9 Rosette - Specific Details

[Mark Knowles]

I see your point Mark, some of those have little in common with what we think of as maps. 
But there's one thing that sets the VM "map" aside from those: its geometrical structure. If you look at the examples you posted, there is something naturally chaotic about them. But the VM large foldout is very structured. The circles up, down, left and right connect to the centre by converging lines. The circles in the corner have something "pointing" towards the centre. All circles interconnect by pathways. And yet, each circle is like its own island.

So if it is a map (which I doubt), it is one that has been subjected to a transformation in order to fit it into the unnaturally structured 9-circle scheme. That's why I say it's more like a diagram than a map. It is geometrically structured like the Fludd diagram we discussed a while ago (which didn't lead to much) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

My own personal perspective is that the author chose a way which fit his mapping needs and also which was in his own unique style. I regard the outer circles as locations on a strip map, the causeways being the strips. This fits within the paradigm of what are termed "itinerary maps". I think one thing that is interesting about this is it represents a return journey by a different route, what one might call a circular tour of different locations. I think the strips are akin to what we see in Matthew Paris's medieval map of his journey from London to Jerusalem.

So the way I see it, is if you planned a journey starting from:

Austin, Texas

to 

Phoenix, Arizona

to

San Francisco, California

to

Salt Lake City, Utah

to

Madison, Wisconsin

to

Columbus, Ohio

to

Nashville, Tennessee

to

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

and back to

Austin, Texas

(I chose US locations to avoid using European locations and to make it clear this is just a hypothetical example.)

you might wonder what is the best way to represent your journey. Well, it is kind of very roughly a circular journey. Your geography of the USA might not be very good, so it might be simpler just to draw each location in a bubble/circle and arrange them in a circular way. To save some space and use your whole square page you might put the circles on the edges arranged in a 3x3 square grid. Now with the space in the centre you might draw a circle with the American Eagle or some other patriotic symbol in it to unify or relate to the rest of the page. In the strip of land between the big circles you might mark other places you visited on your journey, so for example between Austin and Phoenix you might mark Santa Fe and nearby a cactus.(cactus??)

Given that in modern times accurate representation didn't have the same importance that we give it in modern times, so choosing to represent a circular journey in this way seems quite sensible and logical to me.