Flow Charts and Plumbing

The Voynich space is a swamp of confirmation bias. In my own case, having decided that the Voynich text presents us with the “language of the nymphs” I am immediately inclined to view the entire work through that lens.

This need not be a problem if it is self-aware and remains agnostic at the most fundamental level.

With this danger in mind, I turn to the nymph illustrations. 

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It is possible to read them – many of them, if not all – as depictions of the very processes of the text itself. This would follow if we consider the text to be fluvial: if there is an analogy between text and flowing water.

In that case, where we see the nymphs apparently manipulating or doing things with water, we have depictions of the nymphs processing the text. Text = water.

Consider this picture, for instance: 

By my interpretation, this is a depiction, in the first instance, of a nymph manipulating the flow of subterranean mountain waters. The mountain – or rock-face – is indicated by the ragged layering around the edge. The pipes and tubes represent the (secret) passageways of the water through the mountains.

As a general proposition, this is the secret knowledge of the nymphs: they know the hidden hydrology of the mountains.

The illustration concerns the way the nymphs manipulate and control the waters within the mountain, determining the points at which the water comes to the surface, here depicted as outlets with (blue) water flowing from them.

But if text = water then the illustration depicts something else at the same time. It shows the nymphs manipulating and controlling the flow (and formation) of the text.

In that case, we think of the text as several streams. The nymphs open and close those streams, and this determines how they converge and what text emerges from the process. 

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In Voynich studies there have been many attempts to expose the system by which Voynichese words are formed. Some attempts involve creating flow charts. Here is an example: 

Such schematics attempt to map the (complex) processes and rules of glyph combinations that give rise to the Voynich text.

The grammar of any language can be captured (approximated) in this form. It is something linguists like to do. 

Now, imagine such a flow chart rendered as PLUMBING. If the text is fluvial, if the text is analogous to water, then an appropriate metaphor to apply to such schematics is plumbing. The very word “flow” invites a water analogy, after all. We can imagine this flow chart as a system of pipes and tubes, filters and on/off valves.

Instead, most of these schematics of Voynichese have been designed by computer people who automatically render the system in algorithmic terms, or at least with mathematical and geometrical minimalism.

But it could be shown as hardware rather than software. It could be shown as a system of electronic circuitry. Or – if the text is like water – it could be shown as plumbing.

The diagram remains the same, but we apply a different metaphor.

I am suggesting that this is what we encounter in the strange illustrations of the nymphs engaging with complex systems of pipes and tubes. These are the nymphs opening and closing valves and gates according to the rules and set processes (grammar) of the text. They control the flow. They blend different streams together. Different flows produce different words, lines, paragraphs…

In short, we see the nymphs operating the flow-chart of the language.

I am tempted to read such pictures as the one above in this way. They allegorize the very process of the making of the text. We see the nymphs making the lingua nympharum. Its construction is analogized to the subterranean hydrology of a mountain. 

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It is not necessary to take this extra step. It is enough to say that the strange illustrations in the nymph pages of the manuscript are depictions of the mountain nymphs operating the mountain hydrology.

But if text = water then it is possible to see another layer to the analogy.

We must be tentative, though: this is exactly the territory of confirmation bias. Is there really such an analogy, and if there is does it extend all the way into these illustrations? What objections can be made to this reading? Is it inherently fanciful? Am I just seeing what I want to be seeing?

The nymph illustrations – with their pipes and organic plumbing – certainly demand an explanation. And an explanation better than “female reproductive anatomy” or things seen in a hypothetical medieval microscope.

I see these pictures as (folkish) depictions of hydrological processes. That explains them sufficiently. It is a naturalistic reading. But if the text is the language of the nymphs, and – by extension – the text is fluvial, then these illustrations take on important extra dimensions as depictions of the flow-chart of the text.

If we say the nymphs know the hidden hydrology of the mountains – this is also to say they know the hidden processes underneath the Voynich text.

R.B.