Re: Castle Complexes (WAS: VMs: Hello to all...)

[Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ken,

Glad to hear you've been poring over the map page at a proper scale - that 
make about 1% here that here, then. :-o

At 16:20 12/02/2005 -0600, KenW wrote:
> -- Each cardinal direction also has a distinguishable element outside its 
> rosette at the far corners of the folio.  The east and west are symbolized 
> by the sun images - rising/setting.  In the north, there is what appears 
> to be a TO map.  Could this represent the North as a center of knowledge 
> or is it a straight forward reference to the Earth?  The South has a 
> banded circle with a triangle of circles connected by two lines.  This 
> symbol is similar to a medieval alchemical symbol.  The symbol in the 
> circle was commonly used to represent Sol, the sun.  Hmm?

AFAICR, the Florentine Neo-Platonist astrologers (such as Ficino) 
introduced the dotted circle glyph to represent the sun round about 1480 
IIRC. AFA the banded circle goes (if I understand you correctly), perhaps 
ask Jean-Yves for a more definitive answer?

> Also, following Hermeticism and the idea of Originalism (the older the 
> source of knowledge, more pure or closer to the divine it is) Egypt was 
> the home of Hermes Trismegistus - thus the source of divine knowledge.

Hmmm... I forgot to mention my Hermes Trismegistus joke from my blog 
before... perhaps that was a good thing, though! :-o
        http://voynichmusings.blogspot.com/2005/02/esoteric-joke-yes-really.html
        http://voynichmusings.blogspot.com/

> Is the "Sol" symbol a reference to this knowledge?  Marsilio Ficino 
> introduced the Corpus Hermetica into Europe in the 15th century with his 
> Latin translation, so the date is about right for the VMS.

Be careful with what you wish for with Ficino, his is a very contested 
legacy. I for one would not like to have to defend any Ficino-esque 
historical position - fascinating for sure, but with a definite 
poisoned-chalice aspect.

> -- The intermediary rosettes (NW, NE, SW and SE) do not specifically 
> contain architectural elements and only these four connect to the 
> center.  The odd one out is the NE which does not have the spiked and 
> starry rosettes.  It seems more aquatic in nature.  What this means, I do 
> not know.  But I have noticed that the "intermediary" rosettes have 
> increasing numbers of divisions.  Moving clockwise starting from the NE 
> there are 2,7,9 and 13 spikes respectively.  Once again, I'm unsure of the 
> meaning of this, but it seems obvious that there is an intent versus 
> random decoration.  Could it be a clock/time related reference?

If the intermediary rosettes do have a meaning, I think it is to be found 
based on the observation that they relate to each each other via scale - 
that it, you can view them as scaled up/down versions of the others. Try it 
for yourself, see what you think... but I think there's definitely 
something going on there, IMHO. :-o

> -- Putting aside the NE oddity for now, there is an interesting, 
> unpatterned detail in each of the "intermediary" rosettes.  The NW and SW 
> rosettes have what could be best described as clock hand (just a 
> description - not my assumption of intention).  The NW one points toward 
> the center rosette.  The SW one points away from the center.  The SE 
> rosette is more subtle.  There is a clear wavy line emanating from the 
> center of its rosette roughly pointing toward the South rosette.

This isn't really in the category for rebuttal, as you're still observing 
what you see. It's just that when faced with something that's outside our 
normal referential range, our words (naturally) fail us: and when words are 
hard, we're pleased to be able to say anything at all. :-o

Of course, the difficult bit is trying to take a more integrative stance on 
all the fragments: all I'd really advise is to delay that step as long as 
you can. In the end, it may well prove a bigger step forward for everyone 
if you are able to describe interesting features of the page clearly - 
after all, there are more than enough to choose from, right? FWIW, I know 
what you mean with "clock hands", but wonder whether it's actually the 
right term or not... there's been enough "clock"-related baggage for that 
page already, right? :-o

Cheers, .....Nck Pelling..... 


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