Re: VMs: Goat vs. sheep

[Pamela Richards <spirlhelix@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Jorge

Well, perhaps you are on to something.  I do believe
there could be some foreign influence bearing on the
VMs, but to have someone from another continent
writing the document seems fairly improbable to me
from several points of view.

First, the characters of the VMs alphabet are
strangely similar to Agrippa's Characters and Seals of
the Spirit, Book III Chapter 3:  a completely European
source.  I find it improbable that someone on another
continent would write fluently in a language which has
otherwise completely disappeared, and which borrows
heavily from a European source for its characters.

Granted, the characters are a bit altered from
Agrippa's as they appear in the VMs, but I believe
they are recongnizable still.

Secondly, if the VMs writer professed to add to our
knowledge of medical arts, the distinction between a
sheep and a goat in medical astrology is quite
significant.  The appropriate time to perform the
treatment must be chosen depending upon the sign which
arises on the ascendant.  The sign of Capricorn is
ruled by Saturn and rises four or five hours before
the sheep, Aries, ruled by Mars.  So in the first
instance, we are invoking Saturn; in the second, Mars.
 The astrologer must know which he is working with;
it's critical to his results.  He may harm his patient
otherwise.  Unless, of course, as an astrologer, he is
a charlatan; that is one interpretation of these
shoddy Zodiac symbols, I suppose.

Third, if the VMs writer belonged to another culture
which used a distinct Zodiac, why not use the Zodiac
he was familiar with?  Clearly, this would have been a
wiser choice if his intention was to be helpful and
not confusing.

So, is your VMs author a person from another continent
who stayed close to home, or a European who does not
get around much?  Or a well-travelled person from
another contient who has settled in Europe yet managed
in his travels to avoid seeing any sheep?

Warmly,

Pam




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

> 
>   > [William:] I looked at Kelley's material on
> Enochian in the British Library.  It 
>   > is not obvious to me he used a grill.  He
> created enormous numbers of 
>   > enormous (49x49) grids of letters (seemingly at
> random).  He appeared 
>   > to be using these to create texts.
> 
> Those 49x49 grids were not random! 
> 
> Well, not if they are like the couple of examples
> found in Dee's
> books. "Our" Jim Reeds cracked the latter a few
> years ago; you will
> find the URL of his paper in the archives. (They are
> quite
> interesting, though, as early examples of cellular
> automata!)
> 
> If Kelley's tables are built the same way, it seems
> unlikely that they
> were meant to generate pseudo-meaningful text; and
> even less likely
> that they were used for the VMS.
> 
> Ditto for the "magic squares" with angel names which
> he foisted on
> Dee: I can't see them as more than attempts to
> produce fake mystic
> diagrams --- like that sevenfold Sigillum Whatever
> which is often
> featured in Dee-related publications.
> 
>   > [Pam:]   A lack of exposure to sheep and goats
> simply
>   > does not match the facts of European culture. 
>   
> I am still wondering whether that is true of sheep.
> They certainly
> were common in most European *countries*, but what
> about *regions*
> (plains vs. hills, etc.)?
> 
> As a kid in the periphery of São Paulo I had
> neighbors who raised
> goats, pigs, cows, chickens -- but not sheep. There
> are plenty of
> cattle farms in this region, and quite a few horse
> farms, some right
> next to Unicamp; but not one sheep farm. In fact I
> can't recall seeing
> a sheep up close here in Brazil, or in all the years
> I lived in
> California, except in zoos. Yet sheep are a major
> cattle in
> neighboring Argentina, and lamb meat is easily found
> in supermarkets,
> etc.
> 
> So I would conjecture that sheep, unlike goats, are
> generally confined
> to regions where the environment is more appropriate
> for them than for
> other kinds of cattle. Perhaps hilly/rocky land,
> where there is plenty
> of grass but where you cant plant wheat or raise
> cattle?
> 
> Am I all wrong on this, too?
> 
>   > We know this guy was at least exposed to vellum,
> which is
>   > sheepskin . . . right?
> 
> I have always "known" that the VMS material is
> prepared calf skin,
> not sheep skin.  (Should't the latter be called
> "parchement" rather
> than "vellum"?). I can't recall the source, though.
> 
> Anyway, vellum was an industrialized and widely
> traded product, so
> its users were generally very far from the source
> animals (and especially
> from the abattoirs and tanneries).
> 
>   > this is the best picture of a goat I could find.
>   
> Thanks!! And for the leg drawing info, too!
> 
>   > So how does this hypothesis run? This person who
> spoke a language
>   > which no one understood was brought to Europe
> where he saw
>   > European hairstyles, then locked up in a room
> without windows so
>   > he could not see sheep and given vellum and ink.
> . . ?
> 
> Um, Kircher at Rome had a Chinese secretary at some
> point. Granted,
> that was already in mid-1600's. Before that, there
> was a comitive of
> three Japanese noblemen who visited Rome by way of
> Portugal, in the
> late 1500's I think. Two mongol (?) princes visited
> the king of
> France, a couple of centuries before that.
> Undoubtedly there were many
> other such visitors that just didn't made it to the
> history books...
> 
> Note that he *may* have known sheep, but perhaps he
> didn't know that
> "Aries" meant not just "yang2" but specifically
> "shan1yang2" (or
> whatever).
> 
> Suppose you asked a random European to draw "an Arab
> and his camel".
> How many humps would you get? I suspect that the
> average would be well
> above 1.5...
> 
>   > Or many European ladies with their various
> hairstyles descended
>   > upon a Mexican tribe and attempted to explain
> Western astrology to
>   > a man they presented with Western-style writing
> tools, and asked
>   > him to write them a book?
>   
> Er.. AFAIK, the first European women in Brazil were
> brought by Admiral
> Villegaignon, a French adventurer who landed in Rio
> de Janeiro in 1555
> and founded a colony of French Huguenots (La France
> Antarctique) ---
> destroyed by the Portuguese in 1560-1567. Legend has
> it that those
> ladies were, um, entertainers of a sort, so
> presumably well furnished
> with wigs, hats, and dresses -- and the occasional
> absence thereof 8-).
> Maybe...
> 
> 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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