RE: VMs: Astronomical Notes, Comments, and Replies

[Rene Zandbergen <r_zandbergen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear all,

I wrote:

> >Horoscopes tended to look at the degree of the
> >zodiac that ascended at the time of a person's
> >birth, or the degree in which the sun was 
> >located (the latter is what you find in modern
> >magazines and newspapers, because it does not
> >require knowledge of the time of birth, only the
> >date).

and Larry Roux:
 
> Are you saying that in the first case the person's
> horoscope would be determined by the degree of
> the zodiac that was rising at the time of
> their birth?  So, say at 10:00pm it may be
> determined by "20 degrees in Aquarius", but if I 
> were born at midnight I might be
> 13 degrees in "Pisces

Yes indeed. In modern astrology that is called
ones ascendant, while your more traditionally
known sign is often called your 'Sun sign'. 
Fortunately, one doesn't have to believe it all
in order to understand what it's about :-)
Astrology has its placein the history of science
since it prompted renaissance scientists to
make better observations, which eventually 
allowed them to understand the mechanics. 

> I know that the zodiac covers 360 degrees of sky
> (one full circle), but
> why would each constellation contain 30 degrees?
> Were they (or are they)
> all equal in size?  

The zodiac was subdivided into 12 equal parts
of 30 degrees each, which were called the signs.
Since these corresponded approximately with 12
constellations (one may suspect this is actually
a mixup of cause and effect .... ), the signs were
named after the constallations.
Each sign was subdivided into 3 'decans' which
are stretches of 10 degrees each. Each decan
has its own property. And the decans were again
subdivided into 10 degrees, which were also all
given their own 'property'.
If you look at Ptolemy's star catalogue, you
will see that the star positions are given in
longitude and latitude, where latitude is 'distance'
from the ecliptic, and longitude is the angle
along the ecliptic, expressed as 'Aries' 10.1 deg,
or 'Virgo' 25.0 degrees. This was adopted by
ME historians in later catalogues, because the
effect of precession was easily accounted for 
by a linear increase of the longitude.

(In fact a modern controversy exists over the 
question whether Ptolemy made the measurements
himself, or reused longitudes measured by
Hipparcos and applied the effect of precession).

> Lastly, why would the Voy show 30 degrees in each
> zodiac?  are the other
> 29 degrees in the constellation plus the 330 others
> of some importance?

The figures show one sign, and for that sign
the 30 degrees it covers. This is quite a standard
type of image (apart from the nymphs of course),
just like the VMs Herbal pages have quite a 
standard format.

Look again at:
http://www.voynich.nu/extras.html and 
select the Leo figure (link near bottom of page).
Note that the 30 items are not sorted in a way
that easily allows one to determine which is 
which degree. In the VMs we can make some assumptions
(but we don't really know). Note also the 
crossbow-bearing figure. 
This image originates from a MS from the court
of Alphonso the Great in Spain. 
It was later owned by queen Christina of Sweden,
who of course lived in Prague, before she went
to Rome and met Kircher. She stayed in Rome 
and most of her MSS ended up in the Vatican
Library - the 'Reg.' bit in the MS name is short
for Regina (queen) and refers to her.

Cheers, Rene

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day
http://shopping.yahoo.com
______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxx with a body saying:
unsubscribe vms-list