The investigations of the Voynich text I have been pursuing reveal several things with wider implications.
Here I want to apply some insights from previous studies to another perplexing page from the manuscript, namely page 86v3.
We find the idea that the winds carry birds to and from their nest.
The birds, and the figures, are presented atop mountain peaks.
But the page appears to be unfinished. In the centre is the outline of a T & O symbol, along with an outbreak of so-called ‘chicken scratchings’. Mysterious.
The other distinctive thing is that the five (or four) blocks of text on the page are written from four different directions. To write the text the scribe has had to rotate the page around. To read the text the reader needs to rotate the page around. This is unusual in the Voynich.
There have been the customary attempts to compare the iconography of the page with precedents, none very informative: or is it an allusion to Dante, or Ovid?
Most convincing are comparisons with the Wheel of Fortune design in the Tarot, the appearance of the tarocci cards being exactly contemporary with the Voynich, circa 1430s, northern Italy.
The guiding idea, then, might be the ‘Winds of Fortune’.
* * *
In a previous investigation, see the link here, I presented an analysis of the text within the T & O symbol on page 68v.
I argued that the symbol, in that case, was cosmogonic, and represented a process of dividing and dividing again.
Moreover, what was shown being created in that context was the text itself, the language.
The process of dividing and dividing again – like in the traditional T & O symbol – is the process by which the text is created.
Specifically, it is the process by which the paradigmatic forms of Voynichese – which I identify as QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN – emerge from the more basic, primitive paradigm, OTOPO.
More specifically still, the locus of this process, I argued, is the gallows glyph [t], which is revealed as the primal gallows glyph.
I demonstrated how the glyph [k] in the paradigm QOKEEDY emerges from the underlying paradigm, OTOPO.
[t] and [p], it turns out, are the primal forms of the gallows glyphs.
We now turn from the T/O symbol on page 68v to the one on page 86v3.
Our suspicion must be that the symbol on 86v might also be cosmogonic in the same way as that on page 68v.
That is, it represents the process of dividing and dividing again by which the glyph [t] becomes [k] and the paradigms of the running text emerge from their more primitive foundations.
But the symbol on 86v is unfinished, or was abandoned. So we cannot state anything conclusive about it. We do not know, for instance, if the finished diagram would have included text or not.
We cannot compare it to the textual operations embodied in the T/O symbol on page 68v.
There, rather than having its traditional associations, the T/O symbol appears like a device, a model, for the processes – dividing and dividing again – that underlie the structures of the Voynich language.
In the present case, 86v, we are unable to make any such conclusions, because it is unfinished, but I point out the following curious feature of the text on this page:
* * *
Not only are the blocks of text all oriented centre-wards, but they all begin with the glyph [t].
I have not been able to find any discussion of this, or indeed anywhere where the observation has been made.
As far as I can tell, it is the only instance of such consistency in the entire manuscript.
I cannot find any other page in the work where every block of text or paragraph begins with the same glyph.
Once we start looking for cases of it elsewhere, we appreciate that page 86v is quite unusual in this respect.
It is unusual inasmuch as it requires us to read these blocks of text from the centre – that is from the (unfinished) T/O symbol – and when we do we realise that each of these blocks of text begins with the glyph [t].
Again: I can find no other examples of this or a similar consistency on any other page.
And, by my reading, the fact it is the glyph [t] is not insignificant, because this is the primal gallows glyph. This is the glyph to which the process of divide and divide again is applied.
The one exception to this on the page is where a plume of wind from the top right corner intrudes upon the text. It appears to intervene.
It is necessary for that block of text to be split in two because of this plume of wind.
This creates a sub-block (or sub paragraph) of text, and this begins with the gallows glyph [p].
This conforms to our expectations, because [p] is the other primal gallows glyph. That is, we see evidence of the underlying pattern: OTOPO.
Again: every block of text on this page begins with the glyph [t]. But one of the blocks is split (divided) by the plume of wind. Where the block is divided it takes the glyph [p] rather than [t] as initial.
I suggest that we once again see the T/O symbol as a device by which to make the text.
In this case, on page 86v, albeit unfinished, the reader is deliberately placed in the position of the T/O symbol, in the centre of the page.
From that centre we turn and look out in the four directions.
We are greeted by a depiction of the four winds – meteorological symbolism.
But we are also shown five (four) blocks of text.
Conspicuously, they all begin with the primitive gallows glyph [t].
More than that, the illustration of the wind interrupting the text – with the text being adjusted to the illustration – illustrates the process of primal division that the T/O symbol represents.
That is, when this block of text is bifurcated, the bifurcated portion begins with the [p] glyph, the other gallows in the primitive paradigm.
The initial glyphs of these text blocks, or paragraphs, reflect the primitive paradigm.
As we are placed in the position of the T/O symbol, we are to understand that the initial glyphs of these text blocks are to be subject to the process of divide and divide again.
* * *
Regarding the paragraph initial words themselves, they show a particular interest in the glyph [ch] (with [sh] included) as the second glyph in these words; another unusual demonstration of consistency.
(Very few things are consistent in the VM. Those that are stand out.)
Not only do the words begin with [t] (or [p], these gallows are followed by [ch] (or [sh]).
Here are the words that start these text blocks:
tchol
tchedy
tshedal
pchedaiin
toeeedchy
By my account, the glyph [ch] is a ligatured contraction of [ee], and the [e] is a bifurcation of [o].
This is the process of division: [o] is divided into [ee], and then in CHOLDAIIN this is contracted into [ch], an [ee] with a ligature.
In any case, [o] divides into [ee] and so does [ch].
This process concerning the second glyph in these words is explicit in the unusual word at the start of the text that is upside down, that we need to turn the page upside down and read inverted: toeeedchy.
Look at how this word illustrates the sequences of division.
We might explore this group of words further in this light, but for now I draw attention to the initial gallows glyph and the glyphs that follow it.
* * *
Admittedly, there is little to go on here. But the appearance of the [t] glyph at the start of every text block on this unusual page is intriguing in itself and significant by my account. It might be confirmation of my reading of the T/O symbol on page 68v.
Regardless, the customary methods of study have failed to illuminate this page, and especially the meaning of the T/O in the centre, in context. The T/O symbol leads much research astray.
I don’t offer a full reading of the page: I merely point out that the phenomenon of all text blocks beginning with [t] – but where divided beginning with [p] – is consistent with the T/O symbols having a cosmogonic function in regards to the text itself according to my paradigm approach to finding ways into the inner workings of Voynichese.
And further than that, the words themselves – with [ch] in the second place – illustrate exactly the processes of division that I suggest are the intrinsic meaning and purpose of these T & O symbols.
The T & O symbols do not have their usual historical associations here. Rather, they are devices that illustrate: divide and divide again.
What is it that is being divided? The answer to this must once again be the YEAR.
The circle of the T/O symbol is the YEAR. It is divided in half and in half again. Thus the four seasons (and the four winds).
And again: Voynichese is, as I see it, essentially, the year made text.
R.B.
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