Secret Codes and Ciphers of the Magicians
Course Start Date: February 9, 2021
Course Length: 4 classes (one per week)
Learn how to use codes and ciphers to enrich your magical practice!
“Occult” means hidden or secret, and throughout history, magicians, priests, witches, and other practitioners have used various methods to hide their work from others. Secret alphabets, barbarous words, and mysterious symbols have all been used to obscure magical secrets. Mystics and wizards such as Trithemius, al-Kindi, and John Dee, in fact, have long been associated with spies, secret writing, and even methods of cracking codes.
Cryptology is the study of secrets, both how they are kept and how they are discovered. This class teaches the history of cryptology from ancient times to the 19th century, and then explores the connection between secret codes, mysticism, magic, and the occult. We will also explore how to use these methods of hiding and revealing secrets in your own practice, from the creation of unique sacred ciphers to methods for using secret codes to craft your own rituals, barbarous words, and unique sigils.
Recordings of the weekly sessions will be made available to all who enroll, along with personal one-on-one help.
This class is currently not being offered. To be notified when this class is offered again, sign up for the Arnemancy newsletter.
Who will benefit from this course?
This class is for the modern practitioner who wants to use the fundamental laws of the universe to create uncrackable secret codes, to encode messages to angels and demons, and to craft sigils with mathematical precision. You will learn historical techniques from famed wizards such as Trithemius and Agrippa, alongside more modern techniques based on newer cryptographic methods.
Note that since this class also includes one-on-one personalized help to get you up to speed on the difficult topics, the class size is limited to just twenty students.
Materials Needed
Some additional reading will be recommended but not required. This class will come with recommendations for books that are still in print that can expand the your understanding of the course materials.
Course Pre-Requisites
This is a class for intermediate-level practitioners. To get the most out of this four-part class, you should have previous experience with the following topics, but you don’t need to be an expert in any of them.
- Algebra
- Basic ritual work
- Sigils
- Spirit work (angels, goetia, Arbatel, Heptameron – any kind of spirit is good!)
Note that this class does require some math, but I’ll be available to provide you with personal one-on-one help to get you through all of the techniques.
What you will learn in this class
- The basics of cryptology: cryptography, steganography, and cryptanalysis
- Historical encryption methods and how to use them
- The connections between secret codes, mysticism, magic, and the occult
- The steganographic techniques of Johannes Trithemius
- Using one-way codes to create sigils and secret names
- Cryptographic sigils
- Cryptographic numerology
- How to use secret codes to encrypt your rituals and notes
- Using ciphers to construct rituals
- Spirit communication using steganography and cryptography
- Crafting ciphers using sacred and magical texts
- Using magical languages as ciphers
- Encoding hidden messages in barbarous names
