manuscripts), a scorpion (rather than a human figure) holds the scales. In the German version (right) the scorpion is close to the scales but doesn’t hold them, which may have led copyists to assume the scales and scorpion were completely separate.

I searched extensively through zodiacs to discover a reason for the simplified Libra and finally had enough examples to guess what may have happened. Ancient depictions of Libra sometimes show the scales held by a scorpion rather than by Virgo.

The examples on the right serve as a tentative explanation. The one with a scorpion holding the scales is from England from c. 1150. The one on the right is from S.W. Germany from around the same time. They both derive from the Hyginus tradition (which traces back to Greek sources before the 2nd century CE), but the second one visually separates the scorpion from the scales. Since Scorpio is a constellation in its own right, copyists may have overlooked or dismissed the association between Scorpio and Libra and further separated the scales from the Scorpion in subsequent copies, thus creating a stand-alone Libra that was particularly prevalent in Germany.

The Spread of the Illustrative Tradition

The simplified scales in the Germanic manuscripts are not due to lack of space—the images of Sagittarius and Aquarius in the same zodiac cycles are quite detailed—so it appears to be a stylistic choice that contrasted with that of surrounding regions.

By the second half of the 15th century, it is apparent that figureless scales had spread to other countries, as in this example from France from c. 1457 (right). The French zodiac cycles (which were sometimes painted by Flemish artists) tended to be more ornate and more richly colored than earlier Germanic Libras and were often shown within architectural settings, an innovation that set them apart from the Germanic examples.

Simplified Libra and the Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich Libra most closely resembles the Germanic zodiacs, regardless of whether this was coincidental or deliberate. It doesn’t look like conventional Libras from France (with the exception of few isolated examples from NE France or Flanders) or from the eastern Mediterranean. It particularly resembles those from Switzerland, southern Germany, eastern Austria, and England (note that England had strong ties with St. Gall at the time).

This by itself doesn’t prove an association, but taken together with Cancer as a crayfish, Scorpio as a lizard or dragon, and Sagittarius with legs and a crossbow (which is a rare combination), there are multiple illustrative choices that point to the same region.

Summary

A German Libra from c. 1460s probably post-dates the VMS but I’ve included it here because it is a rare example of a zodiac with text written around the sign in a circle (BSB CGM 312).

There may not be an exact model from which the VMS was copied (if there is, it may not be publicly accessible or may have perished along the way). It’s entirely possible that the VMS illustrator was exposed to a variety of styles if a manuscript library or scriptorium were nearby, or if his profession involved travel.

If the illustrator researched multiple sources and then filled in the blanks with original ideas, the Voynich Manuscript’s association with other documents may never be clear, but the examples in the above chart show that this style of Libra was particularly prevalent in central Europe from about the early 12th century to the 15th century, which includes the period during which the VMS was created.

It hasn’t been determined where the VMS illustrator was born or lived, but it appears that he or she was influenced, at least in part, by documents from central Europe.

J.K. Petersen

Is Taurus an Aurochs?

Leave a reply

Tracing Taurus

A drawing of a long-horned animal appears in the position one would expect to see Taurus the bull in a traditional zodiac sequence, and appears twice in the Voynich Manuscript, each within the center of a wheel populated with figures.

The two critters have some minor discrepancies, but are basically the same, except for the way in which they are painted. The brick-red paint is sketchy and light on one, darker and more even on the other. The information circling the figures differs, both textually and visually, but this post will concentrate on the imagery. Let’s compare them to a historic image of a bull:

The most significant difference between the VMS bull and the one shown above is the shape of the neck. The VMS horns are also a bit more upright and closer together, but this was not unusual in medieval zodiacs. The other differences between the VMS bull and real bulls can probably be attributed to limited drawing skills.

It should also be noted that the VMS bull appears to be standing in front of or eating from a basket-like container. The lines on the baskets are respectively diagonal and square. The face of the second bull is turned slightly more to the side. The month-name “May” has been written between the legs, probably by another hand, perhaps by someone trying to decode the manuscript.

Background on the Bull

I was curious about how closely the VMS bull resembles other illustrations of Taurus and collected more than 500 zodiac cycles so I could look for precedents and trends. I discovered that images of Taurus vary widely in style and color, and long curved horns are not uncommon on bulls that inhabited Europe and Asia in the middle ages, but the long neck that is more reminiscent of a deer, goat, or horse than a bull provoked my curiosity and I wondered whether there were others drawn the same way.

Many of the oldest depictions of Taurus, from about the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, show the bull leaping to the right (and may not include the hindquarters, as the stars in the hind area were not considered part of the constellation). In others, the full animal is shown and may be facing either direction. In later centuries, Taurus is more docile, sometimes not running at all, perhaps reflecting a transition from wild to domesticated cattle.

Taurus from the Hamat Tiberias synagogue mosaic., c. 300 BCE.

Leaping Taurus with a hump, from the Hamat Tiberias synagogue floor mosaic, c. 300 BCE. The 9th century Tetrabiblos bull is very similar except there is less emphasis on the hump.

The early images, usually executed in stone or tile, are quite naturalistic and easily recognized as bulls. Many have humps, as is characteristic of certain species such as Brahman bulls. The hump shows up less frequently in later zodiacs.

Humped bulls are thought to have originated from a central Asian aurochs, a form of cattle that had spread to the Mediterranean area by at least about 2,000 BCE. The European aurochs, an aggressive trophy animal with long curved horns, is possibly the one depicted in ancient cave paintings, and was still living in the wild during the middle ages, but unfortunately became extinct in 1627 when the last cow, living in a forest in Poland, was killed by a poacher.

Spotted 14th C Taurus from the Kitab Al-Bulhan, courtesy of the Oxford Digital Library.

Images of Taurus in the early Persian manuscripts were usually white with black spots or vice versa, often with a prominent hump, while the European Taurus was typically solid colors in beige, brown, black, or red, sometimes with a hump, sometimes not.

By the 15th century, Arabic manuscripts frequently included solid-color bulls, as well.

The drawing of Taurus on the right, from a 9th-century manuscript from the Monastery of Reichenau, Germany, differs from typical bulls in being more slender and graceful (possibly a stylistic preference of the illustrator who also drew slender Aries and Leo). From this point on, most images of Taurus did not feature a prominent hump.

The 12th-century Hyginus Taurus from France (left) and a 12th-century Taurus from Augsburg, Germany, are similar to the Reichenau Taurus in being slender with long horns—but differ in having necks that are uncommonly narrow, similar to the VMS. The Taurus symbol from the Gallia Liber floridus has extravagantly long curved horns and the suggestion of a hump.

Some bulls are stylistically embellished with dashes and dots, like this long-necked red Taurus from Weingarten, Germany (right), but are still essentially a solid color. Note, this is a very rare instance of Taurus without horns (Morgan m.711). There is also a bright red Taurus in a manuscript from Augsberg, Germany, from around the same time.

Giorgio Armani would approve of this stylish 13th-century Parisian Taurus stepping out in a bright blue suit with a gold-leaf background (Morgan m.92). Note that this bull also has a fairly long neck, although it doesn’t have long curved horns. The tail coming out from between the legs is a stylistic choice that is usually reserved for Leo, but is occasionally seen on Taurus, as well.

Sometimes solid colors are applied with a lighter touch to create a shaded look or the illusion of a lighter pigment, as in this long-horned bull from the mid-13th century (Morgan m.730). There are places in the Voynich Manuscript where the paint has been brushed on very lightly, as well, as though the painter might have been trying inexpertly to achieve the effect of a softer-color pigment.

Artists can get pretty creative with whatever pigments they have at hand, and cattle vary widely in hide color, so it’s not surprising that Taurus has been painted almost every shade imaginable, but I was surprised to find slender bulls with long necks and long curved horns as often as I did. I wondered if this might be a local custom, limited to one area, but they don’t seem to be tied to any specific region.

The thin-necked bull drawings are not frequent, but neither are they rare, as can be seen by the high-stepping examples to the left, so the long neck and horns on the VMS bull are not as distinctively different as I originally thought. Maybe the illustrators were unimpressed by bovine anatomy or less familiar with cattle than horses or deer, and drew according to what they knew.

Considering Other Details

The detail that makes the VMS stand out as different is not so much the bull as the basket. It’s very unusual for a basket to be included with Taurus—cattle usually graze unless it’s a very arid region. Sometimes there are trees and shrubs in the background with Taurus, but it’s difficult to find even one incidence of a basket, except when month’s labors have been combined in the same drawing with a zodiac sign, which is not the case with the VMS symbols.

Not only is a basket unusual, but the VMS illustrator gave each bull a different style of basket. Whether the basket is a whim (or misconception of bovine feeding habits) or a detail that might help identify the illustrator’s locale, is still to be seen.

J.K. Petersen

The VMS Cycles of Life

Leave a reply

What do the Wheels Represent?

The Voynich Manuscript has a series of wheels with zodiac symbols in the center, but the images around the symbols have no apparent relationship to constellations, seasons, or months of the year. Instead they are mostly populated by naked nymphs in gaily decorated baskets or loges, each with a star.

In some cases, the maidens look somewhat generic, in others they look like they might represent real people, and there are different characteristics to the imagery in different wheels. In some wheels the figures are fully clothed and more heavily painted.

I don’t know if there’s an overall theme or interpretation that covers all the wheels, but some of them appear to illustrate cycles of life.

Take for example, the nymphs surrounding the two fish commonly associated with the zodiac symbol for Pisces (folio 72v)… if you start with the figures that look like pre-teens and follow the progression around the two circles, it could be seen as the cycle of life from youth to old age. When you consider the older-looking figures are stepping into sideways loges (or tubes) that are oddly reminiscent of coffins, it reinforces this general impression.

In the chart below, I’ve extracted each nymph while retaining their order to make it easier to see this pattern. There are three figures that look like children, followed by one that looks like a teen with longer hair. More mature women follow until there’s one with its stomach above the edge of the basket to expose what looks like a baby bump. Continue on for three more baskets and then there’s another exposed stomach showing what looks like another baby bump (before birth control, it was not uncommon for women to have a dozen pregnancies).

A few baskets later, the orientation of the basket changes from vertical to horizontal, and the nymphs look older. There’s one that might be pregnant, but others appear to be showing middle-aged spread until, at the end, the figure is almost entirely within the basket.

Interestingly there are two or three men in the wheel. One shows up next to one of the nymphs with a baby bump, one is in the middle-aged section, and one near the end (old age?). It’s also possible that one or more of the pre-teens are boys.

This is, of course, a tentative interpretation. I don’t know what the labels say and I don’t know if I began reading the figures at the right spot, but there does appear to be an aging sequence.

On the same folio is a wheel with a ram in the center and a smaller number of nymphs in the surrounding wheel.

If one starts reading the figures at the youngest, then once again it appears to illustrate a cycle, but this time it’s the cycle of pregnancy rather than a full cycle of life. It progresses through childhood, puberty, maturation, marriage (one figure has a distinctive veil that may represent marriage), baby bumps, and possibly stretch marks, although it’s hard to tell if those are fabric folds, stretch marks, or both. Some of the figures are clothed, a possible symbolic reference to a woman’s “confinement”, a late-pregnancy custom in which women were hidden away. The cycle is illustrated in sequence in this chart:

The stomachs and sometimes the groin area are visible in most of the drawings, but the last one covers up the stomach. Could this be menopause, when a woman is no longer ovulating or becoming pregnant?

I’m not going to upload all the wheels, it’s too much information for one blog, but you can look at the originals, and you will see another wheel that looks like a cycle of menstruation and one that appears to be a cycle or commentary on relations between the sexes (right), with a man whose genitals are clearly included and a nymph who is leaning down more than the others in a provocative pose. I can’t quite figure out what’s going on with his genitals, they’re not drawn as clearly as one in the biological section, but it might be an animation with two positions (flaccid and erect). Since most of the men are modestly depicted, this more explicit image is making a point about the meaning of the drawings.

Summary

Not all the wheels appear to be cycles. The colored wheels give a different impression. They feel more like political commentary or perhaps genealogical images. The wheel around the symbol for Cancer is more similar to the life cycle wheels and has a large number of figures, quite a few of whom are male, but the pattern and their significance is not clear.

These interpretations are entirely subjective but I offer them to get the idea out there, especially since I’ve been posting articles on the VMS zodiac symbols without discussing the content surrounding them. The cycle of pregnancy is paired with a symbol of a ram (presumably Aries), which represents spring in many countries, and the procreative wheel is paired with an intimate picture of a man and woman representing Gemini, so perhaps there’s a discernible reason for specific symbols anchoring the wheels, but I’m really not certain.

If these wheels do, in fact, represent life cycles with a strong focus on women, it strengthens the impression that the VMS could be, at least in part, a historic treatise on gynecology.

J.K. Petersen

The Path to Medieval Zodiacs

1 Reply

The Birth and Breadth of Zodiacs

Examples of constellations, not all of which are included in the traditional 12-sign zodiac. Courtesy of NASA.

The zodiac, the twelve symbols we associate with astrology, evolved from a mixture of ancient astronomy and myth. Familiar star clusters, which came to be seen as animals, heroic figures, and deities, helped the ancients anticipate the seasons and navigate on land and sea. Celestial events, like comets and eclipses, were taken as portents of events to come.

Both eastern and western zodiacs are divided into twelve segments. Since there are far more than twelve constellations and they do not appear for equal amounts of time, this division into twelve was probably based on lunar cycles. This article will concentrate on western zodiacs, rather than those associated with China, because the Voynich Manuscript includes ten of the twelve western astrological signs.

Ancient Origins

Symbol for Aries on a 2nd century Egyptian coffin that includes the twelve zodiac symbols we are familiar with today. The artifact is housed in the British Museum.

Diagrams of the constellations go back thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians adorned their temples with many astronomical and astrological references, but they assigned personalities to several of the constellations that were different from those of the Babylonians and Sumerians. The Nabatean zodiac in Petra also differs from the modern form both in the order in which the signs are presented and in some of the individual signs, which represent gods rather than animals.

Astrological concepts that developed in Chaldea, Babylonia, and S.E. Syria in the millennia preceding Christianity formed the basis for the zodiac we know today and were transmitted to Egypt through Persian incursions across the Mediterranean in the 6th century BCE and the rise of Greco-Roman cultures. While some of the ancient Egyptian astronomical concepts remained, astrological symbology changed. By the 2nd century CE, modern iconography was showing up on Egyptian coffins (upper left) and the old gods were no longer prominent as zodiac symbols.

Thus, the earliest pictorial representations of contemporary western zodiac symbols can be seen in

Greco-Roman temple mosaics and frescoes, such as Hathor and Esneh,
Mithraic temple sculptures and Roman coins and works of art, and
Jewish temple mosiacs.

A 9th century interpretation of Ptolemy’s zodiac from Constantinople, now housed in the Vatican library.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to assess the impact of astrological writings stored in the research institution and library at Alexandria because it was largely destroyed in the Roman conquest of Egypt in the 1st century BCE.

It’s also difficult to chart the influence of Ptolemy’s Almagest and handbook that included a zodiac, as an original copy of the manuscript no longer exists, but Mithraic symbolism had reached as far as England by the 2nd century and reproductions of Ptolemy’s works began to circulate a few centuries later. Astronomer Theodore Meliteniodes (c. 1320–1393), of Constantinople, dedicated his second book to Ptolemaic concepts.

Earliest References

Flavius Josephus (37–c.100 CE), a Jewish scholar who became a Roman citizen, reported that there was a Babylonian curtain before the doors of the Temple of Ierusalem decorated with a pictorial representation of the elements and images of the heavens (possibly constellations) but specifically remarks that it lacked the [twelve] signs. This might indicate that he was familiar with and would have expected zodiac or month signs to be included. Unfortunately, we have no way to confirm this interpretation of his words or to see the curtain for ourselves—fragile relics rarely survive to tell their tales. Most of what we know about ancient zodiacs is recorded in ceramic and stone.

The Denderah Zodiac. The Denderah sky chart, one of the earliest and most complete examples of a modern zodiac cycle, was found in the ceiling of the Temple of Hathor in Egypt. Many of its early investigators jumped to the conclusion that the organization of the constellations was intended to represent the date at which it was created and projected it to two or three millennia BCE (and sometimes even older) based on astronomical calculations. They failed to consider that artistic choices may have influenced the proximity and orientation of the figures and that the architecture and inscriptions of this and two other nearby temples are clearly Greco-Roman. A more rational estimate, based on a broader base of observations, is that the Denderah temple originated around the 1st century BCE.

In the following Denderah star chart, I have lightened the background and highlighted the figures so it is easier to see the zodiac symbols. Virgo is shown on the left and is possibly depicted twice, once touching Libra, the scales, and again holding a sheaf of grain (it’s also possible there is an intervening constellation of an Egyptian god but it’s worth noting that Virgo is sometimes duplicated in later depictions, both standing alone and holding the scales).

Even though it is one of the oldest remaining examples of modern astrological symbols, the Denderah zodiac is probably not the most influential in terms of spreading the iconography to other regions. Roman soldiers were the primary influence, and the Jewish diaspora contributed, as well.

The Esneh Zodiac. The Greco-Roman Temple of Khonsu at Esneh (Ta-Esna), not far from the Denderah site, dates to approximately the time of Adrian (Emperor Hadrian), though construction and renovation occurred over a couple of centuries until it ceased around 250 CE. Ancient Egyptian influence can be seen in the style of both the Esneh and Denderah carvings (particularly the clothing, orientation of figures, and scarab-like representation of Cancer), but the astrological symbols are of the Chaldean/Babylonian form of modern zodiacs.

A distinctively contemporary-looking zodiac was created in Tunis during the Imperial Roman era and is now on exhibit at the Bardo Museum, and a village on a Greek island sports a c. 5th century zodiac mosaic that demonstrates that astrological concepts and reverence spread to even tiny remote communities.

Mithraic Astrological Imagery

The Mithraic belief system predated Christianity, and played a role in spreading the concept of the twelve signs. Mithraism developed in Persia and the Mediterranean (and may have been inspired in part by the Indian/Zoroastrian god Mithra), but Roman soldiers developed their own version with some distinct differences from eastern iconography.

The personification of Mithras (right), rising from the ground, or possibly from an egg, is commonly shown slaying a bull. It has been suggested the Roman Mithra may have been inspired by the constellation Perseus, a warrior figure located between Aries and Taurus in the northern hemisphere, or perhaps by one of the older gods that represented war and was associated with bulls. The slaying of the bull may even have been a symbolic nod to the astronomical precession from Taurus to Aries.

Dispersion Through Roman Soldiers

Roman Mithraic zodiacal monument, possibly representing Kronos.

The only way the Romans could maintain their supremacy and expand their territories was to deploy soldiers to new regions. As they traveled, they took their belief systems, their crafts, and their coins with them.

It’s not surprising that there are early Mithraic zodiacs on the island of Ponza, in Ostia, and Rome (where politicians in high positions were members as well), but a sandstone relief has been found in Croatia, and many of the most significant Mithraic artifacts, dating to about the 2nd century CE, are in Germany, Bohemia, and northern Italy.

The egg-shaped zodiac surrounding Mithra above right is from Hadrian’s Wall in Housesteads, England, and is now in the Great North/Hancock Museum along with a Mithraic tauroctony sculpture. The oval one to the left may represent Kronos rather than Mithra, but it too is ringed by a zodiac.

It’s said that Mithraism was a secret society, but given the number of temples and artifacts that survive, I doubt it was any more secret than the Masons are today. What went on inside closed doors may have been kept hidden, but general knowledge of the constellations was not secret knowledge. Astrological prognostication was, at times, a profitable business, and medical and judicial applications of astrology were common, so the subject of the signs no doubt came up in conversation. Despite the fact that Mithraic gathering places were deliberately destroyed in the rise of Christianity, more than 500 Mithraic temples are known and there may be others waiting to be rediscovered. Mithraic artifacts number in the thousands.

Not all Roman soldiers belonged to Mithraic societies, which included initiation rites (most still worshipped Pagan deities and mercenaries brought along their own belief systems), but the Pagans embraced astrology, as well. For example, the Roman Second Legion, based in Wales early in the 2nd century, chose Capricorn, the “sea goat”, a sign dedicated to Emperor Augustus, as one of their emblems. Zodiac symbols were also minted onto Roman coins (right), most notably Libra, Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn. They were also widely impressed into seals, gems, and decorative ceramics (examples can be seen in the British Library collection).

By the 4th century, as the Empire faded and Christianity expanded, the Mithraic movement became all but extinct, but the custom of creating zodiac mosaics spread to Jewish synagogues and showed up around the necks of statues of Artemis. Despite objections by certain church officials who condemned astrology as a Pagan tradition, the carving of stone zodiacs into sacred portals spread to Christian churches.

Jewish Astrological Imagery

In the Talmud, the twelve constellations are associated with months of the year. Pictorial representations can be found in temple mosaics from the 3rd to 7th centuries at Beit Alpha, Beit She’an, Hamat Tiberius National Park, and Sepphoris.

Even though Beit Alpha and Beit She’an are near one another, their zodiacs aren’t identical.

Unfortunately, many of the tiles are missing from the Sepphoris site, so it’s difficult to compare the imagery among all three sites, but the Beit She’an Sagittarius is a centaur, while the Beit Alpha Sagittarius has human legs. It should be noted that both Virgo and Libra are often male in some of the early eastern zodiacs, but sometimes Virgo is female, reflecting the Pagan worship of goddesses. In the Beit Alpha mosaic on the right, Virgo is shown as female next to Libra as male (the Hamat Tiberias zodiac is female and male, as well). One other difference is the presence or absence of clothing, Some of the Hamat Tiberius figures are nude, as in the Pagan style, while figures at the other sites are clothed.

Christian zodiacs often represent Virgo as female in honor of Virgin Mary while still retaining a male image for Libra. In some, the scales are alone or shown only with a hand (which later came to represent the hand of God).

A goat by a bucket or well can represent both Capricorn and Aquarius, as in this mid-13th century Jewish Mahzor from the Bodleian Library.

One interesting detail in the evolution of zodiacs in Hebrew manuscripts is the change in the symbol for Capricorn.

In the Hamat Tiberias mosaic, Capricorn is a traditional sea-goat, as in the Roman zodiacs, but by the Middle Ages, it was common for Capricorn to be shown as a goat standing by a bucket or a well, a symbol that could stand for both Capricorn and Aquarius.

Outside the Jewish community, Capricorn as a sea-goat remained popular, although sometimes the Roman fish-tail morphed into a shell or a dragon tail.

In the Arab world, court astrologers, some of whom were Jewish, are known to have existed in the 7th and 8th centuries, and books on astrology were written not long after, but zodiac imagery of the modern form didn’t show up in Arabic manuscripts until around the 9th century. They differed from most earlier zodiacs in that they included the location of the stars (shown as dots on the animal or figure that represented the sign), which indicates their interest in astronomy.

I’ll be describing details of some of the other zodiac symbols and their relationship to the Voynich Manuscript in subsequent articles as I have far too much information to include in one blog.

Continued Interest in Subsequent Ages

In the 9th century, zodiacs were included in astronomical texts in France, Germany, and Switzerland (examples include Harley 647, the Leiden Aratea, and AN IV 18). Some of the imagery from this time period still had a distinctly Greco-Roman flavor, with figures that were nude or dressed in scanty togas. By the late 990s, the dots to indicate the astronomical aspect of the signs were included, as well.

Pisces carved into the Basilica de San Isidoro in Leon. Courtesy of ParadoxPlace.

The efforts of certain Christian clergy to suppress astrology failed and the custom of carving zodiacs into the portals of sacred gathering places became particularly popular in France and northern Spain in the 11th century. Cathedral builders across Europe began adding zodiacs to their tiled floors and stained-glass windows. Labors of the month often accompanied the twelve signs, as well

Zodiac imagery was enlivening Psalters and formerly dull calendrical manuscripts by the 12th century (and were particularly popular in the 14th and 15th centuries). Interest in the twelve signs continues today.

Summary

To give a visual sense of how the earliest astrological symbols that directly influenced contemporary zodiacs spread to the outer reaches of the Roman Empire by about the 3rd century, I have created a chart using a Johnson map with a sample selection of historic sites where these items were created or located. Note, it is not known for certain if the coin on the far right follows the same zodiac sequence as western zodiacs. Generally, zodiacs from Petra and eastward differ in a number of ways from Greco-Roman zodiacs.You can click on the image for a larger version and I’ll continue the discussion of VMS zodiacs in subsequent blogs.

J.K. Petersen

La La La Leeeeeo

5 Replies

The Tip of the Tongue

When I saw the VMS Leo symbol with its tongue sticking out, it reminded me of a South Pacific tongue dancer I saw when I was a teenager. He was dressed in colorful native attire, with tattoos and face paint, a spear in his hand, and looked amazingly fierce when he came over to where we were sitting on the ground and showed the whites of his eyes and displayed his tongue.

The VMS lion isn’t as fierce looking as the tongue dancer, but the image made me curious about how many other zodiac Leos had their tongues sticking out. After scouring the digital manuscript archives and collecting more than 100 medieval zodiac cycles, I only found nine with protruding tongues, and only two of those had their tails curled between their legs. Another thing I noticed with all the Leos except one or two from the Mediterranean region, is that they had full manes.

None of the tongue-Leos had a tree in the background, either, so it seems the VMS Leo is unique in a number of ways. You can see the zodiac Leos I found with tongues in the following map, superimposed on political boundaries for the late 14th century.

The tongue Leos were mostly from central Europe with a few in France, the Netherlands, and eastern England.

It’s not even certain whether the VMS symbol is a lion. Sometimes spotted cats such as cheetahs are substituted for lions as zodiac symbols, but these are not common, either. The VMS Leo diverges from tradition and the tree in the background looks like it might be a palm tree rather than a deciduous tree, entirely appropriate if you consider lions are mostly concentrated in hot countries.

Leo zodiac symbol from the Kitab al-buhan courtesy of The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

It’s possible the VMS lion was inspired by zodiac illustrations of lions from the Mediterranean, which sometimes don’t have manes. There are also non-zodiac lions that have their tails curled through their legs, but whether the VMS illustrator based the drawing of Leo on having seen a lion in real life, or from studying a Mediterranean manuscript, is difficult to determine.

Since the VMS Leo resembles north-central European Leos in other ways, maybe the illustrator simply chose to draw a lion without a mane, just as he or she chose to draw a pair of crayfish (instead of a single one) as a cancer symbol, something I have yet to see in any other zodiac. Resemblance doesn’t always guarantee that a drawing was imitated.

The maned lions we think of as African lions used to inhabit southern Europe but were crowded out by hunting and loss of habitat between the time Stonehenge was built and about a century BCE except for a few that remained in the Caucasus until the 11th century. Cave lions, which looked more like the American mountain lion, were extinct long before the African lion disappeared from Europe.

We know that the VMS illustrator was exposed to zodiac traditions in books or perhaps on the floors and walls of cathedrals or temples, but we don’t know if the way the symbols are drawn is based on other zodiacs or on illustrations and carvings of animals and mythical heroes not directly connected with a zodiac cycle.

Many western zodiacs, in the north and the south, included labors of the month, and sometimes those labors included animals like goats, sheep, and others, so they too might have inspired an inventive person to create zodiac symbols that were mostly like others but also different in some unique ways.

J.K. Petersen

Dissecting the VMS Crossbow

Leave a reply

The Bard with a Bow

In the Voynich Manuscript, Sagittarius the archer has two legs and carries a crossbow. Most depictions of Sagittarius show a four-legged centaur with a longbow, so I searched for those that were similar to the VMS archer and described them in a previous post. This time, I’m more interested in the details of his dress and his bow. On the right, I’ve removed some of the text that was crowding the picture so you can see his crossbow and costume more clearly.

It’s unlikely the archer is dressed for warfare like the 14th century warriors pictured left. The long tail on his hat would be a distraction and a liability, but his dress is not uncommon for archers participating in crossbow tournaments or involved in recreational hunts.

A pleated tunic is typical for the middle ages, as is the style of the VMS archer’s hat. The broad sleeves are not as common as narrow sleeves, but are not unusual either. On the right is an archer at an English crossbow tournament wearing a similar outfit sans hat.

Hat tails made from fabric or sometimes from the tails of animals, like foxes, were common in many areas. The VMS archer also sports a goatee and booties and appears to be wearing leggings, as his legs are painted blue.

The Style of the Crossbow

Most zodiac drawings don’t have enough detail to determine the style of crossbow, but perhaps the VMS does.

To help identify the archer’s bow, I removed it from his hands and labeled the visible parts. Fortunately, the trigger was visible, along with the shape of the stirrup. The style of the lathe is fairly clear and shows recurved tips. The catch, an important component that holds the cord until it’s ready to fire, is barely shown, but it clearly doesn’t have the crank called a cranequin that is found on some of the later crossbows. The stock looks pretty basic—this is not one of the high-octane automatic crossbows from China nor does it resemble earlier Greek and Roman crossbows that lacked a stirrup.

A hunting bow from a French manuscript from the mid- or late 1300s was drawn with a rounded stirrup, recurved lathe tips, and an angled lever. The bolt has a traditional arrowhead rather than a narrow spike.

Who Used this Style of Bow?

This simple style of crossbow isn’t difficult to find in medieval imagery—it can be seen in English, Czech, French, and Lombardic manuscripts from about the late 13th century to the mid-1400s. After that, some of the crossbows include accessories for drawing the cord and some have spikes on the stirrup, which I assume is to stabilize them in the soil when stepping on the stirrup.

I don’t have enough images to know if it’s a general pattern, but many of the images of battle bows had straight stirrups while some of the hunting bows, like the one on the right, had rounded stirrups. It’s not a hard-and-fast distinction, however.

An early Hussite bas relief also has a crossbow with a rounded stirrup, but the trigger is not shown and the lathe is not as broad as the one in the VMS, so it’s difficult to know if it’s the same kind.

Sometimes the bolts have narrow tips, sometimes the classic arrow shape. Crossbows in a c. 1380 manuscript from France are similar to the VMS, but the stirrup is quite thick and the trigger is not shown.

The image on the left is not a zodiac crossbow, it’s a marginal embellishment from an English psalter created around 1330, but it’s interesting because it shows the joint between the lathe and the stock more clearly than most (the illustrator has rotated the trigger, probably to make it easier to see). The stirrup is rounded, like the VMS, but the lathe has a narrower span and doesn’t have recurved tips.

A number of the French manuscripts illustrate narrow bolts, probably developed because they could penetrate armor, while the one on the right, from the Czech region, shows arrow-shaped bolts. How accurately illustrators have represented the bolts (and the crossbows themselves) is hard to assess.

Quite a few crossbows from France, Switzerland, and the upper Rhine are depicted with a different style of stirrup that is flatter at the end and more angular than the rounded stirrup in the VMS.

This flatter stirrup is illustrated in a Germanic image of a hunting bow from the early 1300s (right). The lathe has probably been rotated in the image to show it more clearly, as the triggers were usually on the bottom rather than on the side of the stock. The image is thought to depict a nobleman from eastern Lombardy. Note the recurved tips.

The symbol for Sagittarius on the left from c. 1469 was created in southern Germany or possibly eastern Austria and has recurved tips and a flattened stirrup similar to the previous non-zodiac image. Notice also the pleated tunic, wide sleeves, and typical leggings. The pointed hat is a different style from the VMS, but it’s one of the few examples of Sagittarius with a crossbow wearing a hat.

Summary

It’s difficult to find examples of Sagittarius with both legs and a crossbow but those identified so far are from central Europe. It’s even more difficult to narrow it down to crossbows with a curved stirrup, because the stirrup is usually not clearly drawn in medieval Sagittarius symbols. In fact, the crossbow in the VMS shows more details than most examples of Sagittarius with legs, with the exception of one from approximately the mid-1400s shown on the right.

The VMS archer is also unusual in that he’s wearing a long-tail hat and a beard. The other zodiac symbols with crossbows and legs don’t include these features except for the one mentioned above. You have to look at images of crossbows that are not related to zodiacs to find them.

Did the VMS illustrator add the extra details based on seeing non-zodiac illustrations or based on personal observations? As with so many aspects of the VMS, there’s a level of uniqueness in the images that adds to the mystery.

J.K. Petersen

Additional image added Oct. 27th, 2016:

Sometimes I come across a picture on the Web or in my files that relates to a previous blog that is worth including with the original material. I thought this image from BNF Lat. 9333, folio 68v, (created in the early 15th century) was particularly relevant. The book was inspired by an earlier copy of Tacuinum Sanitatus—a manuscript on living a healthful life.

The image is more detailed than the VMS crossbowman, including a loaded bolt, twirled cord, and lamination seam in the stock, but what caught my attention was the long trigger, and lath tips that are curved slightly more than those in many medieval crossbow drawings. I thought readers might enjoy seeing it.

Additional image added Nov. 11th, 2016:

Another interesting crossbow image in a siege commentary from BNF Latin 6067 (later 15th c) illustrating three archers. The first is loading a bolt, the second pulls the string while his foot supports the bow with the stirrup, and the third has a more automated form of crossbow with a crank to pull the string. The crank provides more leverage but also more weight and would be more appropriate for seige warfare than hunting. Quivers of bolts can be seen attached to belts. The two fully visible triggers are relatively long (the one on the right might be slightly stylized).

Additional image added July 7, 2017:

This image post-dates the VMS, but I felt it worth including because it illustrates a long-triggered crossbow drawn with considerable detail for the time. (The source is a c. 1475 painting of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian from a region of Munich, Germany, now in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne):

Additional image added August 7, 2017:

There is a clear drawing of a crossbow in Thott 290 2° (c. 1459). I was aware of it but didn’t include it in the original blog because it probably postdates the VMS. However, I’ve decided to add it because it has a long trigger and curved ends on the lath, similar to the VMS crossbow (note, however, that it has a straight stirrup), and because I noticed recently that it is similar to the crossbow and bolt in BNF Lat. 9333 noted above:

Additional image added October 16, 2108:

Close-up drawing from BNF NAL 1673 illustrating a narrow bolt, flat stirrup, the winding pattern of the cord, and a lath with a horn texture and extra curve at the tips. He’d better get his thumb off the nut before the trigger engages or he’ll shred then end of it:

Dec. 8, 2018 Additional Image (BSB CLM 74):

25 October 2019 Additional Image—a crossbow practice range on a movable pavilion (early 1500s, Switzerland):

A Crusty Conundrum

Leave a reply

15 February 2016

Cancer the Crayfish

The zodiac symbol for Cancer in the Voynich Manuscript is odd in a number of ways, but not in the ways I originally thought.

Cancer is drawn as a crab in most Mediterranean areas (left), as well as in much of England (possibly due to the abundance of salt water and crabs) but was often depicted as a crayfish, as well, particularly in regions away from the coast, so Cancer as a crayfish is not unusual, but the VMS crayfish has some strange quirks that might not be immediately apparent.

To begin with, there are two critters, not one. I’ve never seen a medieval Cancer symbol presented as a double image, with each crayfish facing in a different direction. Pisces is usually drawn this way, but not Cancer. Also, the line connecting their mouths is typical of Pisces, not of Cancer. Something unusual is going on.

The Anatomy of Crayfish

When I first saw it, the VMS crayfish looked unrealistic to me—skinny legs, tiny claws. I thought all crayfish and lobsters had fat hunky claws. Apparently not.

After some research, I learned that there are crayfish with slender legs and small claws. I also discovered the claws of the female are sometimes smaller than the male.

Skinny-limbed crayfish don’t live in one particular region. They range from Korea to the Caribbean and probably beyond, so the skinny limbs don’t help pinpoint the geography.

Nature is endlessly creative and the patterns on the backs of crayfish are quite varied. Some are like helmets, others have bands, some connect over the top in two layers.

Zodiac crayfish are sometimes drawn with two C-shapes mirroring one another on their backs, a pattern that is also found in nature. There are some where the C-shapes connect over the top and others, like the drawing on the right, that don’t connect. From the side, they look like a piece of armor protecting the shoulder. The VMS crayfish appears to have a smaller version of this detail.

From Life or From Manuscript Tradition?

I wondered whether the VMS illustrator got the ideas for the zodiac by looking at a real crayfish or at other drawings. The upper one is green, the lower is red. Green or a greenish-gray is a common color for crayfish. When they are cooked, they turn bright red like lobsters, so the colors don’t provide many hints to the origin of the VMS. But that’s when I noticed the VMS crayfish was anatomically incorrect.

I was so distracted by the double image, the skinny legs and claws, and the line connecting the mouths that I overlooked a rather glaring defect—the VMS crayfish legs are attached to the tail! This unbalanced crayfish would have a hard time getting around. Given this anomaly, it seems unlikely that a real crayfish modeled for the VMS. Whoever drew it probably took the concept from other drawings and may have drawn it imperfectly from memory, since other Cancer symbols (at least those similar to the VMS) aren’t drawn this way.

Almost all the medieval zodiacs I found that were similar to the VMS (slender limbs plus C-shape backs) were Lombardic and Frankish and were typically green or red. I haven’t had a chance to map them yet, and the overall impression may change when I do, but it’s true of the ones I’ve found so far.

Summary

The VMS zodiac animals, such as the ram and bull, don’t seem to be drawn from life. They’re reasonably well done but, like the crayfish, they have some anatomical oddities. It seems likely they were inspired by other manuscripts—they follow the general format and style of the time. But there’s also a certain individuality to them. Enclosing the zodiac in a ring is very typical, but combining two crayfish in the same circle is quite unusual.

The ecclesiastical library of St. Gallen, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

If the drawings were done from memory, then perhaps it wasn’t easy for the illustrator to copy directly from manuscripts (assuming the VMS author even wanted to do that). In the Middle Ages, the main repositories for manuscripts were libraries: ecclesiastical, university, and the personal libraries of the nobility. Some were probably housed by commercial calligraphy and illustration services, as well. Books were entirely handcrafted and, as such, were rare and expensive. Many books in libraries were chained to prevent theft—they could only be seen during viewing hours.

The VMS depiction of Cancer leaves many unanswered questions. Why two symbols? Why the line connecting two crayfish? Why is one green (with red highlights) and the other red? Why such diminutive C-shapes, compared to other zodiacs, and the ultra-skinny legs? Why are the C-shapes drawn so much smaller than other zodiacs?

Is the crayfish quirky because it was drawn from memory, or is it different because the VMS illustrator had a unique way of doing things?

Posted by J.K. Petersen

Voynich Location – What Can Libra Tell Us?

Leave a reply

14 Jan 2016

The Constellation Libra

The constellation Libra hit the news at almost the same time I discovered the Voynich Manuscript. A comet was visible, in February 2009, at the topmost point of the stars we associate and identify as Libra. It delighted stargazers by being as bright as stars in the Big Dipper, visible to the unaided eye.

My previous post discussed the unusual depiction of Scorpio in the VMS, and since Libra is adjacent to Scorpius, from our earthly point of view, this is probably a good time to post some of my findings about the VM illustrator’s drawing of Libra.

If you turn your head to the right when looking at this chart of Libra and Scorpio from NASA Science, you can see that Libra looks like a set of scales. Scales in the middle ages were different from what we have now. Modern scales are based on springs and pressure sensors. Medieval scales were based on comparisons of similarly weighted items.

If you fasten cups to both ends of a pole and place a known weight in one of the cups, you can find out if another object, like a piece of silver, weighs more or less than the known object by how much the pole slopes off the horizontal.

To aid in determining whether the pole is horizontal, people in antiquity added a spike in the center of the pole that would poke out in one direction or the other to indicate whether the objects in the cups (or the cups themselves, if they were empty) were off-balance.

Scales and the Concept of Justice

The idea of a balancing scale has long been associated with concepts of fairness and equality and sometimes ventures into the allegorical, as in this Egyptian depiction, from the Book of the Dead (a collective term rather than a literal form of book), of a scribe’s heart being measured against the feather of truth. The goddess Maat, Egypt’s spiritual representative of truth and justice, is identifiable at the apex of the scale, wearing the feather of truth.

Sometimes additional stars are considered when envisioning Libra. In fact, in antiquity, the “feet” of Libra were sometimes seen as part of the claws of Scorpio. The inclusion of additional stars explains why some illustrators show Libra held aloft by a Virgo-like figure.

This interesting variation, scales by themselves, or scales held by human figures, is what brings us back to the drawing of Libra in the Voynich Manuscript. Can the VM illustrator’s choice tell us anything about the temporal or geographical origin of the manuscript?

By Itself or Held Aloft

Images of Libra as a zodiac symbol can be loosely classified into two kinds: those that include only the scales (or sometimes a hand holding the scales), and those that have most or all of a human form holding the scales.

I assembled two charts to compare their geographical distribution. I confined the search to images of Libra that accompanied other zodiac symbols in the same document and which were created prior to about 1560. I found more images of Libra as scales than could fit on a chart and selected ones that were generally representative. It was more difficult to find examples of Libra held by human forms and they fit fairly well on one page.

Some of the scales are drawn level and straight on, so you can’t see the balance spike that shows when the scale is off balance. Others show the spike even though the pole is more-or-less horizontal. It’s noteworthy that the Voynich illustrator went to some pains to make the spike visible, even broadening the distance within the housing and painting it blue so it can be clearly seen.

Now let’s take a look at Libra in human form…

Examples of Libra as a person holding scales are harder to find. This may be due to interpretation of the stars and how many constitute Libra or there may be a simpler explanation—humans are harder to draw. It might also be a combination of the two.

There aren’t enough samples to drawn any conclusions and most of the Libra-as-human examples appear to be from the same general geographical areas so we’re not looking at divergent data sets. The paucity of examples from southern France and Spain probably has to more to do with lack of access to digitally scanned files than it does to the number of examples that are extant.

With research, you never know where it will lead or which little details might become important later so sometimes you just have to gather it, present it, and offer it as information, without trying to extract too much meaning.

Thoughts about Scale and the Voynich Scales

As far as the Voynich manuscript goes, I’ll leave you with one little thought…

Did you notice that the cups of the Voynich scale are small and deep (almost round), rather than wide and a bit flatter like most of the others?

The shape of the cups might be small so it’s easier to draw them within the circle, or perhaps they are small for the same reason they are small in the Arabic document shown in the lower right of the above chart.

Or, there may be a practical reason for drawing them this way. Scales for weighing food, or perhaps coins, need to be somewhat broad so it’s easier to move the items on and off the scale. Scales for herbs and powders need to be deeper and narrower so they are not blown away by a draft, or by a breath of wind, if the scale is used outside in a marketplace.

We can’t really know if the small deep cups are intentional, subconscious (if that is what the illustrator was used to seeing), or simply a space or time consideration, but given that the spike and the connection to the main pole are carefully included, perhaps the shape of the cups was intended as well.

J.K. Petersen

Voynich Location – The Fantasy Scorpio

4 Replies

12 Jan 2016

Discerning a Big Picture from Small Clues

The zodiac pictures in the Voynich don’t appear to have much to do with zodiacs, they are mostly surrounded by ladies in loges, but the images themselves are recognizable as traditional zodiac symbols.

The depiction of Sagittarius in the Voynich manuscript as having legs and a crossbow is unusual and is, for the most part confined to a certain time and place, with the time being contemporaneous with the creation of the VMS. Since details like this may offer clues to the identity of the author or provenance of the document, it seemed worthwhile to examine some of the other symbols as well.

The Scorpio Zodiac Symbol

Folio 73r features a lizard-like yellowish-green creature with a long tail and a line in its mouth leading to a drawing of an 8-pointed star. It is surrounded by successive circles of texts and naked women.

It’s assumed this is Scorpio because it would fit the overall theme of zodiac symbols on adjacent pages. Whoever labeled the creature in a hand that differs from the main body text of the VMS, apparently thought so too, and labeled it novembre.

Many medieval European ideas about astrology and astronomy came from concepts expressed in Arabic documents.

Scorpio is based on the constellation Scorpius, a clump of stars with a long curving chain of a tail that resembles a scorpion, a venomous creature in the same family as spiders. You might not guess it was cousin to spiders, because it resembles a crustacean more than a spider (picture a crayfish with an upcurved, pointed tail). Depending on the species, the scorpion has six or eight legs plus specialized pointed claws called pedipalps, and a distinctive claw-like stinger at the end of the tail.

Today, scorpions have spread to almost every part of the world. In the middle ages, however, they may have been infrequent (or absent) in northern latitudes because illustrators who did a good job of drawing the other zodiac symbols sometimes created fanciful versions of Scorpio, or perhaps retained a different concept of the animal that the Scorpius constellation resembled because they were unfamiliar with the creature after which it was named.

That’s not to say that all northern Scorpios were difficult to recognize as a scorpion, many were quite accurate, as can be seen by the examples above that range from about 1425 to the later 1400s, but there are a few that deserve attention because, like the Voynich Scorpio, they could easily be mistaken for lizards, mammals, or dragons.

Unusual Depictions of Scorpio

The following chart illustrates some unusual depictions of Scorpio that would be difficult to recognize unless they were labeled as such or included with the other traditional zodiac symbols for context.

Naturalistic Scorpios are far more common than examples like these. Note that the origins of unusual Scorpio symbols trends more to the north and west than Sagittarius with a crossbow and legs. There is noticeable clustering of Sagittarius in the southern German and northern Swiss area. In contrast, the unusual Scorpios range from Germany and Switzerland to France and England. The two examples from England look more like mythical creatures (perhaps dragons) than any natural animal.

I haven’t yet found any reptilian or mammalian Scorpios from eastern Europe or the Mediterranean. They may exist, but if they do, they are not common. There are some that are debatable because they are not of expert quality. I tried to steer away from illustrations where you really can’t tell whether Scorpio’s quirks were a deliberate choice or attributable to weak drawing skills, and concentrated on those that were drawn well enough or deliberately enough to classify them as one or the other.

The date range of odd Scorpio symbols is not as tight as Sagittarius. Sagittarius with legs and a crossbow tends to occur very close to the time the VMS was created (estimated to be in the early 1400s). Unusual Scorpios, however, range from about 1200 to the early 1500s and since they are rare, are more broadly separated in time. In fact, only one Scorpio in this sampling is contemporaneous to the VMS.

Drawing Conventions

There are three examples that cluster around the German-Swiss border that resemble turtles and which don’t resemble the VM Scorpio at all. Give the scarcity of turtle-Scorpios and their geographic proximity, you might expect them to originate around the same time, but they were actually created about 100 years apart.

The two examples that most closely resemble the side-on posture, orientation, and lizard-like qualities of the VMS were created about 70 years earlier and about 80 years later than the estimated time of the VMS. There’s little likelihood that the brownish Scorpio with stegosaurus-like bumps influenced the VM since it was probably created later and has numerous legs, but it’s possible the one from the mid-1300s did if it was stored in a library or other location where people had access to the manuscript.

The green one from c. 1475 was probably created after the VMS, but note that both the VMS Scorpio and the green Scorpio from France have spots on their backs. There are a number of lizards, native to Portugal, Spain and southern France that are green with spots. Perhaps there was an oral tradition for the names of the constellations that influenced the choice of a lizardy creature that actually lived in north or central Europe.

Other Astrological Traditions

When you consider that most Scorpio symbols in the 15th century looked fairly realistic, even those from the north, you have to wonder why the Voynich illustrator chose this form. In some cultures, the stars that form Scorpius are perceived as a palm tree or as a bird, by why a lizard or mammal?

I considered that depictions of Scorpio in the north might be influenced by Nidhogg, a Norse serpent constellation that shares some stars with Scorpio but the resemblance is slight. The serpent is very long and doesn’t have legs. So, it appears that the Voynich manuscript, as it does in so many respects, serves up another mystery, one deserving of further study.

J.K. Petersen

Postscript 23 Jan. 2018: I have added two more images to the map from manuscripts that originated in the mid-14th century—one from Thérouanne and the other with shelfmark H 437 (which was brought to my attention in a post by Marco Ponzi).

I am not certain where H 437 originated, but the Picard-dialect translation of the Bestiary has been variously attributed to Richard or Pierre de Beauvais sometime in the early 13th century. H 734, the c. 1341 version, is housed in the Montpellier library but possibly originated farther north.

There isn’t room on the map to include the reptilian scorpios from other media dating back to the 11th century, but I have referenced sculptures, stained glass, and mosiac images in previous blogs about the constellation (I was not able to include images of all the sculptures due to copyright restrictions).

Postscript 2 Feb. 2018: I’ve been trying not to clutter this image too much, but I managed to squeeze one more example on the map (from c. 1230), and I have added a version number. I have many “dragon” scorpios from England, but since they are somewhat different from most of the reptile/amphibian drawings from France, I have opted to include only a few for reference.

As mentioned in the original blog on Scorpius, the green arrows are for reasonably established origins, with brown for those that are not completely certain.

You can click the thumbnail to see a larger version.

Voynich Location – Sagittarius with Legs and Crossbow

11 Replies

16 Dec. 2015

Voynich Manuscript Origins – Does Sagittarius Hold Clues?

In a previous post, from July 2013, I summarized zodiac symbols that are illustrated in the Voynich Manuscript (Beinecke 408) and included examples of symbols from other manuscripts.

Since then I’ve collected many more examples, far too many to include in one post, so I’ll constrain this one to Sagittarius, the archer, because, as I mentioned previously, it is somewhat unusual for Sagittarius to be represented with legs and a crossbow when the actual constellation is typically a centaur with a long bow.

Examples of Sagittarius as a centaur are far more frequent, such as this one (left) from Codex Sang. 250. And, with the exception of a rare example from Israel in the 6th century, most of those with legs occur between 1395 and the late 1400s, the same approximate time as the creation of the VM manuscript.

If we further narrow the examples to those with both legs and crossbows, then only a handful remain. To make it easier to understand the importance of these examples, I created a chart which shows the extents of the Roman Empire in the late 1300s overlaid with Sagittarius symbols. This made it easier to visualize the approximate origins and dates of creation of the ones drawn with legs

I felt it was important to include the political boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire because it provides context. I was not specifically looking for zodiac symbols in this region, I sought out every Sagittarius with legs that I could find, but discovered after collecting them that they had commonalities not only in attire, but in geography. It’s probable that others may surface that have never been digitized and uploaded to the Web but until that happens, one has to work with what is available.

The above chart illustrates Sagittarius with legs from a variety of documents. The one in the upper right was pasted into a manuscript and may not originate at the same time or place, but was probably created sometime before 1468.

The image in the lower left of the chart is technically not a zodiac symbol, although the volume from which it originates has astrological references. I included it because it resembles some of the zodiac drawings and might provide a clue as to why crossbows appear in zodiacs. The painting is from the Netherlands and shows a crossbow tournament. It occurred to me that the popularity of the crossbow for warfare and for competition may have inspired drawings of Sagittarius for a brief period of about three decades.

I didn’t include this image of the archer squatting because it’s from a fragment that has been assembled with a longer document, but it is assumed to be from Germany, with an estimated date of about 1457 or earlier. By the mid-1400s, most of the Sagittarius symbols had reverted to longbows and, by the 1500s, the legged version of Sagittarius had almost disappeared (other than obvious copies from older texts). Most of the examples that include crossbows are from the early to mid-1400s.

Note that the examples I’ve located so far tend to be from the same general region. Most are within the Holy Roman Empire, near to what is now the border between Germany and Switzerland. An early one appears to originate in Czech. The legged symbols from Israel and Italy are longbows.

The zodiac symbols in the VM do not appear to be copied from one specific source. If they are, that source has not yet turned up on the Web or may no longer exist. At least for now, it appears that the VM illustrator was inspired by a number of sources. Clearly Beinecke 408 is not a work of pure fantasy—many parallels to European culture are evident.

Location Clues

What is most significant about the Sagittarius crossbowmen is that they originate from a fairly specific time period (clustering around the 1420s to about 1475) and a fairly specific area of central Europe, the same region that matches the handwriting found in the marginal notes and on the last page of the VM (I refer to this handwriting as second script because there’s no definite evidence yet that the VM author (first script) and the author of the Germanic/Latin text on the last page are the same person—there are significant differences in the handwriting).

We also don’t know for certain whether the person who created the drawings is the same as the person who added the text. It probably is, but it should not be assumed that only one person authored the manuscript. In fact, it appears that the paint may have been added by someone other than the person who drew the lines, given that the lines are fairly careful and the painting rather sloppy, so we have to keep open to the possibility that the artist and author may be different people, as well.

The clustering of legged crossbow symbols isn’t sufficient evidence to assume Beinecke 408 was created in S.W. Germany or Switzerland (there are some perplexing oddities in the manuscript that are not typical of this region), but It’s certainly possible. The style of the plant illustrations and the handwriting on the last page are similar to others originating in the same general area (including northern Italy). The manuscript’s provenance, which includes Czech and Italy, and the organization of the content (and materials used to create it), also suggest a central European/Holy Roman Empire origin, so it may be that the person (or persons) who authored the Voynich Manuscript was born there or migrated to the area.

If you have seen any examples of Sagittarius with legs and a crossbow in documents from the 15th century or earlier that are not scanned and uploaded to the Web, I would be interested in hearing about them.

J.K. Petersen

Postscript: I should mention that I didn’t include examples of Sagittarius with goat legs (of which I found several examples, one from about four centuries before the VM), because it struck me that the Pan-like representation of Sagittarius was as distinct from Sagittarius with human legs as it was from Sagittarius as a centaur, individual enough that it deserves a separate article.

2016 Jan 11 Postscript: It was brought to my attention that David Jackson has located a further example of Sagittarius with what appears to be a crossbow, described in his article here.