Llullian formulae

At least three things might mislead us about the Voynich script and language:

The first is that it largely consists of glyphs that appear as LOWER CASE letters in other writing systems, primarily Latin. It is a commonplace to say that the Voynich script contains Latin letters – this is true, but they are lower case letters. None of the upper case Latin letters (A,B,C) are included. The Voynich script is lower case.

The second, related, factor is that the Voynich script has been intentionally designed as an homogenous free-flowing script. Disparate elements – like the distinction between numbers and letters – may be obscured by this. The script is clearly designed, and it seems designed for ease of writing and clarity. Lower case letters can be written cursively whereas upper case letters must be printed and are not free-flowing. Disparate elements (numbers?, foreign letters?, abbreviation marks? etc.) have been gathered into a single system: this might make them seem more all-of-a-piece and language-like than they are.

The third factor is the habit in modern transcriptions (EVA especially) of rendering all glyphs as letters. This is only done for convenience, of course, but it nevertheless creates what might be a false impression. For a start, and most greviously, in EVA at least, glyphs that are NUMERALS in other scripts are rendered as letters of an alphabet. Similarly, it is assumed the ‘gallows’ characters are letters (p,k,t,f) rather than signifying something else.

In fact, the Voynich glyph sets consists of characters that can be identified variously as:

*Lower case Latin and/or Greek letters
*Latin/Greek abbreviations
*Arabic numerals
*Ornamental ascenders, pilcrows etc.

And yet, in transcriptions, we render all of these as letters. Even if only for convenience, it is misleading. It leads us to think the Voynich text is much more language-like than it is. Indeed, all of these factors may conspire to make the text seem more language-like to the eye than it is in reality. This may or may not be a deliberate effect.

* * *

Now, let us suppose the Voynich language is made up of a systematic lexicon of formulae created by an ensemble of volvelles from some version of Ramon Llull’s Ars Magna.

These volvelles, however arranged, might create series of letters, numbers and symbols such as:

D G L /Fire 9 /E F D

This is a Llullian formula where the letters and signs represent ideas and categories of ideas, and its interpretation is the whole of Llull’s “Art”. Each formula typically consists of three parts, three containers or compartments, into which are placed the various combinations of the letter wheels, either as single letters or as bigraphs according to Llullian combinatorics.

Each Voynich word (vord) is one such tripartite formula.

But to write such formulae out is clunky. So let us suppose our author devised a script that made it much easier or more fluent to record lists and sets of such formulae.

For a start, whereas Llull used upper case Latin letters, here our author uses a set of lower case letters so selected that they are clear and easy to write. And secondly, the non-letter components of Llull’s system (numbers, elements etc.) have been rendered as letter-like symbols that fit into the flow of the script.

So, instead of a string like: D G L /Fire 9 /E F D,

it becomes something like the string: dglkyefd.

When this is rendered into the Voynich script:

*It looks like a word
*The distinction between letters, symbols and numbers is obscured.

That is, we don’t recognize them as Llullian strings (formulae) because the author has invented a script specifically to render Llullian strings (formulae) in an easy, fluent, lower case, manner. In this way the strings become very word-like (vords).

In short, Llull used upper case Latin letters to construct the formulae of his Ars Magna, along with numbers and other symbols. In the Voynich manuscript we find a new streamlined system for rendering such formulae where, primarily, a set of lower case letters is used instead of Llull's upper case letters.

This is what we find in the Voynich manuscript: strings of glyphs separated by spaces such that they look like words in a flowing language but when we examine them we find they have strict, almost mechanical internal structure, i.e they are much more like artificial formulae created by procedural generation than they are natural words.

The upshot here is: The Voynich text is in a new, crafted script because the plaintext (Llullian formulae) was clunky and unhomogenous and difficult to write.

R. B.