A Universal Template

Throughout these studies, for well over a year now, I have pursued an iterative approach to textual templates for Voynichese. 

It's how Space X goes about building rockets. You start with a half-decent design, and if it blows up on the launchpad you learn from it, fix it, improve it, and fly again. 

Other researchers might have a more NASA approach - taking the long way back to the Moon. I prefer to blow things up on the launch pad. 

Each iteration of the template fails at certain points. The recent version is no exception. 

The basis of all iterations remains the keywords QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN. The challenge is to construct a template for the Voynich language from those two words. 

The keywords, though, are CYCLES, and we must not envisage the template as static. Rather it is a series of cycles running throughout the text. 

If we take this to its logical conclusion - presenting the two keywords as full cycles - the template looks as follows:

Or perhaps as follows:

Again: these are exhaustive cycles of the two keywords. 

All we need then are the following rules:

Any gallows glyph can replace [k].

Benched gallows are expanded to [k+ch]

[r] can replace [iin]

[m] can replace [iin]

[s] can replace [ch]

[sh] can replace [ch]

[g] can replace [ch]

 

This extension and these few rules resolve all problems. In fact, I contend, any word will fit anywhere on this template, and so will any line of Voynich text. 

In part, this is because the template is so flexible and permits so many glyph combinations, but, after all, it is only two words and a few simple rules. 

We can reduce the entire Voynich text down to two words and a few simple rules. 

* * *

As it happens, previous iterations of a template that I have attempted are all found as parts of this larger grid. 

They were not wrong, just incomplete. We just needed a bigger version of the same patterns. In many ways they are more useful. 

We can make the large grid less unwiedly, though. 

Since so few words are more than twelve glyphs long we can truncate a portion of the template as a 12 x 12 grid, for practical purposes, thus:

Again: I contend that any Voynich word whatsoever (twelve glyphs or less) can be accomodated to this template, with the aid of only a few simple rules (which are based on the visual appearances of the glyphs.) 

We can take any Voynich word, no matter how common or rare, or how unusual or problematic, and it will conform to this template without difficulty. It has universal application. 

It is a sweeping claim, I know, but I cannot find any configurations in Voynichese at any scale - words, bigrams, trigrams, lines, labels - that do not conform. Words that present difficulties in previous iterations - such as those with two gallows glyphs - can be found without trouble in this iteration. 

And if my proposal that the text is entirely derived from two paradigmatic words, QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN, is true then exhausting their cycles should allow such a claim. 

We could think of these as a system of  twelve volvelles. Turning them, we can make any Voynich word. 

The objection might be made: but we could set up twenty-six wheels of twenty-six English letters and any word of English will conform. 

That is not what we have done here. This is two words, set in cycles. And a few rules. 

As it happens, the two words between them contain most of the glyphs in the Voynich glyph set - but that's why they are paradigmatic words. 

The objection: but any glyph can go in any place, is moot. That's right. Any glyph can go in any place. A universal template. 

That is why I am confident it will work for any Voynich word, or any portion of Voynichese. 

After trying many iterations of templates using QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN, we finally arrive at one where any glyph can go in any place. 

* * *

Examples:

* * *

Since any glyph can go anywhere, no further examples are required. This is a matrix upon which we can situate any Voynich word or portion of text. 

Again, to make a set of volvelles from which to generate any portion of Voynichese:

*Take six wheels with two cycles of the glyphs Q O K EE D Y with each glyph off-set.

*And six wheels with two cycles of the glyphs CH O L D A IIN, similarly off-set. 

Twelve wheels of twelve glyphs.

This is the fundamental matrix of the text. There are then variations created by the extra gallows glyphs, [sh], [s], [r] and the others, but as entirely consistent substitutions for the same pattern. 

To my knowledge - and scanning across Voynich pages - I do not know of any other proposed system of volvelles that could so comprehensively account for the text and the phenomenon of Voynichese as we find it. Not so simply. 

Of course, we have not begun to explain why glyphs are selected and arranged as they are, why gallows glyphs change, and so forth, but we have established a viable matrix for the entire text using the two paradigmatic words (cycles). 

I understand QOKEEDY and CHOLDAIIN to be astrological formulae and the text to be a type of astrological notation. A system, a template, of 12 x 12 has obvious astrological resonances. But I will leave that for later posts. 

R.B.