An unverified postulate about a strange rhythm between Universe and Earth well rendered by an almost uncertain alchemical source: the Voynich manuscript.
I didn’t put this article in Alchemy & Nature category because I didn’t trust it as sound and reliable. But … if true, this ancient oral tradition might explain some missing ring in the alchemical chain. Some hermetic pictures display a kind of “back to the Sun” recurrence, an intimate communication between Earth and the Sun.
In my article on the Pythagorean dry river, we have already seen the first part of this transmission from the Universe to the Earth. But now we are before an extra theory of all astronomical beings (or objects) within the Universe being joined together by a reverse mechanism, which might seem like a kind of rhythmical breathing.
The concept of “there and back” is also considered by diverse ancient alchemical treatises, among them Nuisement’s “Poème Philosophique de la Verité de la Phisique Minerale” (1). Still, no one does provide a verified origin for this knowledge, being from the uncertain world of oral traditions. And we have to take it as it is.
The image in the Voynich manuscript we are examining epitomizes this rhythm concept, and availing itself of the universal evocative power of images can carry more meanings than a written page. As mentioned above, other hermetic images represent the same subject. Still, in a way in which Macrocosm and Microcosm, that’s to say, vessels and human Souls, seem rather involved and give to our astronomical system just an evocative role, as we can see below in the Compass der Weisen, Symbola Aureae Mensae engravings and an Albrecht Dürer’s pen drawing portraying Apollo holding his inverted name.
The Voynich image is unquestionably astronomy rooted. Indeed, we can use it to introduce a postulate that seems rather incredible and goes above. Beyond those mentioned above, the naive ancient hermetic idea of a planet Earth engaged in an intimate rhythm with the Sun and Universe. I said naively because this theory often fails to explain how this Earth-Sun rhythm could work. To help us, another unverified legend somewhat unveils the unknown part of the rhythm. The following can, instead, be hardly found in any alchemical treatise. But I have to warn you there are no historical written references to support this theory and, what’s more, no scientific pieces of evidence. Additionally, it is against our present scientific sense as sometimes uncertain oral traditions are.
The Voynich manuscript comprises 204 pages, several images, and an indecipherable writing part. The manuscript was purchased in 1586 by emperor Rudolf the second for some exaggerated 600 gold ducats. The mindless expended amount of money and the writing part clearly not showing signs of a logical system of communication since the beginning made me think of fraud. Nevertheless, if the written part is unreliable, the same cannot be said of the images, often more generous than most contemporary and more trusted hermetic collections.
The manuscript happened to be in Athanasius Kircher’s hold, to finally end up in a Jesuit monastery in Frascati, near Rome (being Kircher a Jesuit in Rome, this should not surprise us). It was there that a Russian antics dealer, Voynich, indeed, discovered and purchased it in 1912. But let’s have a look at the picture now.
What at first sight might easily seem like our astronomical Sun could instead be an ecliptic rendition. The ring around the central face generally does represent the Sun’s path around our Earth. Of course, here we are in an uncomfortable, for us modern, Ptolemaic or geocentric environment (2).
This extravagant solar system representation was the unique possible back at the end of the sixteenth century, but it should not represent an obstacle to our comprehension. I try to explain myself better: whether or not the central face, and so the main actor, is the Earth, nothing changes in the last total. It is just a cultural reference frame. What’s important to us is the belief that even Sun and Universe can periodically blackout to allow what we think to be “dead” matter to send back in its turn. I have already warned you to take this as an archaic postulate. Of course, it is very unlikely that the “matter” to be sent back by something owing to the light range spectrum. Could we think of our Sun releasing light waves in a blinking way? If yes, our eyes could not perceive it, but a continuous sequence.
Pierluigi Ighina, Guglielmo Marconi’s (3) disciple and helper, illustrated this extravagant and very ancient thought, the idea with the help of optical illusions. He said: ”A sudden flash of light can blind us, but also the projection of a film blinds us, from the moment that it makes us see a continuous and coherent movement on the screen, what in reality is continually interrupted from shades that are inserted among the single frames. The moment in which the shutter cuts, the bright bundle of the projector hides the sight. This interval separates every frame from what follows it, offering us a continuity of vision entirely false. Those instants of shades not warned, but that also represents a substantial part of the film to which we assist, from the moment that it has a duration almost equal to that in which we perceive the bright images.”
Ighina went beyond affirming: “ We see only a part of the reality, from the moment that also the light of the Sun is rhythmic and pulsating since it reabsorbs in itself as shades unnoticed by human senses, the reflections of its light, that it receives from not only the Planets but also the Universe”. I don’t know if Alchemy does involve the light range spectrum so profoundly. Alchemy does work better in a deprived light environment. And we must be cautious about identifying Secret Fire as light (in fact, it would instead appear as having flowing attributes). As well as trying to force our Art to involve polarity.
But it is a fact that we, from time to time, read ancient treatises on the necessity to “extract a shadow from its ray” (4). Since the rule of three provides at least three different meanings for the same symbol, we can add something else to the standard signification of return to a black phase after a luminous white one. Is the alternation of light and dark in our Universe a physical reality? Is our blinking Sun just an idealistic idea? We do not know. Nevertheless, that could be the only way to admit this rhythmic “Love” between Earth and the Universe. Or perhaps Ighina doesn’t take into consideration the possibility that the direct solar light may instead be an environment to be shielded, instead, as we will see in the article on Albrecht Dürer’s Apollo (5)
We can see red beams disposed around the inner circle. Supposing they are solar beams, we can easily guess the blue ones as owing to the Earth or Moon; beside them, white beams teeming with stars seem to return to the Sun. In a more probable geocentric system, the central Earth receives from Sun ( blue ones) and the Universe (starry ones). I have mentioned above how the Voynich writing part doesn’t show signs of a logical communication system. So we cannot avail ourselves of it.
So far, we spoke of the Cosmos as of Universe, a space with celestial bodies, especially as a harmonious and ordered complex as opposed to chaos, i.e., in the cosmogony of the ancient Greeks. This mythological differentiation between cosmos and chaos leads to another interpretation: the relationship between the Macrocosm or archetype and the Microcosm or chaos. And the concept, in this case, is more theurgic than physical. Even if it must be admitted that theurgy cannot be detached from physical phenomenology. And the concept, in this case, is more theurgic than physical. Even if it were admitted that theurgy could not be detached from physical phenomenology, the round-trip mechanism would look like a small Genesis.
Finally, there is also another aspect to take into account: the rhythm. A non-secondary aspect in classical mythology: as you can find in Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and the Beating of the Alchemical Metronome, Orpheus himself was considered, above all, a master of rhythm. Everything spiritual is drawn to rhyming cadences. As for the Sun, it is the orchestra leader of our galaxy.
- See also San Miniato Sun Path or the Sky as Seem From the Earth ;
- Gugliemo Marconi was the first to develop shortwave transmission over long distances ;
- See also Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and the Beating of the Alchemical Metronome;
- See also Thesaurus Hermeticum & the Dry Pythagorean River , Two Stars in Venetian Geocentric Sky and The Pythagorean Thigh in the Northern Sky ;
- See Albrecht Dürer and the Backwards Apollo .