No text, but a visual code

[HermesRevived]

Thank you, Hermes!
I have not had the opportunity to read the Lapidary that you cite, its text is not linguistic?

No, the text of the Lapidary is linguistic. It is a Catalan translation of an Arabic work. I only know it from the illustrations and translations. Its format is to describe stones and then link them to particular stars. There are descriptions of the stars and their positions such as  "...front one of two stars on the left leg of the figure that is half man and half horse, and which looks like it is in front of the three stars at the base of the tail..." for the third degree of Libra, the star probably being Delta Centauri. 

If the Voynich is modelled on this, and presents an account of the 360 degrees/stars/naiads, but for the plant realm rather than the mineral realm, we might expect that it contains similar content. But the Voynich text isn't a text. It is something else, some type of notation that presumably accomplishes the same thing: allows the reader to connect the plants to the stars. 

Yet the text is a text, isn't it? The author could not have failed to notice that his system of notation looks like a text of words. That must be by design. It is not enough to say it is a system of notation. For me, that is the central mystery. It looks like a linguistic text, but it isn't, and yet this is not accidental. 

An answer to that mystery might be supplied by alphanumeric systems like Greek. A work like the Handy Tables of Ptolemy might suggest the idea that if you ascribe letters/numbers to astrological coordinates in the right way the movements of the heavens create words - the cosmic text. This depends upon the view that alphabets and writing are gifts of the gods and of celestial not human origins. (The other thing that suggests this idea, and was current at the time, was the SATOR square.) In any case, I think the Voynich arises from a Latin humanist's encounter with Greek. He knows of the Lapidary of Alfonso, but there is no reason to suppose he had been to Spain to see it.