The Copiale Cipher

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 around 1750. 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 100 different symbols, comprising all from Latin and Greek letters, to diacritics and graphich signs such as Zodiac and alchemical symbols. Catchwords (preview fragments) of one to three or four characters are written at the bottom of left–hand pages.

Transcription, transliteration and decipherment brought to light a German text obviously related to an 18th century secret society, namely the "oculist order". A parallel manuscript is located at the Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, Staatsarchiv Wolfenbüttel, Germany.