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Figure 5 – uploaded by Peter J Forshaw
Figure 5 Image of Venus. Picatrix, Biblioteka Jagiellonska, f. 191”. That is the description that we get in the Latin instructions in that place in the manu- script that includes the illustration (f. 191"). Elsewhere in the text, though, we learn hat the comb that Venus is holding should resemble a tablet on which the following Arabic numbers Ao ) oA (851585) should be written. What is immediately obvious, when we compare these instructions with those in the Arabic Ghayat, is that the artist has written these numbers back to front (0 Ao \ oA — 585158).'™ Similarly, with one of he talismans of Mercury, we have the initial description of Mercury as a man sitting on a chair, who should have a cockerel on his head, a torch in his left hand, his feet ike those of an eagle, and certain signs (signa) should be drawn beneath his feet.1% We have to look elsewhere, however, to discover what these signs look like.1°° As the Polish scribe has not copied this text, the aspiring magus will look in vain.
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