• Options
• Login
• Desktop Style

Nicholas of Cusa: Latin analogy

• Index

  • The Voynich Ninja
  • Voynich Research
  • Analysis of the text
  • Nicholas of Cusa: Latin analogy
• Nicholas of Cusa: Latin analogy

• Nicholas of Cusa: Latin analogy

  Hermes777 > 04-07-2022, 11:39 PM

  I've posted this elsewhere but I think it is relevant here. I am of the view, for sundry reasons, that Nicholas of Cusa is the brains behind the VMs and Voynichese. Turning to his writings, there are many suggestive passages that might help us think usefully about the text. Here is a passage from Cusanus that I find enormously intriguing vis-a-vis the Voynich:
  
  One element universally enfolds within itself three elements; but the three elements generally enfold within themselves nine elements; and the nine specifically enfold within themselves twenty-seven elements. Therefore, the cube of three is the specific unfolding of the oneness of each element. But the species enfolds its own specific elements, just as the specific Latin language has its own specific elemental letters. Although these specific letters are few, they are of inexhaustible power. Hence, just as a Latin sentence consists of certain very universal letters, of general letters, of somewhat specific letters, and, lastly, of very specific letters—all contracted to the Latin sentence—so too every sensible-particular is like a complete sentence.
  
  
  Conjectures, 95.
  
  Here we see Cusanus' development (refinement) of the traditional analogy between cosmos and text, known as the stoicheon analogy, its classical source being Plato's Timaeus. I think we need to appreciate this type of thinking in order to understand what is going on in the VMs. Every sensible-particular is like a complete sentence (and so vice versa.)
  
  
  Jasper Hopkins, the Cusanus expert, cannot make much sense of this passage - it is not a natural or familiar division of the Latin alphabet - , but Cusanus is dividing the letters of Latin up into four (Platonic) categories graded from general to particular. It gives us an important insight into how Cusanus was thinking about language.

• RE: Nicholas of Cusa: Latin analogy

  cvetkakocj@rogers.com > 06-07-2022, 01:18 PM

  (04-07-2022, 11:39 PM)Hermes777 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Although these specific letters are few, they are of inexhaustible power. Hence, just as a Latin sentence consists of certain very universal letters, of general letters, of somewhat specific letters, and, lastly, of very specific letters—all contracted to the Latin sentence—so too every sensible-particular is like a complete sentence.

  This is very interesting, because the author I am proposing, Nicholas Kempf, was great admirer of Nicholas of Kusa and used many of his quotations in his work. If Kempf were to act on Kusa's suggestion about the very specific letters in the language in which the VM would be written, the two strange gallows could be considered the letters with great power, because they, according to my transliteration, stand for SV, CV, ZV sounds. Slovenian word families relate   to holiness, blessing, celebration, advice, protection, blossom, poems start with SV/CV, and the words related to stars start with ZV.  I should also mention the unique VM 4-like glyph, which I read as P.

• RE: Nicholas of Cusa: Latin analogy

  Hermes777 > 07-07-2022, 11:52 PM

  The translator, Jasper Hopkins, suggests that the breakdown Cusanus has in mind in this passage is:
  
  Universal letters = vowels
  General letters = consonants
  Specific letters = double consonants
  Very specific letters = diphthongs
• Next Oldest Next Newest