VMs: Re: Gallows-numbers as rotations, astrological as volvelles...?

[Luis Vélez <legal1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Nick,

Here's a good article about Ramon Lull's early 'volvelles' (and their
mechanism, as it was originally intended to work):

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/5284/compbon.html

I thought it would be interesting to share it, as there are several
interesting notes and speculations on how the binary & tertiary relations
(combinatory) were supposed to work for Lull in these diagrams, and some
interesting bibliography, too (see for example, McLean, I. and London, J.
(1990) "The Borda and Condorcet Principles: Three Medieval Applications",
Social Choice and Welfare 7, 99-108.).

I'm not sure if it has been posted before, but my apologies if it has been.

Luis

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> Similarly to the "4 winds" volvelle, if we view the astrological diagrams
> as *instructions for building volvelles* (but with the labels in the real
> language), and each ring's words are grouped by relevance, then the
> rotational instructions might be relative (& hence quite coherent).
> 
> This would skew the "numbers" to being closer to +/-1, which would make
> cccc correspondingly rare. Standalone gallows might then correspond to a
> different ring - the number of loops in the character could correspond to
> the ring number (counted from the centre outwards), etc. EVA <ch> might
> then also be "rotate 180 degrees" (we've heard this before somewhere?) :-)
> 
> This might also explain why we see EVA <c> *before* a gallows - this would
> correspond to "select volvelle ring corresponding to that gallows and
> rotate the ring by one step anti-clockwise".
> 
> This would also explain why the astrological circles look like volvelles -
> it's because they are diagrams to indicate how to make volvelles. Perhaps,
> then, we should physically construct them & look to see if one subtype of
> the astro nymphs line up - this might correspond to an initial position for
> that volvelle?
>