How is it that the nympha of the Voynich manuscript are depicted as both bathing in pools and waterways in a mountainous landscape, and in the heavens among the stars?
Such a connection is entirely beyond the scope of modern ways of thinking. It is an example of how modern sophistications and the pervasive scientific worldview makes us ill-prepared for understanding a work of traditional cosmology such as the Voynich.
Indeed, that is one of my abiding interests here. The gulf between traditional (premodern) cosmologies and the modern (non- or anti-traditional) mind-set has been of professional interest to me for decades. First, I studied ancient Greek cosmology – which entails the constant struggle to acquire non-familiar ways of thinking about nature. And second, I had the task of explaining just that to undergraduates. By nurture, we think very differently than people in previous eras. We do not appreciate the degree this is so until we encounter and engage with a work like the Voynich manuscript.
It is very difficult to explain that the vast majority of human beings who have ever lived believed that there are oceans in the sky. Even more that they thought there was a symmetry between celestial waters and subterranean waters. But unless you can get your mind around that, you cannot understand how nymphs can live in lakes and streams AND in the heavens. Such notions were commonplace before our times. We are now entirely removed from that worldview.
Such a connection is entirely beyond the scope of modern ways of thinking. It is an example of how modern sophistications and the pervasive scientific worldview makes us ill-prepared for understanding a work of traditional cosmology such as the Voynich.
Indeed, that is one of my abiding interests here. The gulf between traditional (premodern) cosmologies and the modern (non- or anti-traditional) mind-set has been of professional interest to me for decades. First, I studied ancient Greek cosmology – which entails the constant struggle to acquire non-familiar ways of thinking about nature. And second, I had the task of explaining just that to undergraduates. By nurture, we think very differently than people in previous eras. We do not appreciate the degree this is so until we encounter and engage with a work like the Voynich manuscript.
It is very difficult to explain that the vast majority of human beings who have ever lived believed that there are oceans in the sky. Even more that they thought there was a symmetry between celestial waters and subterranean waters. But unless you can get your mind around that, you cannot understand how nymphs can live in lakes and streams AND in the heavens. Such notions were commonplace before our times. We are now entirely removed from that worldview.
* * * *
Somewhere in my reading of ancient texts years ago I ran into an account of viewing the stars from bowls of mercury. Sorry, I don’t recall the source. But it was simple enough.
Instead of straining your neck to view the stars overhead, this text described a simple device – a bowl of mercury. You can hold the bowl in your hands and view the reflection of the nightsky above in the natural convex mirror formed by the liquid metal.
* * * *
A related idea is being depicted in the picture of the sleeping nymph below from page 82r:
The sleeping nymph is a personification of a still (dark) body of water. In this “sleeping’ state the surface of the water reflects the stars above.
Needless to say, running water doesn’t do this. If you want to view the stars, you need to find a still, dark body of water with an unruffled reflective surface – as reflective as a bowl of liquid metal. You need a body of water that is asleep.
We forget that lakes and pools (in Australia what are called ‘billabongs’) acted as mirrors of the sky to be consulted in primitive, ancient and traditional astronomy.
And we do not naturally extend such an idea to analogies between the water and the sleeping mind of a dreamer, and thereby dreams with stars. Traditional thinking proceeds by such parallelisms. Modern thinking does not.
In any case, this is how to read this illustration in the nymph section of the Voynich manuscript. It explains, quite simply, the connection between the waters and the skies. This is why the nymphs are associated with the heavens. Because they dwell in lakes and waterbodies that are perfect reflections of the skies. They therefore know star lore and the cycles of the stars.
We think of such old myths simplistically. We think that water nymphs are about water. Well, yes they are. But, for the reason just given, and depicted (cartoonishly) in the Voynich manuscript, you might also consult them for star lore.
R. B.
Needless to say, running water doesn’t do this. If you want to view the stars, you need to find a still, dark body of water with an unruffled reflective surface – as reflective as a bowl of liquid metal. You need a body of water that is asleep.
We forget that lakes and pools (in Australia what are called ‘billabongs’) acted as mirrors of the sky to be consulted in primitive, ancient and traditional astronomy.
And we do not naturally extend such an idea to analogies between the water and the sleeping mind of a dreamer, and thereby dreams with stars. Traditional thinking proceeds by such parallelisms. Modern thinking does not.
In any case, this is how to read this illustration in the nymph section of the Voynich manuscript. It explains, quite simply, the connection between the waters and the skies. This is why the nymphs are associated with the heavens. Because they dwell in lakes and waterbodies that are perfect reflections of the skies. They therefore know star lore and the cycles of the stars.
We think of such old myths simplistically. We think that water nymphs are about water. Well, yes they are. But, for the reason just given, and depicted (cartoonishly) in the Voynich manuscript, you might also consult them for star lore.
R. B.
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