Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS

[Barbrey]

The bathing nymphs in Q13 especially in f84 are far too numerous to mean something practical in recipes, what could they mean in theory? The multiplication process?

In general, I would assume that some kind of process is taking place in the pools. The nymphs individually embody the substances and as a group the sequence. On You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , for example, it looks as if a transformation from red to blue to yellow is taking place (whatever that may mean). The direction is determined by the direction in which the nymphs are looking. There is also a pile of yellow "balls" on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on the left at the edge of the pool. This may or may not be coincidence.

I find You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. particularly interesting because it has features that repeat on other pages. For instance:

Finials:  The finials on top of canopies are in the shapes of a bulbous cross, and for lack of a better descriptor, a penis. The bulbous cross shape can be found on the Rosettes page atop temples/medicine bottles, but it’s also found paired with the penis shape on the canopies on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. if you look closely. We might be looking at male/female principles, a strong contender amongst others, of course. 

Barrel sequence with red: Also found bottom of f80v. Somehow both seem to be connected to “resurrection” (particularly, in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. case, if you buy Koen’s Callisto interpretation, which I do). 

Pool edge pattern: The first pool has a surrounding edge pattern identical to the funnel in the bottom right rosettes sphere in the Rosettes page. I have my own schema for the rosettes - that sphere I identified with Mineralis. But I’ll leave that for now as I don’t want to explain the schema, it’s too complicated. 

I have my own interpretation of this page but it’s all very tentative and I am still lacking alchemical detail to make it more convincing.But basically I think it’s the “projection” stage, this time the more theoretical model, where the red powder of the stone is processed, added to a “mineral bath” that holds deficient metals like lead, tin, etc., resulting in the transmutation to gold.