In recent posts I have considered the T & O symbols found in the Voynich text.
Arguably the most important case is found on the Rosette foldout, the Voynich map.
It is not my intention to provide a full account of it or its context here. Instead, I just want to make the observation that the accompanying text, in this case, suggests that the symbol has much the same function as we saw in the previous cases.
Whatever else the T/O symbol might indicate on the Rosette page, it appears to demonstrate the mechanisms by which the glyphs and text have been generated.
In the first instance, I want to say that these T/O symbols illustrate a process of division – divide and divide again – and by such a process the glyph set has been created from the primitive models that underlie the text.
This is what interests the author/illustrator: not the Isadorian associations of the T/O symbol but its basic geometry.
Even in this context, where we might expect the T/O to be used as a geographical symbol (the world divided into continents) we find that it seems to be involved in, or to illustrate, aspects of the text.
Once again, we need to put the Isadorian associations of the T/O symbol aside and consider it in a different light.
* * *
At the very deepest levels, I have proposed, the text is simply an unending sequence of [o] glyphs. The [o] glyph is the primal glyph.
In the beginning, there was just a series of [o] glyphs:
oooooooo
The other glyphs emerge from and then shape this series of [o] glyphs into the text.
This process is illustrated, I have argued, on page 70r:
Here we literally see glyphs and text emerging from a series of [o] glyphs.
Needless to say, this is not the behavior of a natural language. It is, rather, a system, an artificially designed schema, an elaborate contrivance.
Evidently, for the purposes of this contrivance, an eclectic ensemble of glyphs has been brought together, seemingly without any necessary reference to their meanings in other works.
Note: Just because a certain glyph has a certain meaning or significance in the Latin (or other) manuscript tradition, does not necessarily mean it has that significance here.
Rather, we see textual play. In this it is somewhat reminiscent of the sort of play one encounters in later occult and qabbalistic texts – a type of free association.
By far the most creative, intelligent (and certifiably crazy) exponent of similar textual manipulations in modern times was Aleister Crowley who, for example, presents a series of the English letter V – VVVVV – as a “magickal” formula representing the “camel tracks across the desert of the Abyss” in his (alphanumeric) initiatory system.
I am not suggesting the Voynich ms. is even remotely connected to ‘Crowleyanity’ (and I doubt it is alphanumeric) but there is a similar imaginative approach to letters, glyphs and signs, and it helps to be familiar with it.
It is not a typically modern way of thinking. The mystique of letters is lost in an age of utilitarian mass literacy. This is but one of the ways in which we are not well situated to understand a text such as this.
* * *
Another case of a series of [o] glyphs is found accompanying the T/O symbol in the top corner of the Voynich map.
Here, though, the sequence of [o] glyphs are on top of a series (or fringe) of strokes, and they are only part of the arrangement.
As well as a sequence of [o] glyphs atop strokes along one side of the T/O, there is another sequence of what seem like textual ‘plumes’ (like a large apostrophe mark) such as appear in the Voynich script above or attached to some glyphs.
Evidently, they are intended to match the corresponding sequence of [o] glyphs on the other side of the T/O symbol.
These might be crescents or something else, but they certainly resemble calligraphic plumes, elements of text.
We have a series of [o] glyphs and a series of ‘plumes’ – but the plumes are free standing and unattached to any glyphs whereas in the text they serve as elements of or modifiers of glyphs.
Such a plume placed above the glyph [ch], for instance, changes it to [sh] (in the EVA transcription.) Or we find a plume attached to an [e] to make [s].
Here we find a sequence of such plumes around half the circumference of the T/O symbol, with the other half a series of [o] glyphs – all of them atop a fringe of vertical strokes.
There is a plethora of other interpretations of these ‘plumes’, or curves, and the lines, and the whole design – a city, a fortress, a forest, a big clump of trees near a fork in the Volga river… and so on.
I am pursuing an entirely different line of inquiry.
All the same, another possible (or parallel) reading of these ‘plumes’ and [o] glyphs is that they are, respectively, lunar and solar, and that the curved plumes are moons that mark the night half of the circle, and the [o] glyphs are actually suns that mark the daylight half of the circle.
* * *
In this context, we naturally assume the T/O is cartographical and has something of its familiar meanings.
In particular, much speculation surrounds the words of text within the T/O symbol which, by the familiar associations, should indicate the continents known in medieval geography: Asia, Africa, Europe, along with corresponding compass directions.
There are only three words in this case:
osal
okar
cphey
Over the years, many researchers and casual inquirers have tried to equate [osal] with ‘Asia’, and then tried to take it from there...
I think it is fair to say that such an approach has yielded no results, either in helping us understand the map or in providing a pathway into Voynichese.
* * *
I suggest the following:
The three words – and the whole configuration – concern the processes by which the PLUME is used in the script and text.
The first word, [osal] features the [s] glyph which is, in design, an [e] glyph with an attached plume.
This is then contrasted to a gallows glyph [k] in [okar] and the benched gallows in [cphey].
I suggest these are three versions of the same word. The design illustrates how the word [osal] can mutate.
But the gallows and benched gallows forms are being presented as derivative, a result of the divisions by which the textual paradigms are formed. The word [osal] is primary.
In that case, the PLUMES are being presented as more fundamental, more primal, than either the gallows or gallows glyphs.
The gallowed form [okor] and the bench gallowed form [cphey] are the result of the second division of the circle.
The primal nature of the plumes is illustrated around the half circumference of the T/O symbol and, note, exactly that half of the circle bearing the word [osal].
This strongly suggests the shapes around that half circumference are indeed textual plumes – elements of orthography. Each of those plumes directs our attention to the plumed [s] glyph so prominent in [osal].
But the gallowed and bench gallowed forms are not based on a sequence of plumes, but on the primal sequence of [o] glyphs.
Or, more precisely, the series of [o] glyphs elevated by the vertical strokes we see around the T/O glyph.
These arrangements concern the elevated elements of the text, the plume that goes above the glyph [e] to make the glyph [s] – the plume is inherently a superscript gesture. It goes above the baseline text, just as the gallows and benched gallows inherently elevate elements to a superscript position.
For whatever reason, this T/O symbol on the Rosette page concerns the glyphs that are elevated, primarily the plumed glyphs and secondarily the gallows and benched gallows forms.
* * *
Finally, I point out that the same relations between the words in the T/O symbol are replicated in a different mode in the far bottom corner of the Voynich map.
I show them superimposed thus:
This symbol too has generated an inordinate amount of discussion over the years, and there are some readings of the manuscript that almost entirely swing on it.
Is it a medieval compass? A cartological convention? Does it point north or south, or where?
I suggest it is, in context, another presentation of the T/O symbol, rendered into linear nodes within a circle.
This too is, first and foremost, a symbol depicting: division.
For the moment we should put aside any other associations and just consider it as simple linear geometry. One node dividing into two.
It invites a more thorough comparison with the T/O symbol in the yonder corner.
For a start, in the bottom corner symbol the surrounding circle is divided quite neatly. This is in contrast to the ‘fringe’ of lines around the T/O symbol.
The difference is that the fringe of lines around the T/O symbol is undivided. The ‘fringe’ of marks around the circle in the bottom corner symbol have been organised and divided.
What is undivided and continuous in the top corner T/O symbol has been divided and organised in the lower corner symbol.
In any case: division.
And, as I have asked in previous posts, what is it that is being divided?
The answer I have supplied is: the YEAR.
Yes, but the YEAR can be both temporal and spatial.
The changing durations of the Sun are also spatial, as the Sun moves northwards and southwards, and its risings and settings move eastwards and westwards, in cycles.
Presumably, the symbolism of the YEAR will be taking a more spatial than temporal form in the context of a map.
As I admitted at the outset, this is not by any means a full account. We have only touched the surface in these preliminary observations.
R.B.
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