It is universally admitted that, if the Voynich means anything at all, the wheels on page 57v are probably of vital significance. The letters (glyphs) themselves are cryptic, however, and this is not helped by the figures in the centre which do not illuminate the scheme at all. It is confounding.
No one can agree on what these figures are doing, why they are presented in the postures they are, and what it signifies.
Here I present a simple reading:
The centrepiece of the wheel, with the four figures, illustrates the COINCIDENTIA OPPOSITORUM.
The whole problem with the picture is that the opposing figures are the same. I repeat: the opposing figures are the same.
The natural reading is that the four figures represent the four directions, north, south, east and west. Or perhaps, by extension, the four seasons or the four times of the day. In that case, our expectation is that the opposing figures are different. Front and back and left and right should be reversed. But here they are not.
And that is the point of the illustration. The opposites are the same. Opposites should not be the same.
Let us ask: what is wrong with this picture?
I propose that it is intended that we see what is wrong: the opposing figures are the same. There is sameness where there should be difference.
Let us suppose you are standing facing north. If I now instruct you to face south, you must turn around. North and south should be shown as back and front. But they are not. Instead, two figures stand with their faces turned away from us.
Similarly, let us suppose you are facing east and have your right hand raised. If you are now instructed to face west, your raised hand will be on the other side. This is not what happens in the picture. Instead, the figure changes hands and this makes the opposing figures the same where they should be different.
That is what is wrong with the picture. The oppositions that would properly illustrate the four directions are not there.
This is an illustration of the coincidentia oppositorum. Back and front should be opposites, but instead they coincide. Left and right should be opposites, but instead they coincide. Those dualisms do not prevail. We are given a picture of opposites coinciding.
I argue that this is one of the guiding philosophical principles to the work as a whole. It specifically concerns the (Neoplatonic) doctrine of the coincidentia oppositorum. It is central to the work. The author has been guided by that doctrine.
An explicit representation of that doctrine is shown in the centre of page 57v.
The drawings are crude and cartoonish, but what they illustrate is plain. And it would be plain, I argue, to the early Renaissance reader. The figures are not in the positions we expect them to be in. That is exactly the message. We expect opposites: we get samenesses. In the intellectual world of the early Renaissance, this says: coincidentia oppositorum.
The location of this representation on this important page, in the context of the letter wheels, surely indicates - as I have argued elsewhere - that the Voynich language has also been constructed according to this philosophical principle. The language itself is an expression, or demonstration of, the coincidence of opposites.
R.B.
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