Is Qokeedy POSSEST?

Our text, I say, is based upon, extracted from, unfolded from, paradigmatic words, one of them being (in EVA) QOKEEDY. 

I cast this as the celestial paradigm and present it as a verbum potentiae: a word in which all other words are held in potential. 

But what is this word? 

Is it just a symbolic formula assembled from an eclectic assortment of glyphs?

Does it mean something?

I have suggested, most obviously, that it could be a THEONYM, since Divine Names are the traditional case of verbum potentiae.

Or I have considered that it might be a toponym. 

A very promising possibility is found in the later works of Nicholas of Cusa. 

These current blog pages are, as the URL indicates, devoted to considering the Voynich manuscript in relation to the thought of Nicholas of Cusa, Cusanus, broadly speaking. 

I maintain that the manuscript comes from within his orbit and reflects aspects of his philosophy, at least. 

I detect a Neoplatonic cosmology in the Voynich ms. and Cusanus was the foremost Neoplatonist of the age. 

The language, especially, is a creation that suggests a mind such as that of Cusanus.

He is an unlikely author in himself, though, and the scenarios in which he might have had deep contact with a relevant herbal tradition are from outside the historical window of the Voynich. 

Similarly, the works in which Cusanus writes of things that might be suggestive of such a project as the Voynich are his later works, written after 1440, the terminus date of the Voynich window. 

One such work is De possest, dated 1460. It is a dialogue, or trialogue, on metaphysics. 

In this work, to illustrate his philosophy of coinciding opposites (coincidentia oppositorum) Cusanus makes the bold move of inventing a new Divine Name. 

It is the Latin amalgam POSSEST, a neogolism which brings together ‘posse’ = to be able, and ‘est’ = to be. 

Cusanus proposes that it is the equivalent to the Biblical I AM THAT I AM. 

It is a word that contains and expresses the Divine Nature in the manner of a Theonym. 

I am not a Latin scholar, but commentaries report that this is a complex and clever manipulation of Latin that embodies a precise and subtle philosophical meaning. 

It unites the infinitive of the verb “to be able” and the third person singular present of the verb “to be”. 

It unites possible existence with actual existence. God is All-Possibility and All-Actuality. 

Cusanus introduces the new word in his later works, but he reports that it was a matter he had first conceived long before. 

That is, he was searching for a Latin term that would encapsulate his understanding of the Divine, and specifically that in God is the coincidence of all opposites. 

At some point he hit upon the neologism POSSEST (Potential + Isness) as the perfect word for the task, a perfect Latin realization of the Biblical I AM THAT I AM. 

Possibly, it was a fancy he had entertained for many years, or decades, or even in his formative years when learning Latin? 

In any case, as readers will appreciate, it fits the requirements of a verbum potentiae, and so it immediately suggests itself as the word we are rendering as QOKEEDY.

Is QOKEEDY the Cusanean theonym POSSEST? 

It is a very good fit, conceptually, and perhaps on other grounds too. 

In that case, the paradigm QOKEEDY is not a random or meaningless or merely functional construction, but is a meaningful word, a Divine Name – born from Cusanus’ deep command of Latin - that is inherently replete with potential. 

The appropriate Cusean terminology is ‘enfolded’ and ‘unfolded’. 

Our text is enfolded in QOKEEDY and is unfolded from it. 

This is exactly how Cusanus understands his neogolism POSSEST. 

Moreover – and this is surely significant – in the formation of this Latin neogolism Cusanus engages in symbolic glyph-play such that he proposes the very letters, and shapes of the letters, are an inherent part of the theonym. 

He makes play of the fact that ‘posse’ and ‘est’ share the letter [e], and their union in the form of POSSEST. 

As the entry concerning De possest in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains:

He then argues that the “triune” sharing of the letter “e” in the amalgamation of posse and est signifies a hidden vocalization of both possibility and actuality at the heart of the new divine name. Likewise, God is beyond the union of opposites of absolute possibility and absolute actuality. God, in any case, is said to be hiddenly, Trinitarianly, and immanently discoverable in the world in the same way that “e” is in possest . 

In the same tract, Cusanus relates that the Latin word ‘in’ is symbolic of the Trinity because of its three lines. His method is:

In contemplating “in,” Cusanus first considers the construction of the written letters solely through straight lines into a whole greater than the parts and builds his way to that which is signified by the word “in.” The word points to an entrance. All entering, he notes, involves going in. As a prefix “in” is joined to other roots. For example, intueor (“to regard, admire”) signifies that knowledge of God can be likened to “entering” into the wondrous mystery of an ineffable God. The prefix can also be a negation as in “ineffability.” The joining of “in” in the signifier is moreover symbolically the movement beyond the union of positive and negative theology (in the sense of being “enfolded” in the divine mystery). In all these senses, “in” functions like a hidden signifier that precedes all naming of God.

The word points to an entrance. All entering, he notes, involves going in. As a prefix “in” is joined to other roots. For example, intueor (“to regard, admire”) signifies that knowledge of God can be likened to “entering” into the wondrous mystery of an ineffable God. The prefix can also be a negation as in “ineffability.” The joining of “in” in the signifier is moreover symbolically the movement beyond the union of positive and negative theology (in the sense of being “enfolded” in the divine mystery). In all these senses, “in” functions like a hidden signifier that precedes all naming of God.

We have evidence here of exactly the type of textual imagination – down to the very glyphs - that my studies have detected in the Voynich text.

Once again, I find material in the life and work of Nicholas of Cusa that is tantalizing in the context of Voynich Studies. 

No one else sees it. But it is there. Suggestive. Nicholas is overlooked. Our contemporary view of him is prejudiced against him being a viable candidate. 

If I am called upon to show someone (a humanist with a profound knowledge of Latin manuscript traditions) who, in the relevant period, was manipulating text in the ways I propose – including creating Latin theonyms, verbum potentiae – and who might have created a philosophical language on such principles, it is Nicholas of Cusa. 

Who else from this period was inventing new Divine Names in Latin? 

R.B.