Quote:Diane: What emerged as I worked through the botanical folios (sharing only such material online as I thought might help the linguists and cryptographers), is that these mnemonics are not language-dependent.
I think that's true of of a great deal of iconic imagery. Whenever we want to bridge language gaps we use pictures. Even sign language is, in a sense "pictures", as we are drawing shapes with our hands. A picture, especially of something like an animal, is frequently not language dependent. Much of heraldry is based on iconic imagery such as animals, birds, swords that were intended to be understood by people of different cultures/languages.
Anyone who has looked through herbal manuscripts and medieval religious tracts has seen many mnemonics and most people familiar with medieval history would recognize them as such.
The hard part is not recognizing that there are mnemonics. The hard part is determining exactly what they mean in a manuscript in which things appear to be at least partly hidden or "secret".
I see no reason to write up the VMS mnemonics until I have something to say about it that's a little more definite than "this is a mnemonic". Some look like lions or dogs or horses, but until one determines which one it is, or what it might mean in relationship to the plant, there's not much motivation to write it up.