u/Jaymz7777

This is a continuing project. What you see here is a hang on the wall "clock" based on Pagan icons, intended to be recognizable to Wiccans and Pagans in general. About 12" diameter. The "moon" travels around the "sun cross" one revolution per year, marking the eight Pagan/Wiccan seasons as indicated by the little symbols, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lughnasadh, Mabon, Samhain. The seasonal length of day/night is indicated by the light and dark eccentric circles, reflecting solstices, equinoxes, and quarter crossings. What you don't see is the clockworks behind the wood driven by a common clock motor, geared down, with magnetic coupling to the moon.

Are the symbol names and icons "aligned" as well as possible to avoid anachronisms and unnecessary obscurity? The older, the better. I don't think there is any "official" or authoritative preferred set of names and symbols, except maybe through the active Wiccan culture. If something better established predates Wiccan, then so be it. Not a popularity contest. Keeping it pure and simple, but somehow justified. This is version one. What would you change, add, or subtract in a future version?

https://preview.redd.it/eqrpok1fkguh1.png?width=1741&format=png&auto=webp&s=23f56b4888eb23406b1a39104efcac1122fdb817

Mars colonization appears to be a net negative resources proposition, from earth's point of view, with no potential benefit for Earthlings, a 100% sacrifice with zero tangible return for Earthlings. Nothing on Mars is worth the cost of bringing it home. That defines the proposition as voluntary or coerced sacrifices by present and future human generations, for the fleeting possibility of breeding more humans in a far away time and place.  Not a business plan, but a blind faith foray into the wilderness.  All for what?  Making more humans for the sake of making more humans?  A tautological fallacy and baseless leap of faith.  FAITH in the greed of exuberant tech-bros?

Sacrifice now, to create more people later.  God help them with their social problems.  Engineering the FUTURE of civilization as if we’ve demonstrated that skill?  Why?  Making a future for more people later instead of making people healthy and happy now?  Creating a power base for Palpatine?  So what about it assures that future people will be healthy and happy?  What part of it involves transcending the grievous human flaws of greed, hate, fear, lust, and pride?  Export human wickedness as before.  FAITH in what?

It is argued that the team sport of colonization will provide the critical raison d’être for the brightest to focus their minds on solving ecological and logistical crises that can be used on Earth.  What?  Because fixing earthly life and death problems is too mundane?  Geniuses need an artificial reason to solve existential crises?  Does that necessarily improve human life . . . something mankind has failed to do, as human flaws are still with us, as every new tool becomes the next weapon in the service of future human monsters?  Is there any theory to engineer the human psyche, to stop evil from being exported along with the wonderful far away distant future?

I have a conjecture, but then I checked and see it's been covered, so I'll share it anyway, along with the documented objections: Maybe the Voy was a practice specimen of student "copyists"? Scriptors and Illuminators were developing their copy skills, towards being certified for professional work. Was the VM a dissertation? I read that by the 1400s, professional copying had evolved out of monasteries, into urban strictly regulated commercial industries. There were craft guilds, apprenticeships, and Master examinations, and Guild Inscriptions where certified scriptors were registered for legal right to produce copies for profit. So the VM was a proof of skills, where forming a coherent document wasn't the point, but penmanship was? And the same with the illustrations? This would explain redundancies in the words, phrases, and illustrations, and the overall incoherence. Note that the students were probably not the ones who did the botanical field work, but were merely copying earlier illustration of plants they never actually saw? This would explain a drift in botanical fidelity. The salient objections are: A. It would be a prodigious waste of precious vellum, which is said to be extremely expensive, too much for practice, as students practiced on cheaper media., B. Lack of instructor annotations or corrections, C. Extremely high level of execution, not at student level. Another variant hypothesis is that the VM was a Workshop Sample Book to impress clients, a Master Scribe's Pattern Book (a quality and technique standard). This helps justify the cost of vellum. Am I the only one who sees the illustrations as being at a more student level than the script. I don't know anything . . . just dabbling.

https://preview.redd.it/xrh655tu14ph1.png?width=1009&format=png&auto=webp&s=a325a59d34bb0a2c206f86f4c04060f2b95d3545

Dr. Seuss, is that you? This is bizarre! Where can we find what others have said about this illustration? Before trying to conjecture what is going on here, l invite you all to join me and take inventory of the palpable. What do you see? From bottom to top, here is what I see:

APPARENT:

• Two adjoining hollow tree stumps, clearly rooted into the ground
• Pregnant Girl #1 standing or seated inside the Left stump
• Right stump with massive reservoir (supply?) of "green stuff"
• Girl #1 with hand in green stuff, either "putting" it or "taking" it in handfuls, or just stirring?
• Around the base of stumps, a rippling round puddle of water, with descending wavy vertical flow lines descending into dots, suggestive of percolation into the soil. Or maybe a continuing flow of water from the perimeter of the puddle? The puddle has a distinctly scalloped edge.
• The rippled puddle could be a large "shelf fungus"
• Dotted line ring around perimeter of stump openings, of unknown meaning
• An inclined "slide" or flume leading upwards from rim of Left stump, to a mysterious billowing (or scaly) object.
• Line of dots running midway along flume suggests a flow of liquid, or small objects
• Billowy object connects to a curved hornlike series of three nested funnels
• The top funnel opens to atmosphere, and has another pregnant Girl #2, standing in the open funnel, busy at work
• Girl #2 appears to be "more" pregnant than Girl #1, and somewhat more "robust". She also has a bit of sanguinity in her facial affect
• Both girls have long braided hair
• The rim of the open funnel transitions into a half-pipe, running up to a tubular manifold, having salient long scaly ridges, suggestive of reptilian or dragon skin
• Using both hands, Girl #2 is taking material from, or putting material into two openings in the termini of two branches of the manifold
• Three additional openings in the manifold are connected to the main trunk via short stems. These ports have radial streaks suggestive of outward fluid flow (or sound?), indicting the manifold is somehow pressurized or supplied with fluid material. The wavy streaks terminate in dotted lines, suggesting a spray of atomized droplets
• The manifold is topologically impossible, like an M.C. Escher illusion, as the half-pipe can't really connect to the hollow cylinder of a tubular manifold, as it does so incoherently.

UNRESOLVED:

• The manifold appears to be pressurized with a supply of fluid, but without any obvious source
• If Girl #2 is putting or taking material, where is it coming from or going to?
• Fluid may be flowing into the open funnel, but coming from what supply?
• If Girl #1 is putting or taking green stuff, where is it going to or coming from?
• What is the green stuff?
• What supplies the rippling puddle with fluid?
• Why is the nested funnel horn connected to a mysterious billowing object?
• What is the purpose of the manifold, and why does it have alligator skin?
• Of course, what is going on here? Not a clue!