Re: Found: One tables-like character

[Brian Eric Farnell <bfarnell@xxxxxxx>]

Thanks for the clarification, I had assumed she wouldn't
photograph her own work, or make her own work appear to look
like a photograph.
Regards,
Brian

Adam McLean wrote:
> 
> >> Some of the illustrations in her book are misleading to those
> >> who have not studied the subject in depth.
> >
> >However, the thing I saw wasn't in any list of standard symbols
> >I have ever seen and it was a photograph of a page, not am
> >illustration.
> 
> Dear Brian,
> 
> I think that you will find that all the black and white illustrations
> in Diana Fernando's book are actually her own drawings based
> on and reworking original illustrations.
> 
> If you want to see a reproduction of a list of alchemical symbols
> please go to my web site
> 
> http://www.levity.com/alchemy/alchemical_symbols00.html
> 
> Alchemical symbols in sixteen pages containing hundreds of symbols.
> >From Medicinisch-Chymisch- und Alchemistisches Oraculum, 1755.
> 
> or
> 
> http://www.levity.com/alchemy/val_symb.html
> 
> >If it had been a drawing I would have dismissed it.  If
> >you put the three symbols side by side, it looks like a natural
> >evolution, with Voynich being far closer to this character in
> >the photograph than the character is to the 'standard' alchemy
> >symbol for arsenic.  Hmm, as I said, I don't put much faith in
> >the book as a scholarly piece of work, but does that mean the
> >photograph is faked?  If you showed me the same photograph with
> >the caption, "Taken from the Olaus Wormus edition of The
> >Necronomicon" I'd still want to know where the photograph came
> >from.
> 
> To repeat, this is not a photograph but a drawing of Diana Fernando.
> It is a reworking of an illustration from  an alchemical manuscript
> now in the University of Leiden, Cod. Vossiana Chemica. Q51
> which was in Stanislas Klossowski de Rola's Alchemy: The Secret
> Art, London 1973 (pages 126-128).  You can even see that because
> she could not read the German words in the list she just created a
> scribble !!!!
> 
> The point is, this has nothing to do with Trithemius and the
> Steganographia except in the imagination of the editor of Diana
> Fernando's book.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Adam McLean
> 
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