Re: VMs: The Star Chart on f68r3

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jim,

> From the looks of things the information was found, collected, and saved 
> as the VMS.
<...>
> This leaves the "plant and nymph" pictures. What do they have to do with a 
> destruction on earth? Evidentially, nothing. How much time is wasted on 
> them? They seem to do exactly what they were intended to do. Divert 
> attention from the text.

FWIW, from all the art history analysis of the VMS I've done, there's a 
pretty good chance that I can now account for the plant and nymph sections: 
the zodiac section I'm kind of 50-50 about, but the cosmological part (that 
interests you most) seems (to my eyes, at least) to have come from a 
separate (and currently unknown) source entirely.

Also: though the 9-rosette map page seems to tie in to the same time and 
place as the herbals and the bath sections, I can't currently assert that 
it is from the same source as them.

From all this, I infer that the content of the VMS is a heterogenous group 
of  manuscripts, which was encoded by its owner. This would make the 
encoding related not to the *content* but to the *owner*. By identifying 
the owner, then, we should improve our chances of working out the code.

In addition, I'm fascinated by Robert's suggestions about f68r3, most 
specifically about the difference between six-point stars (fake stars, 
background) and seven-point stars (real stars, foreground). By itself, this 
observation (if verifiable) points to the diagrams in the VMS as containing 
*diagrammatic information*.

This isn't a trivial point - everyone here has examined the diagrams and 
"seen" patterns, but proving that the modes of representation in there (ie, 
number of points on a star, colour of a star, etc) are actually being used 
to carry meaningful information would be a very big step forward in 
positing signal over noise, code rather than gull. :-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....

PS: a further possibility is that, on other diagrams (such as f67v1), the 
number of points on a star could instead be representing its magnitude (ie, 
a primitive measure of "foregroundness"). Going clockwise from 12 o'clock 
(inside outwards), the number of points on f67v1 are (from the CopyFlo):-
        7 7
        6 7
        7 6
        8 8 7
        7 7
        7
        7 7
        7 6
        7 6
        6 7
        7 7 7
        6 7 7 7
        7 7
        7 7
        6 6 6
        6 6 7
        7 7

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