Re: VMs: Re: Plants in the VM

["Jan" <hurychj@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Scott,
 ======= At 2004-05-22, 14:35:00 you wrote: =======
>I would say that the plant drawings are based in part, if not in whole, on >real plants the
 characteristics of which were well known to the author of >the VMS.

Well, I have not seen the list of Latin names for the plants in  the VM which were 100% 
 identified and I doubt if there  is any -  except for  sunflower and some even doubt that. But I
 agree with you that most parts do look like those existing in reality. But only the PARTS - he
 problem with identification is that some of them were used for wrong plants
and we cannot say with certainty: this plant is marigold and so on.  Even Georgius Baresh noticed in his letter to Kircher that the plants  are not from Europe; the  others even claim
 they  are not from this Earth :-). 

I was looking for the reason  of that discrepancy and it certinly looks illogical that while   the
 author took pain to hide the names of plants (if we consider their tags to be exactly that), he
 would draw next to them the real  plants, as a clear giveaway. So he may have modify some parts,
 exchanging  some of their parts with others, and sometimes even adding some impossible
 combinations. 

On the other hand, why  would  he draw the unrecognizable pictures at all? We can see he did take a
 pain  - while he was surely no big painter - to draw the plants with clear outlines and in color!
  It almost looks like they are supposed to convey something else, but what it is, I do not know.
 Maybe it is some code, who knows? But it would be surely  hard way how to pass relatively very
 little of information :-).  Could  it be that the author saw the plants somewhere and forgotten how
 they look? I guess we would be impossible to draw all those plants from memory only.

So what is left? Could those be the pictures of some hybrids from somebody's laboratory? They do
 not  look like  results of some cross-breeding, however. So what is left - pure fantasy?  True,
 but than the  author must have spent many hours   observing the real plants - most parts do look
 like  real. No unskilled imagination would be able to invent them in such closeness. 

That brings another crazy idea: those ladies with "plumbing" - first I thought they were some
 anatomical pictures only (considering the poor knowledge of human body at that time, before
 regular autopsies), but they look so unreal that I changed my mind. What I think now is that the 
"plumbing" could be some kind of  crypto-art, too.

Regards,

jan .





>
>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "Jan" <hurychj@xxxxxxxxx>
>To: <vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2004 6:12 AM
>Subject: VMs: Plants in the VM
>
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> looking at the plants in the VM, it occured to me, that they are 
>> unrecognizable, because the author deliberately  modified their 
>> appearance. Did anybody get the same impression? I do not mean that they 
>> contain the code - that would be real overkill -  but in the case the book 
>> contains some secret recipes (e.g. for  "Aqua Sinapia" or others) it would 
>> be foolish to hide the text and provide the exact pictures of the real 
>> plants used.
>>
>> Some plant parts are defnitely "out of this world", but they also look 
>> like fabrications. On the other hand, they also contain some elements of 
>> true  plants, many  of them recognizable, see ref. 
>> http://nabataea.net/vplants.html
>>
>>
>> Best regards.
>> Jan
>>
>>
>>
>>
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Best regards.				 
Jan
 Our mail is always sent without attachments.
 http://hurontaria.baf.cz/enigma/ Enigma, nas novy casopis zahad


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