Morten St George Theory

[Morten St. George]

FYI, quite a few people on this forum can read German, but pointers to translations are always welcome.


You've compared the last image to a string of beads, but I think the VMS drawing looks more like a chain.

There are a couple of saints whose attributes are a chain and St. Peter is sometimes depicted with a chain in one hand and a key in the other. Notice how there is something a bit nebulous in the figure's right hand? Could that be a key that has been drawn so its identity is not too obvious?


The symbolism in the Rosicrucian illustrations are not unique to them. They borrowed heavily from other symbolic texts that came earlier (e.g., alchemy, astrology, kabbalah), so it would be difficult to say whether there's a direct link between the VMS and the Rosicrucian imagery, or whether both borrowed from other sources. One can find birds on high tors in quite a number of western and eastern illustrations.

That the Rosicrucian imagery has many parallels in earlier imagery is not surprising, since they themselves claimed that they were privy to special knowledge that came down to them from earlier sources.



I don't know if your dragon analogy is going to hold up. There are thousands of images of little dragons and dragons biting. Any manuscript with frequent marginal illustrations and many manuscripts with occult arts have them.


I know you were intending to show that there is a "pattern" of similarity in these illustrations, and the textures on the tor are good, but when two of the examples can be contested, then the argument for the overall pattern is not as strong.


The Hermetic tradition (which had already been mentioned as early as the 14th century) probably inspired some of the Rosicrucian ideas and symbolism.

I have no qualms about anything you say except that I think it doubtful that either drawing is trying to depict Saint Peter: he carried the Keys of Heaven, not the keys to unlock his chains.

My comparisons were only meant to point to the VMS as a source of inspiration for Vaughan's drawings, so it matters little that the VMS depicts a chain of rings and Vaughan only one ring.

The critical question that needs to be answered is: Did the creator of the Vaughan drawings have prior sight of the VMS?

Though, as you say, the VMS and Vaughan drawings could have had the same third party sources, consider this: the Vaughan depictions in all four comparisons are components of a larger, single page drawing, which greatly reduces the chances of coincidental similarities.

The matter is relevant to the European location of the VMS for the period from 1584 to 1912. Obviously, evidence (not meager) of a prolonged presence of the VMS in England presents a serious challenge to the traditional Prague to Kircher narrative.

By my theory, the Rosicrucians themselves broke the VMS code. They would have had no need to send the VMS to Rudolf's cryptographers or on to Kircher for that purpose. The story that Wilfred Voynich acquired the VMS from Jesuits might be false.