There is no secret of palindromes. It is perfectly straightforward as to what they signify, or symbolize, and why they have been regarded as magical or sacred.
Let us ask: what is the primal palindrome? What is the first palindrome? There is a simple answer. It is like the riddle of the sphinx.
The answer is: the YEAR.
The year is palindromic, and provides the model for linguistic palindromes.
If we stand at the equinox and look back we find the day and night lengths changing by daily increments. If we then look forward from the equinox we see them changing by the same increments in reverse.
The year is the primal palindrome.
It is remarkable what nonsense is written on this straightforward matter. The famous SATOR-ROTAS square has been subject to voluminous speculation and theories.
It is simply a charm, or talisman, representing the wheel of the year and the cardinal cross of solstices and equinoxes.
* * *
In previous studies of the Voynich text, we settled upon the conclusion that the text, the language, Voynichese, is essentially and profoundly palindromic.
The paradigms upon which it is based are palindromic, and the more primitive paradigms upon which they are based are more palindromic still.
We might suppose the text is “magical” and exploiting the mystique of palindromes.
Perhaps.
But more likely, and more importantly, the model, the primal palindrome, is the YEAR and so our text is essentially, fundamentally, in its very nature, calendrical.
In this we don’t just mean it is about the year – rather, the very text, the language, and its system of glyphs, is an expression of the year.
We might perhaps think of it as talismanic in a similar way to the SATOR square.
There, the cycles and structures of the YEAR are turned into letters. It shows that the structures of the year are built into human language.
Words have celestial correlates. Palindromes are like the cycles of the sun. We can convert celestial cycles into human language, using human writing systems.
This is essentially what Voynichese is. It is a language, a system of glyphs, that expresses the (palindromic) cycles of the year, or is based thereon.
This was an early suspicion in the study of the text – that it might be about seasonal cycles and calendars and festivals. There is much to suggest it in the illustrations.
But it goes further and deeper than that. The very language, the text, Voynichese, is itself a calendrical system, based upon, expressing, the cycles of the year. It is the cycles of the year made text.
* * *
Assuredly, it is presented as a language, a written text. It consists of glyphs (letters) and words separated by word breaks arranged in lines and paragraphs.
We are intended to see it as a written text.
In reality, it is a symbolic system extrapolated from the cycles of the YEAR.
It has every appearance that it has been created with a system of volvelles. Yes. But these volvelles are, in reality, the cycles (and sub-cycles) of the YEAR.
The implications of this are far-reaching. For a start, it gives us a sure means of determining what phenomena are integral to the language and what are epi-phenomena.
For the most part, the language-like features of Voynichese must be counted as epi-phenomena.
This might be the whole point of the demonstration, anyway. Just as the SATOR square shows that the annual cycles can be expressed in human words, by extension, the cycles of the YEAR are analogous to human language more generally.
The underlying idea is that nature is a text. Its cycles can be converted into glyphs and expressed as a text.
The key to this is the palindrome. It shows how human text is like celestial cycles, how text and cosmos are in parallel.
This is a very medieval – or more accurately – premodern or ‘traditional’ view of the nature of language and writing.
And this is what we must appreciate, and understand, if we are to grasp the nature of the Voynich text.
Again: a “charm” like the SATOR square is “magical” and has “power” because it is (an adequate) representation of the YEAR in the symbols of human writing.
It is “magical” or “sacred” because it is (an adequate) transcription of the text of nature into the conventions of human text.
The Voynich text, I propose, is an extension of the same idea. It demonstrates that the text of nature can be transcribed not just as a few words, like in the SATOR square, but as an entire functional text, a whole language.
* * *
The roots of this premodern view of language are in the ancient world and especially in Platonic cosmology.
There, the basic units of the cosmos are called, by analogy, “stoicheon” (letters of the alphabet.)
Going deeper, and further back, the etymological idea refers to the sun dial. The shadow of the gnomon makes the letter A.
Human writing, the Greeks concluded, is a transcription of cosmic cycles, and primarily the cycles of the sun, the cycles of the YEAR.
Nature is a text. It can be transcribed into human text. And, finally, that is where human text comes from and what it is.
I propose that this is the order of ideas behind the creation of the Voynich language.
R.B.
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