Re: VMs: [VMS] Goat vs. sheep, Sagittarius

[Pamela Richards <spirlhelix@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Jorge

I grant that all those could be possible.  But if we
were to establish this sort of provenance for the VMs,
how likely would it be that the document would add
greatly to our store of knowledge, once de-encrypted?

I could be wrong, but does anyone deeply care what
someone who does not know the difference between a
goat and a sheep thinks of cosmology?  Someone who
can't count the number of legs on a scorpion, or is
ignorant of the myth of the centaur. . .is going to
reveal some great secret of what value?  And this
person is so adept at codes that even computers can't
crack his codes?  It seems unlikely.  But perhaps I
have put cryptologists on too high a pedestal.  Grin.

And it seems to me the more "poor" and "backward" this
person is, the more likely he is to have come into
contact with sheep and goats, and to be able to
distinguish them from one another.

Can we put our heads together and postulate a culture
where they never see scorpions (that's North), do know
what lions look like (that's South), and can't tell
the difference between goats and sheep (that's New
York City!)?  Oh, and also their technology does not
include scales with level plates; the trays on the
scales need to resemble ladles.  Perhaps the
inhabitants of such a country have something of import
to carefully encrypt in the VMs, so sucessfully that
it defies all attempts at decipherment.

If the duplication of "zodiac" figures means nothing,
why do we only find one lion, one hunter, and one
maiden?  Why not two of each?  Really, it's easier to
just get by with one, particularly when drawing a
lobster.  Give it a try; go on!  Grin.

If all this imagery is completely arbitrary, it rather
loses the meaning of a valid symbol, doesn't it?  What
does the Zodiac mean when it has lost its value as
symbology?  Perhaps the deconstructionists know the
answer to that.  Smile.

Warmly,

Pam












--- Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 
>   > [Pam:] I think it was Dana Scott who called the
> two young
>   > animals, light and dark "goats".  I am very
> inclined
>   > to agree.  Sheep don't have dew claws, those
> tiny hard
>   > horns above the hooves; goats do.  And those dew
> claws
>   > are very clearly depicted on each foot.
>   
> No dispute about them being goats. But, as Pam
> observed in a later
> message, that is only one of the oddities in the VMS
> zodiac
> illustrations. My "reading" of those discrepancies
> is that the author
> wanted to draw the Western symbols for zodiac signs,
> but had only an
> imprecise notion of them.
> 
> For Aries, in particular: perhaps "Aries" had been
> translated
> in his native language into a word that meant
> "goat", or 
> "goat or sheep". (Just as "corn" in English means
> "wheat or maize".)
> 
> Perhaps he was not very familiar with sheep, and
> assumed they were
> just a type of goat. (Like someone assuming that the
> panda is a type
> of bear).
> 
> Perhaps the only "Aries-like" model he could copy
> from (in flesh or
> image) was a goat, and he was not aware that in
> Western culture the
> sheep and goat have very different symbolic
> associations,
> and thus one cannot be used for the other.
> 
> The same things can be said of Cancer, only with
> "crab" and "lobster"
> (or "crayfish") replacing "sheep" and "goat". And,
> if it was OK to
> draw *two* fish for Pisces, why not draw *two*
> crustaceans for Cancer?
> 
> Ditto for Sagittarius: he may have relied on the
> literal translation
> of the name as "archer", unaware that the name
> refers to a specific
> archer who was a centaur. 
> 
> Note that this by itself does not imply an exotic
> origin for the VMS,
> only that the author was not someone immersed in
> mainstream European
> scholarly culture, but rather some sort of
> "outsider" trying to
> "connect" to that culture in some sense -- perhaps a
> foreign scholar,
> yes, but perhaps also a poor student from a backward
> province, a
> merchant aspiring to become a philosopher, whatever.
> 
> But this is hardly a new observation...
> 
> All the best,
> 
> --stolfi
>
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=====
"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing, than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."

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