f67v2 - Isidore of Seville
Bluetoes101 > 31-07-2025, 11:45 PM
This seems to make sense to me, however, I know nothing about this stuff at all so offer it to those who do.
It seemed to me once you think of the VM diagram from a "what's up?" perspective, it makes sense (given the below).
That is to say we are looking up at the sky at what we can see and can't see. It's about as simple as I've found a VM image to be, so undoubtedly it is incorrect.
My understanding is that by 14XX this was still applicable knowledge to most who were not an astrologer.
"Isidore of Seville".
From - "The cosmos and its parts"
((c. 560–636) and translated).
"Portals"
The sky has two portals: the East and the West, for the sun
enters through one portal and withdraws through the
other.
"Unknown paths beyond east/west portals"
lii. The path of the sun (De itinere solis) The sun, when
it rises, holds a path through the south. Afterward, it
goes to the west and plunges itself into the Ocean, and it
travels unknown paths under the earth, and once again
runs back to the east
"Air and then Sky (above)"
Sometimes the word ‘sky’ is used for the air, where
winds and clouds and storms and whirlwinds arise.
Lucretius (cf. On the Nature of Things 4.133):
The sky (caelum), which is called air (aer).
And the Psalm (78:2; 103:12, Vulgate) refers to “fowls of
the sky (caelum),” when it is clear that birds fly in the air;
out of habit we also call this air, ‘sky.’ Thus when we ask
whether it is fair or overcast we sometimes say, “How is
the air?” and sometimes “How is the sky?”
"Sky is where the sun and moon are"
God embellished the heaven and
filled it with bright light – that is, he adorned it with the
sun and the gleaming orb of the moon, and the glorious
constellations of glittering stars. [In a different way, it
is named from engraving (caelare) the superior bodies.]
2. It is called
L in Greek, after the term QY ,
that is, ‘seeing,’ because the air is transparent and clearer
for seeing. In Sacred Scripture the sky is called the firmament (firmamentum), because it is secured (firmare) by
the course of the stars and by fixed and immutable laws.
"the stars are in the ether"
The ether
(aether) is the place where the stars are, and signifies
that fire which is separated high above from the entire
world. Of course, ether is itself an element, but aethra
(i.e. another word for ether) is the radiance of ether;
it is a Greek word. 2. The sphere (sphaera) of the sky
is so named because it has a round shape in appearance. But anything of such a shape is called a sphaera
by the Greeks from its roundness, such as the balls that
children play with.
*It's not entirely certain what the firmament means in this comment (to me), so I opted for "The ether" which seemed very clear, but I suspect they mean much in the same.