[Here’s a guest posting from my friend, the well-known Voynich contrarian Glen Claston. Though he originally intended it as a comment to my recent post on Voynich Manuscript Quire 8 [Q8], it actually deserved a whole post to itself. I’ve lightly edited it to house style, and added a couple of pictures.]
Nick asked me to look at the blog, and though I don’t plan to be a regular poster, he’s going on about things that matter a great deal, so we need to examine them very carefully.
The [“ij”] mark at the bottom of f57v is in line with two other erased marks on folios, as well as erased symbols in Q1 and Q2 that Nick and I discussed some time ago. The original author apparently used a symbol system instead of a standard system, and much of his work has been removed. Quirization and foliation are not the work of the original author. I plan to publish this in a book entitled “The Curse of the Curse of the Voynich”. 🙂
Voynich Manuscript f42r folio number
Rene Zandbergen also brings up an interesting observation about f42r, that the crystals appear to be on top of the foliation. Yes, I’m certain that is the case, but I don’t reach the same conclusion that Rene does in this regard. In the image above, the foliation clearly overlaps the drawing lines and the color pigment, but at the same time, this entire region is a section exposed to water damage, which might explain Rene’s observation of the crystals overlapping the burned-in ink. IF the pigment includes mineral salts as many commonly do, this would explain Rene’s observations, as they would have re-crystalized over the existing material. It would require a rather closer inspection to see if this is the case.
If Rene’s observation holds, there is indeed something seriously wrong with the Voynich, since foliation before coloration has a very dramatic implication on known VMs construction, and I for one would have to throw out years of research and start anew, as would many. I recall that I had issues with Rene before on “retouching” because these darker patches fell into areas that were also affected by moisture. As it happens, I do apologize much belatedly to Rene for suggesting that just because some of these didn’t match, his identification of retouching in the astrological section was wrong, when it proved to be spot-on. It was my fault for generalizing, and to say that we all make mistakes is not a good enough excuse, I owe it to myself and to the VMs to be as precise as possible.
[Nick: as far as the paints go, I think the consensus now is more that different paints were added at different times, though I suspect the “light painter” / “heavy painter” binary division may well prove to be far too simplistic – because of the large number of paints present, I can quite conceive that these might have been added by four or five later “heavy painters”.]
As far as the rosettes section [Q14] goes, Nick is suggesting here that Q14 belongs to Q8, and though I wouldn’t exactly state that in the way Nick has suggested, I entirely agree. The rosettes is a part of the astronomical discussion, so it’s not in its right place. A large folio can get ripped out rather easily, and be placed back in the book in random order. It’s an hypothesis, but is it testable?
It turns out that the rosettes contains a record that helps us place some items in order. There are tears in the unused fold of the rosettes, damage beyond what normal foldouts have seen, and these tears hold information. The quire mark only works if the rosettes was bound in this torn seam, and the foliation only works if the binding of this foldout is in its current place. That says that the maker of the quire marks was not the maker of the original foliation, that the foliation was a product of at least one successive binding. There are two distinguishable hands in the foliation, two successive bindings after the quire mark binder. Two inks that I can identify in the foliation bindings, and places where quire marks were added that weren’t there originally.
[Nick: GC is proposing that the nine rosettes fold-out f86 was originally attached to the rest of the manuscript along the (now badly damaged) crease highlighted green (above), rather than along the crease highlighted blue. The shape of the whole codex is highlighted in red.]
It’s a complicated picture that needs a degree of clarification, but there is no way around the idea that the manuscript went through at least three bindings. The big question is – does any of these bindings reflect the original order of construction? The answer is a resounding NO.
Again I go to the rosettes for history, and I need only look on the back of the rosettes to see that the discussion includes the four seasons and the four winds. All my research into parallel texts says that this is the meterological part of the astronomical discussion, and belongs firmly in the astronomical section. This also says that the rosettes on the reverse is a meteorological mappa mundi, and read in that venue of comprehension it’s imagery becomes meaningful and schematic to other VMs imagery. It helps that one page in the first astronomical section [in Quire 8] exhibits similar damage to that of the original rosettes page, and Nick is right that the pages in this section appear to be inverted.
I’ve been through the whole range of arguments over the years, and I weary of argument that doesn’t move me forward, but this is a discussion that needs to be moved forward on several fronts, and I will follow this discussion with interest.
What I am seeing is that the quire numbers were placed on probably the first binding, but I’ve always been of the opinion that the manuscript existed unbound during much of the author’s life. I now have much more information to back up that idea, and as you know, I was once of the opinion that it was the author that first quirized, which is something I can now disprove in abundance. Order changes and shuffling I can’t comment on, but there is evidence that the author himself made some major changes, and these changes were substantially reflected on the first binding but the manuscript was not in a permanently bound condition when the author left off/died.
Rene for one would understand that in making these decisions, I’m weighing intelligent choice against mishap, and using a set of parallel texts on these subjects to determine which is which. One doesn’t even require these options in viewing the interlacing of herbal-a and herbal-b herbals. One does however, need to know why the herbal-a herbal pages were separated from the herbal-a pharmaceuticals and additional information stuffed in between, much of this in a different script. Herbal-a herbals are congruent with herbal-a herbals in the pharmaceutical section, the latter sometimes drawn on the same bifolio/foldouts as the pharmaceuticals, and as Nick and I discussed recently, there is physical contact information that ties them together in a time-line of construction. These are connected in multiple ways to the same time line, and the intervening information is connected to a separate time line, and the construction is a progressive construction, so could this have been the act of binder and not the author? Could this intelligent construction occur passively, and not actively? There’s an argument in there somewhere.
Grant for a moment that I don’t think the book was bound during the author’s life, and I am certain it was not bound before the drawings/text/ paints were added (it’s damned hard to draw, paint, and write all the way into bound gutters on so many pages – common sense observation, eh?). What’s just as important is when quire marks ceased and foliation began. Dee used bifolio quire markings in his book of 1562, and though page numbering was becoming popular in printed documents by this time, Dee chose not to use it, choosing a manuscript format instead. It’s a generational thing, and I feel that the foliation is at least 17th century. The quirization has a problem with dating as Rene pointed out, that it could be someone older that didn’t use the modern format, or it could have been someone before the modern format became prominent. The rosettes’ gutter damage however, says that there was a good deal of time between the quire marks and the foliation, because they couldn’t possibly have happened at the same time, and the quire marks are apparently a good deal older than the foliation.
Make of this all what you will! — Glen Claston
One thing this blog has inspired me to reflect upon is how multidisciplinary this particular mystery really is, with all its complexity and context. To solve the riddle of the Voynich, you’d either need to be a polymath(of the sort which became extinct a few centuries ago) or bring together a bunch of specialists who may not understand each other.
Hi Emily,
I think that studying the Voynich Manuscript for any period of time leaves you feeling uneasy about the multi-sided nature of “evidence” and particularly “proof” – the chasms separating art history proofs and “smoking gun” (scientific) proofs is often vast, yet building bridges (however rickety) to cross these is what Voynich researchers aspire to do.
As far as collaboration goes, even though the main Voynich Manuscript mailing list did run extremely well for a decade, it has somehow ended up (with a few honourable exceptions) as a bunch of non-specialists who plainly don’t understand each other (echoing your comment).
Sadly, Linus’ Law (“given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”) doesn’t quite seem to apply here, perhaps because individual technical expertise (particularly in historical research, which you need in order to understand the nature and limits of evidence) is lacking. If I happen to laud individuals such as Glen Claston, Rene Zandbergen and Elmar Vogt on the blog, it’s because they have a sufficiently polymathic (?) base to build upon, as well as a desire to collaborate.
Hmmm… perhaps this is just a riff on “eyeballs”, and that Linus’ Law might instead be “given enough eyeballs capable of seeing, all bugs are shallow”. Basically, perhaps you need to be some kind of polymath in order to qualify as an eyeball?
Glad you enjoy the blog, feel free to collaborate! 🙂
Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….
Responding to Glen’s ideas about the 9 Rosette folio having once been bound to the manuscript along the now disintegrating gutter (highlighted green) — Isn’t this damage more likely to be the result of this being the outside edge of the folded sheet protruding from the manuscript and getting a far greater amount of rough treatment? Such damage is evident on the gutter bisecting the Western Rosette (Red highlight) as well as within the Zodiac folios.
With the green highlighted fold protruding from the closed manuscript, it would have taken a lot of damage simply from being continuously rubbed by the hand of someone carrying the book.
Try folding a sheet of paper, putting it in a closed book with a little bit of the folded edge protruding along the green highlighted edge and then carrying the book around for a little while. The most common way of carrying a book is by hanging onto that same edge as the paper protrudes from. The result is that the fold is excessively worn and begins to disintegrate — the same as the Rosette gutter.
If Glen didn’t say contrarian things, he wouldn’t be a contrarian. 🙂
Of course, you’re both right – but what’s interesting here is that Glen has put forward a new explanation for why this page should happen be the most damaged part of the entire manuscript by far. Close physical examination with his hypothesis in mind may well reveal some kind of detail that would otherwise have been thought of as having no consequence… or it may not. With luck, we shall see!
Just to add that I am not at all confident that the pigment was applied after the page number.
I am totally untrained in this. It appeared like this, but naturally the ink of the page number
would have to soak into the vellum, while the crystals need to lie on top…
I think this is an excellent example of an individual feature for which we would like specific data to resolve a research question – in this case, a microscopic image of the f42r foliation, to answer the forensic question of how the paint and foliation layers were ordered.
As I just told Nick, I wouldn’t be labeled a “contrarian” if I always agreed with him. 🙂
Thanks Rene for your clarification, and I hear from a big bird that you’re going to view the manuscript once again. Are you accepting item lists of questions from the population, or do you have some specific examination in mind?
At least I’m in a conversation here where people make the distinction between idea, hypothesis, theory and fact, and understand the heirarchy of these terms. What I presented here is at present an hypothesis, it has supporting evidence but not enough to rise above at present. The funny thing is – I’ve personally shot down the vast majority of my own hypotheses over the years, because I’m at least willing to travel the path new information provides. That means that there’s a better than 50% chance that if I’m wrong here, I will be the one to call myself stupid for considering it – the scientific method is a cruel master, no doubt.
I now have three things that seem to suggest that my idea of the binding in the rosettes section is correct, but….. these have not yet been exposed to self criticism or introspection, so they’ll be released only after I have some confidence in the outcome. Right now I’ve only put the quire mark idea out there, and I would like some feedback on that one. It just seemed natural to me when I folded the foldout that it only works one way, but someone else has another idea, maybe?
Unfortunately we get locked up in arguments of whether the quire was bound one way or another, and overlook the real intent of this post, which was to assign the rosettes quire to the astronomical discussion, something that requires a major restructuring of the manuscript. This slice of the discussion is not an hypothesis, it is an actual theory, with more supportive evidence than any VMS theory heretofore presented. The reason one gets lost in the shuffle and the other gets the attention is because one pertains to the original intent of the manuscript, and the other to the original binding of the manuscript, two topics not mutually compatible.
Anyone can argue over one observation or another when it comes to codilogical evidence, but “intent” (less subjectively – “content”) is a much more difficult and much more highly evolved discussion that has yet to take place in any VMS forum. When I use a term like “topic”, I’m speaking about “content”, and order of presentation of “content” is a lesser heading of the same conversation that speaks to “intent”.
This is the level of VMS research where I currently reside, and I have a “theory” about that, surprisingly, not a new one. All levels of VMS research are important and are interconnected, but I’d really like to move the discussion up a notch, if not to my specific address, at least into my neighborhood.
I’m only putting this out because if I continue to comment on this forum, I don’t want to be cross-talking with others that don’t understand my intentions, and I would like to avoid the common misunderstandings Emily mentions and that happen in due course.
GC
@Nick: I’m honored by the invitation to collaborate, but for now at least I’m just a spectator(and just a humble college student, an English major hoping to become more polymath than incomprehensible specialist).
Hi Emily,
I think we all have the capacity to become a Renaissance (wo)man / polymath: all that’s required is to actively engage with different types of knowledges (such as historical, scientific, political, craft) and activities (such as listening, reading, thinking, saying, acting, influencing, persuading), rather than staying in too well-defined a corner. You can’t always fix a car with just a spanner. 🙂
Aged 14, I remember being aghast at the arbitrary binary division imposed between Humanities and Sciences in schools – even then, this seemed to me to be completely missing a really big point. And so what I find fascinating with the VMs is the need to blend and balance so many pieces of evidence and types of proof – even if you look at it simply as a puzzle in and of itself (i.e. before its Prague escapade), you have a million fragmentary clues to juggle (across about a hundred different dimensions) and to try to reconcile and explain. You definitely can’t do that with just a single academic spanner, no matter how good it is. 🙂
In the face of the VMs’ cunning and uncertainty, we should all be humble: but once you’ve grasped the basics (that nearly everything written on the VMs is hugely unhelpful, this blog aside [of course]) and engaged with the primary evidence (print out Dennis Stallings’ PDFs to make your own home facsimile), I’d say you’re ready to collaborate in a way that most Voynicheros singularly fail to do. Don’t underestimate the challenge – but don’t underestimate yourself as well! 🙂
Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….
I expect this comment may vanish, since the original post is three years old now. But I really would like to know what Glen meant by a ‘meteorological mappa mundi’ – ‘cos I agree with the map- bit.
I, too, would like to see more from Glen’s point of view. Have you all already discussed the intermissions of the manuscript’s appearances? Has any one of your correspondents discussed whether the ms appeared in Rudolph’s court in a “briefcase portfolio loose-leaf” form? Have you already discussed (perhaps ad nauseum) the ms’ perhaps gradual re-formatting/binding over the centuries? I know that some of these Q’s may never be resolved, but sometimes a “fresh look” at things leads to new discoveries.
My “take” on the “rosettes” is that the entire unfolded, flattened document was a layout/plan for a formal castle/estate garden, fountain in the middle and all. The whole “rosettes” section may have been a “contractor’s proposal. (?)
Ennyway, I look forward to the ongoing discussions.
I’ll be ba-a-ck!
bdid1dr: truth be told, there are hardly any areas of the Voynich Manuscript’s history and content that I and others such as Glen Claston and Rene Zandbergen (to name but two of many) haven’t raked over before to the point of obsessive nausea. I’m really not suggesting you stop coming up with ideas, but rather that you have to understand that we really have seen them (almost) all before – it takes a particularly mad angle or particularly unexpected combination to raise long-term Voynich researchers’ eyebrows!
For example, I’ve already invested a couple of years of my life (or not far short of that figure, anyway) into understanding the Voynich’s binding, never mind the 30 or 40 people who have proposed that the nine-rosette page is a map or an architectural layout of some kind (one of the chapters of “The Curse of the Voynich” covers this in plenty of detail). In every instance, the big question is never whether a connection holds true (for we simply cannot tell), the big question is how it holds true. This is the cliff all the zippiest sounding ideas fall off – the huge pile of them at the bottom never seems to deter people from hurling themselves off the (conceptual) edge, just in case they’re right. 🙁
I have an image of this document much before the one in this blog , it may be a codex you are correct