The other word for what I am proposing regarding the Voynich text, namely that it is a type of astrological record, is almanac.
In fact, this offers a better conceptual framework for what we see in the text. It resembles an almanac in some respects, and in the medieval (and ancient) manner it includes both astrological and meteorological data.
This does not easily explain the botany and the pharmacology - and the Voynich contains no tables as almanacs typically do - but there is an astro-meteorological system depicted in the cosmological (circles) section, and elsewhere, and it appears to set out systems of celestial and terrestrial cycles.
On my analysis, this is true of the text as well. It is a system of notation (mainly numerical) based on divisions of the ecliptic generated by two templates, QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN.
I have characterized QOKEEDY as celestial and CHOLDAIIN as terrestrial.
By extension, QOKEEDY concerns the stars and solar cycles, while CHOLDAIIN concerns the manifestations of these cycles in the cycles of nature, weather and so forth.
It is the standard medievel model in this respect: astrology and meteorology are interlinked, two parts of a single system.
This is also the nature of medieval almanacs. They combine astrological and meteorological data.
* * *
As it happens, investigations into the zodiacal images in the manuscript - the central rondels depicting the creatures of the zodiac - suggest a dependence upon an almanac.
The illustrator seems to have relied upon an existing series of zodiacal images such as those typically found in almanacs or Books of Hours.
They have been especially linked to a known (southern) German almanac or style of almanac.
The zodiac names that have been added in French lead investigators to northern French almanacs.
This only tells us that our author/illustrator owned or used an almanac(s), which is unsurprising, but it underlines the calendrical nature of some diagrams and suggests that an almanac may have been among the models for the manuscript.
Is the Voynich ms. made to be consulted? Is it a practical work, like an almanac, that was made to be of use, listing, or allowing the calculation of, relevant times and dates?
Certainly, the central section, the circular diagrams, the section I refer to as the APPARATUS - that includes the zodiac wheels - has this appearance. The diagrams - the wheels - seem made to be consulted.
If only we understood these wheels and how they work, it looks as though one can look up dates and times with them.
* * *
When it comes to almanacs, though, there is a host of possibilities extending all the way back to Hesiod's Works and Days.
Of more interest, perhaps, is the almanac of Ptolemy because - as readers of these pages will know - I regard it as very likely our author knows, has been inspired by, the Canones of Ptolemy (Ptolemy's Handy Tables).
It is now my contention, anyway, that the author is familiar with the copy of the Canones then in Brescia, with its cryptic depiction of Helios and his nymphs. There is a clear allusion to that image in the Voynich ms. in the centre of the letter wheel on f57v.
Our author's focus, then, is on Ptolemy and we must suppose he has a natural interest in other works by Ptolemy.
Ptolemy composed an almanac, known as the Phases, or the Phases of the Fixed Stars.
Essentially, it correlates the risings and settings of fixed stars (heliacal risings) with meteorological events.
Here is a sample (Robert Schmidt translation):
This, I think, looks very promising as a possible model for what we see in parts of the Voynich text.
It is suggestive as a format, and it is clear that the astrology in the Voynich is especially stellar (rather than planetary) in nature, as is Ptolemy's Phases.
Of all the other works of Ptolemy, besides the Canones (which sets out solar cycles), the other work most suggestive of the Voynich is the Phases (Phasieis).
More so than the Tetrabiblos and even the Amalgest.
On the face of it, Ptolemy's Phases presents itself as a possible source of inspiration for our author.
Many posts ago, when considering the Canones, I surmised that "there must be another source..." another work our author is using, along with the Canones.
Among other works by Ptolemy, the Phases is a good candidate.
* * *
Or would be, except that it was not extant in our historical period. Rather, it was only reflected in Arabic almanacs which used Ptolemy's format and basic methodology, correlating star phases to weather patterns and natural cycles.
The relevant Arabic literature in our period was from Spain, with Hellenic (Ptolemaic) foundations.
Most importantly, there was the tradition of the so-called Cordoban Calendar found in the Kitab al-Anwa (Book of Phases) by Ibn Said (circa 980 CE).
Our author might have known such almanacs, but could not have known Ptolemy's Phases directly. (Noting that one view is that the Phases was originally part of the Amalgest, but not as we now know it.)
The relevant genre of literature is called parapegmata - essentially "farmer's almanacs". (The word comes from the practice of recording things with rows of pegs and is applied, by extension, to almanacs.) There is a rich tradition of such works in Arabic called 'Anwa'.
* * *
But, stepping back from the textual traditions, we here encounter - surely - the type of astrology we find in the Voynich ms.
Wikipedia presents the 'Anwa' in these terms:
It describes a curious meteorological forecasting system based on the position of the sun and the hiding of certain stars, associating these positions with certain repetitive phenomena experienced at that time.
But the system is not in the least bit "curious". Rather, it is altogether normal in astrological traditions. It only seems "curious" from the modern perspective.
The astrologer Robert Hand, in his introduction to Ptolemy's Phases, explains:
"This kind of astrology, based on the phases of the stars and planets with respect to the Sun, and from which is derived a collective rather than personal correlation between celestial and terrestrial events, is to be found all over the world among all peoples. It is non-horoscopic and mundane.
There is no need to look for origins either in Mesopotamia or any other single source. We find this kind of astrology among the Chinese, the ancient Northern Europeans, Native American peoples, especially MesoAmericans, and the peoples of the Indian subcontinent as well as the Greeks. Sometimes it is applied to weather, as it is here, sometimes to the affairs of the kingdom. The astrology that appears in the Vedas is this type of astrology. It is probable that this is the sort of thing that was practiced at Stonehenge."
Ultimately, this type of astrology goes back to such observations as the rising of Sirius corresponding to the flooding of the Nile and - relevant to the Voynich - the rising of the Pleaides signalling rains.
It is remiss of me not to have made this straightforward identification earlier. The problem has been the expectation that medieval astrology - and Ptolemy's Canones - is essentially planetary.
The astrology of the Voynich is conspicuously stellar in nature, or rather solar/stellar.
As Robert Hand observes, solar/stellar astrological systems, correlated to mundane events (such as weather) are both early and pervasive, and it seems that in the Voynich ms. we have a case of it.
Like Ptolemy's compendium Phases on which most of them ultimately depended, medieval almanacs tended to be solar/stellar rather than planetary. The astrology of the Voynich appears to participate in this tradition.
The problem, in a sense, is not that the Voynich astrology is esoteric or eccentric, but rather that it is quite ordinary. It is a version of a quite standard, ancient and widespread, astro/meteorological system.
Whether such an identification can be sustained or not remains to be seen, but it is a somewhat compelling conceptual framework in which to place the Voynich astrology, in the first instance.
* * *
As for textual influences, there is the Phases of Geminus, or the Geminus Register, which resembles that of Ptolemy but, importantly, arranges the stellar phases by zodiac sign rather than Alexandrian (Egyptian) months.
I do not know or have access to the 'Anwa' literature (and my Arabic is only rudimentary Koranic anyway) and so do not know what variant traditions there are among those works and how they might compare to the Voynich.
In general, almanacs (parapedmata) is a large literature.
The Voynich has often been linked to the works patronized by King Alfonso of Spain, especially matching a known system of 360 stars to what is suggested in the Voynich. Influence from Arabic 'Anwa' (almanacs) would then be part of a broader Spanish influence upon the content of the manuscript.
All the same, I want to insist that our author knows and is directly inspired by the Canones of Ptolemy. His authority is Ptolemy. Through whatever textual tradition, inspiration from or dependence on parapegmata is likely to be Ptolemaic.
R.B.
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