Voynich and Padua | The Planet Children Problem

Voynich’s zodiac pages are crowded with small human figures.

That visual population is one of the reasons the manuscript feels so unlike standard astronomical diagrams.

But medieval astrology had a tradition in which planets were represented not only by symbols or gods, but by the kinds of people believed to be born under them.

The “Children of the Planets” tradition shows that groups of human figures can function as celestial classification systems. That makes it a serious control for Voynich’s populated zodiac pages—and another reason not to localise those figures to Padua from appearance alone.

Quick Read

Salzburg University Library M I 36, produced at Laubach in 1425, contains a text explicitly titled Von den Planetenkindern, “On the Children of the Planets”.
The manuscript sits squarely inside the Voynich parchment window.
The tradition classifies people according to planetary influence, turning human types into astrological information.
Later German manuscripts such as Heidelberg Cod. Pal. germ. 1 continue the planet-children tradition inside astrologically and medically organised miscellanies.
This shows that human figures associated with celestial structures can function as categories rather than portraits.
Voynich’s small figures may therefore represent classes, states, intervals, professions, ages, planetary effects or something else—not necessarily individual bathers or stars.
The Planet Children tradition is widespread enough that it cannot localise Voynich to Padua.
The useful test is functional: do repeated Voynich figure types correlate with repeated celestial positions or textual labels?

The Population Is the Diagram

A Zodiac Man uses one body as a map.

A Planet Children system can use many bodies as a classification space.

That difference matters enormously.

The figures do not need to depict actual historical individuals.

They can instantiate categories.

A figure may represent a temperament, occupation, social type, behavioural tendency or fate associated with a planetary ruler.

celestial category → human type → visual exemplar.

That makes a crowd of figures an information interface.

Laubach 1425 Gives Us an Exact-Window Control

The KdiH database of the Bavarian Academy identifies folios 62v–66v of Salzburg M I 36 as Von den Planetenkindern.

The codex was produced at Laubach/Wetterau in 1425.

That date is almost ideal for Voynich comparison.

We do not need to extrapolate backward from sixteenth-century printed astrology.

The classificatory tradition is present inside the same broad chronological window as the Voynich parchment.

The Same Manuscript Also Contains Medicine

M I 36 is not a pure astrology book.

It is an astronomical–astrological–medical miscellany.

That matters because Planet Children imagery can sit inside the same codex as practical medicine, plants, prognostics and technical recipes.

The medieval reader did not necessarily experience these as unrelated shelves.

The receiver could integrate them.

Why This Challenges Voynich’s “Nymph” Language

Voynich research often calls its small human figures “nymphs”.

The term is useful as shorthand.

It is dangerous as interpretation.

If we begin by imagining nymphs, we pull the imagery toward myth, bathing, femininity or allegory.

A Planet Children control suggests a more neutral term:

human tokens.

A token can encode a class without being a person.

Repeated People May Be Repeated States

If a human figure is a category token, repeated poses may carry information.

Repeated objects held by figures may carry information.

Headgear may carry information.

Position inside a ring may carry information.

Orientation may carry information.

This gives Voynich a concrete image-analysis programme.

Cluster recurring figure poses.
Cluster recurring accessories.
Measure ring position.
Measure relation to labels.
Test whether similar figures recur under similar zodiac or month structures.

If visual classes predict textual classes, the figures may be doing real classificatory work.

Planetary Influence Is Not the Same as Zodiacal Influence

The Planet Children tradition also forces an important distinction.

Planets and zodiac signs are not interchangeable.

A planet can rule or influence signs.

A sign can organise a month or celestial sector.

A planet-children image may classify human types according to planetary rulership.

Therefore Voynich’s figures around zodiacal imagery could theoretically encode a relation involving planets, signs and people rather than signs alone.

This expands the hypothesis space without solving it.

Later Heidelberg Material Shows Continuity

Heidelberg Cod. Pal. germ. 1, although much later at around 1538, preserves a German astrological-medical miscellany opening with planetary and Planet Children texts, followed by month rules, bloodletting rules, health material, planetary weather rules, zodiac properties and medical recipes.

The date is too late to serve as a contemporaneous Voynich control.

It is useful as continuity evidence.

The same broad representational package remains active for generations:

planetary classification + calendar + bloodletting + health + recipes.

That tells us the category system was durable.

The Human-Figure Count Becomes a Testable Variable

Voynich zodiac pages contain repeated rings of human figures whose counts vary.

Rather than treating the count as decorative, we should test whether it relates to:

days;
degrees;
decans;
lunar divisions;
named categories;
planetary subdivisions;
calendar intervals.

The Planet Children tradition does not tell us which one is right.

It tells us that a human population can encode a formal classification rather than a scene.

The Figure–Label Relation Is More Important Than the Figure

Many Voynich figures have short text labels nearby.

If the figures are category tokens, the labels may name:

the category;
an individual instance;
a day or interval;
a quality;
a technical parameter;
a cross-reference.

The high-value analysis is therefore relational.

Do the same label families recur with the same visual classes?

If yes, image and text may form one classification system.

This Is Another Blow to Padua-by-Theme

Padua had medicine, astrology and human-body theory.

But the Planet Children tradition is demonstrably active in Germany in 1425.

Therefore populated celestial imagery is not a Paduan signature.

Padua must win at a lower level:

specific diagram grammar;
specific textual ancestry;
local astronomical parameters;
scribal practice;
provenance.

The Planet Children Test

Catalogue every repeated Voynich human pose.
Catalogue every repeated accessory or object.
Map each figure to zodiac sign, ring, sector and nearby label.
Test whether figure classes cluster by celestial context.
Compare with Planet Children manuscripts from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
Test whether the visual grammar is classificatory, calendrical or narrative.
Reject the comparator if no stable human-category relation emerges.

What the Planet Children Tradition Can Support

Groups of human figures can encode celestial classifications.
Human imagery can be technical rather than narrative.
Astrological and medical materials can coexist with such classifications.
The tradition was active in the German-speaking world inside the Voynich window.

What It Cannot Support

that Voynich figures are Planet Children;
that the figures encode professions or temperaments;
that Voynich is German;
that populated zodiac pages exclude Padua;
that the labels are personal names.

Research Sources

Continue the Series

The Final Idea

The Planet Children tradition changes the most basic question we ask of Voynich’s figures.

Do not ask first who they are.

Ask what class each figure belongs to, what variable changes from one figure to the next, and whether the population itself is the diagram.

Voynich and Padua | The Planet Children Problem: When Human Figures Encode Celestial Categories