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Symbols, 40, Quintessence and Friedman's "a priori" hypothesis - Printable Version

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Symbols, 40, Quintessence and Friedman's "a priori" hypothesis - Barbrey - 25-07-2021

Hi all, I'm hoping our cryptologists and linguists can help me out.  One of the reasons I've worked hard on rosettes page symbolism is I've believed the text symbols might actually operate as symbols when in certain positions, particularly at the start of "vords".  If, as Friedman says in his final conclusion, this could be an attempt to construct an " a priori" lexicon or language, then it seemed to me that the writer might make use of his/her personal hieroglyphs in constructing the script, and/or that the way original alphabets stemmed from actual objects - A from Aleph or Ox, for instance - might play a role.

I've got a fairly cohesive schemata of the Rosettes page now, with labels for its constituent parts, based on Aristotelian natural philisophy and Christianity, and moreover a kind of "index" for the VMS as a whole.

I think it's a sound diagram and I am struggling to put it into a paper that explains it properly. 

But I don't know if my glyph matching is true, nor whether it would make a difference to entropy, or how it might work in expansion with actual letters/numbers to create true words.  I feel I'm onto something but that could yet again be a chimera.  And I don't want to even hypothesize it at the end of my paper as a possible avenue for script/language decryption if it would not even work.

Part of my analysis includes the balneological section as primarily concerned with the distillation of quintessence.  I arrived at this independently, but discovered this was Brumbaugh's opinion in the 70's too, though he doesn't explain how he came to this conclusion.

So that was a long preamble for this: on the rosettes there is a symbol (low bottom left outside the main core, looks like a clock) that, if turned, is a v-shape, and included in one of Valentinius's alchemical charts as "aqua vitae".  I don't have earlier provenance on it but it could have been around. It is inside a circle, and aether/aqua vitae was considered to move in a circle unlike the other four elements.  I have some support from other symbols and nimbi to support this hypothesis, but won't go into here.

Now aqua vitae/aether is also identical to quintessence, which also has an an alchemical sign.  QE.

Quintessence means the fifth element.

My rosettes schemata matches " o" to Spiritus or some variation of Primus, and the 4 symbol - the upright one (I think eva "L"?) - to Mineralis or Elementa.  And of course, it was a form of 4 in earlier days.

So a 4 connected by ligature to a 1 could quite easily be symbolized by 40 in our author's script and mean the fifth element, or quintessence, the " spiritual" element, goal of alchemy.  And I think I read somewhere this symbol 40 most often appears in the balneological section, where I contend distilling it as pure alcohol from wine (a la Rupescissa 1360's, and it subsequently becomes the basis for chemistry and most medicines) - is a major theme.

It all rather handily works out, in theme, in number, with my schemata, with everything really, though I try to keep my mind open.  Brumbaugh's mistake was, in my opinion, jumping to text analysis too soon when he had a lot to offer on the images, particularly the Aristotelian and neo-Platonic concepts

So, hypothetically, if 40 stands for quintessence, how might that work with the rest of the letters following it?  I guess 40 might always stand for the whole word and the letters following describe or are connected to it.  But as a concept, it might just sub in for the kw sound, like a for aleph (ox) did, or perhaps some kind of scribal syllable thing to do with root words, so sub for "quin" maybe? And its positioning at start of word might mean that's where most of the glyphs, when operating as symbols, might appear? Don't know.

My question to you is how, as a symbol in the text, it might work best to solve problems of entropy and line structure?  Even if you didn't follow me, or didn't buy in, the answer will help me with all the other glyphs, too, so would really appreciate any answers!


RE: Symbols, 40, Quintessence and Friedman's "a priori" hypothesis - bi3mw - 26-07-2021

(25-07-2021, 11:19 PM)Barbrey Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Part of my analysis includes the balneological section as primarily concerned with the distillation of quintessence.  I arrived at this independently, but discovered this was Brumbaugh's opinion in the 70's too, though he doesn't explain how he came to this conclusion.
I do not have an answer to your question, but I would like to state that I agree with your above thesis. In the thread " Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS" from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was discussed about Johannes de Rupescissa and the topic "Quintessence" ( not coherent, but the posts can be found easily ).