Re: VMs: Gratheus filius philosophi

["PK#01" <pklist01@xxxxxxxxx>]

I expected a thin book - like most alchemistic manuscripts - but this is a
hefty tome. As soon as I opened the book I was struck by the insight "I can
read this stuff!". To my surprise it's written in medieval Dutch! The
pictures are quite VMS-like and I'll try to scan and post some.

What struck me were the lines that were preceded by single characters.
Sometimes the preceding letters were in alphabetical order - like Psalms
111, 112, 145 in my bible - and sometimes in a random order I could not
discover. They strongly reminded me of the "key" character sequences in the
VMS (f49v, f66r).

There is also a chapter on the significance of numbers. Unfortunately the
author's meaning of our mysterious  "17" does not ring any bells. Still it's
a book that I will study more carefully - if I can surmount my innate
disgust with alchemical ideas :-)

Thanks for discovering this interesting book!

BTW - The more examples I see, the more I think that the "surreal" character
of the VMS is caused by a combination of:
- an untrained draughtsman
- difficulty of drawing by ink on vellum
- the need to illustrate complex concepts.
I think that if we discover more examples this will prove to be a common
characteristic of all amateur manuscripts. (Compare with the drawing by St
John I posted lately - a great mind - but the drawing is really strange.)



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