We can follow the habits and frequencies of the various glyphs in the Voynich text and determine their preferred sequences. [q] is almost always followed by [o], for example. [o] is most often followed by [k] and [k] by [ee], and so on.
By this means we arrive at a default vord, QOKEEDY. This is like the line of least resistance. The natural flow of the glyph combinations is towards the word QOKEEDY.
We can use QOKEEDY, therefore, as a vord paradigm or template and compare all Voynich words to the default.
We find that a great many vords fit comfortably into such a template, comforming to the tripartite structure of the default QO – KEE – DY.
This confirms many studies that identify vords as having a basic three-part structure of prefix, core and suffix.
Nevertheless, there are also many vords that do not fit the template and even more that might fit, but not comfortably.
Very quickly we have to start adding exceptions and extra rules. It is not a simple case of all vords being based upon and moving towards the default. It is clearly more complex than that.
* * *
The problem arises because we are using global statistics. Taking the document as a whole, the glyphs will move to the default QOKEEDY. But, looking closer, this is not true of all sections of the document.
QOKEEDY, we find, is the default word of the Currier B text, but not of the Currier A text, the two "dialects" found in the manuscript. But since there is a lot more of the B text than the A, QOKEEDY prevails as the default overall.
If we take just the A text, a different default emerges: CHOLDAIIN. In the A text sections of the work the glyphs will naturally tend towards this default.
CHOLDAIIN, therefore, can be used as a second paradigm or template and all Voynich words can be compared to it.
Now we find that a big class of vords that did not fit the QOKEEDY paradigm comfortably, or without extra rules, fit this alternative paradigm without trouble.
Many glyph transformations that were difficult to explain in the QOKEEDY paradigm are easily and naturally accomplished in the CHOLDAIIN paradigm.
But also, we realise that there is a very big class of vords that are best understood as a combination of the two paradigms, that seem pulled in both directions. We find that vords are combinations of glyphs and elements from both paradigms.
We might think of the text as like two streams that meet, overlap and intermingle. Or we can think of it as a tension between two poles, two teloi.
This is the difference between text A and text B. In what is called ‘Currier A’ the CHOLDAIIN paradigm dominates. In so-called ‘Currier B’ the QOKEEDY text dominates.
But there is no pure “Currier A” or “Currier B”. We find an intermingling throughout, but there are different concentrations of the two streams in different areas of the text.
* * *
There is a strong atmosphere of COMBINATORICS in the Voynich text. What we see is the interplay of these two paradigms and the permutations caused by their meeting and interweaving.
We have, then, a DUAL PARADIGM model of Voynichese. We can describe Voynichese as two overlapping streams of glyph combinations, one resolving in the default QOKEEDY and one in CHOLDAIIN. The text, we might say, moves or is pulled in two directions.
Global statistics are misleading by making it seem as if QOKEEDY is the default for the entire corpus. In fact, it is one of two, although it prevails in larger portions of the text and on more pages.
As a general characterisation, we can say that the CHOLDAIIN default dominates in the early parts of the work, the herbal sections. The QOKEEDY default dominates in the latter sections of the manuscript.
As we read it, the text is CHOLDAIIN based at the beginning and becomes more QOKEEDY based as it progresses, although this general trend is now somewhat obscured because of missing and misplaced pages and sections.
* * *
The simplest way to think about the two paradigms is to see them as two glyph sets.
There are all the glyphs supplied by CHOLDAIIN – and its variations. [ch] mutates to [sh], for example, and [l] to [r]. Such well-observed mutations are part of the CHOLDAIIN glyph set.
Then there are the glyphs supplied by QOKEEDY, particularly allowing for the variations of the gallows glyph [k].
The two glyph sets are thus:
Ch O L D A I N Sh S R M G
Q K T P F E Y
Although, note, O and D are shared by both paradigms and could be included in the QOKEEDY set as well.
Leaving aside rare glyphs, the ones missing from this list are the so-called benched gallows. These are literally a meeting of the two paradigms.
An important difference between the two defaults is that CHOLDAIIN contains a benched glyph [ch] but no gallows glyph. Whereas, the opposite is the case for QOKEEDY.
Words with benches but no gallows follow the CHOLDAIIN model. Words with gallows but no benches follow the QOKEEDY model.
But in the benched gallows the two models immediately and quite graphically overlap – a bench with a gallows in a combined glyph. In these distinctive glyph formations the two templates coincide.
The elements the two paradigms actually share are the glyphs [o] and [d] – a vowel and a consonant – and the four benched gallows.
We can follow the intermingling of the two streams of text by observing the distribution and combinations of these glyphs. We can see the differences between what are called the A and B text. There are differing concentrations of CHOLDAIIN based text and QOKEEDY based text.
This is true for all units of the text, words, lines, paragraphs, pages and sections. We can find a CHOLDAIIN based line in a strongly QOKEEDY-based page, and vice versa, for example. It is a matter of proportions.
* * *
Approached in this way we see that, in fact, the CHOLDAIIN paradigm provides most of the glyphs that we encounter in the text. QOKEEDY provides a more specialized group, including, most importantly, the gallows which assuredly are central to the Voynich language in some way.
So CHOLDAIIN emerges as the underlying default for the text as a whole even though QOKEEDY is the statistical default because there is more QOKEEDY-based text. More vords are made from glyphs and elements supplied by the CHOLDAIIN default glyph set simply because it is a bigger set. The more specialized glyphs and elements from QOKEEDY intrude into these.
The glyph [e] and its multiples [ee] supplied by the QOKEEDY model are especially prolific, but so is [y]. These vowels routinely intrude into CHOLDAIIN-based words even without the presence of the gallows glyphs.
* * *
A further decomposition of these glyph sets is revealing. QOKEEDY is entrely devoid of glyphs based on the minim (backslash). [ee] is a duplication of the c-curve.
Whereas, in CHOLDAIIN we find both c-curve based glyphs and, distinctively, the series of minim based glyphs at the end of DAIIN.
It is not that the CHOLDAIIN default is based on minims and the QOKEEDY default on c-curves. Rather, CHOLDAIIN allows both, whereas there are no minim-based glyphs in the QOKEEDY glyph-set; it is uniformly based on c-curves.
Any glyphs based on the minim are under the influence of the CHOLDAIIN template. Conversely, text populated with lots of the [e] glyph and series of c-curves [eee] show the influence of the QOKEEDY template. We can usually see concentrations of these at a glance.
* * *
The tension between the two paradigms also shapes words. While QOKEEDY is tripartite, as already mentioned, CHOLDAIIN is not. It does not have a prefix-core-suffix structure. Instead, it tends to separate into two halves, two parts. This is how it is usually found in the text, as two words CHOL and DAIIN.
One paradigm tends to draw glyphs together into longer words, while the other tends to break words apart into smaller words. One is triune, one is bifurcated. There is, perhaps, a contrast between duality and (tri)unity.
In any case, words are pulled in both directions – glyphs have a tendency to clump into longer three-part words (usually with a gallows glyph in the core), and they have a counter tendency to fragment into shorter syllabalistic words.
However, CHOLDAIIN is, in this sense, itself a compound word. It joins together CHOL and DAIIN which can stand on their own. Both are very common words, DAIIN the most common word in the entire work.
This is not true of the component parts of QOKEEDY. They are not (commonly) free-standing. So, QOKEEDY is not a compound of other words, whereas CHOLDAIIN is.
So as well as the model for fragmentation into shorter words CHOLDAIIN can be the model for longer words where they are compounds of shorter units that can be otherwise free-standing. The CHOLDAIIN model gives the text compounding.
Thus there are two ways to develop longer words: syllables assembled around a core after the QOKEEDY model, or compounded from shorter words after the CHOLDAIIN model.
Again, these are two tendencies intermixed throughout the text.
* * *
Comparing and contrasting the various characteristics and traits of both default vords is instructive and leads to the conclusion that they are surely intended to be complementary to each other. They are not ill-matched. They go together. The entire text is developed from their relationship.
An important distinction between the two defaults is in the alternation of vowels and consonants. It is uniform and continuous in QOKEEDY, but broken in CHOLDAIIN where, for a start, two consonants, [l] and [d] are adjacent.
This is why CHOLDAIIN so readily bifurcates into two words at that point.
We can count CHOL as consonant/vowel/consonant, and we can count DAIIN as consonant/vowel/consonant (if we count [aii] as a single vowel configuration.) So both parts of the paradigm are CVC, but the [ld] in CHOLDAIIN violates the alternation.
QOKEEDY, on the other hand is a straightforward and regular alternation: CVCVCV. This is one of the first things we notice after discovering QOKEEDY is the statistical default - it is regular CVCVCV. The text, this tells us, tend towards consonant/vowel alternation.
So, one of the influences of the CHOLDAIIN paradigm on the text is to disrupt the alternation of consonant and vowels. Whereas the QOKEEDY paradigm draws the text towards regular CV alternation.
Again: the CHOLDAIIN paradigm tends towards dissolution, fragmentation, mutation, disruption, irregularity, multiplicity. The QOKEEDY paradigm tends towards unity, stability, regularity.
CHOLDAIIN is loosely bound. QOKEEDY is tightly bound.
These are the two great polar tendencies that run throughout the text.
* * *
Can they be reconciled?
The main difficulty, as already intimated, is that one template is binary and one is triune. How to reconcile the two with the three?
We can do so if we acknowledge a SPACE between CHOL and DAIIN and make the CHOLDAIIN paradigm threefold in that way. It becomes:
CHOL [SPACE] DAIIN
We can bring the two models together if we place the core – the gallows - of QOKEEDY into that space.
This is another consonant and resolves the problem of [l] and [d] being adjacent by replacing, or uniting, them both. The CHOLDAIIN paradigm is thus:
CHO [Space] AIIN
CHO obviously matches QO in QOKEEDY.
AIIN is more difficult because of the terminal glyphs, but it matches EEDY, the [y] being final for c-curves while [n] is final for minims.
So we match the two paradigms in this way:
When we do this we restore consonant/vowel alternation.
The important thing to note is that gallows are placed into spaces. These are the junctures at which the two templates are joined.
These spaces are, as it were, the weak points in the CHOLDAIIN paradigm, the point where CHOLDAIIN tends to bifurcate, the point where the consonant/vowel alternation is broken. The gallows are placed at that point in order to restore consonant/vowel alternation and in this way bring back togther – bind back together - the bifurcating parts of CHOLDAIIN.
* * *
Yet, when we reconcile the two paradigms in this way we arrive at a remarkable realization: finally, CHOLDAIIN and QOKEEDY are probably the same word.
They are – in some fashion – different versions of each other, the same word in two different modes.
The CHO of CHOLDAIIN is the QO of QOKEEDY, and the K of QOKEEDY is the double consonant LD of CHOLDAIIN and EEDY is another way of writing AIIN.
In the Voynich text, therefore, we see, in two paradigms, ONE WORD mutating from one form into another. Indeed, every word in the entire text is such a mutation. That, essentially, is what is happening in this text. That is what Voynichese is.
In the end, the mystery becomes:
Which word is it that consists of three parts but which can also be written as a word of two parts, which two parts consist of three parts and can each stand alone?
* * *
What could all of this possibly be about? What could produce such phenomena? What sort of text does this? How can we understand this?
I can provide an answer that is consistent with my general hypothesis regarding the nature and origins of the work.
I note that what we observe in this DUAL PARADIGM system – where the two paradigms are really the same thing, even though apparently contrasting and at odds – embodies the idea of the COINCIDENTIA OPPOSITORUM – the coincidence of opposites. It is exactly that.
The coincidence of opposites is a cornerstone of Neoplatonic philosophy and cosmology, and its foremost repressentative in the relevant period wa Nicholas of Cusa.
R. B.
