May Day

In his speculative notes on the Voynich ms. made many moons ago Robert Firth dropped the W word – “witchcraft”. The astronomical section of the work, he observes, seems to be calendrical, and he draws attention to the diagram on f68r which he describes as “a circle divided into eight segments, four with single stars and four with groups of stars.”

The text, he observes, “starts in the middle of the NW segment, which has the largest star” and he opines:

“I think this stands for "spring", the eight segments are for the quarter and cross-quarter days, and the diagram is oriented so you rotate it counter-clockwise to read the text.”

He then makes the comment:

“Incidentally, if the circumscribed text starts at the vernal equinox, then the top is approximately May Day and the bottom approximately All Saints Day; the connotations with "witchcraft" are clear.”

In other words, he notes that if the diagram is oriented as it seems to be, then its axis is on the dates traditionally associated with witchcraft.

Firth was not the first to attach the notion of witchcraft to the manuscript, and others – especially folk from the contemporary neo-pagan community – see accommodations of the old pagan festivals in its calendrical designs.

There is an eightfold cycle of annual seasonal festivals in some widespread pre-Christian survivals in Europe. These are still observed popularly, or in a Christian guise, or in the old way by Wiccans and recreationists. Festivals like Beltane and Imbolc are residual throughout European folklore and folk custom. It might not be unusual or remarkable that we find the year divided into eight parts in the Voynich ms, or that the cycle begins at the vernal equinox or that it gives emphasis to May Day.

 

Sabbats and Esbats in modern neopaganism

But it is still right to say “witchcraft” because the period of the Voynich ms. coincides with the rise of the witch hunts and witch hysteria in Europe, and pagan and pre-Christian residues were increasingly demonized, increasingly problematic.

To give this some historical precision: the very first witch hunts were in northern Italy. In fact, the first wave of witch hysteria came from exactly the region from which I propose the manuscript came: the County Tyrol. The people suspected of witchcraft were the people we today identify as the Ladin – the rustic mountain people, poorly Christianized, speaking a barbaric Latin, steeped in pagan mythology and superstitions.

This is a contextual point: arguably we find a calendar system in the text that marks the eightfold pre-Christian (yet still widespread and popular) festive calendar in a period when this cycle of festivals is being implicated in witch hysteria.
 

On my reading, the Voynich ms. concerns aspects of the Ladin herb gathering tradition. It presents a benign and Christian view of that tradition, but it may have been written in an atmosphere where forces were increasingly hostile to their unique ways.

R. B.