There is really no avoiding the fact that some of the glyphs in the Voynich glyph set are numbers.
It is especially conspicuous in the suffix [dy] which looks for all the world like the Arabic numbers [89].
That is how it looks to us, and it is how it must have looked to Voynich ms. contemporaries.
Indeed, it is how it must have looked to the Voynich author and scribes.
Here is an image from a copy of Ulrich Putsch's Light of the Soul made in the relevant region in the relevant period.
As far as I can tell the pagination is part of the original rubrication and not a later addition.
Now compare this to the Voynich [dy]:
Regardless of what [dy] might stand for in the Voynich glyphs, it certainly looks like the numbers [89], and it is not conceivable that it didn't look like that to the Voynich creators.
They are the numerals 8 and 9.
Possibly, they are being used for non-numerical purposes here, but they are still numerals, in the first instance.
* * *
4 OKEE 89
But let us take them as numerals and [dy] as [89].
How can we make sense of this?
These glyphs are a feature of our paradigm or template QOKEEDY and it features as a suffix throughout the text.
There are over 6800 cases of the bigram [dy] in total and over 270 cases as a stand-alone word.
Then, of course, each of the glyphs, [d] and [y], 8 and 9, are found in other contexts throughout as well.
There are some 16,000 cases of [y] and over 12,000 of [d], in total.
It is hard to think of any explanation for such a proliferation of the numbers 8 and 9 in any context.
What might be special about the numbers 8 and 9?
* * *
In view of my previous explorations, where I describe the text as cosmological, or astrological, or calendrical - based upon the YEAR, in any case - I propose the following:
The number 8 is divisible by two.
The number 9 is divisible by three.
This is the same basic distinction we have witnessed throughout the text at various levels:
The principle is division, and we can divide by two or divide by three.
In the year, we can divide the quarters by two, or by three.
In the paradigms or templates of our text, QOKEEDY is threefold while CHOL+DAIIN bifurcates.
(In plsants, stems divide by concurrent or alternating nodes.)
Again: we can divide by two, or divide by three as we divide up the YEAR and the ecliptic into quarters, half-quarters and zodiacal divisions.
Throughout the manuscript we find a tension between the eight and the twelve.
This is the same thing, because the twelve is generated by dividing by three. The eight is created by divisions of two.
The basic framework of astrology - the zodiac and its various divisions - is created by primal divisions of two or three.
[8] and [9], then, are the two keys of division.
[8] represents the principle: divisions by two.
[9] represents the principle: divisions by three.
When they appear together as [89] it means both divisions, or either, are applied.
This does not explain all the behavior of [d] and [y] in our text, but it does provide a coherent account of their symbolism and intrinsic meaning as functions in a cosmological text.
Numerals suggest quantities or measures (addition), perhaps, but also geometry and systems of division or ratio (rather than simple addition.)
My proposal is that this is the signification of these two important Voynich glyphs: they represent the principles of division by two or by three respectively.
* * *
Further to this, we can also note that the other apparent numeral in the text, the glyph [q], the first glyph in QOKEEDY, so strongly resembles the number [4] that, again, we cannot conceive of the author and scribes (and readers) not understanding that association.
In my account of the glyph [q] - see my previous post here - it means: divide by four.
It marks the quartering of the circle, which is to say the quartering of the year.
Visibly, it literally displays the quadrant from equinox to solstice (or solstice to equinox) - or the zodiacal quadrant from Aries to Cancer, etc.
This is the arc that is to be further divided.
It can be divided in half, or into thirds.
It emerges then that our paradigmatic "word", which features numerals at both ends, provides the formula for astrological divisions.
The [q] at the start says: divide the circle by 4 and mark out the arc between the quarters.
The [d] and the [y] at the end say: now divide the arc by two, and by three.
This is to decipher, unpack, QOKEEDY giving a full account of the fact - obscured in some transcriptions - that this template starts and ends with glyphs that are unmistakeably numbers.
What are these numbers? What do they mean? Have they just been appropriated and put to linguistic uses? Or are they mathematical, numerical?
By my account they present a formula for the generation of the zodiac. That, in the end, is what the paradigm QOKEEDY is.
R.B.
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