Folio 36r – Socotra Island, Game of Goose

Captain’s Blog: 6/1/2022

DATA:
Location: Arabian Sea, Socotra Island
Geolocation: 12°38’N/53°54’E
Ocean Currents/Gyre: Northeastern Monsoon Drift
Ethnobotany: Barnacle Geese myth in Scotland

English Translation:
Survey mapped area requests you are lifting the large hole higher inland. The residual enclosure is eastward. The Earth’s atmospheric layers lines are all around, congealing a double (“gooser”) enclosure, it moves a multitude, a dammer leeward side, the measurement center can calculate the distance.

Significance North, water sounding reference. The velocity of the orifice descending thus, its wrist confirms the measurement sounding fixed to the rhumb circumference. The rhumb descending line value, I am hoping it produces a fixed smallest unit rhumb. The area crosspiece extracts. The inactive fixed eddies relative vorticity. You would maintain. Raise the wind to pause the measurement ahead.

Voynicheese:
puo p son jeron uupoi rem uper vom ula soir
eroi ver alom jelom jeeisa ula ueisa ler
jelua lua som hom seiron
pesom upa jea puei reh va ua sua pueh sor
som jeruei uleia r o r ua ra ualorem
etom uler atom r son ok sok
jelei ulei eteisa etua alerera reis
aluer ulei uom as
ales oia som elore

The Game of Goose

The medieval game called “Goose” was thought to have been invented by the Knights Templars, (though no one knows for sure (typical Voynich).) It’s a rather simple game, roll the dice, follow the instructions, and is much like “Shoots and Ladders.” The game may have derived from the Barnacle Goose myth known as early Mycenaean settlers c. 1600–1100 BCE and migrated it’s way into Old English. The authors of the Voynich Manuscript use both the board game and the myth as a warning, “a goose that hatches in water will live and fly, a goose that lands on land will die.” Essentially, don’t dock here!

Symbolism and illustrations in the “Royal Game of Goose”

The Royal Game of Goose has a jester figure at the start of the game and the drinking scene at the end.  The game is played with two dice and counters.  The game does not require any skill: it is a game purely of chance and following instructions.

The goose is a symbol of good luck and spiritual advancement – by landing on the spaces depicting geese, the player advances further in the game, by the same number of places the player has just thrown on the dice. There are also ‘hazard’ spaces, illustrated with symbols which hamper spiritual advancement, such as the prison (space number 19) or the inn (space number 52).  Space number 58 with the skeleton is certainly to be avoided:  if a player lands on this space, they must start at the beginning of the game again. In the game there are 63 spaces, which in the numerology of the Ancient Greeks and early modern period was symbolic: Each 7th and 9^th year of a person’s life were believed to represent critical or ‘climacteric’ points, and so by multiplying these two numbers together, number 63 was known as the ‘Grand Climacteric’.  It is known that Elizabeth I’s astrologers were concerned for her welfare in her 63^rd year, for example.  In the game, Seville suggests that 63 as the endpoint of the game represents ‘the evolution of a human life: once the Grand Climactic was passed, peace and wisdom were to be enjoyed’.

Symbolism and illustrations in the “Barnacle Goose Myth”

From the 11th C. Exeter Book of Riddles. The riddle NUMBER 10, is asked as follows:

” ……..My nose was in a tight spot, and I beneath the water,
underflowed by the flood, sunk deep
into the ocean-waves, and in the sea grew
covered with waves from above, my body
touching a floating piece of wood.
I had living spirit, when I came out of the embrace
of water and wood in a black garment,
some of my trappings were white,
then the air lifted me, living, up,
wind from the water, then carried me far
over the seal’s bath. Say what I am called…..”

To which the anticipated answer was: The Barnacle Goose.

In 1435, Aeneas Silvius Bartholomeus (later Pope Pius II) travelled to Scotland to encourage James I of Scotland to assist the French in the Hundred Years War. He spent several months travelling around Britain, and recorded these travels in his book entitled “de Europa”. A short section of the book is devoted to Scotland and Ireland. He described James as “… a sickly man weighed down by a fat paunch …“. He noted the cold inhospitable climate of Scotland and ” .. semi-naked paupers who were begging outside churches (and) went away happily after receiving stones as alms…“.

Continuing in this vein, he records the following story:

” …I / We… heard that in Scotland there was once a tree growing on the bank of a river which produced fruits shaped like ducks. “When these were nearly ripe, they dropped down of their own accord, some onto the earth, and some into the water. Those that landed on the earth rotted away, but those that sank into the water instantly came to life, swam out from below the water, and immediately flew into the air, equipped with feathers and wings. When I eagerly investigated this matter, I learned that miracles always recede further into the distance and that the famous tree was to be found not in Scotland but in the Orkney islands…”

It is believed that this story from Pope Pius II is the first recorded account of the Barnacle Geese myth in Scotland.

Go to Folio 36v