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+--- Thread: The existence of Culture V* (/thread-1648.html)
The existence of Culture V* - R. Sale - 14-03-2017
Just as a Chinese manuscript is clearly the product of the Chinese culture, the VMs is just as clearly not a randomly surviving artifact of Culture V*. The VMs has put on an authentic appearance and would certainly seem to be a plausible artifact of an unknown origin from the time of its creation and it would retain that appearance long afterwards. But if we want to investigate the VMs and to pin it down with facts, then a decision needs to be made about the existence of Culture V*. So the modern point of view contradicts and negates the existence of Culture V*. And thus cut off from genuine cultural origins, the VMs is revealed as an impostor, a pretender and a dissimulator. It appears to be a thing that is genuine, but it is not.
So what is the purpose of the VMs, if it is all nonsense? But the VMs is something else. It is a masquerade. The VMs is a puzzle. The VMs is a facade behind which something else is hidden. And it is difficult to hide something of a sheet of parchment and still maintain the original identity. The author, as a great dissimulator, separates the illustration of the Oresme cosmos into two parts, leaves a big clue and still maintains a connection with the original through the similarity of detail - through what has been and continues to be an unrecognized level of similar detail.
Simply by separating the cosmos into two parts, the author has confounded countless investigators. The level of detail in the VMs is such that the text contains a sophisticated use of canting based on traditional heraldic designs, that have all but evaded any modern detection. Just ask about papelonny. Knowing the name and the pattern are among the essential details needed to understand how the hidden parts work. But the availability of such detailed information was probably better disseminated among the heralds of yore (if you will) than it is among any group today. The VMs author knew the details, the scallop-shell patterned cloud band for example; things that we do not know. And this is nothing to do with obscure or arcane knowledge. These are the the details of commonplace historical and scientific facts from the relevant times, and while the basic facts have been given a simple disguise, the examination and comparison of detail, once it is known which details to examine, show strong similarities in pattern, form, number, placement and structure with the original and traditional examples. And yet, at the same time, the VMs is clearly something that is not straight forward in an expositive sense. There is no Culture V*.
RE: The existence of Culture V* - Koen G - 14-03-2017
You ask an interesting question, and to some extent I agree with your statement that there is no Culture V*, though I disagree with your conclusions.
I do understand your line of reasoning, and something similar to this is the first impression the manuscript imposes upon many viewers. But this reasoning is flawed, since it limits the options to two choices:
A) A manuscript is the product of one culture, like a European book of hours or an Egyptian Book of the Dead.
B) A manuscript is the creative product of an author.
Since (A) is not true (I agree), then your conclusion is that (B) must be the case. On top of that, for some reason you also add that:
C) The intention of this author was to form a puzzle, to deceive.
Now, © is a theory-specific addition to (B) - one can write a "different" work without the intention to fool others - so let's limit the question to (A) and (B).
So what you say is: "since we cannot easily pinpoint a culture that brought forth the manuscript, it must have been the brain child of an author."
If this is indeed what you mean, then I see some serious problems with the premises as well as the conclusion.
My main objection is that not all works of art can be pinpointed to one culture. Which culture produced the imagery in the Aratea manuscripts? Unraveling the cultural layers of such a manuscript is a lot like an archaeological dig in an ancient city that has seen several different layers of occupation. In the case of the Aratea, the very roots of the tradition lie even before the Greeks, in Mesopotamia. The Greeks, in their obsession to assign meaning to everything further specified the figures and fleshed out their lore, all of which was luckily safeguarded by the Carollingians who added their own layer, then further copied and/or corrupted by later copyists who often had no clue what they were doing since their culture was by now so far removed from the original makers of the imagery. And, very importantly, not all of these manuscripts have the same DNA. Some of them have hard to recognize influences from Egypt and Asia Minor, where most of the famed Greek astronomers had lived or studied.
Something very similar can be said about the various herbal traditions. Other forum members know more about those than I do.
The point is that subjects which are prone to form traditions, like herbals and astronomical works, have exactly the potential to produce something like the VM, since they don't exist in a sterile way within one culture, place or time.
On this subject, D'Imperio wrote (p.14-15) that the VM "plant parts frequently have a curious blocky, chunky, rough-hewn look, with platform-like structures surrounded by hard outlines defining a sharp change of plane. [...] A somewhat similar blocky, rough-hewn appearance is seen in some herbal drawings in other manuscripts, that have been copied over and over again from some earlier source by successive scribes."
Of course not all works that emerged from those traditions were blind copies. Especially in herbals there was selection, addition, correction, combination and so forth. Nothing says that those things did not happen in the VM. But that does not mean that the imagery was invented on the spot, in fact there are many arguments against that.
What I still have a hard time understanding is that so many people appear to believe that since no other manuscripts of the VM's direct tradition have been preserved, that the only conclusion can be that its imagery is mostly composed by a 15th century author.
Also, specifically to this post, no work exists without cultural influences. Can you provide any other example of a 15th century or earlier work of an "author" that seems to ignore much of the culture around him?
RE: The existence of Culture V* - R. Sale - 14-03-2017
Hi Koen,
Well, we're not quite on the same wavelength here. I'm not denying the existence of cultural influences nor suggesting that anyone can live a normal life without being influenced by the cultural presence. And I'm not suggesting that all of this doesn't have an ongoing historical existence and a reiterated cultural influence.
What I am saying is that the VMs 'appears' to be a sort "alchemical-herbal-hausbuch' type of document. That is easy enough. But where does this document originate? What is the name of the culture, the nation, the empire, the tribe where this language is written and spoken? In the 15th century, one might easily suspect that there was some valid historical source that had existed on some unexplored, distant piece of geography. That seems to be an enduring opinion.
I propose that there is no historical entity to be named as the natural, valid, cultural source of the VMs. There is no Culture V* as an actual historical society. The appearance of the existence of Culture V* is the author's creation and concoction, based on this individual's knowledge and perceptions. The author is pulling the wool over the eyes of the reader. In order to communicate secretly, there needs to be a place and a method to disguise what is intended. The VMs is a fabrication made for such a purpose. And still there must be a clear path to discover what was intended.
It is the pretense of Culture V that is the facade that obscures the hidden reality. Of course, no one can create a wholly imaginary world without some sort of cultural references. But the result is a document with non-existent cultural origins in the sense that it came from an actual society or tribe or what have you, however obscure. Obviously the elements used in some illustrations will have their own cultural origins, but they have also been manipulated in such a way as to produce the present state of confusion.
So if we really are stumbling blindly in a state of confusion, how is it that something like the Oresme cosmos suddenly pops up? Can it be considered that the VMs version of the Oresme cosmos has two parts of different pages? Can the papelonny pun be distributed on three consecutive pages? What the author does here is like the slight of hand that leaves young children with their mouths open. The VMs author exhibits a knowledge of detail where we do not know to look, like the use of scallop-shell patterns in the construction of a cloud band - the same pattern of construction as the Oresme cosmos.
However in the separation of Oresme's cosmos, as in the fabrication of the Culture V* origins, the VMs shows its deception and starts to reveal its hidden side. There is a reality behind the facade. Trickery is used to disguise. Similarity of detail and the correspondence with traditional placement are used to confirm. Appearance can be deceptive. Appearance can be intentionally ambiguous. Ambiguity can disguise reality, but it cannot contradict reality and still retain identity. And apparent ambiguity can then be redeemed through other factors, such as traditional placement or similarity of detail, but only if those factors are identified and examined. And if identification is no longer a problem, then intention certainly is.
RE: The existence of Culture V* - -JKP- - 14-03-2017
(14-03-2017, 10:06 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
So if we really are stumbling blindly in a state of confusion, how is it that something like the Oresme cosmos suddenly pops up? Can it be considered that the VMs version of the Oresme cosmos has two parts of different pages? Can the papelonny pun be distributed on three consecutive pages? What the author does here is like the slight of hand that leaves young children with their mouths open. The VMs author exhibits a knowledge of detail where we do not know to look, like the use of scallop-shell patterns in the construction of a cloud band - the same pattern of construction as the Oresme cosmos.
...
I've often wondered if the text itself is constructed this way.
I've tried things like taking paragraphs beginning with EVA-P and splicing them into ones beginning with EVA-T or trying to match up text on the plant pages with text on the starred-text pages, or splicing one sentence into the next one. I also tried an "ox-row" method (alternating back and forth). There is a sense of something being "missing" in the text and the question comes up, from time to time, whether variations in shapes of specific glyphs might be a variation in meaning...
which brings up the question of whether there is another reference, another part, or a glossary to fill out the missing parts or, as you mention, two parts (whether textual or visual) in different sections of the manuscript that go together to make the whole.
RE: The existence of Culture V* - R. Sale - 15-03-2017
JKP,
As to the question of whether things are split up or not, all one needs to do is look at VMs Aries and Taurus, and the a answer has to be 'yes', or at least a provisional 'yes', because 'absolutely not" has been ruled out by these illustrations. Whether that applies to text remains to seen. We don't have a way of knowing that things fit into place, like we do with the illustrations.
While I do believe that the focus needs to be on visual detail, I do not believe that this extends to the level of subtle, shall we call them internal?, variations in the VMs glyphs. I suppose researchers, who expect that the VMs author was a perfect scribe, are going to have difficulties. If s/he was just a normal writer, I would expect those variations. And the potential for variations in the material aspects is another factor.
The comparison or combination of paired text segments is an interesting possibility. The problem is in the selection of specimens. If the author wanted the reader to do a comparison or combination of particular text segments, what sort of construction could be put in place? And if the author's preference was for something more subtle and not glaringly obvious?? How about marked text segments? Or isolated text segments? How about marked and isolated text segments placed in unexpected locations? Is that too obvious? Perhaps from this set only certain ones are given another marker? Things don't need to diminish in size to be hidden, they just need to pass unrecognized.
Things just need to pass unrecognized, as they have been doing, and the secret is safe. Progress is blocked. But if it can be accepted that Oresme's cosmos can be duplicated with VMs parts, then this could be the start of a new perspective for VMs investigation. Does the VMs contain common information of the author's actual (European) culture, that has been disguised and made ambiguous through intentional manipulation - such as the separation of parts in the case of the cosmos? I believe it does and that the VMs provides confirmation in the details of the scallop-shell cloud bands in this case. Or in the use and placement of papelonny tub patterns in another example. Here we have traditional information from the field of heraldry used in a method common to heraldry (canting) in a time when this would have been standard practice for many. Whereas, from the modern view, these are unknown and difficult to discover symbols which cannot be interpreted due to the absence of any point of reference.
Happy boustrophedon.