There are also a couple interesting red-hatted clergy in the KBR files and lost somewhere in my notes. But, being surprised by this response, let me reply here ASAP - local time. The VMs can be ambiguous. It's not about appearance. I learned only recently that the galero was formally replaced by the saturno back in the 1600s - after Galileo. But the heraldic designations based on color were maintained. It's not about appearance, because appearance is deceptive. It's about *color*. The VMs hats are green and red and unpainted. And unpainted is white, perhaps. Not everyone is that familiar with ecclesiastical heraldry, but these color designations of rank and order in the church hierarchy certainly predate the C-14 results.
An interesting thing about the use of heraldic colors and their representation with pigments is that one color cannot be used to represent another. So when it comes the red, green and white hats and to the blue-striped patterns on VMs White Aries, color is not ambiguous. What is ambiguous is the actual direction in which the blue stripes are oriented, from a heraldic perspective. Ambiguity derives from the fundamental nature of the illustration, which visually tends toward a radial interpretation, but also contains the more fundamental, page-based interpretation. This is an optical illusion - of sorts. This is a hidden key to the VMs. <<This is the rabbit hole - the hidden path that opens the alternate world.>> Certainly the appearance of these characters is not as ostentatious as it might be. But for those who knew / who know / the details of Catholic Church history, there is only a very specific historical situation in which paired insignia of the blue-striped bendy pattern and the red hat of the cardinals' have ever come together. And despite other attempts at disguise, which can be shown to be innately flawed, there are also a number of independent structural confirmations of this ecclesiastical interpretation, culminating in the papelonny pun, based on heraldic canting.
The purpose of this construction is to establish historical grounding. And through that grounding to establish validity, which is then passed, through direct contact, as it is drawn in the White Aries illustration, to the Stolfi's 'start here' markers (patterned boxes), and to the circular bands of text thus designated. No other text in the VMs is marked out by such rigorously designed, carefully concealed, historically and traditionally validated indicators. But why???
An interesting thing about the use of heraldic colors and their representation with pigments is that one color cannot be used to represent another. So when it comes the red, green and white hats and to the blue-striped patterns on VMs White Aries, color is not ambiguous. What is ambiguous is the actual direction in which the blue stripes are oriented, from a heraldic perspective. Ambiguity derives from the fundamental nature of the illustration, which visually tends toward a radial interpretation, but also contains the more fundamental, page-based interpretation. This is an optical illusion - of sorts. This is a hidden key to the VMs. <<This is the rabbit hole - the hidden path that opens the alternate world.>> Certainly the appearance of these characters is not as ostentatious as it might be. But for those who knew / who know / the details of Catholic Church history, there is only a very specific historical situation in which paired insignia of the blue-striped bendy pattern and the red hat of the cardinals' have ever come together. And despite other attempts at disguise, which can be shown to be innately flawed, there are also a number of independent structural confirmations of this ecclesiastical interpretation, culminating in the papelonny pun, based on heraldic canting.
The purpose of this construction is to establish historical grounding. And through that grounding to establish validity, which is then passed, through direct contact, as it is drawn in the White Aries illustration, to the Stolfi's 'start here' markers (patterned boxes), and to the circular bands of text thus designated. No other text in the VMs is marked out by such rigorously designed, carefully concealed, historically and traditionally validated indicators. But why???