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Dragons, Dogs & Amadillos?
- Dragons, Dogs & Amadillos?
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RE: Dragons, Dogs & Amadillos?
Koen G > 24-11-2025, 02:16 PM
Very good example. Note also the full side view of the face which is extremely rare for VM nymphs. At the very least it seems like they copied this figure from a source that showed a pious soul or resurrected person (both usually nude). -
RE: Dragons, Dogs & Amadillos?
Bernd > 24-11-2025, 03:33 PM
The big question is - did the VM artist use these images in a similar context, or did he merely copy something he found interesting or that served his purposes, but used them for something completely different? Think of today's stock images or memes. Often they end up being used completely out of context. I'd imagine - from my own experience at least - that an untrained artist would be much more comfortable adapting existing material than drawing freely.
And given all the potential sources we have identified so far, I keep wondering if the ultimate source for the VM was rather the image collection of a workshop than a library. -
RE: Dragons, Dogs & Amadillos?
Bluetoes101 > 24-11-2025, 05:16 PM
I think the odds of no one finding exact matches to anything (although the caveat of we don't have many of all the manuscripts ever made) probably points to them not copying directly, at least from well known source material. If it was some professional outfit pumping out manuscripts I can only imagine asking them to produce something that was not using the material they had used previously would get a very expensive reply.
On the creature. This is obviously not the same thing, but look where the wool goes up to on the face it continues from the ear line to near the chin (its a bit faint, but you can see the loops if you look close). Where it stops at the back leg. The wispy tail. How the back woolly leg goes into the body (upper part). The hooves look like 3 bumps in places. I have better examples for this where a lamb with horns has front hooves and back "paws", it seems quite common. In fact you could remove the lambs horns and it would be a dog with weird front paws.
With all that being said, I still have no idea what it is
, just that a not very well drawn sheep like thing, doesn't seem too crazy.
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RE: Dragons, Dogs & Amadillos?
Koen G > 24-11-2025, 05:38 PM
Did you notice the lamb you posted has 5 legs?
About the tail of the VM creature, I used to think that it must be aquatic, because it's split like the tail of a fish. This would also include aquatic mammals, like the ever-unfortunate You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. But if we look at VM-internal indications, we see that they also use this split for the tuft at the end of a tail, like for example in both bulls. For a sheep's tail, it looks quite long compared to the body, though it's hard to see what's going on with those faded lines... -
RE: Dragons, Dogs & Amadillos?
Bluetoes101 > 24-11-2025, 06:41 PM
I'm hoping it is a ruffle in a coat (Edit - that "Beaver"! hahaha)
I guess the tail thing might lead to my latest area of research.
The beast of the earth. "two horns like a lamb", and speaking "like a dragon".
This description seems to have spawned all manner of interpretations, 2 below. But, essentially I think people see lamb, horn, dragon, scales, wool, beast, dog, wolf.. because its a made up creature with a bunch of it in mind. The False prophet (The beast of the earth = The False prophet) - "beware the wolf in sheep's clothing", etc. I think it might be looking down in a "I am doing this" way, and not curled up.
Here is an image of him with a long tail, back paws - the nebuly line, and rain "with the ability to perform great signs, even making fire come down out of Heaven."
I'm considering if maybe "horns+lamb+beast+dragon looking down from the heavens, raining down" was the goal, and this is what we ended up with.
Here's a 1511 Dürer doing
"The beast with the lamb's horns" - raining down fire from the heavens
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RE: Dragons, Dogs & Amadillos?
asteckley > 24-11-2025, 07:15 PM
I haven't reviewed every post in detail here, so sorry if this is repetitive but...
Even though there are some vary good arguments here for non-armadillo interpretations, it seems to me that the head of the drawing—the snout and the ears/horns—is the hardest part to square with those alternatives. And not simply because they look like an armadillo's or because don't look like some other proposal.
When someone draws a particular animal (or clearly intends one), they usually don’t botch the very features that make that animal recognizable and that distinguish it from other creatures. Even a crude or childlike giraffe will have a long neck; an elephant won’t be given a beak instead of a trunk. The most distinctive traits are the ones artists tend to preserve, not reinvent.
So a key question is: what are the distinguishing features of an armadillo (or any proposed animal -- a pangolin, a sheep, an aquatic animal, or even a mythical creature)? Whatever those “signal” features are, they’re the ones an artist is least likely to take major license with. Even if the targeted animal is a mythical chimera, then the hybridization of two creatures becomes the distinguishing feature and so the combination itself --displaying the joining of two clearly different animals --tends to be a prominent feature in the drawing. There doesn't seem to be any emphasis in this drawing of "this body" is joined to "that head" and how the two are suggesting different source creatures .
For an armadillo (and I’m not arguing for that reading in particular), the tail isn’t especially diagnostic, so a “wrong” tail doesn’t tell us much. (Many adults would probably not even recall just what an armadillo's tail should look like.) The more defining traits of an armadillo are the scaly/segmented armor, the rounded “ball-ish” body, and especially the head—most notably the pointed snout. If you asked any child to draw an armadillo, those are the features you’d expect to see in their drawing, assuming they had any concept of one.
I can imagine the scales being misread; they could very plausibly be intended as wool or some other texture given all the other examples of that. But the combination of a pointed snout with those sharp, upright ears doesn’t feel like a generic animal "default". That head appears to be part of the distinguishing elements chosen by the artist. That’s why it’s harder for me to believe the artist would choose that specific set of features to partner with the body texture (whether that be scales or wool) if they were really aiming at most of the other non-armadillo options. -
RE: Dragons, Dogs & Amadillos?
Koen G > 24-11-2025, 07:25 PM
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RE: Dragons, Dogs & Amadillos?
Bluetoes101 > 24-11-2025, 07:30 PM
For me the main issue is everything else, but the "armadillo"
The image seems to be saying "raining from the heavens" - Good or bad
I don't know how an armadillo could insert into something like this, if we consider the rest
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RE: Dragons, Dogs & Amadillos?
R. Sale > 24-11-2025, 10:03 PM
Nice illustrations, in the second one there is clearly a nenuly line basis for an elaborated cloud band used as a cosmic boundary in the shape of a vesica piscis. With a lamb inside besides. No blood present. Don't snip that part off.
It's a three-part puzzle. It's a lock with three tumblers. It won't open otherwise.
The other thing is to see how much visual difference exists between different examples of the same artistic element or structure.
This same sort of visual difference is what is surely to be seen in several VMs illustrations. And examples show where this concept of visual differentiation was actively used by the VMs artist(s). Too what end? we must look more closely.
I've always seen the VMs critter with its apparent snout almost touching its apparent foreleg. Now I wonder if this is Pareidolia. Looking at the images of Gideon and the fleece. So many are headless. Is the VMs fleece 'ambiguously' headless? That dot looks like an eye. Has the "looks like" investigation been foiled again? It's interpretation based on structure, but we don't know what structure to interpret until we recognize the relevant historical structure - event, ideology.
=
Does Jonah ever show up with four companions? That is the structure of the mermaid illustration in Harley 334. It could be Jonah with implants, but I don't think so. The Berry (Valois) connection to Melusine was strong. -
RE: Dragons, Dogs & Amadillos?
Antonio García Jiménez > 25-11-2025, 09:40 AM
Indeed, there is a phenomenon of pareidolia. Who hasn't ever seen a human or animal figure when looking at a cloud? In the interpretation of this iconographic element there is a bias in perception, or an excess of imagination. How can there be a religious image in this if there are hardly any religious symbols in the more than 200 pages of the book?
I believe that the most useful thing for a correct interpretation is to look for images in the same section or on cosmological pages of the VM