Re: VMs: Pleiades Occultation Further Date Refinement

[Dennis <tsalagi@xxxxxxxx>]

jan wrote:

> > 	The visions of Hildegard of Bingen are now widely believed 
> > to have been inspired by migrainous imagery.  
>
> She may as well had migraine - why not? - but I bet there was a number of 
> painters who put stars  on their pictures without having migraine. How we 
> then recognizes which stars are only artistic license and which are  
> "migraine dependent"?
>  Of course there are other symptoms of migraine effects discussed in the article
> you listed. 

	That is how we know, of course.  Her biography suggests she 
had migraine, and other migrainous images, such as scotomata 
and fortification spectra, can be found in her art.  I 
believe they can be found in the VMs as well.

> Why don't   you carry  on the study a  let us know - after all it should
>  show in other  parts of the VM, as probably K+C noticed. 

	I am doing that.  Kennedy and Churchill noticed a lot of 
things.   I have noticed some others.

> Of course, visions can be 
>  caused also by other  factors: head or eye injury, schizophrenia or other mental 
>  sickness,  drugs and last but not least those coming directly from  
>  Heaven :-).

	Yes.  Oliver Sacks, a famous neurologist who wrote 
*Migraine*, a standard reference, noted that scotomata are 
almost exclusively found in migraine as I recall.  We must 
also do as doctors do, and look for several factors to 
decide on a diagnosis.

	I fully agree; we would need to see several things.  As 
always, we need to be careful.  After all, Rugg looked at 
several things as well.

	I do not mean to say that there is nothing to the VMs but 
migraine aura images.     No one says that about Hildegard 
of Bingen, after all.  It might simply be a useful 
hypothesis.  Anything definite at all helps us with the VMs.

> > 	This is just my point.  Most of the star patterns in the 
> > VMs don't seem to follow any "constellation", they are just 
> > random collections.  This would suggest that they were 
> > inspired by something besides real or mythic celestial images.
>
> Not necessarily - the inaccuracy for instance. As for randomness, 
> even that needs to be proven. As for inspiration - true, but almost
> anything  will do. 

	These points are well taken.  However, I have heard very 
little mention of definite constellations to be found in the 
VMs.  The Pleiades are about the only instance I can think 
of - all of which suggests that there is usually no such 
pattern involved.

> > 	No, I think the 'Pleiades' could be an exception.
>
> Well, why exception? The author momentarily had no migraine? 
> And if one exception, why not more of those?

	See above.    One certainly doesn't expect consistency in 
an artwork.

	In another post, you asked 'So what?' to the migraine 
hypothesis.   To me that would make it more likely that the 
VMs is the work of just one person.   We might expect some 
of the plants to be known migraine remedies.  We might wish 
to investigate Renaissance-era thinking about migraine or 
headaches.  Words relating to migraine could be cribs - just 
as the Pleiades hypothesis could provide us with cribs.   We 
might wish to study migraine art further.  Migraine art is a 
genre; just do a search on 'migraine art'.   There could be 
other implications, and I am still thinking about that.

Dennis

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