I entered Kingdom A&S in 2014 with a cryptography project. Steganography is the art of making a code that, at first glance, appears to be ordinary writing, with no secret code.
A Steganographic Poem
A love poem, with hidden writing
Gently idle until east glows the dawn.
Thou art tart, and in thy mead given
Ruin; I save springtime in a vial drawn.
That loving nest is the haven, our glen.
Art thou a lover of these sorry men?
Envy not. Earn no leer of a wastrel.
Do countenance so faithful.
This project combines two separate sources of inspiration, both drawn from German writers who were active at the close of the 15th century: Sebastian Brant and Johannes Trithemius.
Sebastian Brant
Sebastian Brant (1457-1521) was a lawyer and professor at the University of Basle, and he wrote several poems discussing religious and political topics in his native German and in Latin. His most famous work, The Ship of Fools, was published in 1494. In 1499 Basle became part of the Swiss confederacy, and Brant’s firm devotion to the German Empire and Emperor Maximilian I caused him to return to his home city of Strasbourg, which was still part of the German empire. He found work as a government official there in 1501 and remained a productive member of his community until his death in 1521.
The Ship of Fools
Brant’s original German edition of The Ship of Fools was titled Das Narrenschiff, and was published in 1494. It’s a long list of moral failings - 110 kinds of fool are described and illustrated in the book’s 112 chapters, and there are 118 highly detailed woodcuts. The majority of the woodcuts are attributed to Albrecht Dürer. Dürer has a later tie to Trithemius’s student Agrippa, as discussed below in the section titled “Trithemius’s Later Influence.” Das Narrenschiff was very popular, and was promptly translated in to a variety of European languages and editions. The various translations do not seem to have been much concerned with preserving the poetic structure of the original German, and in some cases they may have employed considerable license with regard to the content of the chapters as well, keeping the general theme of each chapter but using their own idiom and examples. The woodcuts of the 1498 Latin edition, titled Stultifera Navis, are available for online viewing courtesy of the University of Houston website link listed in the bibliography.
My poem is loosely based on the structure of the English translation of Das Narrenschiff published in 1509. The 1509 poem is written in 7-line stanzas, with a rhyme pattern of ABABBCC. The rhyme words do not repeat across stanzas. The syllable count ranges mostly between 10 and 12, and 11 is most common. Syllabic emphasis is hard to tell due to variable number of syllables per line, but seems to generally be simple alternating unstressed then stressed. 11-syllable lines have an awkward repetition of an emphasis to end the line on an accent. For the text of the 1509 English translation, along with a version in modernized spelling, see Appendix A.
In comparison, the modern German version of the poem consists of paired couplets, which do not seem to be arranged into stanzas. The rhyme patterns do not continue on past the couplet AABBCCDD (… etc.) The lines are written with a strict syllabic construction of 8 syllables each. I did not analyze the syllabic emphasis of the modern German poem, nor of any of the other languages, as I do not speak them well enough to be confident of my results. For the text of the modern German version, see Appendix A. The various other translations seem to have each had their own rhyme structure, with simple couplets being the most common.
The 1509 English translation and the modern German seem to have very different content - they are on the same topic of decrying dandyism and vanity in one’s clothing, but the modern German is much shorter, and levels different accusations.
Johannes Trithemius
Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516) was born in Trittenheim, Germany. In 1483 he was elected abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St. Martin at Sponheim, near Bad Kreuznach. He was a prolific writer on a variety of subjects, and many of his works survive. Most of his published works concerned religious topics, and he was heavily active in efforts to reform the monastery. He also published a genealogy where he simply made up a 6th-century chronicler he called Hunibald, whose writings Trithemius claimed could “prove the genealogical connection between the Trojans and the Franks.”
Trithemius went on a business trip in 1506. In his absence the monks rebelled, in part because of the disrepute they felt Steganographia had brought to the monastery. Emperor Maximilian I offered him a position at court, but in 1506 Trithemius chose instead to go into semi-retirement as abbot of the tiny Scottish monastery of St. Jacob, at Würzburg. He remained there until his death in 1516.
Trithemius’s extensive Christian writings, his role in the persecution of witches, and speculation as to why he would choose to present his cryptography in a format that would leave him open to accusations of demonology, are all beyond the scope of my work here. Noel L. Brann covers these topics extensively in his book Trithemius and Magical Theology.
Steganography
Trimethius’s work that I used in this project was titled Steganographia, after the Greek for “hidden writing.” It was written in three volumes, although the final volume is much shorter and may have been released before it was complete. Trimethius’s 1492 work In Praise of Scribes (which discussed how much better hand-copied manuscripts were than printed books) was distributed via printed books.
His 1499 work Steganographia was copied and distributed in manuscript form. “Not until 1606 was it printed, and this exacerbated the dispute. The opponents scored a great victory when, on September 7, 1609, the Roman Catholic Church placed it on its Index of Prohibited Books.”
It was not until 1998 that Dr. Jim Reeds solved the cypher of the third book of Steganographia, and proved that just like the first two volumes, it was also cryptography. His solution was published widely, and garnered much interest in the modern Hermetic magic community, which had regarded Trithemius as one of their important early community members. Dr. Thomas Ernst had discovered and published the solution in 1996, but the Dutch-language article he wrote on the subject had remained relatively unknown.
Additional information on Trithemius and Steganographia may be found in Appendix B.
Trithemius’s Later Influence
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (known simply as Agrippa) was a student and friend of Trithemius. Agrippa served in the secret service of Emperor Maximilian I, and was known for his skill and discretion. When he wrote Of Occult Philosophy or Magic in 1510, he sent an early manuscript to Trithemius seeking his advice and approval of the work. An excerpt from Trithemius’s warm and highly complimentary letter in response is included in Appendix C.
Agrippa influenced Albrecht Dürer. Most notably, Dürer’s famous 1514 copperplate engraving Melencolla I is thought to be a reference to the first of three types of melancholy (“Melencholia Imaginativa”) described by Agrippa, and Dürer used a magic square in the image to give the date it was engraved. Dürer also served as official court artist of Emperor Maximilian I.
Some years later, John Dee owned several of Trithemius’s books.
Dee heavily annotated and underlined Trithemius’s Liber octo quaestionum (1534), which was concerned with the spiritual life of humanity and the place of angels in the cosmic system.
In addition, Dee acquired a manuscript copy of Trithemius’s Steganographia when he was on the Continent in 1563, believing that it was “so needful and comodius, as in humayne knowledg [sic], none can be meeter.”
Though Dee’s interest in Trithemius has always been linked to his possible interest in cryptography, there is no evidence to suggest that anyone in Elizabeth’s government considered the work to be anything but a curiosity.
A timeline showing some important dates from all these various intersecting lives is included in Appendix D.
The Code I Used
Trithemius describes several code systems in his writings, many of which require the sender and receiver to have corresponding tables to use as keys to decipher the coded message. I have chosen here to use one of Trimethius’s simplest codes, which does not require the use of any separate key.
In this code, the sender encodes the hidden message using every other letter of every other word. The remaining words are nulls, and simply fill in the spaces. For example, the sent message might read:
Parmesiel oshurmi delmuson thafloin peano charustrea melany lyamunto…
which the receiver would decode as shown below:
parmesiel oShUrMi delmuson ThAfLoIn peano ChArUsTrEa melany LyAmUnTo…
to reveal the coded message, which in this case is in Latin:
Sum tali cautela ut….
An example is:
Padiel aporsy mesarpon omeuas peludyn malpreaxo…
which the receiver would decode as shown below:
padiel aPoRsY mesarpon oMeUaS peludyn mAlPrEaXo...
revealing the Latin:
Primus apex…
For additional information on this particular code and my sources for it, see Appendix E.
How I Wrote the Poem
Unlike Trithemius, who indulged in pseudo-religious Latin-sounding nonsense words, I am writing for an audience who would find such gobbledygook annoying at best, and suspicious at worst (“worst” since suspicion would increase the chances of the hidden message being detected). To preserve the original covert intent of the code, I chose to write the hidden message in the form of a poem. I took the poetic structure from Ship of Fools because of that work’s close association with Trithemius in terms of time, geography, and the authors’ political affiliations. In creating the poem, I had to work under three separate rule sets:
- I needed to follow the cryptographic code.
- I needed to follow the poetic structure.
- The resulting poem needed to look like a reasonably passable poem. It doesn’t need to be a good poem (mediocre poets are not uncommon, and have been around forever), just a believable one.
Code-containing word choices have a cascading effect through all following code-containing words, since the code requires the use of every other letter - if I choose a code-containing word that ends in a null letter, the next code-containing word cannot begin with a null letter. For a sample of the tight word restrictions I had to satisfy, see the table in Appendix E. As I chose code and null words, I counted off syllables to meet the restrictions of the poetic form. I tried to have lines end on null words, since I had greater freedom in choosing null words and it made the ending rhyme much easier to accomplish. In cases where the code and the poetic structure conflicted, the code had to take priority.
The Poem I Wrote
Gently idle until east glows the dawn.
Thou art tart, and in thy mead given
Ruin; I save springtime in a vial drawn.
That loving nest is the haven, our glen.
Art thou a lover of these sorry men?
Envy not. Earn no leer of a wastrel.
Do countenance so faithful.
which the receiver would decode as shown below:
gently iDlE until eAsT glows tHe dawn.
ThOu art TaRt, and In thy MeAd given
RuIn; i SaVe springtime In a ViAl drawn.
ThAt loving NeSt is ThE haven, OuR glen.
aRt thou A lover oF these sOrRy men?
EnVy not. EaRn no LeEr of A wastrel.
Do countenance So faithful.
revealing the English:
Death to Trimaris!
Vivat! Ansteorra forever leads.
Using an Alternate Code Pattern
In my original attempt to create the coded poem, I mis-remembered the code, and thought that the code letters began with the first letter of the second word, rather than the second letter of the second word. I titled it “The Traitor’s Pilgrimage: A meditation on suffering brought on by disloyalty.” The long-winded title seemed in keeping with the style of the time, and it helped the body of the poem make more sense. The last two lines don’t have any coded content, as I hadn’t come up with a message to encode.
Parmesiel drew his art obsessively -
Hot and oft desiring rain or meal,
Wandering ruins in vain, desperately,
Via roads that highwaymen nest a-zeal;
Tree and ogre indistinguishably real.
And such to all who forsake their homeland -
Their ship of fortune dashed upon the sand.
which the receiver would decode as shown below:
parmesiel DrEw his ArT obsessively -
HoT and OfT desiring RaIn or MeAl,
wandering RuInS in VaIn, desperately,
ViA roads ThAt highwaymen NeSt a-zeal;
TrEe and OgRe indistinguishably ReAl.
and such to all who forsake their homeland -
their ship of fortune dashed upon the sand.
revealing the English:
Death to Trimaris!
Vivat Ansteorra!
Bibliography
Sources are listed in the order in which they are referenced in the documentation.
Arthur F.J. Remy "Sebastian Brant." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907)
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02741a.htm
“Ship of Fools Woodcuts,” University of Houston, last accessed on 4 February 2014
http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/p15195coll15
“Ship of Fools,” Rebecca McKellar, last accessed on 4 February 2014
http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/Mar2002.html
Sebastian Brant, The Ship of Fools, translator Alexander Barclay, editor Jacob Locher (William Paterson, 1874)
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=C2gCAAAAQAAJ
Peter G. Bietenholz, Historia and Fabula: Myths and Legends in Historical Thought from Antiquity to the Modern Age, (BRILL, 1994)
http://books.google.com/books/about/Historia_and_Fabula.html?id=ZFjXaCAWoOUC
Christopher S. Wood, “The Credulity Problem,” in Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, ed. Peter N. Miller and François Louis, (Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2012) p. 161
https://webspace.yale.edu/wood/documents/woodcredulityproblemproofs.pdf
David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet, (Simon and Schuster, 1996)
Austin Public Library: http://austin.bibliocommons.com/item/show/294779067_the_codebreakers
Note this book was published before the solution for code in Steganographia book 3 was widely known.
Jim Reeds, Solved: The Ciphers in Book iii of Trithemius's Steganographia, 1998. Article available for download from the author in .pdf format.
www.dtc.umn.edu/~reedsj/trit.pdf
Johannes Trithemius, In Praise of Scribes, translator Robert Behrendt, editor Klaus Arnold. (Lawrence, Kansas: Colorado Press, 1974) Pp. viv + 111
http://williamwolff.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/TrithemiusScribes.pdf
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, Three Books of Occult Philosophy or Magic, Volume 1, ed. Willis F. Whitehead (Hahn & Whitehead, 1897)
http://books.google.com/books?id=5SYSAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=#v=onepage&q&f=false
“Dürer’s Magic Square,” Shaman Tito, last accessed on 4 February 2014
http://www.taliscope.com/Durer_en.html
“Albrecht Dürer,” Jacob Wisse, last accessed on 4 February 2014
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/durr/hd_durr.htm
Deborah E. Harkness, John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge University Press, Nov 13, 1999) p. 111, 112
http://books.google.com/books?id=ku3DHWvg4hwC&pg=PA111&lpg=PA111&dq=trithemius+dee&source=bl&ots=fMA0DoxXZO&sig=DWRUE2BCk2EuR8E6MQBO2MtgHeQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eQPxUrmtOYLcyQGK24CIBA&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=trithemius%20dee&f=false
Noel L. Brann, Trithemius and Magical Theology (SUNY Press, 1999)
http://books.google.com/books?id=jU81YW06ZH0C&pg=PA285&lpg=PA285&dq=Jim+Reeds+trithemius&source=bl&ots=4LqrtI679a&sig=OByhkiQSpKXka8m7c11vXgIBifM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=U9fWUqW1Iq7ksATxjIBA&ved=0CGEQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
Gina Kolata, “A Mystery Unraveled, Twice,” The New York Times, April 14, 1998, pp. F1, F6
Additional Sources
The picture of Johannes Trimethius was found at
http://www.maasberg.ch/Figures/20710_Trithemius_4100.jpg
“The above portrait was probably made around 1510, and was painted by the famous painter and graphic artist Hans Burgkmair (1473-1531) from Augsburg, who influenced the German Renaissance with his own style. The original of Hans Burgkmairs's drawing is in the Musée Dondé de Chantilly in Paris.”
http://www.maasberg.ch/eTrithemius.html
The picture of Sebastian Brant is from the frontispiece of Sebastian Brant’s Das Narrenschiff, published in German by G. Wigand in 1854 and accessed via the Google scan available at https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=Sg5cAAAAMAAJ&hl=en
Johannes Trithemius, Steganographia printed 1608, in Latin
Accessed via the Google scan available at https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Johannes_Trithemius_Iohannis_Trithemii_Steganograp?id=fQdCAAAAcAAJ&hl=en
Johannes Trithemius, Clavis generalis printed 1606, in Latin
Accessed via the Google scan available at https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Johannes_Trithemius_Clavis_generalis_triplex_in_li?id=OFVAAAAAcAAJ&hl=en
“Writings of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa,” Joseph H. Peterson, last accessed on 4 February 2014
http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/
“John Dee - a brief biography,” Robert Parry, last accessed on 4 February 2014
http://johndee.ash.com
“Maximilian I,” Gloria Lotha, last accessed on 4 February 2014
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/370486/Maximilian-I
The source I used for the modern German version of chapter 1 and 4 may be found here:
http://webergarn.de/narren/narrenschiff/index.html#inh
Sebastian Brant, The Ship of Fools, translator Alexander Barclay, editor Jacob Locher (William Paterson, 1874)
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=C2gCAAAAQAAJ
I used this for the original German.
Volume 1 of Locher’s edition is available to read in the OCR version on Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20179
I could not find a full, scanned version of Alexander Barclay’s 1509 English translation, but The University of Glasgow has an article showing it:
http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/Mar2002.html
Appendix A:
Selected Text of Ship of Fools
[edit to add: in the original documentation, I included a number of excerpts of various translations of Ship of Fools. Since I was neither the author nor the translator I was uncomfortable with including that work here, but the sources are listed below]
The source I used for the modern German version of chapter 1 and 4 may be found here:
http://webergarn.de/narren/narrenschiff/index.html#inh
Sebastian Brant, The Ship of Fools, translator Alexander Barclay, editor Jacob Locher (William Paterson, 1874)
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=C2gCAAAAQAAJ
I used this for the original German.
Volume 1 of Locher’s edition is available to read in the OCR version on Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20179
I could not find a full, scanned version of Alexander Barclay’s 1509 English translation, but The University of Glasgow has an article showing it:
http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/Mar2002.html
Appendix B:
Trithemius’s Occult Reputation
From The Codebreakers:
He showed the “Steganographia” in its incompleted state to a visitor, who was so horrified at its barbarous names of seraphim, its obscurantism, its impossible claims, that he denounced it as sorcery. A letter which Trithemius wrote to a friend arrived after the friend had died; the prior of the abbey opened it, was likewise shocked, and passed it around. Trithemius fell under a cloud of working in magic, which the church even then frowned upon. He abandoned the book, but probably did not mind the reputation he was gaining as a wonder-worker, for Trithemius was more than a bit of the braggart and publicity hound. He had concluded his ecclesiastical bibliography with some of his own books - inserted, he said, “at the solicitation of my friends.” To a visitor, he boasted that he had once taught an illiterate German prince Latin in an hour, and then, before the prince departed, withdrew all his knowledge. He offered to make a thief return everything he had stolen from the visitor if only the visitor would have faith; of course he did not have enough. Trithemius maintained that he comprehended nothing less than wisdom itself. This sort of thing naturally attracted crowds of the curious and hopeful and started the wild rumors about his magic powers that were circulating even during his life. According to one, the abbot, finding himself at an inn where supplies had run short, tapped on a window and called out in Latin, whereupon a spirit passed in to him a broiled pike and a bottle of wine. (….)
Believing sincerely that his own practices were devoutly Christian, Trithemius did not fight the legend, except to deny that there was anything demonic or un-Christian about his practices. His reputation for esoteric knowledge grew so great, in fact, that the “Steganographia” circulated in manuscript for a hundred years, being copied by many persons eager to suck out the secrets that it was thought to hold. Parts were transcribed for Giodrano Bruno, among others. It became famous, and controversy flamed about it. In 1599, for example, the Jesuit Martin Antoine Del Rio called it “full of peril and superstition.” Not until 1606 was it printed, and this exacerbated the dispute. The opponents scored a great victory when, on September 7, 1609, the Roman Catholic Church placed it on its Index of Prohibited Books. It stayed there for more than 200 years, throughout numerous reprintings, the last as late as 1721. Many scholars attacked it, and others wrote whole books defending it. But the larger controversy over magic faded as the Age of Reason gained sway, and the book lost its interest. (p. 132-133)
Trithemius Forged his Sources
From Historia and Fabula:
Another influential forger was Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516), for some twenty-three years the Benedictine abbot of Sponheim and a prolific author. To flesh out his historical constructions, Thithemius invented the medieval chroniclers Meginfrid and Hunibald. Hunibald, in particular, who was presented as a contemporary of King Clovis (d. 511), became the principal authority, on which the abbot of Sponheim based his genealogies. In 1508 he first claimed to have perused Hunibald’s chronicle. Afterwards he relied time and again on this unique source of information, which in the meantime had mysteriously disappeared. From the beginning the claims of both Annius and Trithemius were met with some scattered skepticism, but the issue was never resolved during the Renaissance, and most readers felt free to assume that they had testes with a critical mind what their hearts told them to believe. There was, nevertheless, a debate over the authenticity of these texts. As it grew, it was bound to assist the emergence of historicism. Even those who defended the forgeries were challenged, like the forgers themselves, to ponder the compatibility of different sources and the consistency of chronological sequences. (p. 194-195)
Appendix C:
Trithemius and Agrippa
He [Agrippa] was remarkably successful in the study of European languages also, becoming proficient in several. Thus his years of home training were passed until he arrived at the age when princes are considered fit to be produced at court. He then left Cologne and became an attendant on the Emperor of Germany, Maximilian the First, whom he served first as a secretary, afterwards for seven years as a soldier. At the age of twenty he was employed on secret service by the German court. (….) In the capacity of secret service, in which he was engaged more than once, he showed himself abundantly able to preserve diplomatic secrets, though concerning his own affairs he was open, frank, and free.
Excerpt from Trithemius’s letter to Agrippa:
John Trithemius, Abbot of Sait James of Herbipolis, formerly of Spanhemia, to his Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, health and love:
Your work, most renowned Agrippa, entitled Of Occult Philosophy, which you have sent by this bearer to me, has been examined. With how much pleasure I received it no mortal tongue can express nor the pen of any write. (….) Yet this one rule I advise you to observe - that you communicate vulgar secrets to vulgar friends, but higher and secret to higher and secret friends only: Give hay to an ox, sugar to a parrot only. Understand my meaning, lest you be trod under the oxen’s feet, as oftentimes it falls out. Farewell, my happy friend, and if it lie in my power to serve you, command me, and according to your pleasure it shall without delay be done; also, let our friendship increase daily; write often to me, and send me some of your labors I earnestly pray you. Again farewell.
From our Monastery of Peapolis, the 8th day of April, A.D. MDX (1510)
Appendix D:
Timeline
1457 birth of Sebastian Brant in Strasbourg (then part of the German empire)
1459 birth of German Emperor Maximilian I in Wiener Neustadt, Austria
1462 birth of Johannes Trithemius in Trittenheim, Germany
1471 birth of Albrecht Dürer in Nuremberg, Germany
1483 Trithemius was elected abbot of monastery of St. Martin at Sponheim, Germany
1483 birth of Martin Luther in Eisleben, Saxony (then part of the German empire)
1486 birth of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa in Cologne, Germany
1494 Brant’s Das Narrenschiff was published in German, with woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer
1499 Trithemius’s Steganographia was copied and distributed in manuscript form
1510 Agrippa’s Of Occult Philosophy or Magic was written and circulated in manuscript form
1514 Albrecht Dürer produced his copperplate engraving Melencolla I
1516 death of Johannes Trithemius in Würzburg, Germany
1517 publication of Luther's Ninety-Five Theses
1519 death of Emperor Maximilian I in Wels, Austria
1521 death of Sebastian Brant in Strasbourg
1527 birth of John Dee in London
1533 Of Occult Philosophy or Magic was printed
1535 death of Agrippa in Grenoble, France
1546 death of Martin Luther in Eisleben, Saxony
1563 Dee acquired a manuscript copy of Steganographia when he was on the Continent
1606 Steganographia was printed
1609 The Roman Catholic Church placed Steganographia on its Index of Prohibited Books
1609 death of John Dee in London
Appendix E:
Every-other-letter of every-other-word
I have attempted to use search tools to find this particular code in either Steganographia or Trithemius’s other cryptographic work Clavis, but I have been unable to find it. It is possible that I was unsuccessful because I was relying on optical character recognition (OCR) software to sift through scanned copies of the printed books (printed 1608 and 1606, respectively). The OCR software sometimes fails to read highly ornate fonts, such as the style of blackletter used in portions of the books. Going through 257 and 246 pages of Latin (a language I don’t yet speak) to track down the original reference will have to be a later project. Below I present the three sources I relied upon for the code:
In 1499, Trithemius, who after long pondering had finally concluded that some things were unknowable, was said to have been visited in a dream by a spirit who taught him many of these very things. These he wrote down in a volume which he intended to comprise eight books and which he called “Steganographia,” from the Greek words meaning “covered writing.” In the first two books he described some elementary reciprocal vowel-consonant substitutions and several variations on a system in which only certain letters of nonsense words signify the meaning, the other letters being nulls. For example, in the message beginning Parmesiel oshurmi delmuson thafloin peano charustrea melany lyamunto…, the decipherer extracts every other letter of every other word, beginning with the second word since the first indicates the specific system. The Latin plaintext begins “Sum tali cautela ut….”
The ponderous approach of Trithemius to cryptic communication is further illustrated by the “Hebraic” example furnished by Arnold, Trithemius, p. 188, in which forty-five words addressed to the spirit Parmesiel, counting every other letter of every other word, yields a mere thirteen-word Latin message.
The incantations were actually encrypted instructions for concealing a secret message within the cover letters. To read out the secret meaning of either, one selects a special subsequence of the letters, such as (in the case of the incantation quoted above) every other letter of every other word:
padiel aPoRsY mesarpon oMeUaS peludyn mAlPrEaXo ...
that is, primus apex …
Appendix F:
Code Word Choice
The table below shows the beginning of the encoding of the poem I wrote. A null word is one that does not contain any code. The question marks represent null letters. Capital letters are the letters that form the secret message. Code-containing word choices have a cascading effect through all following code-containing words, since the code requires the use of every other letter.
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