Prophecies: Grain, Grafts and Threatening Censers
Riddling prophecies on a sheet crowded with untranscribed circle diagrams
This backlit spread carries, on the left leaf, a group of Leonardo's riddling 'prophecies', each pairing an ominous title with a plain explanation: 'Of grain and other seeds' resolves to sowing, 'Of the trees that nourish the grafts' to grafting, and 'Of the terribleness of incense' to robed men swinging a censer of metal and fire. The sheet is otherwise dominated by drawings not included in the transcription: a large circle enclosing a network of smaller linked circles, further circles set on a ruled baseline, clusters of small circles, and a grid of figures. Further untranscribed writing accompanies these diagrams, and the transmitted-light exposure makes text from the reverse show through.
On this page
Prophecies of grain, grafting and incense
Each riddle names an alarming event and then supplies its ordinary meaning: men will cast out of their houses the victuals dedicated to sustain their life (the sowing of seed); fathers and mothers will do more good to their stepchildren than to their own (the grafting of trees); and men in white garments will move with arrogant menace, threatening with metal and fire those who harmed them not (the censer of incense).
Sowing seed and grafting trees read as riddles
Two of the prophecies turn on plant husbandry: the scattering of grain and other seeds from the house into the field, and the graft nourished by the stock it is set into as though a foster-parent nurtured a stepchild. The agricultural acts of sowing and grafting supply the hidden solutions to the riddles.
Untranscribed circle diagrams on the sheet
A large circle at upper left encloses a network of smaller circles joined by straight lines; below and to the right, further circles are set tangent on a ruled horizontal line, with clusters of small circles and a grid of figures nearby. Their purpose is not given in the transcription, and no reading of them is offered here.