Re: Re: VMs: Replies on the Pleiades Occultation Thread

["jan" <hurychj@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello  Rene,
 
Thanks for your detailed history. That's exactly what we needed. No 
comment is really necessary,
I may just mention my feelings and possible open links: 
  
=======  You wrote:  
 
>What we need is someone who has some experience in
>historical astronomy, but from reading in
>D'Imperio we can understand that this has been
>attempted many decades ago, without any great 
>success. Wouldn't it have been nice if we had
>more details? We know that Panofsky has spent some
>time with the MS, but what about his friend
>Saxl, who has published at length about this
>type of illustrations?

 Worth well looking into. We do not want to repeat
anything what was done  already.

>I think that the combined astro knowledge in this
>group can at least confirm that there are no
>obviously identifiable planets, stars or
>constellations in the VMs, with the exception 
>(beside the many Suns and Moons) being the very
>illustration we're talking about.

Right - and there may be reasons why not: they may be part of 
symbolism, hidden code,  attempt of hoax or look-alike, 
even different kinds of visions or pure decoration (well, hardly :-).
Out  of those,  the code seems to be particularly interesting, of 
course there are different kinds of it and without the solution 
of the accompanying text and  tags we cannot get too far.

 For instance,  the number of stars is different in each sector:

16, 2
8 ( or maybe 1+7?), 18
11, 3
4, 14

I find the similar oddity in folios   f99r and f99v, where each picture in 
the row has various  number  of roots (mostly different), written the way 
their number is quite clearly distinguishable (well, mostly). It does look 
like a code, but what next? :-)
>
>For me, the astronomical illustrations fall in the
>same category as the herbal ones: quite close
>in general layout to existing MS's, but still
>different in all details, thereby not allowing
>positive identification, or even hard proof that
>any particular existing plant (or view of the
>sky) is intended by the author.

Right you are and it is not a result of the poor skill either, plants have so many 
drawn details so it looks more like an  intent NOT to show the real plants
or hide somethin g in there. 
Neitherdoes  it look like a product of some weird vision. Originally, I 
thought of them as some kind of hybrids, but even that would be 
impossible without artificial engineering of their DNAs :-).
>
>Of course, this conversation would be quite
>different if we could read the text. It is still
>useful to have it, in the absence of such good
>hard information, since there is the hope of
>finding additional cribs.

Well, the tags is a good start, but even  they may not directly relate to 
stars or plants they are attached to - this may simply be again some 
disinformation only. As far as I  know, we did not get too far with
solving the tags either.
>
>Getting back to the illustration of interest,
>as I wrote before, the Pleiades are almost a 
>certain guess, but does it show that the author
>was a great observer?
>This is not at all clear. The group is known as
>the group of seven stars in many different cultures,
>and there are seven stars drawn, but the naked eye
>will invariably see 6 or 8 stars or more. Never
>seven. This is not just my point of view, this is
>a known feature since documented history.
>The group of stars in the VMs doesn't particularly
>look like the Pleiades, but this is perhaps not
>relevant. I am not aware of any ME illustrations
>where they have been drawn somewhat accurately.

If we take the whole picture in that folio, the other stars there 
are not leading us to any definite constellations. So they may be just
a distraction for hiding one useful information elsewhere, maybe the one  in
the sector with "Pleiades". As for seeing either 6 or 8 by naked eaye - how could they 
ever get the name "7 sisters"?
As I suggested in the table above, the single star (or planet) and Pleiades 
may simply mean the numbers 1 and 7 (total 8) 
(or maybe 17, but not because  not having enough space
 - one sector there has even 18 stars! :-). 
>
>(I'm rather sure that someone must have written
>a learned piece about this some time).

Exactly, so  we should take Pleiades seriously - if there is a hidden  info 
there,  it may be more of it elsewhere in the VM as well. That may 
be a promising start.  I reached the impression  that in the VM, 
apparently nothing is as simple as it looks :-).
  
>I would greatly welcome a more detailed analysis
>of which other stars and/or planets could be 
>identified, and I look forward to Robert's 
>results. Of course I am aware of most part of
>his hypotheses, but a more complete layout of it
>would be most welcome.

I am sure he will do anyway.  As I said before, sometime 
we need to assume even more than  is reasonably expected, 
to be able to  move forward.  The problem is that we do not
know the proper meaning of it. Too bad we cannot tune into
the inspiration waves of the author of the VM!

It reminds me story about the invention of the wire-wrap
connections for computers. 
When classical  technologies failed and  they run out of ideas 
in their brainstorming session,  somebody supposedly said: 
"Well, then we have to hold the wire by our teeth".
Luckily, they did  not considered it then an utterly childish  idea :-).

>While I have already expressed my skepticism 
>about some aspects of it, I would like to stress
>that this is all quite interesting, and cannot
>be discarded as easily as any of the 'solutions'
>that have been presented over the years, where
>the probability of correctness is vanishingly
>small.
>Well, perhaps apart from the identification of 
>Tycho's face in one of the drawings :-/

Right, he should continue by all means. It would be  short sited to 
discourage him.
What we also need of course is confirmation of the findings from
other areas - the history, the text or whatever can confirm it or 
deny  it.

Thanks again,

Jan




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