This is the first time I’ve logged into my Voynich Portal account in 3.5 years. I couldn’t even remember my password. I’ve been fighting for democracy. All my research, hobbies, family relationships, all the things that matter to me, have been sidelined by the need to be actively engaged.
Time Lost
It was a crushing blow to set aside my research. After 13 years of basic legwork, I was making discoveries, exciting ones, and now all the emerging threads are moldering on an old hard drive that I pulled from a computer that I sold, with my paper notes gathering dust in the attic and under the bed. I feel like a small ship that lost everything in a bad storm, including the captain’s log and now, amidst an even bigger storm, I’m trying to find it all and drag it back into the boat.
Except I can’t. Not yet. There’s more work to be done on the home-front and it’s more urgent than ever.
A Token Note
I can’t pop in and out without at least posting something about the VMS. So maybe the most appropriate snippet is this… at the time I was forced to drop my Voynich research, in 2021, I was booking a trip to Europe. This is one of the more speculative parts of my research but I was itching to travel somewhere mysterious and beautiful, and I set my sights on Plitvice, the waters of the mysterious legend of the Black Queen.
I tentatively booked accommodation, selected a train pass, and was making a final decision between two air routes. I was long overdue for a vacation and wanted to see if there was a connection between the fabulous pools and falls in Plitvice and drawings in the Voynich Manuscript. I wanted to “walk the walk” and try to match up the connections on the “map” pages and “pool” pages with something real. I was forced to cancel all of it. I’m still longing to go there for both personal and academic reasons.
Summary
This is all I can post right now. I will try against all odds to drop in and get some of the more important VMS-related matters resolved (like my findings about the drawing that was located in Italy by F. Salani) but for now, duty calls.
Back in July 2016 I posted a short blog about some of my early ideas for the VMS “map”. My favorites in the early years were Jerusalem (this was actually my first idea); Villa d’Este; the Naples/Sicily volcanic area; the natural-spa areas in northern Italy/Germany/Czech; and one I haven’t disclosed yet because I want to write it up properly with pictures and I haven’t had time to do a proper job.
There are others, but these are the ones I particularly liked and spent considerable time investigating.
1) Jerusalem
I spent countless hours studying old paintings, engravings, postcards, and aerial photographs of Jerusalem. My reasons were simple:
The top-left rotum in the VMS “map” is oval (olive-shaped) and looks like a mountain (I thought it might be the Mount of Olives),
the center rotum has lots of towers (the traditional position and way to depict Jerusalem),
there was a tradition of building tombs into the hills next to paths, which means that some of these old tombs look like towers in holes (you have to look at very old images to see this because all the paths have been widened since medieval times and they look less like they are in holes), and
pilgrimages to Jerusalem were customary and thus a journal-style “map” with landmarks would be appropriate to the time.
After studying Jerusalem so extensively that I could walk around it in my head, I was beginning to think I might be wrong or at least that I should not get too invested in one idea, and that I should take some time to investigate other ideas.
One of the next items on my list was Villa d’Este, which is an astonishing piece of medieval/renaissance hydraulic engineering, partly inspired by old Roman ruins and earlier water gardens that were not quite so elaborate. The engineering was so advanced that sensors would detect the presence of visitors and turn on the sprinklers to give them an unexpected shower.
2) Villa d’Este
Even though I was worried that the construction of Villa d’Este was too late to have inspired the VMS (even back in 2008 I pegged the VMS in my mind as 14th or 15th century, mainly for palaeological reasons), I thought if I learned everything I could about it, maybe I could discover an earlier water garden with the same properties that might be connected to the VMS. Here is what intrigued me about Villa d’Este:
It is overtly Pagan, filled with pools, fountains, and statues of nymphs, echoing the profusion of nymphs and water in the VMS. Remarkably, it was built by a Christian cardinal who showed no remorse whatsoever when his colleagues criticized him for his choice of Pagan themes.
There is a spiral staircase in the main structure (and a spiral on the VMS “map”).
It has many topological features in common with the “map” folio and VMS pool folios, including waterfalls, fountains, natural pools used for swimming, a winding path leading to the estate with an ancient round Pagan temple, and many other features that seem to match the VMS drawings.
There is an extensive herb/kitchen garden and surrounding gardens, which might have been documented at some point in time.
In other words, some connection with the Villa d’Este or its predecessors could explain numerous features on the VMS “map” and also the many pool drawings and nymphs in other parts of the manuscript, and possibly even the plant folios. You can almost chart a path around the estate lands and match them up with the landmarks on the VMS “map” folio.
I also spent time investigating the d’Este family tree to see if water gardens existed in the earlier generations of the family.
I became so familiar with Villa d’Este from photos, postcards, paintings, Google Earth and aerial photos, that I could walk around this in my head, as well, and I was reluctant to let go of the idea except that I had another one that seemed equally intriguing…
3) Naples/Baia/Sicily/Salerno Volcanic Region
This is one of my favorites. I’ve blogged about it several times. After becoming so familiar with Villa d’Este that I felt I had been there, I dove into a more in-depth study of the Naples/Salerno/Baia region. It caught my attention for the following reasons:
Vesuvius has an eye-shaped crater (similar to the “mountain” top-left on the VMS map). The wavy lines in the eye-shape might be flames, thus indicating a volcano, or they might be water filling in a dormant crater, or they could represent the famous Sulphurata/Solfatara, Campi Flegrei, all of which are present in the Naples region.
Medieval medical students from areas like Paris and Heidelberg frequently spent part of their university career in Naples or Salerno studying plant medicine and astrology, and might document the journey as a map.
The baths of Pozzuoli were located here (until they were destroyed by an eruption in 1538) and might account for the bathing nymphs in other parts of the VMS.
I have been to Naples. Unfortunately, it was an ill-fated trip. On the day I arrived, the museum staff went on strike and judging by events later in the day, it was not likely to end that day or any day soon.
There are numerous other commonalities with Naples that I’ve already covered and I won’t repeat here because the direction of this blog is related to more recent events. But before getting to that, there is one more location that I studied before moving on to other subjects…
4) Rome
I thought the way the VMS rota were organized, in separate circles connected by pathways, might be inspired by the hills of Rome. Rome is sometimes in the center of mappae mundi, rather than Jerusalem, and we have the saying, “All roads lead to Rome”, so I thought it might be possible to relate the VMS map to this area.
After some effort, I couldn’t get the topological features to fit as well as they did to Villa d’Este or Naples/Baia, but it seemed worthy of consideration. I tried the same with Paris, Venice, Genoa, the Flanders coast, and the Po estuary, with mixed results. They didn’t fit as well as Naples.
5) Natural Spas
In Greece, Italy, Croatia, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, and numerous other places, there are natural spas with thermal pools, waterfalls, green pools, blue pools, grottoes and numerous features in common with the VMS.
I was overwhelmed.
I discovered there might be hundreds or thousands of areas that could match the VMS map if it documented a natural-spa area. This was bewildering, and very difficult to investigate because the topology of natural spas in the Middle Ages is not well documented. Plus, many of them have been over-built with modern spas and the original geology altered.
I gave up. The task was too difficult, so I confined my studies to a few of the ones that were popular retreats for medieval nobility, one of those being Tuscany (described in a previous blog due to the marble escarpments that look similar to features in the VMS “map”). I haven’t had time to write up the others.
I’m not going to describe #6 yet because it deserves a blog of its own and I don’t want to disclose the location until I can do a good job of it.
On to the point of this blog…
Recently, I’ve had to re-evaluate my assumptions about the VMS. The process of re-organizing my thoughts started more than three years ago, but it took a long time for the mounting evidence to convince me I might be wrong about the “non-Christian” nature of the VMS…
The Impetus of the Mystery Critter
In March 2016, I was inspired by comments by René Zandbergen and K. Gheuens to consider that the critter on f79v might be a golden fleece. The curved posture was the key feature provoking my interest. The blog is here.
Then in April 2016, when I was writing about Theriac, I thought, what other possibilities are there?
Perhaps the head-down posture and “scales” of the mystery critter might be a reference to the castoreum beaver, an animal that shows up regularly in medieval herbal manuscripts and which is often drawn very badly (it usually looks more like a dog, a deer, or a platypus than a beaver, and is frequently drawn with a scaly tail). Here is a link to that blog.
In other words, I was trying to think of as many explanations as possible and then hoped to find other elements on the folio confirming one of the guesses.
So what did we have? Armadillo, Pangolin, Sheep, Fleece, Beaver, etc., and somewhere along the line I also suggested an aardvark (no one seemed to like that idea but I’ll keep it on the list because they confused pangolins and aardvarks in the Middle Ages due to their similar habits and habitats).
Then I went through medieval imagery for each animal, one-by-one, trying to figure out how each one was traditionally drawn and why, and collected as many examples as I could find.
By 2018, I had more than 2,000 medieval images of sheep. That might seem like a good starting point, but the ones that related best to the VMS were the ones I had been reluctant to collect.
Baaaaaaaa…d
The irony (which will become clear further down) is that I didn’t collect most of the Christian-themed sheep I came across, even though they were in the majority, because I didn’t think the VMS was a Christian-themed manuscript. About 70% of my samples were from secular or zodiac sources (some of which are only incidental embellishments in Christian manuscripts and were not directly illustrating Bible stories).
Then came the eye-opener, which hit me sometime in late 2018, and which I blogged about in April 2019 (the “zoomer” post I lost and had to repost) and another in June 2019… the imagery surrounding the mystery critter (cloudband “cushion”, lines, etc.). Like it or not, the critter’s milieu was more similar to Christian imagery than the others.
This took me by surprise. I thought, “Could I have been wrong all this time? A dozen years of studying this manuscript and I’ve been discounting the possibility of Christian content.”
Of course then I kicked myself because I TRY to search with as few assumptions as possible.
So where is this leading?
It’s leading to interpretation. But first, let’s get short-sightedness out of the way first…
Many images get posted on the Voynich.ninja forum. Much of it is not new to me. I have more than a 300,000 plant images catalogued and accessible at the touch of a finger (I was interested in plants before I learned about the VMS). I also have more than 20,000 medieval plant images, many of which I can now recognize and identify on sight. I have related these to images of real plants so I can automatically display them side-by-side sorted by date and illustrative tradition. Here, for example, is a very small portion of the information I have for Agrimonia:
I have more than 550 complete zodiac series (almost 7,000 images) and thousands upon thousands of medieval and ancient animal images (dragons, sheep, bulls, snakes, fish, etc.), thousands of pictures of medieval maps, merlons, towers, castles, and escarpments. I’m not even going to try to count them but I had to buy another several-terabytes drive to accommodate the overflow.
Despite this penchant for collecting, I am fairly selective and realize now that I zoomed past a lot of Christian imagery because I didn’t think it was relevant.
The Sea Change
So what changed my mind?
It wasn’t any one thing, it was a pattern that was emerging…
I mentioned Add ms 37049‘s humble drawing style (similar to the VMS) on the forum in February 2018, but I didn’t read it until a few months later. That’s when I realized the picture of Jerusalem had been extracted from the preceding mappa mundi rather than being included or repeated as a separate drawing. That is not common.
And that was an “Aha!” moment.
I thought to myself, “Is this the way the VMS is created? Have they taken things that usually go together and split them into separate chunks? Is this why the VMS is so hard to understand?”
Looking for Confirmation… Could it Be True?
As soon as that thought crossed my mind I went to the cosmological section and looked for a Creation theme and this section (of which I enclose a portion) seems like a possible candidate. Many people try to identify this as individual stars or constellations, but I think it might be more metaphysical than physical:
But I wasn’t sure I could precisely pin it down without more study, so early in 2019, I tried another folio. I re-evaluated f86v and realized, after a few days, that the drawing wasn’t so strange after all….
The VMS is drawn very differently from traditional manuscripts, but the themes of things falling out of the sky, birds, double tors (possibly representing the pillars of the sky), earthquakes, people hiding, and the world erupting into chaotic movement were common in biblical stories and apocalypse manuscripts, and I was able to find them in classical literature also, so I posted this blog in March 2019 with a sampling of possible interpretations, including one from the Book of Revelation.
I didn’t want to get locked into one idea, which is why I posted four ideas, but the one from Revelation matched quite well. That’s when I really started wondering if I had been wrong about the VMS. Maybe there was Christian imagery, after all. Maybe. (I was still reluctant to believe it.)
But whether I believed it or not, I have to admit, it changed the way I collected imagery from that point on, and it goosed me into trying harder to determine if the mystery critter might be a lamb rather than a pangolin or beaver.
The Best is Yet to Come…
So coming up to the present, things suddenly started happening fast.
K. Gheuens pointed out that helical twining could be found in medieval Arma Christi images (the same kind of twining as in the VMS Oak and Ivy plant).
Here is an example of an Arma Christi illumination with helical twining on the pole that was used to bind Jesus:
And this detail from a Russian Arma Christi illustrates that the number of coins doesn’t have to be 30 (there are 28 in this drawing):
I was thinking out loud on the forum when I wondered whether the major holy days might be encoded right into the VMS plants:
“Could a subset of the plants in the VMS (I’m thinking specifically the big plants and mostly the fanciful ones) represent a visual calendar? A way of expressing something about the most important holy days that was maybe tied in with what they believed about plants?”
And then, in the process of discussing this, and the mystery critter (is it the lamb of God?), mandorlas, sacred hearts, celestial flyers (“zoomers”), and poles in the Arma Christi in medieval manuscripts, K. Gheuens did some research on mandorlas and posted this blog, which I think is a must-read for every Voynich researcher.
Because I had also been researching mandorlas, I knew almost instantly that Gheuen’s blog was going to be about the imagery on f17r (note the almond-shaped vagina-like red splotches in the root of the plant), but Gheuens went so far beyond, you could almost call it a bombshell in terms of our thinking about the VMS.
Read the blog and pay special attention to the analogies between some of the more stylized plants (ones that are hard to identify) and the various implements of the Arma Christi. This isn’t just about one plant drawing, it’s about a group of plant drawings. If he’s right, it will be the first time someone has convincingly discerned the meaning and inspiration behind a group of the less naturalistic plants.
As an aside, suns and moons with faces are generally associated with alchemical manuscripts from the later 15th and 16th centuries, and are rare in early medieval manuscripts, but they show up in Arma Christi images, as well.
We’re Not Finished Yet
Now we get to the part about interpretation. It’s one thing to say, hey, I found a picture of a tree-like thing and things twining around it in helical fashion (and this happens very frequently in Voynich research when images are posted without any follow-up to confirm or deny whether the idea has legs). It’s quite another to say, hey, here is a pattern of several illustrations that might have a cohesive explanation.
This is why I am taking Gheuen’s idea seriously. Because there might be a strong enough pattern to help us figure out if he’s right. Plus, the Arma Christi caught my attention because it has talismanic implications, as well, which might tie in with the strange writing in the VMS.
So, in that vein, I’d like to add a few more images that might relate to this in a way I never expected…
Back to the Future
Remember how I said at the beginning of this blog that I mostly gave up on the idea of Jerusalem being the object of the VMS map and moved on to other ideas? I couldn’t quite make it work—at least not as a strip-map or as traditional cartography. Maybe I need to look at it again, but in a slightly different way…
Maybe it’s not quite a map of Jerusalem, maybe it’s Jerusalem in the narrative sense. Take for example this picture, which no doubt has been mentioned in the VMS literature at some point for having a plant with twining, but what especially provoked me to drag it out of my files was the story behind it…
This painting illustrates the Betrayal of Christ (a theme related to the Passion of Christ which is, in turn, related to the Arma Christi) and includes Jerusalem, possibly Babylon (it was frequently included in mappae mundi in the Middle Ages), the Mount of Olives AND a tree with helical twining (the point is that they are all together in one painting):
The Betrayal of Christ, Bartolomeo di Tommaso, c. 1440s [Gwynne Andrews Fund, The Met]
The painting is part of an altar triptych that illustrates Christ being betrayed and arrested, and the mourning of the death of Christ.
“Maps” like this landscape of hills and castles don’t have to be geographically accurate. Their role is to tell a story. Could the VMS “map” (or parts of it) be a didactic version of one of these stories? Is that why it’s hard to pin down?
A Critical Look at the “Oak and Ivy”
It’s probable that the helical vines on the tree in the triptych painting above are metaphorically related to Arma Christi imagery, which would place the tree iconographically halfway between the Arma Christi “pole with ropes” version and the VMS Oak and Ivy—almost a visual bridge, so-to-speak.
But I now have second thoughts about the VMS tree. Maybe we should examine it again…
The following plant, from a Hebrew manuscript (lower-right), has a hauntingly similar twining pattern to the VMS Oak and Ivy. The main difference is that the VMS main stalk has branches going through rather than around (whether this is deliberate, creative, or a correction for a mistake is not clear). The leaves, however, are quite different, so it’s not a complete match:
Maybe the VMS Oak and Ivy is not meant to be two plants, as in herbal manuscripts such as Masson 116 or Sloane 4016. Maybe it’s one plant that has been pruned and twined in topiary style like the one on the right (note how the stalks are attached at the base, which sometimes happens with ivy (it insinuates itself into the bark) but which might mean it’s all one plant with three stalks).
I’ve seen plants where the stalks have been twisted and twined in remarkable patterns very similar to the above painting. Maybe the berries are not ivy berries, maybe they are olives, or something else related to a biblical story.
Now Everything Looks Different
I have to go back and look at everything again. I was almost certain the nymph middle-left on folio 77v represents the birth of Venus (or at least, that she is either Venus or a metaphor for birth), but maybe not.
And maybe the nymph at the top isn’t Cassiopeia after all (although I think Cassiopeia is a very good suggestion for the imperious seated nymph). Maybe the central position is the throne of the last judgment and the nymphs on either side are stand-ins for the angels Michael and Gabriel.
Things are shaking up right now, but maybe that’s a good thing. A new perspective. Let’s see where it leads
I have several ideas for how the middle-right rotum on the VMS “map” could be interpreted, so this is just one possibility. I’ve mentioned it a few times on blogs and on the Voynich.ninja forum, but I thought it might be better to post some visuals.
Rotum 6 is ringed by a textured pattern of small circles painted blue. On the left is a different pattern of lines connecting it to the center rotum.
Within the outer blue texture is a double-infurled scalloped pattern resembling a cloudband. In the center is a small circle with a dot (the dot is the compass point) surrounded by another circle of small scaly shapes. From the inner circle emanate two roughly triangular spreading shapes (or perhaps they are pointing to the inner circle). The open portion between the scalloped band and the inner section is dotted with blue paint:
The first time I saw this, I thought it looked like water and rocks, similar to some of the other rota, but the infurled cloudband-shape makes me wonder whether the intention is mythical or real.
Does the double-infurled band indicate another realm or another time period? Could the band be “air”, as in some medieval depictions of the elements? Or could it be sea foam drawn with an infurled band simply because it was a popular theme at the time and they look somewhat the same?
I can’t cover all the possibilities in one blog, so let’s start with one of the more literal interpretations. For the sake of exploration, let’s assume this is something real with water and rocks. One idea I had is an aerial view of a lighthouse.
Medieval Lighthouses
Most medieval lighthouses have been rebuilt. The few that remain in their original form have been fitted with modern beacons and sound systems to replace the fire beacons and manual horns that were used in the Middle Ages. Sometimes they have been made taller. Nevertheless, we can get a sense of how they might have looked from these images:
Ancient lighthouses may have been more squarish or perhaps a combination of squared and round shapes. Many of the medieval lighthouses were round or somewhat round (octagonal) and when they were built on artificial jetties, those were sometimes round, as well.
What about the “Beams”?
Looking at the central circle in Rotum6, it looks like something is streaming out of it or pointing toward it at the top and bottom. Also, if you look closely, you will see small tickmarks on the lower left. The infurled, scalloped shape that resembles a cloudband might indicate another realm, or it could be foam where waves lap up against rocks:
Were light and sound represented with streamers and little tickmarks in the Middle Ages? I wasn’t sure, so I checked, and found that they were:
This doesn’t prove that the VMS lines mean light and sound, but it does show that it’s possible.
I wasn’t sure whether to include this image, as I’m not certain represents sound, but the way it’s coming out of textured bands at the top of the panel reminded me of the bird on VMS folio 86v that I blogged about here. The orientation is different, but the lofty position and the narrative impression are similar:
This image from Giovaninno Di Grassi, with rays coming out of the cloudband, also reminded me of the tor with the birds on VMS f86v:
So, let’s take a look at the evolution of this style of infurled band
The Infurled, Scalloped Band
This infurled cloudlike shape was often used as a divider between the earthly and spiritual/heavenly realms. The scalloped edges were a later medieval style that evolved from simpler wavy shapes. Here is one of my favorite early-medieval cloudlike dividers with simpler bands (Tiberius C-VI):
These are some of the innovations that came later that are similar to the VMS band:
The earliest of these examples, the 13th-century Louis Blanche band, wasn’t infurled, but it did have scalloped edges.
The scalloped infurled bands were quite common by the 15th century—I have far more examples than I can post. One influence may have been an Anglo-Norman tapestry of the New Jerusalem, woven in the late 14th century. Unlike the contents of books, tapestries were often on display, as signs of wealth, where more people could see them:
Another influence might be the design exemplar created by Giovannino di Grassi. You may have noticed that the illustration of the raptors on the tor above includes infurled shapes with scalloped edges. Di Grassi drew the image in his model book in the late 14th century, to provide examples for other illustrators.
Variations
The Rotum6 band is a single row, but sometimes there are multiple rows of bands, with rays and sound-horns coming out of them. This occurs in both Latin and Hebrew texts:
In contrast to infurled bands, here is one comprised of spiral shapes from eastern Europe (probably Bohemia) that is more similar to Asian cloud clusters than the scalloped bands shown above (Velislavova Bible, c. mid-1400s):
The Lauber workshop, not surprisingly, created quickie versions of the western style of scallop:
This form of scallop was later repeated in a printed version of De Sphaera.
This super-quickie version, without the scalloped edges, appears in NYPL ma 104 (c. 1445). The drawing style of the figures is not too different from the VMS, but more care and attention was given to VMS decorative elements and textures:
The motif remained even after printed books displaced hand-drawn illuminations. A mappa mundi created by Hanns Rüst, published in Augsburg c. 1480, includes infurled bands, and a small inverted-T-O in the bottom-right corner:
PML 19921, Morgan Library & Museum, Pubished in Augsburg, c. 1480
On the same page, in the lower-left is a similar image, except it is arranged in bands rather than as a tripartate scheme, and thus the infurled shape is repeated as a representation of “air” within this schema, above horizontal bands of water, earth, and fire:
Thus, it can be seen that the infurled band was most popular in the late 14th century and the 15th century, consistent with the radiocarbon dating, and everything I’ve discovered so far about the paleographic characteristics of the manuscript.
But what does it mean in the VMS? Is it decorative or symbolic? If it’s symbolic, is it representative of another realm, or perhaps the element air? Or is it stylized sea foam around the base of a lighthouse?
Maybe the Answer is Simpler
Maybe Rotum6 is not a lighthouse, even though a lighthouse would fit well with the other water and rock/mountain imagery on the VMS “map”. Maybe it’s something more simple or more abstract.
Coming back to examples from Cotton Tiberius C VI, it can be seen that biblical stores often include beams of light, horns, and other iconography that represent the light of God, the majesty or power of God, or the voice of God (or one of his emissaries), emanating from a heavenly-realm band:
Infurled bands can also be found in stories of creation, as in this Anglo-Normal Bible (BL Additional 47682, 1330s):
Notice that the centers are rather abstract. You wouldn’t know what they represent without context (which may also be true of the four mid-side rota in the VMS “map”).
There is a more intricate version of the band in Egerton 1894 (c. 1360s), with God creating the animals (note also the rainbow):
Sometimes the story of creation gets all bundled up with Eden, animals, elements, winds, angels, the sound/word of God, and an extra scalloped band for good measure:
So this infurled style of band is frequently used to represent a division between realms (usually heaven and earth), but it can also represent “air”.
Could there be two different “planes” of meaning on the VMS “map” folio?
The VMS “Map” Seen as Layers
Perhaps the central rosette is a spiritual center (a church or temple, or Jerusalem, Eden, or Rome), and the four radiating “mouths” are the winds, connecting it to four rota on the middle-sides. There’s a certain consistency of theme among these. Each one has lines radiating from the center toward the edges (in Rotum6 there are only two rather than multiple spokes). Each one is explicitly connected to the central, larger rotum:
The four rota in the corners are drawn and connected in a different way from those on the sides—they are also more literal and detailed in a geographical sense. They are not directly connected to the center, like the side rota. Instead, they have “pathways” that connect around the edges of the folio.
Maybe these paths don’t go through the four side-middle groups as it appears at first glance… maybe they connect directly to the other corners on another plane. We might be looking at a spiritual plane and an earthly plane:
Even though the corners do not connect directly to the center (just as earth does not directly connect to heaven), they do in a sense “point” to the center using protruberances such as pipes and mounds. Each corner rotum has a certain amount of terrain or context extending into the space outside the edges (suns, symbols, textures).
There are two pathways extending from the sides of the corner rota, but each is a slightly different design. And each rotum has a different inner design (oval, spiral, terrain-like, garden-like).
One way to look at this is that the outer corners may represent the earthly plane, and thus embody (from the top-right going clockwise), the elements of water, air, earth, and fire, and still (at the same time) represent real locations, but before this idea is discussed in depth, I have some information on mapping traditions I’d like to post first.
Sorry for the abrupt interruption, but this was originally a small portion of a very long blog that goes into detail on whether the VMS “map” is traditional, metaphorical, or literal. It was much too long for one post, so I split it in two. I will post the rest of it as soon as I can figure out how to break up the remaining portion into two, as well, as it is also much too long.
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]
