Re: VMs: Goat vs. sheep

["Dana Scott" <dscott520@xxxxxxx>]

I would really like to know which vellum was used in the VMs?

Santa Inês:
http://www.sheepandgoat.com/articles/Brazil.html

Regards,
Dana Scott


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jorge Stolfi" <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, October 11, 2004 1:34 PM
Subject: Re: VMs: Goat vs. sheep


>
>   > [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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