Here’s a novel Voynich theory I somehow missed along the way. ‘Oiram’, a Senior Member on David Icke’s Official Forums, suggested last October that the ‘balneo’ nymphs in tubs might actually be grape treaders, that the zodiac nymphs are illustrating a grape planting calendar, and that they all had a nice shower after they were finished to clean themselves up.
As with everything viticultural, there’s a 1000-franc phrase for grape-treading – “pigeage à pied” – which I thought you’d like to know. Gotta get that resveratrol hit, eh?
In Oiram’s defence, I have to say that page f83v (below) does indeed seem to depict nymphs treading grapes (can you see the grapes rolling along the pipework at the top left?), along with two stupendously large grapes in the foreground to press the point home:-
Truth be told, I somehow doubt Quire 13 will turn out to be a secret book of grape planting. But it would be rather nice if it was, right? 🙂
How unique!! And I like his colourised versions of Voynich pages as well– thanks for sharing!!
Actually, I’m pretty sure the colourized versions were originally from Claude Martin’s “Voynich, the game is over” site, such as on this page.
A rather charming idea. I personally suspect that the manuscript discusses a wide variety of topics, and if the overall subject is herbal or agricultural in nature, grape-stomping wouldn’t be out of place. But I wonder: does anyone go grape-stomping in the nude?
The Voynich series-of-tubes pictures are like a Rorshach test, aren’t they? (Same goes for the rosette diagrams.) With no clear knowledge of what the text means, one can come up with a variety of interpretations for the same image.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread…
Actually I like it! 🙂 ISTM we’ve heard this idea before. It’s sure a lot better than the Elizabeth Bathory one.
Has anyone ever said the nymphs were angels? Now there’s an interesting thought! 😉
People (myself included) have long wondered whether the zodiac nymphs were inspired by Dante’s description of heaven, so who knows?
That reminds me! There’s a set of charts/illustrations for the Divine Comedy which look a bit like the rosettes diagrams(particularly those depicting the eighth circle of Hell, which is intricately subdivided), and might be roughly contemporary with the Voynich: http://www.worldofdante.org/gallery_vellutello.html
Here’s a manuscript with some figures similar to the nymphs, as well(particularly the “rose” of Paradise, shown as a kind of walled garden): http://www.worldofdante.org/gallery_yates_thompson.html