The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[eggyk]

Indeed, I grant that Alfonso could have been the source for the 12x30 scheme.  (The Atrolabium however is too late,  after 1480.)

But if the VMS Author got his Zodiac scheme from Alfonso, why did he think it was OK to split Aries and Taurus into two 15-thing parts?  

Well, both seem to match in the content they are depicting (see the comparison I made in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., which suggests the underlying content on which both were based was present at the time of the VMS being made. 

The reason why they could be split without issue is likely the same reason why the author of astrolabium planum felt that he could split it into 30 individual squares. The relevant subjects were the figures surrounding the zodiac symbol, not the zodiac symbol itself. So perhaps he wished to use the given space more cleanly, or thought it looked nice, or perhaps he drew the circles too small and decided to split them in 2. Perhaps the specific symbols were of more importance to the author or to the customer(s) using the book (For example, the man was born during taurus, and his wife in aries) so were given relatively more importance. I don't know. 

But the specific reason doesn't really matter, because this specific content is unaffected by the split. 

The same question could be asked for any possible source, including eastern astrology. And i'm sure the same answers apply: author preference, mistakes etc