(03-11-2016, 03:07 AM)Diane wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Witchmountain says:
Quote:If these are the five elements, what is coming out of each pipe (from left to right)?
It actually reads right to left:
Smoke, Fire, Wind, Water, Darkness.
Yes, there are several different systems for describing basic "elements" (some that haven't even been mentioned yet) but which ones they are should probably be investigated in relation to other representations in the VMS. There's a fair degree of consistency in the way the plants are presented, in the way the nymphs are presented and in the way the pools are presented. There are differences, of course, but in general, one can recognize a VMS drawing when placed alongside others.
If the illustrator maintained this consistency on this page, then perhaps depictions of "elements" (regardless of which system was used) are referenced elsewhere.
So what other clues are there?
The "zoomer" (that's what I call a flying loge) under the female most closely resembles the output from the pipe second from the left which, to me, is the one that most closely resembles water (darker blue waves and spray or steam). Water is traditionally associated with females in many cultures.
The zoomer under the male most closely resembles the output of the pipe on the right, which has less blue and is less "thick" than the second-to-left. Male is usually associated with fire, earth, hard things, etc. I'll reserve judgment on what it represents since it doesn't look like smoke to me (if any are smoke, the far left one looks most like smoke to me) and it doesn't quite look like earth either (or like black or yellow bile). I'm not sure what it is. I would almost want to label it steam since it looks vapory with a trace of blue.
The male zoomer also resembles the textures flowing downward on the lower left, under the darker blue wavy shapes that look like water.
And, of course, there are parallels to most of these on other pages that could be discussed pretty extensively.
If the whole page were intended to be alchemical rather than biological, I would suspect the various pipes of representing heat, water, vapor, and other common products and processes associated with distillation. The "loge" second from the bottom on the left even resembles a handcrafted brass funnel.
It's interesting to note that the total number of "pipes" on the upper diagram is seven (the number associated with the solar system at the time). Red could be sun, water could be moon, mercury could be the center one, which is often associated with ether or spirit, Terra is ground/earth, man and woman are Mars and Venus, and the two remaining are Jupiter and Saturn. It's a stretch, the correspondence of biological-looking structures with the solar system is not a natural association (and the sequence is wrong) but until the diagram is better understood, I like keeping alternatives on the table.