I personally think it is:
ES
NW
though I base N and S on where I think E and W is.
And it is interesting that Searcher mentions the Hermeticum because that's where I derived this idea (and Searcher, we can't discount extant copies of the Poimandres before Ficino's translations; there were hundreds of different tracts around of different Hermetica, and even some suggestive passages that Roger Bacon had a copy - which is how I ended up reading Bacon!)
But the Hermeticum is based on Aristotle, other Greeks, gnosticism, Egyptian and Judaism, maybe even early Christianity, in its creation account, so all these ideas can be found elsewhere.
So bear with my vision of the Rosette page for a second. The middle circle is the cosmos, including the heavens and earth, the seen and the unseen. The outer circles are the spheres of the cosmos, but not planetary (which are included in the top sphere only). They are details of the cosmos, particularly of earth, and some part of their indinvidual spheres can be found in the middle sphere.
So wipe out all the smaller spheres. They are details only. You're left with the Cosmos centre and the marginalia. And don't as yet include marginalia like the T-O earth, or the cloud, that is actually connected to the smaller spheres.
What do you have: a path leading off the page, a sun near it, a sun opposite the first spewing forth two different elements above a striated mound, and a symbol that could be a compass, or an alchemy symbol, but despite the equal arms on first sight appears to be a clock.
God/Invisible Prime Mover (the path leading to the unseen), Time/Aion/Eternity (the clock), Light (the risen sun), Darkness (the setting sun), but with air and fire spewing forth, the first two elements to emerge from Matter/Chaos/Nature (the striated mound) by the Word of God.
This is the beginning of the Hermetic creation myth.
If you then turn the rosettes page sideways, and look at the pathe, you see how air and fire rise to make the stars, and water and earth fall to make the Earth, the TO map. This is the second part of the Hermetic creation myth.
And so on.
You might wonder why a setting sun instead of a moon was used to symbolize darkness and the answer is the moon didn't exist. Neither did the sun, but in the corpus, it is used to symbolize God's actual presence.
That's why I believe in the E-S-W- N orientation.
ES
NW
though I base N and S on where I think E and W is.
And it is interesting that Searcher mentions the Hermeticum because that's where I derived this idea (and Searcher, we can't discount extant copies of the Poimandres before Ficino's translations; there were hundreds of different tracts around of different Hermetica, and even some suggestive passages that Roger Bacon had a copy - which is how I ended up reading Bacon!)
But the Hermeticum is based on Aristotle, other Greeks, gnosticism, Egyptian and Judaism, maybe even early Christianity, in its creation account, so all these ideas can be found elsewhere.
So bear with my vision of the Rosette page for a second. The middle circle is the cosmos, including the heavens and earth, the seen and the unseen. The outer circles are the spheres of the cosmos, but not planetary (which are included in the top sphere only). They are details of the cosmos, particularly of earth, and some part of their indinvidual spheres can be found in the middle sphere.
So wipe out all the smaller spheres. They are details only. You're left with the Cosmos centre and the marginalia. And don't as yet include marginalia like the T-O earth, or the cloud, that is actually connected to the smaller spheres.
What do you have: a path leading off the page, a sun near it, a sun opposite the first spewing forth two different elements above a striated mound, and a symbol that could be a compass, or an alchemy symbol, but despite the equal arms on first sight appears to be a clock.
God/Invisible Prime Mover (the path leading to the unseen), Time/Aion/Eternity (the clock), Light (the risen sun), Darkness (the setting sun), but with air and fire spewing forth, the first two elements to emerge from Matter/Chaos/Nature (the striated mound) by the Word of God.
This is the beginning of the Hermetic creation myth.
If you then turn the rosettes page sideways, and look at the pathe, you see how air and fire rise to make the stars, and water and earth fall to make the Earth, the TO map. This is the second part of the Hermetic creation myth.
And so on.
You might wonder why a setting sun instead of a moon was used to symbolize darkness and the answer is the moon didn't exist. Neither did the sun, but in the corpus, it is used to symbolize God's actual presence.
That's why I believe in the E-S-W- N orientation.