VMs: Re: The castles

[Dana Scott <dfscott@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Petr,
   When I examine these nine "circles" in the VMS I start with the premise that
everything depicted is meaningful and significant. The author of the VMS exerted
a great deal of effort and imagination to illustrate the perceived world and
universe. It may very well be that the castles, walls, roads, and towers drawn
in these circles are in part extentions of the author's imagination and inner
and outer universe. Think microcosm/macrocosm when viewing these diagrams. A
square castle with a circle may reflect this concept. Think also in three
dimensions. Try to imagine the "circles" drawn around a globe with the heavens
above. All the primary forces of Nature may be depicted in these diagrams. Tiny
little round circles like the letter 'o' drawn between the upper middle and
central circles may be raindrops and/or dew. Opposite to this (lower middle
circle to central circle) Vs may be light rays. Then there is the question of
flow. Which way is the flow in relation to the central circle? This is hard to
say but for now I will say that it is from the central circle outwards towards
the four NEWS surrounding circles. Notice that there are no land bridges to the
central circle. How many roads are there anyway? Aren't there some roads leading
from/to the outer edges of the diagrams? Not all diagrams are really circles.
They only appear to be because of the encyphered text written within the
circular bands drawn around the delineated subject matter. Try to mentally
remove the circles containing text and you may see a different set of pictures.
Without knowing a great deal more about the VMS (who wrote it, when, where, why,
etc.?), identifying and matching the man-made structures in the diagrams with
real earth constructions is a very arduous task . The author of the VMS may very
well have been familiar with Dante. The correlation of the castle in the VMS to
Dante's Jerusalem is interesting.

Dante: (Jerusalem)
http://www.italnet.nd.edu/Dante/images/tp1544/1544.BBi.v.jpeg
http://www.italnet.nd.edu/Dante/images/tp1568/1568.inf1.wc.150dpi.jpeg
http://www.italnet.nd.edu/Dante/images/tp1515/1515.wc1.150dpi.jpeg

More Dante:
http://www.italnet.nd.edu/Dante/images/tp1544/1544.BBv.r.jpeg
http://www.italnet.nd.edu/Dante/images/tp1568/1568.par1.2pg.150dpi.jpeg

San Giorgio Maggiore: (Nice Tower; Venice)
http://rosswarner.com/1863.html
http://www.photo.net/photo/pcd3610/venice-san-giorgio-maggiore-89.3.jpg

Happy Holidays,
Dana Scott

Petr Kazil wrote:

> > I get the impression that
> > the main castle and the 'Prague-style' tower
> > could be connected by a wall. This is of course
> > possibly just a decorative element.
>
> Well, if it's done on purpose it looks even more Prague-like, I was reminded
> of the "Hladova Zed" (Hunger Wall) that runs down one of the hills of
> Prague.
>
> But that's just a coincidence - the tower could just as well be Chateau
> Aigle (1488) or Schloss Chillon (1496) in Switzerland - I checked in my
> Swiss tourist guide. They all have these "lightning rods" on top. Probably
> that's not specific enough to go by.
>
> 'There is even one more wall on the scans that I posted. It connects two of
> the "circles" in the opposite corner of the drawing. I'll look through my
> volume of "Czech Castles" tomorrow, but I bet more on the Italian
> connection.
>
> The whole set of drawings reminds me of the landscapes on East-European /
> Austrian playing cards. But that's no concrete likeness, more a vague
> general feeling. Since I was a child I felt that these simple landscapes
> contained some deep secrets. And I have exactly the same feeling with these
> drawings :-)
>
> I found one interpretation of the circles in Dennis's excellent summary
> "Historical Precedents for the Voynich Manuscript" and some more references
> to the castles. Sigh ... So much reading to do before one is able to make an
> original contribution.
>
> Excerpts from "Historical Precedents for the Voynich Manuscript":
>
> Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 16:46:33 -0500 (EST)
> From: Karl Kluge
> To: voynich@xxxxxxxx
> In-Reply-To: (René  Zandbergen)
> Subject: Re: Levitov, heretics, catholics
>
>    My previously announced silly idea: in the centre circle of
>    the mega-foldout on ff.85-86 there are some objects (reportedly
>    six but they are too vague to make out) that could be pharmaceutical
>    jars like the ones in the pharma pages, but to me they look
>    quite like the images of minarets in old Arabic manuscripts.
>    The centre circle could represent the Arab world, or Mecca.
>    The other circles could represent other parts of the world
>    or the Universe in a more abstract sense (Earth, Fire, the lot).
>    In fact I like Greece or Italy for the top right circle. If has
>    a castle not unlike Rhodos or Patmos, but a tower that
>    more resembles the Veneto style. Some Greek(?) houses,
>    a volcano (when was Santorini first identified as a remnant
>    of an eruption? I have a feeling that it was much later).
>    Maybe this represents.....  Atlantis :-)
>    No, strike that last one.
>
> Good eye, and I think close but not quite. *My* previously announced
> idea is that this represents the old alchemic notion of how the four
> elements earth, air, fire, and water are created from the qualities
> wet, dry, hot, and cold. The circle in the upper right with the T-O
> map and little castle would be earth. The structure is then something
> like this:
>          dry
> fire O -- O -- O earth
>      |\   |   /|
>      | \  |  / |
>      |  \ | /  |
> hot  O--- O -- O  cold
>      |  / | \  |
>      | /  |  \ |
>      |/   |   \|
> air  O -- O -- O water
>          wet
>
> Subject: Re: Historical Precedents I Missed
> Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 10:47:43 +0200
> From: René Zandbergen (Rene)
> To: Dennis Stallings
>
> By the way, what could be relevant is that Vat.Gr.1291 was in
> N. Italy in the second half of the 15th C, in Brescia to be
> precise, which is right in the middle of the area where the
> castles look like the one in the Voynich MS. It is so easy
> to speculate....
>
> Subject:   Re: Sagittarius and crossbow
> Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 22:20:07 +0200
> From: René Zandbergen (Rene Zandbergen)
> To: Dennis Stallings
>
> The little castle on the upper right circle in the rosetta. I've not
> seen a castle that looks exactly like it, but there are plenty of
> castles with such elements in Northern Italy. They date from the
> 14th-15th Century which doesn't help pinning the date down any
> further, but the style of the crenellations is typical for N. Italy
> (all the way from Aosta to Friuli / Trieste).
> I even found a castle in the latter area for which there is a 15th
> C drawing. It's called Villalta. Compare it with the modern
> picture at (about 100k together):
> http://www.voynich.nu/vilalold.jpg
> http://www.voynich.nu/vilalnow.jpg
>
> ***