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Yes, you make some good points here; however, I would suggest that there is
a male presence in the VMS. I suspect that most, if not all, of the sun
faces/references and possibly even some of the plants reflect male figures. The
individual in the center of f73v seems to be male. There may be another male
individual at the top right corner of f80r. And there is probably a male figure
behind the plant (flower?) structure "casting off his seed" at the bottom left
of f86v3. There is a cross held in the left hand of the naked lady at the top
left of f79v, at least one cross with a crown, as I recall, and the flowers at
the top of the plant in f90v1 also seem to symbolize crosses. Flowers the occur
in plants in sets of 3 might also reflect the trinity. So there may indeed be
religious references in the VMS, however "hidden" these might have been
represented. The absence of any babies/children is curious though there do
appear to be references to reproduction. Just some thoughts. Take a look at
tj
he first "words" in the first paragraphs of f09v, f10r, f14v, and f18r, as
examples. See how the gallow characters extend across the whole word. I suspect
that this might be meant to indicate that this "word" represents a summary of
the whole plant, containing the minimal basic set of plant parts. It is possibly
a summary of the plant. Notice, for example, the dots added to
the first gallow in f14v. These same dots may be represented by the
"seeds" shown in the plant drawing. A similar representation can be seen in the
first gallow at the top of f42v which might correspond to the thistle structure
at the top of the plant. This is all hypothetical, of course, but my suggestion
is that the characters/glyphs/letters in the text of the VMS may be pictographic
as in hieroglyphics. I think that this observation is important and should
probably not be discarded out of hand. In summary, the
first paragraph in the herbal section may be descriptive of the plant
anatomy. The second paragraph seems to refer to another subject relating to
the plant. The gallows with single down stroke might be references
to plant flowers.
Regards,
Dana Scott
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