Is it Occultism or just a Geometric Cryptogram?
Diving deeper into historic cryptograms we also see graphical ciphers. They provided a representational method to hide your message. Such ciphers have been documented for centuries being used in occults and secret societies. So, today I’ll shed some light upon few that I found quite neat. Maybe you’ll remember some of these from movies or perhaps the news.
Pigpen Cipher
Also widely known as Freemason’s Cipher is believed to be an ancient cipher originating from Hebrew heritage.
It is a representational cipher which uses grid structure to represent different letters and using the grid the cipher is made
Throughout history this cipher has been seen in various places such as, in the Christian crusades by the Knights Templar. It was also heavily used for religious symbolism by the Jewish Kabbalah.
French Pirate Olivier Levasseur is also said to have used Pigpen to write the location of his treasure, which is yet to be found.
It was also used by different societies like Rosicrucian Brotherhood and Freemasons.
Monk’s Cipher
Also known as Cisterian numberals, these were developed in the 13th century by John of Basingstoke, archdeacon of Leicestor and introduced them to the Cisterian monastery.
This number system depicts number in single glyphs and the original system can depict number upto 9999.
These number were not used for arithmetic or fractions but were rather used for years, numbering and simple accounts.
Cisterian abandoned the system in favour of Arabic numeral but these numbers still found usage outside the order until the early 20th century.
These numbers were used by wine-gaugers in the Bruges atleast until 18th century and also were also found in an astrolable from 14th century.
These briefly found use in occult magic and were also considered by Nazis for Aryan symbolism.
These cryptograms have faded away but these still find use in movies and remind us how throughout history, mankind has strived to achieve secure communication.
