Hi all, sorry if this is the wrong post for this, but someone mentioned it may be a medieval styled piece - would anyone know what this statue is and where it would come from? Had it in the family for a while, and now it's sitting on my bookshelf. Unfortunately, I never figured out where it's from. It's around 6 inches tall - any help is appreciated!
They're not perfect but I had such a fun time with them!
Reference image and the American Traditional interpretation.
Many know Geoffrey Chaucer as the famous Middle English poet who wrote The Canterbury Tales. But did you know that Chaucer’s life could still be considered extraordinary even if he never wrote that poem? Indeed, he went to war in France, he witnessed and survived the Black Death as well as the Peasants’ Revolt, he traveled across Spain and Italy, he oversaw the construction of famous architectural works, and he lived long enough to serve three different English kings. This is Chaucer’s best tale, the story of his own life.
Recently, I was sitting, puzzling over the Voynich manuscript, and realized that it could be:
a botanical and/or medical reference book–this explains the presence of naked women in ponds and strange plants there.
The "magic book" is because the manuscript was written in the 15th century, and then everyone was buying "magic" books at huge prices. And everyone believed that it was something magical and mysterious. Well, you understand me
A hoax–well, there's nothing to understand.
What is your opinion about this manuscript? Write your opinion about the post, it will be interesting to read your Guesses and opinions.
The Watchers of the Northern Plateau
A church mural found while excavating a cathedral in norway from the time of the Great Plague.
Five figures stand over three dead. On the left, a cold, distant priestess in white — notice she carried no weapon meaning her role was to give only blessings and guidance Besides her, a strong red-haired church guard, his axe resting on the ground, standing open and unafraid as if daring the plague to take him but being strong he knows he can take the plague blow head on. In the middle, a violet-haired figure whose staff is the longest of all, made to strike the sickness from far away. Next, the masked plague doctor, who tended the infected with cold, precise care — a protector who walked among them so others need not. On the right, a golden-haired woman, also unarmed, who used her beauty with calm method to draw the plague away from the weak
Hey Reddit! I wanted to share my latest piece that I’ve been working on secretly for weeks. It’s a 30th birthday gift for my best friend, and today she finally gets to see it.
The prompt was simple: paint her parents' three cats. But since she is absolutely obsessed with roller skating, I figured... hey, medieval scribes drew way weirder things in the margins of manuscripts, so why not put cats on wheels? One is playing the violin, one is reading, and the third one is absolutely rocking the clavichord.
It took me at least 5 hours of solid, late-night drawing. It's completely handmade on vibrant magenta paper using black ink, rapidographs, and layers of shiny gold metallic markers that catch the light beautifully.
Let me know what you think! Would your cat survive a medieval transformation?
Gisela von Kerssenbrock (died by 1300) was a German illuminator and choirmistress. She was a nun in the Cistercian convent in the northern German city of Rulle. She probably worked most of her life writing and illustrating manuscripts, as well as being choirmistress.
The first piece of a medieval marginalia inspired series I’ll be doing! I couldn’t resist representing the ever whimsical yet mysterious battling snails and rabbits frequently found in illuminated manuscripts. 🤓 More to come!
Found this woodcut on Sendivogius edition and it’s been sitting with me. It’s labeled ARBOR RARITATIS, Tree of Rarity, under a Greek header that reads ΤΥΡΑΝΝΟΣ ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΙΚΟΣ — “spiritual sovereign.”
What strikes me is that it’s built on the Pythagorean Y. The letter as the fork in the road, the choice between the lower and higher path. Here the trunk rises through the ages of a human life — infancy, boyhood, youth — and at the fork the soul’s material nature splits and begins to climb. Earth and water at the base, thinning upward toward air and fire at the crown. Density giving way to rarity. The two upper branches carry the harder words: on one side ABYSSVS, VIS, FRAVS — abyss, force, deceit — and on the other the Greek ΣΟΦΟΣ and ΦΙΛΟΣΟΦΟΣ, wise and lover-of-wisdom, climbing toward “Adeptus” beside the fire at the very top.
So the image reads to me as a moral-cosmological map disguised as a diagram of the elements. The descent into matter and the possible ascent back out, with the adept’s path running up the side of fire. The “spiritual sovereign” of the title being what you become if you take the right branch.
What I keep turning over: the choice in a classical bivium is moral — virtue or vice. Here it’s mapped onto elemental rarity, as if becoming rarer, less dense, \*is\* the virtuous ascent. Has anyone seen this rarefaction-as-virtue move elsewhere in the Hermetic material, or is Sendivogius doing something his own here?
Flagging honestly that I’m reading some of the smaller labels off a photograph and haven’t fixed the exact edition, so corrections welcome on both.