VMs: Ramon Lull and pseudolullian works

[Luis Vélez <legal1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Petr,

I was intrigued by the fact that Father Petersen had spent some time
studying Lull's works, among others. D'Imperio tells us that Father Petersen
spent 4 years transcribing the VMS (approx. 250,000 characters), spent
$25.00 of his 1931 money over 122 photostats from Ms. Voynich's copy, and
spent at least 14 years of his life studying the MS (clearly one of the
first modern victims of 'voynichitis').

Later, having read a little about Lull (Llull to some), his alchemical,
astronomical and cryptographical  (language abstracts, text combinatory,
'wheel' disks) inclinations and, more importantly, his intellectual
acquaintances and connections, I became very interested on the subject.
Some of his disks are quite reminiscent of those in the VMS zodiacal
section. 

Lull's biographies:
http://www-mat.upc.es/grup_de_grafs/logo/llull_bio.htm

A Lull timeline:
http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/llull.html

Of particular interest I found this site:
http://lullianarts.net/sevcr.htm

Is this related to the intriguing six-pointed circled star in the VMS (see
previous posting)?
http://lullianarts.net/harmonic2.htm

and take a look at this weird version of his 'Book of Seven Planets" :
http://home.iSTAR.ca/~yjan/planets/2-1-.htm
where even herbs take a role in astronomical explanations...
 
Ramon Llull, the medieval monk who inspired Leibnitz the principles of
symbolic logic; inventor of unusual combinatory wheels in an attempt to
mechanize reasoning; orientalist, fluid in languages and alchemy; definitely
belongs in the honor roll of potential VMS authors.

About the Pseudollullians:
=======================

Dra Michaela Pereira from Universita di Sienna and the Warburg has perhaps
done the most extensive work on pseudollulians (works attributed to Lull).
You can check her 'Catalogue of the Alchemical Works Attributed to Raimond
Lull' at:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/5284/home.html

But so far, Dra Pereira does not see a connection between the VMS and the
pseudolullians - her own conclusion: "...I had read some literature and seen
some facsimile reproductions from the Voynich ms when working to my edition
of the ps.Lullian Testamentum, and I could exclude any link with ps.Lullian
alchemy".

I'm still trying to find a copy of Llull's "Elements of Astrology", where he
presents the art of astrology as an abstract logic, in his usual approach to
all fields of knowledge, providing "surprisingly elegant derivations of
planetary combinations, and planet/sign combinations" (Robert Hand, Project
Hindsight).

I'll provide more on this soon, hopefully - research not complete yet but
results are not encouraging... unless you take the optimist approach that
considers any reduction on the suspects' list a triumph.

Keep up the good research.

Luis


"The usual charge today (for Gardner, as it was for Descartes), that his
thinking was actually confused, is not the whole reason for the
misrepresentation of Llull's thought: confusion between religious faith,
ethical motives, apologetics and natural explanations was the rule rather
than the exception in medieval philosophy." ("Llull as Computer Scientist or
why LlulI Was One of Us", Ton Sales, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya,
Barcelona.