Morten St George Theory

[Morten St. George]

A few clarifications on my last post seem in order:

Ironically, in this particular depiction, Ioth is spelled "y" but I can assure you that Ioth is spelled "i" in other medieval texts. You see Ioth (as y) here in the upper right, between Adon (a) and Quyesteron (q).

Actually, in the Summa Sacrae Magicae (SSM), Ioth is spelled with a "j" (but without the dot) as you can see:



Note that there is only one "j" ("i") so this remains the most likely explanation of what distinguishes "bruine" from "bruyne". 

The VMS wheels have two sets of four pointers: four arms pointing in opposite directions ...

The VMS graphic depicts six arms but only four of them have glyphic extensions:



The six arms undoubtedly relate to the six directions of space as recorded in the Sepher Yetzirah (SY), here translated by Westcott:

"11. He selected three letters from the simple ones, and sealed them as forming his great Name, I H V and he sealed the universe in six directions.

Five.- He looked above, and sealed the height, with I H V.

Six.- He looked below, and sealed the deep, with I V H.

Seven.- He looked forward, and sealed the East, with H I V.

Eight.-He looked backward, and sealed the West, with V H I.

Nine.- He looked to the right, and sealed the South, with V I H.

Ten.-He looked to the left, and sealed the North, with H V I."

In a prior post, I spoke at great length about the ABOVE (height) direction, sealed with Yod (10) He (5) Vau (6).

In the VMS graphic, the bloke on the bottom has his right hand pointing to the sphere ABOVE and his left hand pointing BELOW the plane of the cardinal directions. The right forearm of his colleague to the right holds the sphere while his darkened upper arm with glyphic extension points in a cardinal direction, probably to the North. 

The word "seal" is significant as surely the Sigillum Dei is key to breaking the VMS code.

... and four scribbles extending from the central flower.

Here's a close-up view of what I arbitrarily called a "flower":



Again I cite the SY:

"4. These twenty-two letters, the foundations, He arranged as on a sphere, with two hundred and thirty-one modes of entrance. If the sphere be rotated forward, good is implied, if in a retrograde manner evil is intended.

5. For He indeed showed the mode of combination of the letters, each with each, Aleph with all, and all with Aleph. Thus in combining all together in pairs are produced these two hundred and thirty-one gates of knowledge. And from Nothingness did He make something, and all forms of speech and every created thing, and from the empty void He made the solid earth, and from the non-existent He brought forth Life."

The SSM supplies us with a graphic depiction of all 231 gates but, to all appearances, the VMS wishes to work with only eight gates (the eight loops that you see surrounding a circle with a dot in the middle).

According to Wikipedia, a circle with a dot in the middle is, among other things, the symbol of Keter, the topmost sephirot of the Tree of Life (which I view as a mystical derivation of the "stump" of X-56, the "branch" of V-35, and the "fruit" of IX-65).

In the end, we are left with two sets of four directions (the eight sequences of glpyhic pointers). Therefore, to arrive at 72 Latin letters, each of the eight gates would have to be the entrance to nine Latin letters. Indeed, the SSM lends support to just such an arrangement:



As you can see, there are eight groups of nine letters, with each group separated by a dot. There's an extra dot after the first letter which could indicate a movement of one space to the right after each loop around the circle, or, just as likely, that we also need to work in a backwards direction.

Note that the London manuscripts of the Sworn Book of Honorius provide slightly divergent sequences of 72 Latin letters. When and if determined that a variant was published during the epoch of VMS marginalia or not long thereafter, I will be considering it in my decoding efforts.