Re: Illustrations

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    > [Brian Eric Farnell:] I've seen one [VMS figure] description as
    > a model of pregnancy
    
The picture at the bottom of page f66r has sometimes been
interpreted as a woman giving birth. 

The illustrations on f77v surely must be related to reproductive and
digestive organs. (While in each figure the resemblance could be
explained away as mere coincidence, that explanation is not tenable
for the set as a whole.)

Of course, the exact relationship is open to debate. The figures could
be simply anatomical drawings, but could also be allegories showing
the healing properties of certain baths or concoctions. They may be
botanical parts notable for their resemblance to human organs.
(Consider the mythology surrounding the mandrake root, and the
aphrodisiac properties popularly ascribed to certain natural products
solely because of their suggestive shape.) They could also be drawings
of bizarre anatomically-shaped bathtubs, or alchemical vessels, or...

Several other illustrations readily suggest anatomical drawings
(e.g. the two bulby things in f83v), but f77v is the most convincing
example, IMHO.

    > [I] saw a description of breaking compounds into their
    > components, the different positions and actions of the nymphs
    > describing solutes and a precipitate as well as gasses boiling
    > off.
    
That is certainly a possible interpretation!  However, it does not
remove the need to explain the anatomical imagery in f77v.
    
One big problem, as Dennis and Adam Mclean pointed out, is that the
VMs imagery doesn't look at all like "typical" alchemical imagery, of
which many examples can be found in Adam's site.

    > Some of those astrological diagrams with all of the hot chicks
    > look like alchemical 'periodic tables'.

Perhaps.... but that would be quite surprising, since the "periodic
tables" of the alchemists were generally based on the 4 "classical"
elements and combinations thereof. On the other hand, Rene and others
have found astronomical/astrological charts that do resemble the VMs
"zodiac" diagrams, at least in the overall layout.

All the best,

--stolfi