Fortean times article

[Zandbergen@xxxxxxxxxxx (Rene)]

Gabriel recently announced a new article about the VMs in the Fortean Times.
It provides an interesting reshuffling of the usual information - only, the
title is 'Maze of Madness' and the subtitle 'plenty have gone mad in the
search'. Gabriel already complained about this unfortunate emphasis.

(Of course, it's possible that we're all mad but just don't realize it.)

Anyway...

It's got some nice illustrations and some very doubtful ones. There is
a portrait of Roger Bacon which looks alarmingly familiar (*), and also
a supposed portrait of John Dee, who turns out to look exactly like
the ancient Greek mathematician/astronomer/geographer Ptolemy (**) (depicted
as geographer). Aptly, this portrait is overlapping one of the most 
obviously astronomical diagrams, the one with the 12 sectors and the
7 'planet names'.

*) I can't remember where I saw this portrait before. He looks just like one
   of the early American presidents
**) Obviously, this portrait of Ptolemy is not contemporary but, unless I
   am much mistaken, dates from the renaissance.

Prompted by that, I hereby submit, without evidence, that the 20th quire
of the Voynich MS, which contains the so-called 'stars' or 'recipes' section,
might well be a summary of Ptolemy's 'geography' (e.g. like the 'list of
cities' found in some later summaries of his work). If anything, this fits
better with the remainder of the MS. 'Medical' recipes are already given
in the pharma section. 'Alchemical' recipes belong in an alchemical MS
which the VMs almost certainly isn't. Geography as a science belongs with
astronomy and astrology, which are well represented. Also missing is
'meteorology', which could be represented by some of the pages labelled
as 'cosmological'.


Cheers, Rene