Impasse - Mid 2024.

The inescapable conclusion of the studies pursued in these pages - now extending back over a year - is that the text of the Voynich ms. is a form of astrological notation. 

It is not by any means the conclusion I expected or even hoped for, but the evidence overwhelmingly points in that direction. And, in fact, once this becomes clear it also becomes obvious. All the evidence was there long ago, but was overlooked, misconstrued or ignored. 

For a long while the banner for this approach has been carried by the lone voice of Antonio García Jiménez. His thread on the Voynich Ninja forum extends back over a hundred pages, and his constant message to the Voyniuch research community has been: Not a text, a visual code. 

For the most part, his admonitions are politely ignored while researchers get back to their algorithms and graphs, searching for linguistic or cryptological solutions. 

In a recent post in that forum Antonio presented one of the keys to the Voynich text: it comes from a time prior to the introduction of the now standard astrological symbols. Those symbols, and the standard astrological notation, arrive after the printing press - from the second half of the 1400s onwards. Before that, a different system was commonly used in which the zodiac signs were defined and marked by the durations of day and night.

We have a celebrated example of that notation, exactly contemporary to the Voynich ms., namely the Ashmole ms. 370, dated to circa 1420. It has been known and considered by Voynich researchers for decades. 

But, it would seem, Antonio is the only person to notice that several of the Voynich glyphs serve in the notation of the Ashmole. 

He is surely right: the Voynich system is a development of the same type of notation seen in the Ashmole. 

That is, it is a development, an extension, of the astrological notation used prior to the introduction of the standard symbols. 

It should have been possible to date the manuscript on that basis, but that was never done. 

And it should have been enough to dispel linguistic and other theories, or at least driven a cohort of researchers to explore in this direction. That didn't happen either. In the contemporary scene we see the obsessive drive to accumulate more and more data... and Antonio saying "it's not a language, it's not a cipher, it's not a hoax, it's astrological notation." 

That is the conclusion of my own studies too, albeit arriving there by a different route, documented on this blog. I conclude that, of all the Voynicheroes abroad at present, Mr Jiménez is the man who is on the money. 

To his work, I would add that our manuscript has drawn very directly from the Brescia Canones, the Handy Tables of Ptolemy, and that the Voynich project purports to give a demonstration of Ptolemaic botany. 

Antonio is again correct to see this as a companion to the medieval Lapidaries and the stellar astrology of 360˚ and 360 stars. 

An entirely coherent and contextually cogent picture of the Voynich manuscript emerges. It is not so mysterious. 

The task still remains, though, to understand the notation. There are reasons to be optimistic. Since the Voynich system is a development from the preexisting system of astrological notation - such as we find in the Ashmole 370 - we are in a good position to reconstruct it. 

A solution would entail being able to read and write the Voynich notation. We would be able to point to a word or words in Voynichese and explain it as an astrological configuration. Conversely, we would be able to point to an astrological configuration and render it in fluent Voynichese. That is the objective. 

The proposal is that the Voynich glyph system is a development from the type of astrological notation found on the famous Soli-Lunar volvelle of the Ashmole manuscript:

I propose, for a start, that the large crosses that mark the solstices in the Ashmole system have been developed into the system of the four gallows glyphs marking the solstices and equinoxes, the four quarters of the year.

The idea, I maintain, came from the Helios cosmology of the Brescia Canones. It is the author's encounter with the Handy Tables of Ptolemy in Brescia that is the catalyst for the development of a new or extended system of astrological notation.

Again: we had all that is necessary to complete this task decades ago. We had the Ashmole 370, we had the Canones of Ptolemy, and medieval Lapidaries. The points of contact with the Voynich ms. are plain. It becomes obvious what the Voynich ms. is and what its text is. It may not be easy to establish how the notation works but we should be prevented from misconstruing it as something it is not. 

Remarkably, it seems there is only Antonio and myself, politely ignored, and we will have to work out the notation system ourselves from scratch, as if these sources and connections have just been newly discovered. 

Looking over decades of Voynich research, there is very little upon which we can build. 

That is the current impasse: from this point on these pages will be focused upon the Voynich text as astrological notation and the objective is a comprehensive solution. Only a comprehensive solution will be persuasive. 

R.B. 

Fifteen stars, 1424

The measure of precession is 1˚ in about 71 years. We can therefore work backwards from the current position of the fixed stars and establish their positions in the period of the Voynich ms. 

Let us calculate the adjustment in round figures to the year 1424:

2024 minus 1424 = 600 ÷ 71 = 8.4 

So, for general purposes, such as zodiacal stations, we can rotate the sphere of the fixed stars backwards about eight and a half degrees - for easy calculation, 8˚ and a bit.

If Sirius (Canis Major) is currently at 14˚ Cancer, in 1424 it was at (about) 6˚ Cancer. Since the stars move together - are fixed - we can apply the same adjustment to all of the fixed stars.

This, of course, is their celestial longtitude - their position projected onto the ecliptic. 

In the Middle Ages broadly speaking, and throughout the period relevant to our manuscript, there was a set of fifteen stars counted as especially important. We should properly begin with them. 

Their positions in 1424 are listed below. 

I have also listed their Decanate, according to the system known to  Ptolemy. Decanates are important in the Voynich astrology.

We are not looking for astronomical precision down to the minutes and seconds. We want to know what signs and decans and other astrological divisions the stars occupied at that time. This allows us to have a general grasp of the celestial order as it was then.

As it happens, none of these fifteen stars change zodiacal sign over the 600 years, but 8˚ is enough to change their decanate.  

Again: the adjustment is about eight degrees, slightly more. To find the (approximate) current positions of the stars, add 8˚+.

* * *

FIFTEEN IMPORTANT FIXED STARS, 1424

Algol = 19˚ Taurus, decan = Moon

Alcyone (in the Pleaides) = 22˚ Taurus, decan = Saturn

Aldebaran = 2˚ Gemini, decan = Jupiter

Capella (Hircus) = 14˚ Gemini, decan = Mars

Polaris (Cauda Ursae) = 21˚ Gemini, decan = Sun

Sirius (Canis major) = 6˚ Cancer, decan = Venus

Procyon = 18˚ Cancer, decan = Mercury

Regulus (Cor Leonis) = 22˚ Leo, decan = Mars

Algorab (Ala Corvi) = 6˚ Libra, decan = Moon

Spica = 16˚ Libra, decan = Saturn

Arcturus (Alchamath) = 17˚ Libra, decan = Saturn

Alphecca = 4˚ Scorpio, decan = Mars

Antares = 2˚ Sagittarius, decan = Mercury

Vega (Vultur Cadens) = 7˚ Capricorn, decan = Jupiter

Daneb Algedi = 16˚ Aquarius, decan = Mercury

* * *

On the Lapidary Proposal

Reposted here, with a few amendments, from Voynich Ninja:

If the Voynich manuscript has been modelled upon the Lapidary of Alfonso, or a similar medieval lapidary, presenting an account of stellar correlations to botany rather than to gemstones, we would expect to find 360 plants in the Voynich presentation. 

In the Lapidary there are 360 gemstones, one for each degree of the ecliptic and by extension one for each of 360 stars. 

The proposal is that the Voynich author has set out to do to the plant realm what the Lapidary does to the mineral realm. 

But there is a strong objection: there are not 360 plants in the Voynich manuscript, even allowing for missing pages. 

How many plants are there? I count 129. There are 110 in the first section up to f57v. There are a few strays, and there is the section known as Herbal B, another 14. Making 129. A few pages arguably show two plants. 

There might have been others on missing pages, but not many. Certainly not another 231 to make a complete set of 360, one plant per degree. We could perhaps conjure a set of 180 at a stretch. 

Much more reasonable would be a proposal that the first herbal (botanical) catalogue amounted to 120 plants. 110 are extant, but folios 59 to 64 are missing. When the text resumes at 65r there are three more botanical pages. This suggests there were botanical pages among the missing folios. 

With the extra three, there is therefore 113 plants, and enough missing pages for there to be seven more. (Leaving Herbal B out of the equation.) 

Such an arrangement would require that each plant in the set represents 3˚ - 3 x 120 = 360. 

This is the only astrologically coherent grouping that seems likely. 

But the parallel with the Lapidary of Alfonso fails on this account. Evidently, the Voynich ms. does not give an account of 360 plants after that model. Instead, it does present one nymph per degree. Despite a few anomolies, it is clear the work contains a system of 30 nymphs per zodiac sign. 

This is after - or an extension of - the model of the Helios icon in the Brescia Canones. That work is the inspiration for the celestial nymphs - more properly the Naiads of Helios. 

That there are 360 - the extension to 360 nymphs - is an idea from the Lapidary, as is the application of the astrology to botany, to complement the gemstones. 

Thus, we see that the Voynich is a synthesis of ideas. It is not a simple (badly done) companion volume to the Lapidary. It is a companion volume to the Lapidary constructed through Ptolemy. 

Presumably, the chain of causation was something like:

*There is an existing account (the Lapidary) of the mineral realm's associations with the 360 stars.
*The author desires to create a companion volume to this concerning botany.
*But how is botany matched to the 360 stars? How is this to be done?
*To accomplish this the author turns to Ptolemy. He believes the Brescia Canones to be an authentic ancient key to Ptolemy's astrology. 
*The key to the Canones is the Helios icon, the key illustration of the work. Botany is under the rulership of Helios. Therefore, the author uses this Ptolemaic Helios system (a soli/stellar astrology) to extract a system of astrological botany. 
*The author has tried to create a Ptolemaic botany in response to the need for a work that complements the existing account of minerals and gemstones. 

It might have been a lot easier to just have 360 plants, but that is not the case. 

Indeed, when it comes to plants, there is hardly a plant in the manuscript that actually looks like an identifiable plant. We are not presented with a catalogue of natural plants. 

Many Voynich plants are actually botanically impossible, most are anomalous, and some seem like strange combinations of known plants. Some seem simply fantastic, the product of imagination, not observation. 

Again: it might have been a lot easier to just have 360 plants, but something else is going on.

How does the identification of one of the 360 nymphs lead to a plant if there are not 360 plants? What is the relationship between the nymphs and the plants?

Presumably, the nymphs tend the plants? Although there are not shown doing so! In fact, among the illustrations, there is no direct connection between the nymphs and the plants. There are no nymphs on the botany pages and no plants on the nymph pages. Matching labels on nymph pages to words on botany pages, in search of a correspondence, has proven futile. Many have tried. 

If the astrology of the work leads the reader to one of the 360 nymphs, what does she have to do with botany? Clearly, from the manuscript, she is not allotted one particular plant, or else there would be 360 plants matching the 360 nymphs. 

The short answer to this problem seems to be: meteorology. 

There is a meteorological dimension to the Voynich system that is lacking in the Lapidary. Weather, and seasons, after all, are not relevant to the nature or habitat of rocks, but they are to plants. 

An astrological account of the mineral realm does not require an account of weather cycles or seasons: gemstones do not follow weather or seasonal cycles. Nor are they distributed in climatic zones. 

But to give a corresponding account of the botanical realm, astrological influences upon weather and the turn of seasons becomes relevant. Plant life is distributed in climatic zones, follows seasons, and is especially dictated by rainfall. 

This is the domain of the nymphs. They are naiads, water nymphs. The zodiacal nymphs are the nymphs of the celestial waters. When they distribute the celestial waters, the earth is irrigated and nourished. 

Their connection to plant life, therefore, is indirect. The nymphs control the weather - specifically the rains - to which the botanical realm responds and of which it is a manifestation. 

More completely, plants respond to sun and rain. Helios and his naiads. 

Moreover, plant life is more plastic than rocks. Rocks are comparatively stable and fixed. Plant life is mutable. The same plant can grow quite differently in different climates, or under different rainfall or weather conditions. That is not true of gemstones. 

Accordingly, there are not 360 distinct, stable and fixed forms of plants, as there are 360 gemstones. 

Gemstones are, as it were, direct manifestations, or coagulations, or condensations, of the stars. That is not true of plants. The plant realm is a living expression of the changing cycles and moods of the heavens. Rocks are static, plants are dynamic. 

Plants require a different application of the stellar astrology. It is not as straightforward as allotting one plant to each of the 360 degrees of the zodiac. They are not gemstones. 

This is all pure Ptolemy. Astrology and meteorology are wed and you cannot have botany without meteorology. 

Going back to our presumed chain of causation:

*There is an existing account (the Lapidary) of the mineral realm's associations with the 360 stars.
*The author desires to create a companion volume to this concerning botany.
*But how is botany matched to the 360 stars? How is this to be done?

The Voynich author knows that it is not simply a case of nominating 360 plants, one for each degree. In the Ptolemaic worldview, plants are under the control of celestial cycles in a way that gemstones are not. 

To produce a companion volume to the Lapidary, the Ptolemaic cosmos demands an account of astrological meteorology. 

Our author has used the Canones of Ptolemy - and very likely an almanac based on Ptolemy's Phases of the Fixed Stars - to accomplish this. The essential idea is found in any farmer's almanac. When such-and-such star is rising, it brings rain, or not. 

The resulting botany concerns the morphology of plants. Plant life, as I say, is plastic. If conditions change, the shape of the plant changes. In a drought it will be stunted, in good years flourish. Most obviously, the morphology of plants follows the cycles of the sun. As days lengthen seeds germinate, erupt into coteledons, then true leaves, stems, roots, flowers, fruits, before receding back into seed for the winter. 

In the Voynich cosmology, the (stellar) nymphs shape this (solar) process by controlling the celestial waters upon which plant life depends. 

Moreover, there are terrestrial nymphs, counterparts to the zodiacal nymphs. Naiads are creatures of lakes and rivers and streams and fountains and wells and subterranean waters. The Voynich ms. shows an account of terrestrial water nymphs (mountain nymphs) collecting and distributing the celestial rains controlled by the celestial nymphs. 

Stellar influences are mediated through light and water. 

It would seem, then, that the botanical presentations in the Voynich concern the mark of these influences upon plant morphology, not by way of 360 specific plants but by way of a catalogue of morphologies. 

It is tempting to detect a system of 120 botanical pages with tripartite plants - 120 different types or patterns of root, stem/leaf and flower, making a catalogue of 360 morphologies in all. 

This would still present the Voynich ms., as a companion to the Lapidary of Alfonso, but it is a much more elaborate extension of it than simply supplying 360 plants to match the 360 gemstones. 

A catalogue of 360 plants would be inadequate, anyway. In the prescientific worldview it is conceivable there are only 360 gemstones in Creation, but there are clearly more than 360 plants. We might imagine 360 types of morphology - growth habits - found across the wide range of plants, though. 

This is also to say the Voynich is not a "herbal" and, in fact, not a medical text at all. A herbal is restricted to medically useful plants. The botanica in the Voynich ms. does not conform to the usual set of medically useful plants, and there is no indication plants have been selected for their medical properties. (In many cases it looks like plants were selected for their interesting root systems!) 

It is hard to imagine our author knew the Lapidary of Alfonso directly - he knew of its system - but he did know the Brescia Canones directly. If his objective was to produced a botanical 'Lapidary', the project took the form of an attempted reconstruction of a Ptolemaic astrological botany. The correlation between plants and the 360˚ of the ecliptic/zodiac is through the mediation of Helios and his Naiads, the cycles of the sun and the celestial waters.

Masterkey - formulae

 

Here is an attempt to render the two paradigms of the Voynich text, QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN as astrological notation. More specifically, they are presented as astrological formulae. 

If the text is not linguistic but is, in reality, a record made in some form of astrological notation, what are the values of the glyphs? How does the notation work? 

The feature of the current attempt to work out the values of the paradigms is the proposal that each word identifies one particular degree of the ecliptic. 

Each word is, as it were, a formula that points to one of the 360˚ of the zodiac.

In astrology, the individual degrees are often called paranatellonta and a degree so marked in a horoscope is often called the PARAN. 

(There are more technical applications of these terms, but we will adopt them here.)

The challenge is to find a set of formulae that are both astrologically cogent and conform to the habits and nature of the text. 

This current attempt is by no means complete, but it does have some innate virtues and is a step towards finding a masterkey. 

To recap: as I now conceive it, the text is founded upon two paradigms, QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN, and each of these are formulae from which the astrological notation of the text is an extrapolation. 

These formulae, I posit, are simple equations by which the ecliptic is divided into its traditional (Ptolemaic) divisions: binaries, triplicities and quaternities, the twelfold cycle and the eightfold cycle. 

R.B.

The other half of [e] - f49v

An important feature of the astrological notation I have proposed is that the [o] glyph is divided in half to become the formation [ee]. More generally, [e] is a bifurcated [o].

This suggests, most obviously, that the [o] glyph (omicron) is SOLAR in nature and the [e] glyph is LUNAR. The very shape of the [e] glyph resembles a crescent moon.

But this proposal must encounter the objection: why is the [o] glyph only divided one way? Why always with a rightward facing [e] glyph? If the [o] is divided in half - where is the other half? 

The objection is: there is no evidence the [e] glyph is a bifurcation of the [o] glyph. There is no matching opposite half from the bifurcation.

But there is evidence on f49v. 

This is the page in the Botanical Section that includes a glyph key on the lerfthand column of the page. 

Among the glyphs of this key we find not only the rightrward facing [e] glyph but also its opposite - a leftward facing crescent. 

We find two instances of this. 

In most transcriptions these leftward facing [e] glyphs are marked as unknown or [?], but they are grouped with the rightward facing glyphs as mirrored pairs. 

Here we find the necessary evidence that [e] is a bifurcation of [o] - [e] is one of two halves.

It does not explain why the leftwards facing glyph does not appear in the running text and only appears in the glyph key on f49v, but it does show the bifurcation. 

If the signification of the [e] glyph is taken as LUNAR, then presumably the back-to-front [e] represents the waning moon. In that case, the notation in the running text only concerns the waxing moon represented by the [e] glyph? 

Nor have we explained why [e] appears so often (and paradigmatically) as [ee] and sometimes as [eee] or even [eeee]. 

We have, however, answered a basic objection. If we argue that [e] is a bifurcated [o], where is the other half? It is not included in the glyph set in the running text, but we do find it in the glyph key on f49v. It is not missing: it is just not deployed. 

R.B. 

Length of Lines: Line Paradigms

There are two models for lines of Voynich text. They prevail, respectively, in the two 'languages', Currier A and B, or Text A and Text B. 

In Text A, the archetypal or paradigmatic line of text has eight words. 

In Text B, the archetypal or paradigmatic line of text has twelve words. 

The difference between the two texts is quite visible to casual observation. The lines of text in the herbal section (Text A) are shorter than those in the Star Catalogue or the Nymph pages (Text B). 

Assuredly, there are lines with more or less than eight or twelve words in these texts, but the paradigm, the standard, is for lines of eight words or lines of twelve. 

Whether this is the statistical average depends upon the sample tested - and what we count as a line, and also the knotty issue of what are and are not word breaks. 

Word counts are open to many variables. Are single stand-alone glyphs counted as words? Do we count breaks in text at illustrations? Is [okeeokaloro] two words run together by scribal error? Such statistics are always slippery and often dubious. 

In any case, there is no requirement that a statistical average exactly match the paradigm. It is enough to say that:

*Lines in Text A are about eight words long. (And the average in any sample will be about eight.) 

*Lines in Text B are about twelve words long. (And the average in any sample will be about twelve.) 

Certainly, lines in Text B are longer than those in Text A and are so by about a third. 

By "lines" we mean full lines, not the shorter lines that often end paragraphs, nor circular text. 

The paradigmatic form - which the text approximates - is for lines of either eight or twelve words. 

* * * 

I will demonstrate it by sampling:

Here is a sample of pure B Text from f76r in the nymph section with the number of words indicated:

 f76r.R.1 = 11         potchokar.chcfhdy.opshdy.qolp.chcphy.chcphdy.opshey.qofshy.opchdy.sain.*sy-

 f76r.R.2   = 12      dshedy.qotddyar.cthar.chep.dain.okain.qokeor.shedy.qol.ain.sheols.qokeey-

 f76r.R.3     = 13    yshey.qokeey.qokey.qokeed.okedy.shky.qotedy.otedy.shol.qoty.ol.chedy.aiiny-

 f76r.R.4 = 12        qokedy.qokchy.orar.or.chkarol.otey.qokedy.lkedy.chdy.qokchdy.qokal.chdam-

 f76r.R.5   = 13      solchedy.qokeedy.qopchedy.qokeeo.sol.shedy.qokedy.sheey.okees.al.al.chedain.dar-

 f76r.R.6   = 12      qoaiin.ches.okeedal.qokeokeey.shedy.chey.lkeedy.okey.dar.oiin.chekain.oldy-

 f76r.R.7    = 14     shed.al.shckhy.sain.chcphedy.ain.olkeey.lkar.ain.otchy.lkain.chedy.dar.daly-

 f76r.R.8   = 12      qotedshedy.qorain.oteedy.chedy.ol.chdy.raiiin.chekain.dain.chckhy.sal.oty-

 f76r.R.9      = 14   sol.shedy.qool.qctheed.shdy.qo.ol.keey.dain.saiin.sar.shedy.qokeor.okeedy-

 f76r.R.10   = 12     qokeedy.checthy.chckhey.okol.okaiin.sheckhey.okeedy.otey.dal.ykal.chedy.sar-

 f76r.R.11  = 14      chor.shedy.qoked.okees.al.ar.aiin.ar.ain.chckheed.lchedy.shedy.qolair.chedy-

 f76r.R.12     = 11   qotes.chedy.shckhy.qokeey.okeey.kain.checkhy.qokeedy.qotey.qotain.chekear-

 f76r.R.13   = 11     chey.chckh.shey.qeeey.chol.lkain.shedy.qokeedy.okain.chedy.okeeokaloro-

 f76r.R.14    = 11    dcheedy.qolchey.qokeey.qokeey.chedy.qokar.shedy.shedy.lshedy.qolchedy.otedyl-

 f76r.R.15   = 12     dshedy.qo.chedy.lchedy.qokey.qolchey.qotain.chckhy.shckhy.lchar.okar.alchdy-

 f76r.R.16    = 11    qokchsdy.okeey.lchedy.qo.olain.otshedy.qotaly.dar.sain.shedy.oleeed-

 f76r.R.17   = 13     sheedy.qokedy.chedy.chedy.qokain.chckhy.olchy.l.ain.shedy.olain.chedy.qokey-

 f76r.R.18    = 12    dalshedy.qol.sheedy.qokaldy.chepy.dain.alolor.olain.chedy.shecthy.qokeey.lor-

 f76r.R.19      = 14  qaloin.chey.qokeey.lchedy.chckhy.chey.ky.chey.qolal.lkl.chey.lchedy.chey.llaiiry-

 f76r.R.20    = 13    shedal.shey.qokey.qolchedy.qolain.ain.chey.qokaiin.okain.cheedy.lchey.loly.sy-

 f76r.R.21     = 13   soin.sheey.chear.ol.aiin.chodaiin.qokaiin.chey.qokalchey.dal.chdy.dal.ytal-

 f76r.R.22     = 13   qokar.shedy.shedy.qokar.shedy.qokain.dar.shey.lshcthy.okar.okain.ylaiin.y-

 f76r.R.23   = 12     darchey.cheolchey.shcthy.chedy.qo.qokey.dalaiin.sheeky.qokain.olky.sain.chy-

 f76r.R.24    = 14    cheor.ain.okaiin.dain.chey.dal.shedy.qokaiin.cheol.shy.chedy.rain.chedy.shy-

 f76r.R.25   = 13     qokedy.lkey.kal.shedy.qopchey.qol.pchedy.okchy.chckhy.shey.lol.ral.sheey.dar-

 f76r.R.26   = 12     cheor.shey.qoolkal.shedy.shedy.shey.shedy.ollchy.shlches.shcthy.sain.oly-

 f76r.R.27   = 12     saiin.shedy.lshey.qokal.chcthy.okeolor.cheol.otar.chedy.qol.chcthy.chckhy-

 f76r.R.28     = 13   qokal.shedy.sheol.cheal.alshy.chol.chdy.talor.olalor.chol.okeyr.ar.oly-

 f76r.R.30  = 10      polalchdy.pshedy.opchedy.qokas.yksheol.qokeedy.oty.lshed.chpsheedy.ytal-

 f76r.R.31   = 13     qolchey.shckhy.qokey.lchy.opchey.dain.shdy.qokedar.olchdy.sor.oty.dy.lchedy-

 f76r.R.32   = 13     sain.ar.okedy.lcheey.qokey.shckhy.otedy.qokal.shey.qoky.dain.chedy.qokchdyl-

 f76r.R.33     = 12   dain.chey.lsh.daiin.chey.lchedy.qolain.qotal.shedy.dy.shecthy.otalam-

 f76r.R.34   = 10     sor.shey.qokey.qokar.sheeoldy.chol.oly.chaly.lol.chdy=

 f76r.R.35    = 11    poleedaran.shckhy.qoty.ykar.alol.lkaiin.olshedy.otain.okar.opar.kolpy-

* * *

Here is some pure A Text, f 20r in the herbal section (selected because the lines are not interrupted by illustrations.) 

 f20r.P.1   = 7      kdchody.chopy.cheey.qotchol.qotoeey.dchor.choiin-

 f20r.P.2   = 7      chodey.cthey.chotol.odaiir.qotchy.cthody.chodchy-

 f20r.P.3     = 8    qoteey.cho.chodaiin.sho.qochy.chey.tcheodal.daral-

 f20r.P.5    = 7     pchocthy.chokoaiin.cpy.cheeen.opchey.shosaiin.r-

 f20r.P.6   = 8      choees.okchor.qotol.cheey.daiin.chy.choiin.daiin-

 f20r.P.7   = 7      ocholshod.daiin.choteol.chol.dol.shol.otaiin-

 f20r.P.9   = 6      fchodees.shody.qotchey.qokchey.qocphy.chokoldy-

 f20r.P.10   = 8     ochoaiin.chor.sody.pchodaiin.chetody.choky.dchy.toy-

 f20r.P.11 = 5       dchooteeody.ytchy.qotshey.dchaiin.cholody-

 f20r.P.12    = 8    shoiin.cheody.otchey.otchy.tchy.qoteey.daiin.dar-

* * *

We don't need to indulge in statistics to see the difference or to see that these lines approximate twelve and eight respectively.  

Just as words approximate the paradigms QOKEEDY, or CHOLDAIIN, so lines of text approximate paradigms of twelve and eight words. 

The A Text is based on the CHOLDAIIN paradigm and typically forms lines of eight words. 

The B Text is based on QOKEEDY and typically extends to lines of twelve words. 

By my account, these numbers are astrological and follow from the astrological symbolism of the two paradigmatic words.

By my account, this is a structural feature of the astrological notation that I propose constitutes the Voynich text. 

It is an important structure to observe. Much study is devoted to the statistical differences between Text A and Text B - and finer distinctions of them - but this basic difference receives little or no comment. In fact, I have never seen it reported at all. 

It will elude many global statistics. It is perfectly evident on a page-by-page analysis where full lines of text are clear and uninterrupted. That some sections of text have longer lines than others is obvious to the naked eye. A closer look soon reveals the pattern.

Of course, Text A and Text B are not in different "languages"; they are different applications of a single system of a notation that is internally coherent.

The casting of short lines in Text A and longer lines in Text B is not linguistic. There is no linguistic model, or even an encryption model, that easily accounts for a text in which lines (as "functional units") are either eight or twelve words in length. 

R.B.

Unshuffling Lines

Failing to uncover any linguistic sense in the Voynich text, some researchers turn to the proposal that the glyphs in the words have been shuffled, and so they seek methods to unshuffle them.

On the face of things, though, it is not the glyphs that have been shuffled, but the words. When we look at lines of Voynich text, there is every appearance that the words have been shuffled out of sequence. 

We detect groups and series of related words, but they are interrupted and broken. Often there are two series of related words, but they have been shuffled together. 

The text, as I understand it, is the intermixture of the metamorphosizing paradigms, QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN. In lines of text, the metamorphosis of these paradigms is mixed and shuffled. Throughout, there is the suggestion of a lost order. 

Can we restore the proper order of words in lines? 

* * *

The paradigms being paradigms, the text is resolved in the paradigms. 

That is what the paradigms are, and how they are discovered. They are the words that all other words are resolved into. The preferred sequences of glyphs lead to these words. 

But Voynich words must also begin there as well. 

In my model, the text begins and ends in QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN. 

What we witness in the text, then, is both the dissolving and the crystallization of the text out of and back into the paradigms. 

The text starts with the paradigms. These are then deconstructed. Then the fragments of the deconstruction are reconstructed back into the paradigmatic forms. Disassembly - reassembly. Thus:

Two cycles of this palindromic pattern run throughout the text and in lines of text we see them interwoven. 

By my account, this pattern is astronomical, or astrological - not linguistic. We see the movements of the solar year, the lengthening and shortening of days culminating in the solstices. (The gallows glyphs mark the solstices.) 

Be that as it may, it is the pattern we see in lines of Voynichese. 

* * *

We can, however, unweave the intermixing and separate words in lines out into the two cycles of disassembly and reassembly. 

It is easiest to see in lines where one or the other paradigm dominates. 

Consider this line, line 8, from f76v:

qokeedy.ochedy.roiin.sheedy.qokeedy.okeedy.olor.okeedy.qolkeeey.r.al-

As we can see, this line features the QOKEEDY paradigm, and includes two instances of that word. But a few elements from CHOLDAIIN are interspersed. 

Here is the line stratified into the two paradigms. Blue marks the elements from QOKEEDY. 

         

qokeedy.ochedy.roiin.sheedy.qokeedy.okeedy.olor.okeedy.qolkeeey.r.al-

Let us strip away the intruding CHOLDAIIN elements:

qokeedy.oedy.eedy.qokeedy.okeedy.okeedy.qokeeey-

We can now reorder these words as disassembling permutations, thus:

qokeedy.

qokeedy.

qokeeey.

okeedy.

okeedy.

eedy.

oedy.

Another example, line 29, f108v:

pol.shedaiin.qokeoy.keol.chokeol.qotedy.qoteedy.dar.raiin.shedy.qotain.oteedy-

pol.

shedaiin.

qokeoy.

keol.

chokeol.

qotedy.

qoteedy.

dar.

raiin.

shedy.

qotain.

oteedy-

p.

e.

qokey.

ke.

ke.

qotedy.

qoteedy.

edy.

qot.

oteedy-

This is an assembling order:

p.

e.

ke.

ke.

edy.

qot.

qokey.

qotedy.

oteedy-

qoteedy.

In the actual line, though, - note well - the culmination of the assembly is at the midline. 

***

This, I propose, is the essential step in untangling lines of text and is the method I will pursue in further studies. It follows directly from my previous research. 

My general proposal, to state it again, is that the entire text is based on only two (cycling) words, and all the rules of the text are implicit in them and their relationship to one another. 

Why the two cycles are intermixed, and according to what principles and processes, is another and more difficult question. 

R.B.