Comments on: Hieronymus Reusner & the Voynich Manuscript…

By: Rene Zandbergen

Rene Zandbergen — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:08:21 +0000

Actually,

the image is from MS Wellcome 164.
As explained on the Wellcome website, usage of its illustrations is highly restricted!

To view it, go to the Wellcome site and do a Reference search for MS.164

By: rene zandbergen

rene zandbergen — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 06:18:17 +0000

The plant image I was talking about is indeed the illustration of a moon plant, but it is
not in Roob. I found it in a publication that I photocopied, and was from the London
version of the book. “Londoner Kritzelbuch” if I remember correctly, but like I wrote,
Google doesn’t return a lot on it.

By: Ernest Lillie

Ernest Lillie — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 05:36:23 +0000

Hello Rene.

I don’t know if its the same plant you’re thinking of, but Roob’s book has a plate from “Buch der Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit” on page 462 showing a pair of plants — one bearing moons for leaves and the other bearing suns — with an androgynous figure standing between them.

This image is page 220 in the Munich manuscript linked to above. I paged through to see if there were any other plant drawings within but found no others. There are, however, many other smaller figures not shown in the Roob book as well as a lot of figures showing alchemical glassware — none as ornate as those illustrated in the Voynich Pharmacology quire though.

Note for Infinitii (from 2 above): I did a search through a few alchemy texts and found a listing for a book that may be of interest to you if you’ve not already found it:
Martin Ruland(us): Lexicon Alchemiae sive Dictionarium alchemisticum. Frankfurt a. M., 1622. For translationb, see: A Lexicon of Alchemy. London, 1892

P.S. — Nick, sounds like you have a library similar to mine. Are you familiar with the Art and Imagination series of books put out by the publishers Thames and Hudson? If not, I recommend that you look up a few of them.
Imagine Roob’s book with a separate volume for each chapter. Their titles run to such subjects as Alchemy, Books of the Dead, Robert Fludd, Athanasius Kircher and The Tree of Life.

Thanks.

By: infinitii

infinitii — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 05:30:15 +0000

Funnily enough, my theory was born out of finding images of Pandora in Roob’s book (supplemented by the images in the Bachmann book)– also, I don’t think the image Zandbergen is talking about is in Roob, but I would be very interested in seeing the scan.

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:28:54 +0000

Hi Rene,

If it’s in Roob’s “Alchemy & Mysticism”, I have a copy here (along with a copy of pretty much every other semi-related book under the sun) – just let me know the page number.

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….

By: Rene Zandbergen

Rene Zandbergen — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:19:31 +0000

Ernest,
Roob’s book also triggered my interest. I will try to make a scan of the bad photocopy
I mentioned, and send it to Nick. Perhaps he can place it here.

By: Ernest Lillie

Ernest Lillie — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:44:27 +0000

Much like Rene above, I too am fascinated by the “Buch der Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit”. My introduction to it came from the reproductions of several of its illustrations in Alexander Roob’s “Alchemy and Mysticism”. The various bizarre drawings and cipher grids had me looking in vain for a copy of the complete manuscript.

Rene and others may be interested to know that there’s a complete facsimile of one copy (Cgm. 598 in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek of Munich) online here:

http://mdz10.bib-bvb.de/~db/0001/bsb00016775/images/index.html

The cipher grids mentioned in Roob’s book are located on images 009 and 177 (This blog is called “Cipher Mysteries”, afterall).

By: infinitii

infinitii — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:06:21 +0000

I tried looking more into this theory since I had e-mailed you about it, but didn’t find much more. However, I did find that there was a mention of a Martin Ruland in the dedication (or something) of one of the copies of the Pandora– I can’t recall the details exactly, but I think the implication was that he had been the guy who did the illustrations for it. There are two Martin Rulands (both physicians and alchemists)– the Elder, who is the one mentioned in the Pandora, and then his son the Younger, who interestingly enough eventually went on to become personal physician to none other than Rudolf II. I thought the possibility may have existed of the Voynich being in the Ruland family and making its way to Prague where it was found interesting, but I have no evidence of this.

By: rene zandbergen

rene zandbergen — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:17:07 +0000

I remember being fascinated by the ‘Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit’. I once got a
(very bad) photocopy of one plant drawing in the version referred to as the ‘London
sketch book’, which had a striking resemblance to one of the herbal illustrations in the
Voynich MS. There is very little about this particular MS on the web…