Lunar mansions... yet again.
Diane > 25-03-2018, 11:09 AM
Even at Voynich ninja, a search on 'lunar mansions' will turn up a long list of posts.
I've been explaining that they are not 'magical' by definition... and explaining their use as an earlier and persistent alternative (beyond Europe) for astronomical and geographic co-ordinates.
I've talked about their use in navigation, as explained by the fifteenth-century master of the Indian Ocean routes, Ibn Majid. I've quoted Sergeant and others on the Yemeni agricultural calendars which name the months in that way.
I - and doubtless others - have noted that they name the lunar months of the Islamic calendar, and that every muezzin would have known them and the stars marking each.
It is therefore a little disappointing to notice that the older idea that any mention of the manzil must be 'magical' is being pursued again, but the bright side is that in a passage translated recently by Marco Ponzi there are two clear indications that the Latin material has come from Islamic Spain, and that its basic attitudes are compatible with the period when Ibn Arabi wrote his 'Bezels of Wisdom' and 'Holy Names..'
I've also spoken about these works before, in explaining how the system of lunar mansions was employed in much the way the Psalter was in earlier Latin Europe: to provide the basic structure upon with additional sets of information were attached in one variation of aids to recall.
Anyway, the clues in Ponzi's translation are these:
... oh, sorry. I can't be more precise, or quote the original passages because Marco Ponzi doesn't wish me to read what he writes, and has now (since I read the post first) blocked my ability to read it. Things the non-conservative are not meant to read, apparently.
Hardly conducive to scholarly exchange, improved understanding or reasonable debate but there you go.
I don't quite see the sense of it, frankly, because any spammer could surely just get a new email address, use someone else's computer or employ some similar dishonesty if they wished.
If they cared enough.