18-01-2025, 02:07 PM
(18-01-2025, 01:23 PM)dashstofsk wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If the drawings shouldn't be taken literally then why have them? Why waste expensive calfskin vellum?
Also, I'm not saying they are meaningless. It's quite possible that they are very relevant and important, one just needs to interpret them in a certain way, explained in the text.
If this manuscript has something to do with alchemy after all, then the plants could be disguised schematics or mnemonics for various chemical reactions. For example, leaves and flowers could signify various ingredients and their proportions (say, 4 to 13 to 5, as you go down the branches towards the root) and roots specify the way to process the ingredients (e.g., mix, shake, boil, pulverize, etc). This is just one possibility.