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

["jan" <hurychj@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello  Pamela,
  
  
=======  You wrote:  
 
>The author/artist's intention results in the viewer's
>apprehension.  I would say, "comprehension", but the
>point is that complete comprehension in this case is
>so far lacking.

Maybe it is our perception which is manipulated and
faulty comprehension just follows.  As I suggested before,
in the case of plants, their strange features
are  not caused by the lack of painting talent or negligence,
but rather by intention. Not even author could recognize the real plants
from his drawings, if they indeed were such.  And from other pictures 
 we can see he was observant enough :-).
 Also, the elaborate "plumbing" pictures may be hiding some obscure 
 meaning or a code.  

>I will say that none of the images so far has struck
>me as being random or banal.  They certainly don't
>appear to be useless doodles.  

I suspect that too: in each picture may be the key
how to read the text  on that particular page. 
Look at f99v and f99r - the number of roots in individual pictures
are clearly countable and vary from 1 to 9, nicely aligned in rows,
apparently with some purpose.  First thing which comes to my
mind is a cipher.
 

>  If it is an
>unbreakable cipher the author proposes, masking
>meaningless content, he immediately casts doubt on his
>product which he must strive even harder to overcome
>to win the viewer over.  The more nonsensical and
>fantastical his illustrations, the more doubtful.

Right.  In the case of Kelley, he may have pretended to
make gold using the book - but sooner or later Rudolph 
would ask him to show him the sample of the translation.
A con man as Kelley was, he would think about  it ahead of the time
and rather put there some sensical, innocent
text underneath, otherwise he would be doomed. Rudolph and his advisers
would surely try to check his "solution" for veracity :-).
If each page is indeed using different key, he might have just claimed
he did solve only few pages, but  he could not risk to put gibberish in all pages. 

>My opinion is that the author took a risk in tampering
>with such commonly seen images.  The question would
>be, what was his purpose in taking such a risk?  To
>make his secret more safe, or to make his product
>(although meaningless) more believable? 

The former, only that was worth doing it. And the  real need to do it - 
 the pictures had to deterr the attention from the hidden facts!
Yes, the pictures are too strange and surely raise the doubt. 
But every con man knows the dangers of overkill and the breakpoint 
between trust and mistrust.
Why not put there rather recognizable pictures of real, earthly plants,
 to encourage the trust rather  than the doubt? That is certainly the
 purpose of each  fraud, to gain the belief!  
I already quoted  here the site with Mathiolli's pictures. 
 What a difference - so many features are recognizable and correct!  
 But of course,  that is the real herbal. The VM pictures on the  other  hand
look like made by  highly unexperienced botanist and mentally disturbed as well :-). 
 From already seen ingenuity of the VM, he may have been unskilled painter but
negligent or fool he was not. 
 

 jan 

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