Steganographia

The Steganographia is Johannes Trithemius’s most notorious book. Begun around 1499, it claims to teach a way of sending secret messages over any distance by means of spirits: the writer composes an innocent-looking letter, recites a conjuration to the appropriate spirit prince, and the hidden meaning is conveyed to a recipient who knows the same procedure. Book I is organised around thirty-one spirit rulers of the points of the compass, each with dukes and servants and a specimen conjuration; Book II assigns spirits to the hours of the day and night; and the unfinished Book III turns to the seven planetary angels and their numbered tables. A letter in which Trithemius boasted of the project became public, and visitors who saw the manuscript denounced it as demonic. The work circulated in manuscript, was printed only in 1606, and was later condemned by the Catholic Church. For centuries readers argued whether it was genuine angel magic or cryptography disguised as magic. The question was largely settled by the cryptographer Jim Reeds, who in 1998 published a solution showing that the numerical tables of Book III conceal enciphered messages; the German scholar Thomas Ernst had reached a similar result independently. Books I and II also contain cipher methods, since the conjurations themselves are coded texts. The spirit lists nonetheless entered the grimoire tradition, most visibly in the Theurgia-Goetia of the Lemegeton and in John Dee’s library.

What it contains

• Preface on the art of secret communication at a distance
• Book I: thirty-one spirit princes of the compass with dukes, conjurations and cipher keys
• Book II: spirits of the hours of the day and night
• Book III (incomplete): the seven planetary angels and numerical tables
• Specimen ‘conjurations’ that are themselves enciphered plaintexts
• Instructions for writer and recipient to use the same spirit