Page - 58 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/01

58 | Alisha Meininghaus www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/1, 45–65 in different contexts? Composition, as well as content, could suggest mean- ing.34 The woodcuts of the zodiac signs which were available anyway were then also used for amulets, for the realm of birth already had an astrological connota- tion marked by illustrations of the zodiac signs on Torah binders. It seems likely that only Virgo and Sagittarius were used because they show anthropomorphic figures that could pick up on the tradition of depicting the bride and the man with a book, perhaps the primary tradition of illustrating these amulets. Since the amulets with the bride and the man with a book contain neither a year of production nor a reference to the printing house, the order in which they were printed and by whom cannot be established. Nevertheless, at least one amulet of this type can be dated relatively reliably to 1690 and located to Sulzbach (see figs. 1a and b).35 This version would then be very old compared to the presumed dating of the other amulets. The whole tradition of illustration of the bride and the man with the book may then be quite old and perhaps even the original form of illustration for amulets. Ac- cordingly, the zodiac signs can be understood as imitations of this tradition. The fact that the Gemini and the Aquarius were not used although they too are anthropomorphic can be explained by the similarity of the Virgo with the plant to the bride with the wreath. Besides, the Sagittarius with his bow would possibly fit better to the apotropaic function of the amulet than would the Aquarius. Astro-Medical References: From the Virgo to the “Zodiac Man” Another possible and not necessarily competing explanation for the choice of Virgo and Sagittarius draws on an astrological-medical attribution for the il- lustrations. The context here is the tradition of images of a naked man whose 34 Franklin 2019, 216. 35 This is H61 WAGENSEIL. VK 209 b, Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg, Wagenseil Library. The Wagenseil Library consists of prints collected by Johann Christoph Wagenseil (1633–1705). After his death, the collection was sold by his heirs to the University of Altorf in 1708 and then given to the University Library of Erlangen. Although it is no longer possible to reconstruct how Wagenseil got hold of the amulet, the localization to Sulzbach and the dating to 1690 seem realistic. In any case, the print was produced before 1708, when the collection was sold, as no works were added to the collection.