While you can't test icons for C-14, you can rediscover the icons that were relevant during the C-14 dates. However, it has taken some time to recover those icons and to place those that are relevant into a functional interpretation. This is a compilation of multiple investigators' results.
The VMs begins with a lot of herbal illustrations. Some are a bit odd, others are totally strange. Regardless of potential identification, no connection with the written text has been established. And that goes for the written text throughout the VMs. Nothing in the written text can reliably be read. That leaves the collective remains of VMs illustrations.
The plants can take a lot of time and yet reveal nothing. The cosmic pages reveal nothing. Only when the reader can see the VMs cosmos itself can the true depths of VMs trickery and obfuscation be seen by those who recognize the two icons combined to create this representation. Trickery and obfuscation are further revealed in the VMs Zodiac sequence with a focus on White Aries. White Aries is a structure built of icons and traditions. But the icons and traditions of the VMs are those from 600 or more years in the past.
Furthermore, where the artist of a standard text would endeavor to maximize and make obvious, the VMs artist has chosen to minimize and disguise, to create ambiguity. Not to eliminate, but to obfuscate. The icons are present even though they have been hidden by their altered appearance. Despite visible ambiguity, interpretation and identification are facilitated by the structure of the illustration, as an examination of the details of the VMs cosmos reveals, and further examples confirm this use of standard iconic structure.
The iconology of the VMs is only suggested by the potential recognition of ambiguous appearance. Potential VMs iconography can be verified by historical research and by the investigation of internal details in the VMs illustrations that reveal iconic structure.
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I don't know what you see in white Aries.
I only see that he has only drawn what he sees.
For me, everything is quite normal.
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And that the pictures of plants and stars don't reveal anything is also not true. You have to see it and understand it.
Too bad that picture of the sheep wasn't known some years back. But isn't it still true that sheep graze and goats browse?
Back in the era of C-14 dates, would this animal have lived in an area with swallowtail merlons?
Anyway, that is Dark Aries, or Black Aries, - not White Aries.
My apologies, in referring to White Aries, I am referring to the entire page, not just the medallion. Though there is the fact that the apparent 'whiteness' of the central image is enhanced by the fact that this is the most fully painted page in the zodiac sequence. And it is not accidental, but an intentional way to also disguise the presence of things that *must* be painted. The iconic images of the red hats and blue stripes.
The inner ring of nymphs on VMs White Aries has a single figure associated with a red hat and a blue striped 'tub' pattern. This is the artistic interrogation of the potential 'reader' regarding the interpretation of heraldic. information. Blue stripes are potentially armorial heraldry. Red hats, and white hats are potentially ecclesiastical heraldry. The combination of red hats and blue stripes constitutes a verifiable historical situation tied to the Catholic religious tradition of the cardinal's red galero, as instituted by Pope Innocent IV, who was Sinibaldo Fieschi, and shows an act of historical nepotism.
The more natural, radial interpretation of the figures with the blue striped patterns does not yield useful heraldic information. However, the page-based, paired orientation not only makes a potential connection to history, it also shows a use of duplicity revealing intentional deception. The ambiguities and obfuscations of appearance serve as a disguise. Potential iconography can be verified by historical research and by an investigation of the internal details of internal, iconic structure.
If the cardinal has the red hat and the other figure represents the pope, these are the structural verifications.
According to proper hierarchical position, the pope is in a higher celestial sphere that the cardinal.
According to heraldic placement, both figures are in the most favored, heraldic upper right quadrant.
Having the representations of pope and cardinal, with their religious connections, the only zodiac creature, suitable for celestial sacrifice, since the time of the ancient Greeks, is White Aries.
Structure is not subject to interpretation. There are a host of potential alternative structures, but only one way to maintain these three structural validations.
In addition, on the two preceding pages, Pisces and Dark Aries, there is another confirmation based on heraldry and heraldic canting. In the outer ring of Pisces and the inner ring of Dark Aries, there is a pattern in about the 10 o'clock position. It is a scale-like pattern, that is an obscure heraldic tincture. These two patterns form a structure that corresponds in quadrant and in sphere with the two blue striped patterns on White Aries. The tincture pattern is called papelonny. The French word for 'pope' is 'pape'. This looks like heraldic canting and intentional construction. The historical popes were Innocent IV and Adrian V.
As you say, "You have to see it and understand it."
Certainly, one can interpret the images and colours as one likes, or believes to recognise something in them.
But they are also dangerous.
Drawing something as you see it does not come about by chance.
I try to stick to simplicity and to refrain from self-interpretation if possible. They create a false image.
I refer to the indications of the time. Here, too, there is already no such thing as simple.
That is how I search in history. What do I see, where does it come from and what does it affirm. This as realistically as possible.
Example:
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Historical picture with the battlements.
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One wall further on: the shepherd with sheep. Which sheep?
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Interpretation:
Interpretation:
The picture description says ibexes. I think, why ibexes? I rather see a goat species to the shepherd.
Both breeds ( sheep and goat ) are temporally authentic in the same place. This is well known
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Are you sure it's a cardinal's hat?
I see it more as a priest's or bishop's cap.
What I'm saying to you is, stay as close to facts as you can. Support them with pictures.
Unfortunately, I don't see the details like you do.
You can see for yourself in the example on White Aries, the nymph with a red hat and blue stripes. This is not a nymph with a blue hat and red stripes, or any other color combination. Is this just a chance combination of color and pattern?
If you are familiar with the origins of the tradition of the cardinal's red galero, you may know that it began with Pope Innocent IV, who was Sinibaldo Fieschi, whose family possessed an armorial insignia blazoned as bendy, argent et azur. When you look at the VMs illustration, it should be recognized that there are two ways to interpret how the blue striped patterns might fit into a standard heraldic interpretation. Both radial and page-base interpretations exist. And here, the more subtle, page-based interpretation shows a pairing of pattern orientations that almost matches the standard heraldic, bendy pattern and the stripes are blue.
Innocent IV raised several of his relatives to the rank of cardinal. The most significant of these in 1251, was his nephew, Ottobuono Fieschi, who was later elected pope as Adrian V. The papelonny patterns on the preceding pages make the suggestion that they both are popes, and in fact history confirms it. A red hat and blue stripes in a pair of bendy patterns is the only color and pattern combination that has any historical significance.
Not only is the secondary interpretation the one that was and is historically significant, the existence of a secondary interpretation of such apparent significance is a clear revelation of duplicity and a warning to beware of VMs trickery - if that wasn't already apparent in the VMs cosmos. Not only do the VMs illustrations appear odd by their nature, they are made strange and ambiguous by intent.
What exists are two intentionally ambiguous nymphs and a darn good match to historical events of traditional significance promulgated by one of the primary systems of visual communication (heraldry) concurrent with VMs dates for one of history's primay religious organizations. The illustrations are ambiguous, but the history is good. An interesting story, too easily dismissed?
Here is where the investigation returns to the source of the White Aries illustration, If the illustrations are ambiguous, the structure is not. If the interpretation of the illustrations is subjective, the interpretation of the structure is objective. The structure is composed of hierarchical position, heraldic placement, sacrificial association and heraldic canting. All this structure is objective in its detail. It does not depend on the interpretation of appearance. It does not seem reasonable to me that the artist would or could construct these various independent structures that confirm an identification that was *unknown* to the image creator. The structure was not built around a mistaken interpretation. There is a valid history.
If the structure is objective and the appearance is ambiguous, what more is needed when deception and obfuscation have already been clearly shown? Potentially ambiguous interpretations can be validated by historical investigation and the examination of internal VMs details. There is more to ambiguous appearance that just seeing the visual differences. It also helps to try to appropriately interpret the more significant examples of C-14 iconography and learn more about them, as it relates to the VMs.