No doubt the paradigm system I have been pursuing is incomplete and probably wrong or even misconceived in many respects, but I think the approach is productive: evidence of some such system is everywhere.
Here is an example that is particularly revealing. At the centre of the circlular diagram on folio pg 69r we find a six-pointed star with six Voynich glyphs located around the circle.
d o l s ed y
We could begin anywhere in this listing, but let us place the [y] glyph last since, of the glyphs, it is the one that is typically final.
Now let us consider this arrangement in terms of our paradigms, what I cast as verbum potentiae, keywords: QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN.
The arrangement, I want to say, depicts the paradigm QOKEEDY, but with a prefix from CHOL. It is effectively: CHOL + EEDY.
We can be sure of this because – peculiarly – the glyphs [e] and [d] have been grouped together. It is this bi-glyph [-ed-]in the fifth place that lets us construct QOKEEDY from this sequence.
[dol] is a form of CHOL.
The glyph [d] can be seen as a construction of joined curves in the same way as [ch]
I have not explored the sympathy between [ch] in CHOL and the [d] in DAIIN – I have not considered the CHOLDAIIN paradigm as thoroughly as QOKEEDY as yet.
But, clearly, in CHOLDAIIN, [ch] and [d] can be interchangeable as initial glyphs.
Here [d] replaces [ch].
What we learn from this arrangement in fact is that the prefixes DOL, CHOL and QOK are interchangeable.
This arrangement is specifically playing with the prefix of QOKEEDY.
It also demonstrates for us that the glyph [s] is a modification of the [e] in the QOKEEDY paradigm.
* * *
In any case, we can clearly see our paradigms, here presented as an arrangement of six glyphs (letters).
And yet, in order to make the QOKEEDY paradigm fit this sixfold schema, two glyphs [e] and [d] had to be placed together as a bigram. (It appears to be a forced fit.)
It is surely the pattern [-eedy] that this design wants to create.
I take this as very solid evidence that QOKEEDY is being used as a paradigmatic word, a verbum potentiae, in the manner I have proposed.
And I take the play of the prefix, [dol-] as evidence that CHOLDAIIN is the other paradigm, and that the two inter-relate at points of sympathy (and coinciding opposites) as I have proposed.
The coinciding opposites in the case of [ch] and [d] is that [ch] is a consolidation of [e] glyphs by a horizontal ligature, whereas [d] is [e] glyphs consolidated vertically, on top of each other instead of side by side.
The bigramming of [ed] is especially remarkable here. It tells us that glyphs can be grouped in different ways for different purposes.
* * *
Regardless of the specific glyph mutations what we see in this diagram is evidence that QOKEEDY = the YEAR.
We find our paradigm imposed upon – adapted to - a representation of the circle of the YEAR divided into six parts.
In itself, and in context, I take it that the circular diagram depicts some sort of annual cycle (or else a corresponding daily cycle or sub-cyle.)
We do not need to offer a full interpretation of the diagram or the whole page in order to see the implications of the glyphs arranged in the centre.
The letters (or mutations) of Q | O | K | E | ED | Y are stepped out throughout the cycle, so that the whole word equals one cycle.
Projected onto linear text this cycle becomes the underlying pattern:
We have evidence that our paradigms represent the cycles of the year (or day), that the language in our manuscript is, as I propose, the year made text.
* * *
Another point of conformity:
The diagram marks the place where the prefix/suffix interchange occurs, which is to say where the gallows glyph [k] is in the paradigm.
Notice how this point is marked.
The diagram is, in fact, astrologically coherent. This device marks the cusp.
The circle (360 deg.) is divided into six parts (60 deg. each) marked by the star shape in the centre.
But note that the star’s arms are marked with three lines.
Let us take this to suggest multiplication (further implicit divisions), thus: 6 x 3 = 18.
In the wedge shape that marks the sensitive point (cusp) in the circle, corresponding to [k] in QOKEEDY, we see series of five lines.
This maths concerns the division of the circle (zodiac) into lots of 5 degrees.
Because:
6 x 3 = 18,
18 x 4 = 72,
72 x 5 = 360.
It is a different configuration of the same divisions we find in the letter-wheel on page 57v.
(And I take it as some evidence that the wheel on 57v is 18 x 4, not 17 x 4 as commonly interpreted.)
There is a system of divisions in the manuscript based on 5 deg lots and the above equations.
The text of the manuscript is not about these divisions: it embodies and expresses these divisions, turning them into a system of glyphs by which to generate a “language”.
This is accomplished by means of two paradigmatic sequences of glyphs (vords): QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN.
Several diagrams in the manuscript suggest that the text is generated from letter-wheels (volvelles).
This is one of them.
By the same token, these same diagrams suggest the letters (glyphs) correspond to the cycles of the year.
There is abundant evidence for such a proposal.
QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN are two basic paradigms in this method of rendering a cosmological text.
* * *
As it happens, this particular diagram from the manuscript illustrates very well the notion of the resources of the year, as I outlined in my previous post.
In this illustration we see the resources of the year – or of a sub-cycle of the year – being presented as a distribution of celestial waters, or rain. It is one of several such diagrams showing the resources of the year as waters.
R.B.
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