Discussion of the Konstellations

[Koen G]

You know, Koen, all these possible double and triple meanings and the many roundels/wheels in the VMS remind me of the diagrams of Ramon Llull.

Lull developed the art of encapsulating information for teaching and for recall at a later time. Llull mostly created these diagrams in the context of teaching religion and scripture, but the general idea of "mnemonic charts" was very popular at the time and spread in various ways through scholarly circles.

If one is not familiar with the content of Llull charts, they seem very cryptic, but that was not their intention. It was assumed that you learned the basic concepts illustrated in the chart and then, when you come back to it, even if it were heavily abbreviated and seemingly obscure, it would nevertheless provide a memory jog for the information it encoded.

Yes! Something like this is precisely what I mean. Finally someone understands me
The images in Q13a (and probably many other folios) can only be analyzed and explained as a synthesis of consistent layers. I'm afraid that to many readers this seems trivial and a bit random, but quite some effort must have gone into it. It's like writing a poem that can be read as one thing in English, and another in French. It won't look like English and it won't look like French, but if you understand the techniques and rules used, you can filter out both.

I can think of two reasons to do this. One is to hide information. But I don't think the kind of information is included here that needed hiding. 
The second, like you say, is to help the memory. We often underestimate the extent to which people used to understand the memory so much better than we do now. They knew what the memory likes.

The memory does not like a list of random, seemingly unconnected stuff like a list of constellations. The memory does like stories. It also likes remarkable, somewhat humorous images. This is exactly what memory experts today recommend, for example when you need to remember a list of names. You come up with a funny mental picture for each name and place them into some kind of overarching structure like a mental building. This activates areas where our memory excels: if the visual and spatial components are activated, memory retention increases dramatically. Ancient and medieval people didn't have too many books, so they naturally relied on these advantages to remember amounts of material that would make every modern student jealous.

As you probably know, I favor a composition in an earlier period than the 15th century, but I share your philosophy of keeping options open. If it has to be a medieval composition rather than copy, then a person like Llull, given the right source material, is a good example.