Toponym Generator

In the approach to Voynichese I have been pursuing, the LABELS become of special interest. It has long been observed that ‘Labelese’ is somewhat different to the running text. This needs to be explained. Why are labels different?

I propose that the Voynich text has been generated from two keywords, verbum potentiae, namely CHOLDAIIN and QOKEEDY. In short, I propose that the creator of the text has set up these two terms as coinciding opposites, and the text arises out of their interaction.

In the manuscript, this is being presented as discourse between the terrestrial and celestial nymphs. But there is also another (earlier) framework: the movement of ideas from east to west.

The model for this is the transfer of sanctity from Jerusalem to local sites in Europe (Italy) made necessary by the closing of the pilgrimage routes at the end of the Middle Ages.

This, I argue, is what we see in the foldout Voynich map. It is a map concerning the imposition of the (symbolic, sacred) geography of the Holy Land upon a local, north Italian landscape. The focus of this transfer is the Holy Sepulchre.

But I suspect this may have been done independent of the wider Voynich project and may expose the original purpose of the Voynich language.

What we may have is: a device for generating toponyms.

It would work in this way:

You take the word like JERUSALEM, say, and the name of its corresponding place in Italy, say, CATINACCIO, and the device (method) is able to create new (synthetic) words from the combinations and permutations of the letters in these words.

The first step is to convert both words into a common script, itself designed to facilitate combinations and permutations. The "device" is actually the script, the glyph-set. 

The reason for doing this is to sanctify the new landscape with toponyms imbued with sacred potency.

These, then, are the LABELS in our manuscript. In the Labels we see the method being put to its original and proper purpose. This is what the script and method of word generation were invented for: to create place names that carry the sacred power of the Centre (Jerusalem) to the Periphery (Italy.)

In the Voynich manuscript, though, this method has been expanded and applied to other purposes besides creating toponyms. Now it is creating labels for various things, including the herbs of the new landscape.

If the two keywords, the verbum potentiae, are Theonyms, or similar, they are understood to contain inherent powers, which can then be extrapolated or unpacked, as it were.

(I point out that the name Jerusalem was believed to be sacred in itself, like a Name of God, as were other Biblical place names, by extension.)

In this scenario, the Voynich text would be a wholesale development of this idea, set to generating an entire language.

What began as a method for creating (sacred) toponyms (used by pilgrimage planners?) – from a coincidentia oppositorum of sacred and vernacular place names - has been put to wider purposes. The Voynich map reveals the first purpose: creating new place names.

It follows that the Labels will show us the original and simplest application of the system, before the method was adapted to creating more than just place names.

The ways in which Labelese is different to the rest of the text then becomes a matter of key importance.

For instance, there are none to very few bench-gallows glyphs in the labels. We might hypothesize that they were not part of the original scheme and were added when the method was expanded beyond its original application. ?

In terms of my on-going research, it suggests that the verbum potentiae, the words we render (in EVA) as CHOLDAIIN and QOKEEDY, are likely to be place names. 


R.B.