The Copiale Cipher (decoded) "Occulist Order"

The “Copiale Cipher” is a 105 pages manuscript containing all in all around 75 000 characters. Beautifully bound in green and gold brocade paper, written on high quality paper with two different watermarks, the manuscript can be dated back to 1760-1780. Apart from what is obviously an owner's mark (“Philipp 1866”) and a note in the end of the last page (“Copiales 3”), the manuscript is completely encoded. The cipher employed consists of 90 different characters, comprising all from Roman and Greek letters, to diacritics and abstract symbols. Catchwords (preview fragments) of one to three or four characters are written at the bottom of left–hand pages.

Breakthroughs by linguistics versed in machine language analyzing this document have lead to it's final decoding:

'Kevin Knight, a computer scientist at the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California, collaborated with Beata Megyesi and Christiane Schaefer of Uppsala University in Sweden to decipher the first 16 pages. They turn out to be a detailed description of a ritual from a secret society that apparently had a fascination with eye surgery and ophthalmology.'

Apparently detailing rituals from a 18th century secret society called the "Occulist Order" who were fascinated with eye surgery and ophthalmology...and one could surmise hiding things from sight. Interesting read for those intrigued by such...

the Copiale Cipher Decoded

From a new york times article it appears the Roman letters represented nulls used to throw off any who attempted decoding the document:

But when that approach failed, they figured that the code was what cryptographers call a homophonic cipher — a substitution code that does not have a straightforward correspondence between the original and encoded information. And they decided the original language was probably German. Eventually they concluded that the Roman letters were so-called nulls, meant to mislead the code breaker, and that the letters represented spaces between words made up of elaborate symbols. Another crucial discovery was that a colon indicated the doubling of the previous consonant.

Perhaps a per-cursor to the symbology of the Eye of Providence that other well known secret societies utilized following? It's Free-Mason like style and choice of German as a language could suggest ties with the original Bavarian Illuminati... although I've come to understand the Illuminati would have been around for ages prior, perhaps this is some of the earlier German manifestations? Perhaps someone more well versed can illuminate us...

this was very interesting! I'm not familiar with this work.i guess i have something new to read!
another obscure work is called the voynich manuscript,named after the fella that found it. it dates to around the same period, and to date,this cipher has never been decoded!

heres a link www.crystalinks.com/voynich.html

hope you enjoy!!!

THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS! IT'S SO INTERESTING!

I've been reading (on page 19 currently) and just can't stop! I'm completely immersed

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

Much love,
OnewithAll

reply to post by reficul


Yes, I'm very aware of the Voynich Manuscript, from the article he plans on working towards decoding that as well as the 'Kryptos' - an encrypted message carved into a sculpture at CIA headquarters...

Here's to an interesting future for decrypting old codes!

Cheers,

seaez

sounds like a masonic ritual. I have my grandfathers old "course" book and some of the stuff sounds really quite similar.

Discover mag had an interesting little piece on it too. They said it was a group of freemasons...

This gave them their first successes, and in short order they had most of the text deciphered, revealing it to be the rules and rituals of a German secret society of the mid-1700s. A German secret society of the mid-1700s with some very weird fixations.

Potential inductees must attempt to read a blank sheet of paper, and when they fail, they will have hair from their eyebrows plucked by the master of ceremonies. Members must cover their eyes with aprons or their hands during certain ceremonies. The group describes themselves as freemasons, and the rituals make use of mallets, compasses, epees, and other paraphernalia (and lots and lots of candles). A black carpet inscribed with occult signs is spread on the floor during rituals. You know, the whole DaVinci Code drill–except for real. Read the whole thing for yourself here.

blogs.discovermagazine.com...

Pretty cool stuff on multiple levels...

reply to post by onewithall


Welcomes gone by! Any interesting perusals of late that correlate?