Verbum potentiae

In earlier work on these pages I explored the device of word PARADIGMS - the basic words from which other words have been generated.

The outcome of those studies - drawing on similar far more in-depth studies by others - was that the text appears constructed from two such paradigmatic words: a dual paradigm system. 

These two paradigms are QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN. 

This, in fact, gives rise to the phenomenon of two languages or dialects in Voynichese, as observed by Prescott Currier long ago. Currier A and Currier B. 

Currier A is based on the paradigm: CHOLDAIIN.

Currier B is based on the paradigm: QOKEEDY.

In short, there are two systems of glyph combination (we can call them languages or dialects.) The probabilities of glyph combinations in Currier A resolve in the word: CHOLDAIIN. In Currier B, however, they resolve in QOKEEDY. 

I identify these as KEYWORDS. I assume that the study of these words will reveal much about the fundamental levels of the text. 

* * * 

Some preliminary things: What to make of these keywords? What are they? Why have they been chosen? 

I think the proper way to think about them is as: verbum potentiae - words of power (or potential, or potency.) It is from these words that the text is generated. The whole text is implicit - in potentia - in these two words. If all the probabilities lead to these two words, they also arise out of these two words.

In most medieval contexts such words of power are very likely to be THEONYMS - Names of God - but that is not necessarily the case, and until that is established, it is better to use a neutral term: verbum potentiae. This, in any case, is a better description of what they seem to be, in the first instance, since they appear to be highly constructed and constructed together as a matching and complementary pair. 

* * * 

More exactly, the two verbum potentiae are designed as coinciding opposites. The text generated from them is, then, an exhibition of the coincidentia oppositorum. 

This is of the utmost importance. It is the organizing principle of the whole language, and it is built in to the two keywords by design from the outset. That is, as I conceive it, the design of the language began with these two words, rendered into the Voynich script. 

* * * 

Let us start to tease out some basic implications. The contrast between the two verbum potentiae is:

Terrestrial - Celestial

But this is also framed as:

West - East

Which is to say:

Local - Holy Land

Or, more abstractly:

Periphery - Centre

And therefore, implicitly:

Vernacular - Sacred

It is not clear if these words are taken from natural languages, but they are designed to stand in a particular relationship: coinciding opposites. 

What is implied are the doctrines:

What is above is below

What is east is west

The periphery is the Centre

The vernacular is the sacred

* * * 

The basic presentation of the work is that the terrestrial nymphs know the secrets of the celestial nymphs, and the text is a record of this transfer of knowledge from the celestial to the terrestrial. The text is the Lingua Nympharum: the terrestrial nymphs speak the low dialect, or demotic, while the speech of the celestial nymphs is pure and formal. 

R.B.