Rosette folio detail and cosmological element display

[MarcoP]

This is an illustration from the lost Rupertsberg Scivias (color copies were made in 1930 ca).



Book 1, Vision 3 (thanks again to Helmut for pointing out You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.!)

The text gives an extensive description of the vision, first as a cosmology, then as a Christian allegory. The subject of the Vision is the Universe, seen as an enormous egg. The vision is described in layers, moving from the outside towards the inside:

• The exterior (painted yellow in the illustration) is made of fire. In this flaming layer there is a large globe of fire (the sun) above which there are three smaller flames (the three planets Mars, Jupiter, Saturn). Fiery winds blow in this region.
  
• Immediately below this outer layer there is a “dark skin” (pellem umbrosam): this layer if filled with a “dark fire” (tenebrosus ignis) and violent thunder storms with sharp stones of all sizes carried around by the winds.
  
• Then there is “the purest ether” (purissimus aether”), with a large white globe (the Moon) and two smaller flames (Mercury and Venus). In the ether there are several other bright spheres (the fixed stars - “multae et clarae sphere”). Ether has its own winds which spread light to all the stars.
  
• Below there is a layer of “watery air” (aquosum aerem) providing humidity to the whole giant egg. The winds that move this fluid cause rain.
  
• In the middle there is a globe of sand (“arenosus globus”). In this globe, Hildegard sees a huge mountain (“maximum montem”) one side of which is illuminated, the other dark.
  

I will not go into the details of the Christian allegory, but you can find a discussion (in German) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

This cosmograph differs from the standard Ptolemaic model in several ways:

• it is not spherical, but egg-shaped
  
• the planets are not discussed as each having its own sphere
  
• the layer of dark fire beyond ether
  
• the presence of different groups of winds in different layers
  
• a mountain at the center of the universe
  

The graphical “mountain-pattern” that appears at the center clearly illustrates the “globe of sand” and possibly the Great Mountain. Similar graphical patterns seem to erupt the “dark fire” in the black layer. These can be again compared with details of the Rosettes diagram, but they are more irregular, less constantly triangular. Still it's quite interesting that flames are coming out of them, since "something" also seems to come out of the Voynich "pyramids".

Overall, I find the illustration an interesting parallel because it provides an unconventional cosmograph of considerable complexity. In particular, the number of winds, flows and fluids described by Hildegard suggest something more chaotic than the perfect circular rotation of the Ptolemaic system. I have the impression that the Rosettes diagram might be describing something similar.

I will likely come back to the illustrations of this lost ms, since there are other details that can be interestingly compared with the VMS.