On the Use and Mysteries of Signs

Jacques Gohory was a Parisian lawyer, translator and occult philosopher who often wrote under pseudonyms such as Leo Suavius. He promoted Paracelsian medicine in France, translated Machiavelli and the chivalric romance Amadis de Gaule, and hosted a learned circle, the Lycium, at his house and garden in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel. His short Latin book De usu et mysteriis notarum (1550) is his most important work on magic. It is a learned essay on notae, a term covering shorthand signs, cipher marks and sacred symbols. Gohory traces the history of Roman shorthand back to Cicero’s secretary Tiro, discusses ancient and modern ciphers and steganography with frequent reference to Trithemius, and moves on to finger-counting, the art of memory, Pythagorean number symbolism and the numerical reading of sacred names in the Sibylline Oracles, such as the value 888 for the Greek name of Jesus. He reproduces a letter of Trithemius on the mysteries of the monad and triad, and he records encountering a book of the Ars Notoria, whose promise of instant learning through prayers he treats with scepticism. John Dee owned a copy, and Peterson suggests it influenced Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica of 1564. Peterson has also argued that Gohory is the likeliest author of the Arbatel, which makes this treatise an important witness to his thought.

What it contains

• Dedication to Gabriel le Veneur, bishop of Évreux
• History of Tironian shorthand and other abbreviation systems
• Ciphers, letter transposition and steganography, citing Trithemius
• Finger-counting and the art of memory
• Sibylline acrostics and numerical values of divine names
• Pythagorean number lore and Trithemius’s letter on the monad and triad