Water metaphor

God spoke to Moses from the burning bush. Accordingly, the Hebrew script used to record His words is very often depicted as a language of fire. It introduces a symbolism that is very important in Jewish esotericism. The Hebrew script is made of FIRE.

In Islam, a different symbolism prevails. Instead, the Islamic revelation is regularly depicted as and compared to rain. The idea is that God sends revelation from heaven just as He nourishes the earth with rain. Accordingly, in Koranic calligraphy, the text of the divine revelation is very often depicted as being encased in CLOUDS. The divine text is understood as a type of precipitation. The Arabic script is compared to WATER.

These are basic orders of symbolism found throughout the Jewish and Islamic traditions respectively. They are commonplace. The water symbolism in Islam - the rivers of paradise etc - is ubiquitous, and the script itself is part of it. It is a Biblical symbolism too, of course, but Hebrew is not (routinely) depicted as water; more properly it is fire. And vice versa for Arabic which is cursive and flows like running water.

On page f70r1 of the Voynich manuscript we have this intriguing configuration of glyphs:

This is significant because it appears to show the glyphs of the Voynich alphabet (glyph set) in some extra-linguistic manner. It is the only place in the work where this occurs.

What seems to be happening is that the glyphs are emerging out of - and then back into - a circle (or arc) of dot points. First there is a series of the letter [o] and then several other letters appear in an apparently random sequence, which then trails back into the series of dots.

What does this depict? And what does it tell us about the Voynich glyphs? What are they being used as here?

One interpretation is that the dot points depict astronomical degrees - the 360 degrees of the zodiac (or any celestial circle). In this case, we would have a strong suggestion that the glyphs are being understood as astronomical coordinates in some way. Glyphs = degrees. Or perhaps, glyphs = stars.

But the context of this page suggests otherwise. It is not an astronomical page. It is, rather, meteorological. It clearly depicts clouds and rain, apparently set out as a cycle. In that case, the analogy being depicted must surely be meteorological, and most likely it is an analogy with rain. That is, the glyphs are precipitating. The text is a condensation. There is an analogy of text = water.

This is not to suggest direct Islamic (Arabic) influence, although it is a distinctively Islamo-Arabic analogy, and not just in the Koran which is simply the prototype for all Arabic literature.

Regardless, I take it as evidence that the text is - in some way - being compared to rain and water. A textual water metaphor is explicit on page 70r1.

Or is it, rather, that the outer ring (arc) on this page depicts the heavens that are above the clouds? This is a possible reading. In that case, what is being depicted is the precipitation of LIGHT (star light) into rain via the clouds. In traditional (folk) cosmologies there is the idea that star light (and celestial light generally) is deposited in the clouds (often being compared to seeds) which then transmutes into rain. Light transmutes, condenses, into rain. This is perhaps a fuller account of what is being depicted on this page of the manuscript.

R.B.