Browsing through the opaque pages of Voynich ms. we might well get excited when we come across cases of the T & O symbol – here at last is something we recognize, something familiar. From this we can establish our bearings!
The fondest hope is that the words in these symbols might correspond to our expectations.
Going by all precedents, the words are likely to be names of the parts of the world – Asia, Europe, Africa – or else, less commonly, have religious significance, proclaiming Christ ‘Savior of the World’, or naming the sons of Noah, or something not too far remote from those models.
The precedents, though, are thoroughly unilluminating. The Voynich, once again, does not fit into any specific and identifiable tradition of iconography.
Collecting hundreds of examples of medieval T/O symbols is fruitless and inconclusive multiplication that reveals nothing. That standard codicological approach is unproductive. We are thrown back upon the internal resources of the manuscript itself.
There has been considerable discussion and speculation on this over the decades, but to my knowledge no one has made sense of the text in these symbols (or, really, of the symbols themselves, and their role in the text.)
If we construe one word as Asia, it doesn’t help us identify other words as Africa and Europe, and vice versa. Nothing works.
The conclusion, for many, is that, despite appearances and what we might expect, the words in the T/O symbols are probably not designations of continents or races after all.
* * *
Here I will submit the T & O symbol on page 68v to some analysis according to my ‘dual paradigm’ approach to the Voynich text.
Here is the symbol in situ:
Here is the text transcribed into EVA.
These are, of course, Labels. Or are they?
There are three signs of Labels we see here:
*An absence of [q]
*The presence of [t]
*The presence of [p]
This might happen elsewhere, to be sure, but it is characteristic of what is (regrettably) called ‘Labelese’.
By these criteria the two top words beginning [ot-] and [op-] (without a [q]) are especially typical of Labelese. These are certainly Labels.
But the lower text seems more typical of the running text.
More exactly, perhaps, it is like the running text we find on the first page of the manuscript, the [q]-less running text.
It is too small a sample to be certain of this, but the text below the lines is more like running text than Labelese.
I propose therefore that in the first instance this design is as follows:
The text above the line is of a different nature than the text below the line.
By my account, the text above the line – the Labels – are based on what I have deemed the primitive paradigm, and the text below the line is based on the two verbum potentiae developed from the primitive paradigm, QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN.
And we can see this.
Look at the two top words. In previous posts I identified the primitive paradigm as:
otopo
Both of these words are clearly derived from that paradigm.
But look below the line.
We find the words: [solaiin] and [olekeey].
These are just as clearly derived from CHOLDAIIN and QOKEEDY respectively.
Above the line, Labels based on the primitive paradigm. Below the line we encounter the dual paradigm, text based on CHOLDAIIN and QOKEEDY.
* * *
It is not my intention to analyse and decompose each word in this group. Rather, I want to point to certain symmetries.
The first symmetry is:
‘
*primitive paradigm above the line,
*dual paradigm below the line.
This so-called Isadorian T & O symbol embodies that distinction, the distinction between Labelese (and the primitive paradigm), and the running text, the verbum potentiae.
But notice the symmetry of the vertical line.
This left/right symmetry is given emphasis by the first sequence of words below the line because there is a very emphatic space between: [roar.ykeol.] and [darol.daly.]
The space is clearly deliberate, and much bigger than ordinary word spaces. This first sequence of four words is bifurcated, well separated, into two sets of two words.
I contend that these words are derived from the corresponding paradigms. They are cases of the dual paradigm in action.
The symmetries of bifurcation continue – are reflected in – the final line of the group. We have:
[ykol] …… [dar]
These are mutations of the two parts of CHOLDAIIN, namely CHOL and DAIIN, the prefix and the suffix.
* * *
This leaves us with only two words – the words that span the vertical dividing line, the words with a foot in both camps.
They are both strange words:
ckhhy
ctheepoey
The thing to notice, though, is that they both sport a form of the BENCHED GALLOWS.
I have refrained from discussing these glyphs until now. But, obviously, they combine our two paradigms into one single configuration.
CHOLDAIIN has the bench.
QOKEEDY has the gallows.
The benched gallows are synthetic glyphs that arise from the meeting or overlapping of the two verbum potentiae. They constitute a fascinating study in themselves from this viewpoint, but here we see their nature illustrated quite explicitly. They are where the two paradigms meet and are combined.
Accordingly, in this T/O arrangement, they stand in the centre, crossing the vertical, bifurcating divide.
On the left is CHOLDAIIN and on the right is QOKEEDY, and in the middle are two rather mangled or at least inelegant (perhaps unfinished or premature?) combinations of the two featuring benched gallows glyphs.
The benched gallows are what they seem: a combination of a [ch] and a gallows glyph, superimposed. The [ch] is supplied by the CHOLDAIIN paradigm and the [k] or other gallows is supplied by QOKEEDY.
* * *
In view of above symmetries, we have put an entirely new light upon this T/O arrangement.
It seems, for all the world, like a standard T/O such as one finds on maps (or charts). We are invited to think it has something like its usual geographical meanings.
But, instead, what it does is illustrate, demonstrate, the creation of the two paradigms of the running text from the primitive order. It would appear to indicate something quite different than geographica-mundi.
The key, surely, is the idea of bifurcation.
What is it that recommends the T & O symbol to our author/illustrator? It is the way the T/O symbol divides and divides again.
Readers are invited to look back through previous enteries to this blog for an account of this process of division.
The T/O symbol, then, may have no geographical meanings at all here. It is, rather, a device that illustrates, or performs, the primal divisions from which the Voynich language has been formed.
Indeed, the assumption that it is a T/O symbol in the ordinary sense may be entirely wrong. And this may apply to the other T/O symbols in the manuscript.
Again: it is not a T/O symbol in the first instance, but rather a circle that has been divided in half and then in half again.
The first division is severe. The primitive words are above the line. The developed paradigm system is below the line.
Below the line, the left/right division is only implied, not strict.
The T/O symbol illustrates types of division.
From these divisions the Voynich language changes from Labelese to the language of the running text (albeit without the [q], like the text on the first page of the manuscript.)
* * *
But it is a medieval Isadorian T & O symbol all the same. It is inconceivable that the author/illustrator did not want us to make that association.
Are we being misled? Or do we just fail to understand?
The reading that would follow from this illustration on page 68v, and this account of the inherent symmetries of the accompanying text, is that, in the centre, the T/O symbol represents CREATION.
The language is being created here. And, in context, it is being shown as a cosmogonic process.
The spirals on this page strongly suggest this. It is a convention in Platonic and Hermetic cosmology – spiral forms are cosmogonic, creative. (I note that others have made this observation about spirals before.)
* * *
The entire page requires a new interpretation. And it will have consequences for our reading of the work as a whole, text and illustration both.
Idle geographical speculations based on the T/O symbols in the manuscript are likely to be only that: idle speculation. Such speculation assumes the T/O symbol carries its familiar associations, but it apparently does not. There are whole theories based on supposed geographical attributions that follow from the T & O symbols in the text, but the symbols do not seem to have any such associations.
Rather, the author/illustrator has taken the T/O glyph as a model for the basic divisions that generate the text.
Again: What is it that recommends the T & O symbol to our author/illustrator? It is the way the T/O symbol divides and divides again.
It encapulates the relationship between the primitive paradigm and the dual paradigm system developed from it, and it illustrates the porous and reciprocal and overlapping relationship between the two paradigms, QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN.
In particular, too, it illustrates the origins of the benched gallows glyphs.
When we view this configuration through the lens of textual paradigms, the stylizations and symmetries of the text and the diagram emerge. The T & O symbol takes on a new meaning.
R.B.
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