Rosettes foldout: cardinal directions?

[Searcher]

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.

They write that the Asclepius was known in Europe before the Corpus Hermeticum, I'm not sure about the Poimandres, but maybe the East was familiar with its fragments. Anyway, we can begin with Greek philosophers, including Plato, Proclus, Plotinus, etc.
I'd consider interesting the text of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. survived in fragments from works of later Greek philosophers, although it is rather about fire then water.
2.
Theurgists assert that he is a God, and celebrate him as both older and younger, as a circulating and eternal God, as understanding the whole number of all things moved in the world, and moreover infinite through his power and of a spiral form.   (Proc. in Tim. 244.—Tay.)
3.
The mundane god, eternal, boundless,
Young and old, of a spiral form.

It is possible to find more when one wishes and has time. 
In general, I have an impression that the author of the VMs wanted to reflect motion in his illustrations, including the nymphs with their poses and directions (zodiac section, Quire 13) and, of course, the cosmological section and the Rosettes. I think he / she got this well, and, on some degree, it is also unique.

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.

Alternative history or something else?