I have wondered many times – as surely many have before me – if the water flows on quire 13b are supposed to connect certain folios to others. Let’s take f.81v as an example to show you what I mean. This folio features just one “pool”. The water is supplied by one stream which appears seemingly out of nowhere along the left margin and it leaves the folio in a similar manner at the bottom right.
So my research question for this post is simple: is it possible that water flows are to be read as connections to other folios? In other words, can these folios be put together like a puzzle? It must be noted that some pages are clearly self-contained, but this does not affect the possibility that others are implicitly linked.
I don’t mean that the folios were originally one single piece, though they may have been copied from a source where they did form one whole. The VM does contain a number of large foldout pages, and a shortage of such sheets may have contributed to the division we have now. The flows of water appearing and disappearing may be a creative solution to cope with the fragmentation of one larger drawing. But there is no way to know whether this was the case. If so, they were likely taken from a map that focuses on the relative layout of bodies of water and connecting rivers.
One complicating factor is the broadly accepted fact that the folios in quire 13 (and indeed others) are out of order. Many researchers, including myself, believe that quire 13 was originally divided into two separate sections. One indication for the “mess up” is that the pools on f.78v and f.81r, which are on the same side of a single bifolio, are clearly linked. This despite the fact that now, in the current binding order, there are several pages in between. The following image shows the relevant section of both pages, though keep in mind that there is no perfect match because a portion of the junction is obscured by the pages in between.
The fact that this connection is unmistakably there, means that the pools are indeed connected across folios. Since these are on the same bifolio, though, they may have originally been visible right next to each other.
What’s in a mountain?
Another thing to get out of the way first is that of “water origins”. Quire 13b features certain structures or patterns from which water flows onto the page. These look like little semi-circles stacked on top of each other. If the water flows are truly rivers like on a map, then these structures might be highlands or mountain ranges, which are often the original source of rivers. Compare two of these structures inset in a map from the Ghent Liber Floridus:
The likeness is especially strong in the bottom pair, where three rivers flow from the overlapping circles. The convention of drawing a mountain or mountain range like a group of overlapping circles is not exclusive to the Liber Floridus and is indeed found in quite a number of early manuscripts. For example, here are some mountains from the Book of Curiosities:
The text with the bottom example is especially interesting, since it explicitly links the mountain (which looks like a pile of rocks) and its nearby lake to the origin of floods. “The floods of the Nile are drawn out from this lake”. While this mountain in a lake is mythical – as the origins of the Nile traditionally were – our examples show that naturally a link was seen between mountains and great rivers.
Puzzle Time
So just as a test to see if this hypothesis can get off the ground, let’s start puzzling. In order to present our folios in a blog-friendly way, I made schematic versions of each. Here’s an overview of the symbols:
All water flows and pools will be marked in their color, either blue, green or blank. If a direction can be glanced from the image, it will be indicated with a single arrow on the river. Pink dots will mark places where a river suddenly appears or disappears and might be connected to a pink dot on another folio. Grey dots are “mountains”, features which look like natural origins of water and will likely not connect to other folios.
Quire 13b, or what is left of it in the current manuscript, consists of eight pages, or two complete bifolios. Folio 75r is completely isolated; the water originates from what looks like a cloud and elevated terrain and flows down blue rivers and a large green stream, connecting to a separate green pool at the bottom. It won’t be of importance for our “puzzle”, so let’s just get it out of the way already. No pink dots means no possible connectors to other pages.
Furthermore, it’s almost certain that 78v and 81r should be viewed adjacent to each other. This results in the following diagram:
The water appears seemingly out of nowhere (pink dot), and three green pools are connected by a number of blue rivers.
These are the remaining pieces of the puzzle:
At this point I must confess to the reader that I typed this post as this project went along, not knowing what the result might be. And well, the result is, that there are just too many possibilities. One thing which seems clear is that there is a distinction between “water origin” pages and “receiving” pages which appear to be further down the flow.
There is one combination I particularly like, since it would explain why there is a double-size river on top of f75v. If both 84v and 84r are meant to flow together, they would form this large river which splits into a delta on 75v. The 78v-81r bifolio is clearly a terminus, and I’m not certain of the position of 81v – it’s a bit of a mess, just like this whole subquire.
As always, feel free to correct my interpretations or suggest improvements. This was mostly a test to see how well the pages would translate to a more schematic overview, and I’m rather satisfied with the results. But to know if and how the pieces can be connected is, as usual, dependent on the text.
The order of the folios – or if there is one to begin with – is not the real point of this post though. While playing around with the above diagrams, they suddenly reminded me of something I had seen a while ago. A map of the flow of the Nile in an 11th century Arab manuscript.
In the manuscript, this map had been flipped horizontally. When I turned it again, I noticed something strange. I had lost all my modern conceptions of what a map should be, and the Nile looked fine with the South side up.
After having drawn an abstract version of the Voynich maps, something seemed natural about placing the mountains on top, the high ground from whence the water comes, makes its way through various blue lakes and terminates in a square – the great green sea.
All this just to say, if there is one point I want to make in this post, it is this: the nymphs are not really bathing ladies. They are metaphors.
Very intriguing line of questioning.
Even though the Voynich manuscript has a small footprint (it was probably designed for portability), we know that the creator of the VMS “thought bigger” and was interested in relationships between drawings—evidenced by the many double folios, plus the distinctively large nine-rosettes page that are not typical of most medieval manuscripts.
If the pages were to relate to one another in a larger sense than has not yet been explored, it would not surprise me. It seems a worthwhile idea to explore.
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Yeah, when I set out to write this post that was my line of thought as well. But there are too many possibilities to connect the rivers, assuming that they have been disconnected to begin with. It’s a shame we don’t know the original folio order for sure, nor whether any pages are missing.
While I was sketching these diagrams, however, I noticed something more important, which is that if you filter out the embellishments, what you have left is strikingly similar to water way maps in other manuscripts.
Still, I think some of the pages are supposed to be connected, but I’m not sure how to decide which ones.
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Hello Koen!
N.Pelling has already proposed the links of the images of folios 78, 81 and 84 for more than 10 years, although its explanation was different. Maybe it’s a good time to compare the different proposals?
Best regards
Ruby
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Hi Ruby
I know that Nick mostly agreed with Glen Claston back in the day, and I generally refer to Claston when discussing the separation between quire 13a and 13b. That’s also why I adopted Claston’s original names of Q13a and Q13b
Do you mean that Nick proposed a way to link the water flows together, though? Let me search his blog..
I found this page where he suggests 84v sat next to 78r. http://ciphermysteries.com/2011/12/20/voynich-colour-inference-a-sure-path-to-madness
Indeed, his reasoning is completely different, but the result is similar. I also place these folios on the same “level”, since they both contain mountain-like water origins. So that’s nice 🙂
In another post he writes the following (source: http://ciphermysteries.com/2011/03/04/green-voynich-pools-i-really-dont-think-so-sorry )
“Personally, I suspect that – for the most part – naked women are used in the Voynich as some kind of cryptographic / steganographic ruse to get people’s decrypting brains either to shut down completely or to open up too far to be useful: a systematic misdirection trick, drawing your attention away from where the real information is held on the page.”
That’s what I like about Nick, he’s clever enough to cut right through the “these are really naked ladies” surface. I just don’t agree with the rest of his reasoning, since there are plenty of examples of maps which use both green and blue water. Hence, I don not think (anymore) that the green paint was the work of an uninformed painter.
But as far as the way certain Q13b folios are better viewed side by side, I completely agree.
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Koen,
Nick fairly well pioneered codicological research in Voynich studies and treated these water-flow connections in that context in his book (2006). Perhaps he’d be willing to let you have a copy of that section. His work, and argument is now very well known among longer-term researchers, but the whole codicological (and palaeographic) side of things was ignored for years. Bizarre really when those are the foundations of most manuscript studies.
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Diane
Yeah, you are right, it’s a shame I still haven’t read Nick’s book, I hope he’ll put it online some time. About the separation between Q13A and Q13B and the out of order pages, Nick seems to credit Claston, so I do as well 🙂
Having looked into those curly flourishes a bit for my post about the “mus del” marginalia, I also realized that paleography deserves more attention, especially since we’ve got a lead already in French/Spanish legal documents…
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Just btw – for a vivid demonstration of why Voynich writings aren’t taken seriously by the wider world of scholarship – you might compare the way things like codicology, palaeography, iconographic studies and so forth are treated by the author(s) of the litteravisigothica blog.
A model of evidence-based, historically solid, non-theory-spinning manuscript studies. Also a model of scholarly generosity – e,g. sharing on every platform, and pdf downloads all enabled – something I hope no Voynichero would abuse.
Here’s a post about scribal abbreviations, as example.
http://litteravisigothica.com/medieval-abbreviations-i-origin/
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Certainly, it is only natural that experts in a certain very specific field can write about it in a much more appropriate way than an amateur could. But instead of not taking Voynich studies seriously, they should offer their insights. But they generally don’t. I’m rather desperate to have experts look at a number of things about the manuscript, but generally they don’t.
And what happens when an expert does offer their opinion is embarrassing. The limited scope of their field becomes clear immediately, and their frame of reference appears so narrow that it ignores most of the manuscript. Others, when they do attempt to go further, turn into theory-spinning buffoons themselves (thinking sunflower guys here for example).
And still others see the significant challenge they are up to and avoid it wisely. Some months ago I was annoyed that there was still no consensus about the dialect of the month names. This was a task I could isolate from the rest of the manuscript and present as such to an expert. Someone with knowledge about Romance dialects should be able to judge based on linguistics alone when and where these names were added, since they are dialectically marked. I emailed the question in isolation to a number of experts on medieval French, but they all said it was impossible.
Let me put it another way. In order to even be able to follow the discussions among Voynicheros, I lost count of the amount of fields I’ve had to learn about, and I still feel like I’m catching up. The Voynich hobbyist will often aim for width, which might translate in a lack of depth. But that is where experts should step in instead of look down.
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Koen, There is no consensus because there is no investigation as such – and thus no solid evidence, and no reasoned comparison and conclusion possible. We are dealing with a medieval manuscript. Manuscript studies include palaeography and codicology. It is not that “the experts” can’t become interested in the manuscript but that when they do their opinions are treated less as the informed opinion of a specialist than as another bit of kite-flying and hypothesising. The disinclination to study subjects relevant to the study of any medieval manuscript, and preference for ‘plausible ideas’ over evidence-based evaluation is why (just for example) the Voynich archer’s bow having been identified as one used in Spain, and in a maritime context has been largely ignored; it doesn’t suit the usual sort of easy, story-telling and largely imaginative narrative that is the near-unique hallmark of current ‘histories’ for the manuscript.
Most of the really popular tales are just that; internally consistent works of historical fiction. Just as example – theories that the ‘ladies’ are in ritual baths is scarcely supported by either the religious culture suggested, nor by any carefully reasoned study of any other medieval works. All moonshine, really. But ‘plausible’ to people unwilling to treat the thing as an example of medieval manuscript production and jolly well study the well-developed formal (and thus academic) sciences of manuscript studies.
Anyway, I’m away from it. have fun.
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I have my reservations about the crossbow and the extent to which the figure’s pose can be trusted to reveal the details of its mechanism. The fact that the bolt hovers and the trigger stick is attached in the wrong place undermine the technical reliability of the drawing. And that’s not even touching upon human anatomy and pose 🙂
And well for what it’s worth, I haven’t seen any seasoned Voynich researcher so far who completely believes Skinner’s “jewish bathhouse” proposal. It garnered some attention because it appeared in a book, but that’s about it.
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I hope this is not a duplicate comment. If so, please delete it.
You say “the bolt hovers and the trigger stick is attached in the wrong place.” Can you explain that? It’s not what Jens Sensfelder said fourteen years ago, and not what I say. I know of no-one else who has addressed the technical issues seriously.
To say that the ‘trigger stick is attached in the wrong place” pretty much begs the entire question. Not that it’s true. In fact – sorry – it sounds to me as if that sentence is some sort of meme. Sensfelder’s conclusion was in error, but his attempt was made fairly and his little essay is also fair to the reader. It includes all the evidence which shows that he was, in fact, mistaken and that sort of integrity in not leaning on the scales to make a theory sound more reasonable is why I feel such respect for the man. A wrong conclusion is no great thing; a wrong way of going about advancing a theory is, in my opinion, a really big mistake.
The bow and the clothing are all perfectly well done – as a picture intended to convey meaning. The whole speaks of a type which is – in my view – to be associated with the period of Catalan possession of the Duchy of the Archipelago. All sorts of linguistic as well as material clues in it. Just as one ‘Arc[h]i-tenens’.
Imagery always expresses the same line of thought as the maker expressed in words. This because the legal status of the deaf and dumb in canon law meant that only those who spoke and thought in words made it into a book.
It’s all language, and context. You have to go there to get it, you see.
Anyway, I’ve said my farewells to the online community and various correspondents. Private work from now on. But do fare well.
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Diane
In the crossbows I’ve seen, the trigger stick is attached between the nut and the person, not between the nut and the stirrup. But you are right, I have not studied this enough yet. I’m just saying that I’m not sure if the details in this drawing can really be trusted to this extremely technical level.
That said, I agree with everything else you say and I still haven’t seen any evidence for Swiss or German origins of the manuscript.
I’ve also beem growing more convinced of the Catalan ties lately. Have you seen the symbol for the northern pole star on the Catalan atlas? I see you have referred to the map a number of times, but I was unable to find something about this symbol on the compass rose. It’s quite wonderful, and proves you right about a certain nymph 🙂
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Hello Koen,
I have had the pleasure of talking about the Voynich MS with numerous experts in very relevant fields. To summarise my experience of the vast majority of these discussions:
– They are patient and try to explain things in plain language, without using the jargon of their profession
– When they are not certain of something, they say so. Most particularly, they don’t like to speculate
– When something is not known, or cannot be decided or concluded, they say so.
The last two points may be frustrating for people looking for answers, but I think that it is better to get no answer than to get a wrong answer.
When writing to such specialists, the most important thing is to be as precise and specific as possible.
In many cases, the knowledge of the amateur about a particular field (say: the dialects of French in the 15th C) is such a tiny subset of the knowledge of the specialist, that communication is difficult and can easily lead to misunderstanding.
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Hi Rene
Of course I respect and acknowledge expert opinions, and indeed I think we’re in need of more of them. Like I said before, I’ve been trying to find someone who could/would comment on the French dialects but this appears to be really hard.
The problem with the VM is that it requires, at least in my opinion, a multidisciplinary approach in order to say something about the whole manuscript. Knowledge about medieval herbals is not enough. Nor about ciphers, nor about medieval history, and so on. One needs to learn a lot about a lot of fields in order to form an informed opinion.
There are many examples where experts are lured into this multidisciplinary trap. Take the proponents of the “American” theory. They are experts about plants, but lack the other expertise to see that their theory is extremely unlikely. Take someone like Toresella, who made great contributions but disappointed when he brushed aside the nymphs as the work of a crazy sex maniac (if I remember correctly). More recently there is the opinion given by Skinner, who is no doubt an expert in his field , but… need I go on? 🙂
One point where I really agree with Diane is that experts, because their frame of reference is well developed but also limited, might see the VM as a “strange form” of something they know – since they may not be acquainted with what it *actually* is.
But once again, don’t get me wrong. One way forward is to gain more expert opinions. But this will work best if the right questions are asked.
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Hello Koen,
you clearly wrote that you already got several responses about the French dialect:
“I emailed the question in isolation to a number of experts on medieval French, but they all said it was impossible.”
And when you say:
“Take someone like Toresella, who made great contributions but disappointed when he brushed aside the nymphs as the work of a crazy sex maniac”
Why do you think that this cannot be right?
I don’t want to be too specific on some points, but I can only sense that you (like many other Voynicheros) rather greatly underestimate the level of knowledge and expertise of people dealing professionally with medieval documents.
D’Imperio is a great resource and I can only recommend you to read it (if you haven’t yet done so). There are many others too (e.g. summarised in Brumbaugh’s book – harder to get a copy of).
However, she introduced a concept (from her perspective as a non-medievalist) that the Voynich MS is extremely strange to the point of being outlandish.
I admit that I have propagated this sensation in the earlier versions of my web site.
However, whenever I asked *real* MS experts about the Voynich MS, they just called it ‘odd’.
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Indeed, I have read D’Imperio and found her knowledge on various subjects astounding, especially since she did it without internet 😉 I also won’t say that a sense of wonder is inappropriate when confronted with the VM. There are tangents with other works, but it still remains a unique document and can still bear surprises even for veterans.
The “crazy sex maniac” view on the manuscript is one of the few I will outright reject, based on too much to name.
For one, I think a sex maniac would have included more than just a few sex acts. And he would have drawn much nicer breasts 🙂
Seriously though, my main reason is that I am absolutely convinced that the majority of the nymphs don’t represent people of flesh and blood, but rather abstract concepts, personifications… or even spirits of you will. This is clear in the Zodiac roundels, and also in the more abstract Q13 drawings.
And even if the more “normal” bath-like Q13 drawings are taken as literal bathing women, their closest parallel would be in the Balneis manuscripts. Parallels for the nudity of spirits or abstract figures are found, for example, in astronomical contexts. A circle of nudes around Sol, constellation figures in Aratea manuscripts, nudes walking in a procession in a cosmos diagram. Spirits of the damned being dragged into hell. Stuff like that.
The Balneis is not te work of a crazy person or sex maniac. Nor are any of the other examples mentioned above. I don’t see why the Voynich would be, since it’s mostly about plants *and* the nymphs are explicitly linked to stars in the Zodiac roundels.
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Obviously, Toresella was very familiar with the Balneis manuscripts when he made his statements, and he must have seen a significant difference between these and the Voynich MS.
About the internet, that is an interesting thing. Nowadays, what one can find there is vastly more than what one could find 5 years ago, let alone around 2000, when ‘things were happening faster’ than any time I know (related to the Voynich MS). In 1995 there was basically nothing. Many of D’Imperio’s sources can still not be found on the internet.
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