The Cryptogram; Masonic Example of Secrecy

No treatise which deals with symbolism would be complete without a section devoted to the consideration of cryptograms. The use of ciphers has long been recognized as indispensable in military and diplomatic circles, but the modern world has overlooked the important rôle played by cryptography in literature and philosophy. If the art of deciphering cryptograms could be made popular, it would result in the discovery of much hitherto unsuspected wisdom possessed by both ancient and mediæval philosophers. It would prove that many apparently verbose and rambling authors were wordy for the sake of concealing words.

Ciphers are hidden in the most subtle manner: they may be concealed in the watermark of the paper upon which a book is printed; they may be bound into the covers of ancient books; they may be hidden under imperfect pagination; they may be extracted from the first letters of words or the first words of sentences; they may be artfully concealed in mathematical equations or in apparently unintelligible characters; they may be extracted from the jargon of clowns or revealed by heat as having been written in sympathetic ink; they may be word ciphers, letter ciphers, or apparently ambiguous statements whose meaning could be understood only by repeated careful readings; they may he discovered in the elaborately illuminated initial letters of early books or they may be revealed by a process of counting words or letters. If those interested in Freemasonic research would give serious consideration to this subject, they might find in books and manuscripts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the information necessary to bridge the gap in Masonic history that now exists between the Mysteries of the ancient world and the Craft Masonry of the last three centuries.

The arcana of the ancient Mysteries were never revealed to the profane except through the media of symbols. Symbolism fulfilled the dual office of concealing the sacred truths from the uninitiated and revealing them to those qualified to understand the symbols. Forms are the symbols of formless divine principles; symbolism is the language of Nature. With reverence the wise pierce the veil and with clearer vision contemplate the reality; but the ignorant, unable to distinguish between the false and the true, behold a universe of symbols. It may well be said of Nature--the Great Mother--that she is ever tracing strange characters upon the surface of things, but only to her eldest and wisest sons as a reward for their faith and devotion does she reveal the cryptic alphabet which is the key to the import of these tracings.

The temples of the ancient Mysteries evolved their own sacred languages, known only to their initiates and never spoken save in the sanctuary. The illumined priests considered it sacrilege to discuss the sacred truths of the higher worlds or the divine verities of eternal Nature in the same tongue as that used by the vulgar for wrangling and dissension. A sacred science must needs be couched in a sacred language. Secret alphabets also were invented, and whenever the secrets of the wise were committed to writing, characters meaningless to the uninformed were employed. Such forms of writing were called sacred or Hermetic alphabets. Some--such as the famous angelic writing--are still retained in the higher degrees of Masonry.
Secret alphabets were not entirely satisfactory, however, for although they rendered unintelligible the true nature of the writings, their very presence disclosed the fact of concealed information--which the priests also sought to conceal. Through patience or persecution, the keys to these alphabets were eventually acquired and the contents of the documents revealed to the unworthy. This necessitated employment of more subtle methods for concealing the divine truths. The result was the appearance of cryptic systems of writing designed to conceal the presence of both the message and the cryptogram. Having thus devised a method of transmitting their secrets to posterity, the illuminati encouraged the circulation of certain documents specially prepared through incorporating into them ciphers containing the deepest secrets of mysticism and philosophy. Thus mediæval philosophers disseminated their theories throughout Europe without evoking suspicion, since volumes containing these cryptograms could be subjected to the closest scrutiny without revealing the presence of the hidden message.

During the Middle Ages scores of writers--members of secret political or religious organizations--published books containing ciphers. Secret writing became a fad; every European court had its own diplomatic cipher, and the intelligentsia vied with one another in devising curious and complicated cryptograms. The literature of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries is permeated with ciphers, few of which have ever been decoded. Many of the magnificent scientific and philosophic intellects of this period dared not publish their findings, because of the religious intolerance of their day. In order to preserve the fruitage of their intellectual labors for mankind, these pioneers of progress concealed their discoveries in ciphers, trusting that future generations, more kindly than their own, would discover and appreciate their learning.

From Selenus' Cryptomenytices et Cryptographiæ.

One year after the publication of the first Great "Shakespearian" Folio, a remarkable volume on cryptogram, and ciphers was published. The title page of the work is reproduced above. The year of its publication (1624) was during the Rosicrucian controversy. The translation of the title page is as follows:

"The Cryptomenysis and Cryptography of Gustavus Selenus in nine books, to which is added a clear explanation of the System of Steganography of John Trithemius, Abbot of Spanheim and Herbipolis, a man of admirable genius. Interspersed with worthy inventions of the Author and others, 1624." The author of this volume was believed to be Augustus, Duke of Brunswick. The symbols and emblems ornamenting the title page, however, are conclusive evidence that the fine hand of the Rosicrucians was behind its publication. At the bottom of the picture is a nobleman (Bacon?) placing his hat on another man's head. In the oval at the top of the plate, it is possible that the lights are beacons, or a play upon the name Bacon. In the two side panels are striking and subtle "Shakespearian" allusions. On the left is a nobleman (possibly Bacon) handing a paper to another man of mean appearance who carries in his hand a spear. At the right, the man who previously carried the spear is shown in the costume of an actor, wearing spurs and blowing a horn. The allusion to the actor blowing his horn and the figure carrying the spear suggest much, especially as spear is the last syllable of the name "Shakespeare."

Many churchmen, it is interesting to note, used cryptograms, fearing excommunication or a worse fate should their scientific researches be suspected. Only recently an intricate cipher of Roger Bacon's has been unraveled, revealing the fact that this early scientist was well versed in the cellular theory. Lecturing before the American Philosophical Society, Dr. William Romaine Newbold, who translated the cipher manuscript of the friar, declared: "There are drawings which so accurately portray the actual appearance of certain objects that it is difficult to resist the inference that Bacon had seen them with the microscope. * * * These are spermatozoa, the body cells and the seminiferous tubes, the ova, with their nuclei distinctly indicated. There are nine large drawings, of which one at least bears considerable resemblance to a certain stage of development of a fertilized cell." (See Review of Reviews, July, 1921.) Had Roger Bacon failed to conceal this discovery under a complicated cipher, he would have been persecuted as a heretic and would probably have met the fate of other early liberal thinkers. In spite of the rapid progress made by science in the last two hundred and fifty years, it still remains ignorant concerning many of the original discoveries made by mediæval investigators. The only record of these important findings is that contained in the cryptograms of the volumes which they published. While many authors have written on the subject of cryptography, the books most valuable to students of philosophy and religion are: Polygraphia and Steganographia, by Trithemius, Abbot of Spanheim; Mercury, or The Secret and Swift Messenger, by John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester; Œdipus ægyptiacus and other works by Athanasius Kircher, Society of Jesus; and Cryptomenytices et Cryptographiæ, by Gustavus Selenus.

To illustrate the basic differences in their construction and use, the various forms of ciphers are here grouped under seven general headings:

1. The literal cipher. The most famous of all literal cryptograms is the famous biliteral cipher described by Sir Francis Bacon in his De Augmentis Scientiarum. Lord Bacon originated the system while still a young man residing in Paris. The biliteral cipher requires the use of two styles of type, one an ordinary face and the other specially cut. The differences between the two fonts are in many case so minute that it requires a powerful magnifying glass to detect them. Originally, the cipher messages were concealed only in the italicized words, sentences, or paragraphs, because the italic letters, being more ornate than the Roman letters, offered greater opportunity for concealing the slight but necessary variations. Sometimes the letters vary a trifle in size; at other times in thickness or in their ornamental flourishes. Later, Lord Bacon is believed to have had two Roman alphabets specially prepared in which the differences were so trivial that it is almost impossible for experts to distinguish them.

A careful inspection of the first four "Shakespeare" folios discloses the use throughout the volumes of several styles of type differing in minute but distinguishable details. It is possible that all the "Shakespeare" folios contain ciphers running through the text. These ciphers may have been added to the original plays, which are much longer in the folios than in the original quartos, full scenes having been added in some instances.
The biliteral cipher was not confined to the writings of Bacon and "Shakespeare," however, but appears in many books published during Lord Bacon's lifetime and for nearly a century after his b death. In referring to the biliteral cipher, Lord Bacon terms it omnia per omnia. The cipher may run through an entire book and be placed therein at the time of printing without the knowledge of the original author, for it does not necessitate the changing of either words or punctuation. It is possible that this cipher was inserted for political purposes into many documents and volumes published during the seventeenth century. It is well known that ciphers were used for the same reason as early as the Council of Nicæa.

The Baconian biliteral cipher is difficult to use today, owing to the present exact standardization of type and the fact that so few books are now hand set. Accompanying this chapter are facsimiles of Lord Bacon's biliteral alphabet as it appeared in the 1640 English translation of De Augmentis Scientiarum. There are four alphabets, two for the capital and two for the small letters. Consider carefully the differences between these four and note that each alphabet has the power of either the letter a or the letter b, and that when reading a word its letters are divisible into one of two groups: those which correspond to the letter a and those which correspond to the letter b. In order to employ the biliteral cipher, a document must contain five times as many letters as there are in the cipher message to be concealed, for it requires five letters to conceal one. The biliteral cipher somewhat resembles a telegraph code in which letters are changed into dots and dashes; according to the biliteral system, however, the dots and dashes are represented respectively by a's and b's. The word biliteral is derived from the fact that all letters of the alphabet may be reduced to either a or b. An example of biliteral writing is shown in one of the accompanying diagrams. In order to demonstrate the working of this cipher, the message concealed within the words "Wisdom and understanding are more to be desired than riches" will now be deciphered.

The first step is to discover [he letters of each alphabet and replace them by their equivalent a or b in accordance with the key given by Lord Bacon in his biliteral alphabet (q.v.). In the word wisdom, the W is from the b alphabet; therefore it is replaced by a b. The i is from the a alphabet; therefore an a is put in its place. The s is also from the a alphabet, but the d belongs to the b alphabet. The o and the m both belong to the a alphabet is replaced by a. By this process the word WISDOM become baabaa. Treating the remaining words of the sentence in a similar manner, AND becomes aba; UNDERSTANDING, aaabaaaaaabab; ARE, aba; MORE, abbb; TO, ab; BE, ab; DESIRED, abaabaa; THAN, aaba; RICHES, aaaaaa.
The next step is to run all the letters together; thus:

baabaaabaaaabaaaaaabababaabbbabababaabaaaabaaaaaaa. All the combinations used in the Baconian biliteral cipher consist of groups containing five letters each. Therefore the solid line of letters must be broken into groups of five in the following manner: baaba aabaa aabaa aaaab ababa abbba babab aabaa aabaa aaaaa. Each of these groups of five letters now represents one letter of the cipher, and the actual letter can now be determined by comparing the groups with the alphabetical table, The Key to the Biliteral Cipher, from De Augmentis Scientiarum (q.v.): baaba = T, aabaa = E, aabaa = E; aaaab = B; ababa = L; abbba = P; babab = X; aabaa = E, aabaa = E; aaaaa = A; but the last five letters of the word riches being set off by a period from the initial r, the last five a's do not count in the cipher. The letters thus extracted are now brought together in order, resulting in TEEBLPXEE.