"History of Ciphers" (part 1) - The Ciphers of the Illuminati

    Dear Reader,

 

 

    In this series of posts called "History of Ciphers", I will do my best to give you some pertinent informations on some of the ciphers we know and use (at least some of them), including their origins, specific bibliography for your own future reference, as well as my own considerations about how some of them "should" be used, and in which context. I said "should" because you must never forget that obviously this is my opinion and my methods, and you shouldn't necessarily take it as an absolute "truth". I will also tell you some personal stories with these ciphers, so that you can understand some of the reasoning behind my conclusions. I strongly believe that by doing that, without being too elaborate or tedious, you may have a richer experience in reading my posts. Of course, if at any time you wish to exchange some ideas with me, or to make any comments or suggestions you'd like, you can always use the Contact Form on the right side of this blog (web version).

    To begin this series, we will begin with a cipher that I found most interesting since the day I first saw it, and became even more interesting after some years had passed: the Illuminati Novice cipher.

    The reason why I'm beginning with this cipher is threefold. Firstly, it's a way of introducing some of my work with this specific cipher. Secondly, it serves as a nice introduction to the ciphers of Sir Francis Bacon, which will be dealt with in the second post of this series. And thirdly, it serves to show that this is no "conspiracy theory" cipher, but instead a very real historical cipher, used by a real historical secret society, and in my view, should be at least studied before (or if) it is discarded as "just another cipher".

* * *

HISTORY OF CIPHERS 

by Luís Gonçalves

 

Part 1: The Ciphers of the Illuminati

    In the previous post I wrote very briefly about how I came to know this cipher. This is the cipher I have been using consistently since early 2008. My work with the Illuminati cipher is long, sometimes disappointing, and sometimes highly rewarding. I first read about it in a text about the Bavarian Order of the Illuminati, I don't remember exactly which, but it explained that this cipher was given to the Novices (a degree of the Illuminati) to be used in their correspondences from that moment onward, in order to conceal the real names of people, places, or specific expressions. Later I've come to collect some valuable sources about this cipher, including, in chronological order:

 

– Arkon Daraul's "A History of Secret Societies";

 

– Robert Anton Wilson's "Illuminatus!" Trilogy (more on that just ahead); 

– Terry Melanson's excellent book "Perfectibilists";

 

– and the absolutely fundamental "The Secret School of Wisdom", edited by Josef Wäges and Reinhard Markner, and translated by the late Jeva Singh-Anand.

 

    It should be noted, however, that this cipher was not originally used as a type of Gematria (i.e. adding the values of the letters), but instead as a simple substitution cipher, where each letter was replaced by its corresponding value. Thus, if we were to use this cipher the same way, we would write "21.8.4.18.5.12.20.15.19." instead of "Weishaupt", the name of the founder of the Bavarian Illuminati. When I read this I also didn't use it immediately as a system of Gematria – instead I kept it in my personal records, for my future reference.

 

"Der schon bekannte Chiffre des Illuminaten-Ordens" ("The well-known cipher of the Illuminati Order"), taken from Einige Originalschriften des Illuminatenordens (1786): LINK

The Illuminati Novice cipher, from Saun Virroco's Gem Calc Project at GitHub.

    You may notice that in this cipher – as it happens in the Baconian/Elizabethan ciphers, which will be explored in the next post of this series – the letters "I" and "J" share the same value, as do "U" and "V". This has to do with the fact that in the Latin alphabet, the letter "J" was originally an alternative form of the letter "I", the same happening with "U" and "V", which were originally the same letter. In the King James Bible, for example, which was published in 1611, you will notice that in the dedication page it refers to the future King James I of England as Prince Iames (link here). Likewise, the letter U/V was written as "u" in the middle of a word, and as "v" in the beginning (for example, "saue" and "vpon" would be the way we would write "save" and "upon", using the same orthography).

Robert Anton Wilson and the "Illuminatus!" Trilogy

    Some time after I knew about this cipher, I came to see it again in Appendix Beth of Robert Anton Wilson's "Illuminatus!" Trilogy. While this Trilogy was intended to poke fun at the paranoia and conspiracy theories in the world at the time it was written, I believe that, paradoxically – as was always characteristic of R.A.W. – he used the Illuminati Cipher to encode some numerical clues (or in-jokes?) in this book specifically. You see, along the book there are ciphered messages using another substitution cipher of the Illuminati that is purely cryptographic, not related to Gematria. This is the cipher that was used in the Illuminati Masonic degree of Scottish Knight. It uses an option of two symbols for each letter of the alphabet, in order to increase the difficulty in deciphering the message.

 

The third ciphered message in R.A.W.'s "Illuminatus!" Trilogy.
The concealed text reveals the message: "May Day the Rising Hodge arrives".

      This "glyph cipher" also seems to have its secrets, but for now let's continue with the explanation on how I think that Robert Anton Wilson used the Illuminati Novice cipher. First, if you've read the "Illuminatus!" Trilogy, you should have noticed that it is STUFFED with references to the numbers 5 and 23:

    Guess what? 115 equals 5 x 23. And here's another one:

    The first ciphered message in R.A.W.'s book is "Hail Eris" (Eris was the Greek goddess of Discord – not our app though =)). The second ciphered message, which is rather humorous, reads "Never whistle while you're pissing". Apparently there wouldn't be anything interesting about this, except the following:

    These are very specific references to multiple 7's, as 70 equals 7x10, while 343 equals 7x7x7. I honestly can't image what would be the intention of Robert Anton Wilson in choosing specifically these sentences with these specific values, but the fact is that there seems to have been some very conscious encoding with the Illuminati cipher. Even the third ciphered message in the "Illuminatus!" Trilogy, which was already addressed, seems to have its numerical secrets, as the value of "Rising Hodge" is precisely one third of the value of the whole sentence:

312 = 3 x 104. Also, note the following division of words:
– "May Day th" = 104
– "e Rising Hodg" = 104
– "e arrives" = 104

    Curiously enough, half of 312 is 156, and that is precisely the value of "Adam Weishaupt", the man who founded the Bavarian Illuminati on May Day 1776. There is a very curious kind of geometry in this ciphered message, which is based on the proportions 1/2 and 1/3 (remember the 5's and 23's I mentioned earlier?). And this comes to confirm the clue given by R.A.W. in the book:

"Thus any computer can break the cypher [...] but only the Illuminated can read the code behind the cypher and know what (or who) the Rising Hodge is."

I guess this counts as a successful code breaking. Don't you?

     So basically, after studying these patterns in R.A.W.'s masterpiece, I decided that I should give it a try, and I seriously pondered the possibility of using it as a system of Gematria. You must remember at all times what I wrote earlier, however – that the Illuminati themselves never used this cipher as a system of Gematria, but only as a simple substitution cipher. It was only after I read R.A.W.'s book that the idea came to me... and I will never regret that decision.

The 1 Dollar bill & the Illuminati Novice cipher

 

 

     And then, I had an intuition. So we're talking about the Illuminati, right? The 1 Dollar bill has been such an object of study and conspiracy theories (the All-Seeing Eye, the Pyramid, the Illuminati, well... you know)... so how about I use this cipher in order to try to find some "synchronicities" or "coincidences"? It would surely be ironic. And please note: I am definitely NOT a conspiracy theorist – even though I do believe in conspiracy practices.

 

Seems tempting... doesn't it?

 

    I immediately set foot to find the value of the mottos in the 1 Dollar bill, and I was stunned when I noticed that the only mottos having 13 letters ("E Pluribus Unum" & "Annuit Coeptis") also sum 169 in the Illuminati cipher, and that is 13 x 13. Not only that, but right in the center of the reverse of the 1 Dollar bill we can read the motto "In God We Trust", containing 12 letters, and right below it the word "ONE". If we add "ONE" (1) to the 12 letters of the motto, the result is the number 13; and if we add "ONE" (1) to the value of the same motto using the Illuminati cipher, the result will be 169, which again is 13 x 13.

 

 

    These findings eventually led me to writing my first (somewhat awkward) presentation of the Illuminati cipher in a 1-page text called "Ciphers of the Illuminati and the 1 Dollar bill", which was first published on May Day 2008. From that moment onward I was able to make many decodes with it which I think have proven its validity. Anyway, these aren't the only "coincidences" that I've noticed in the Great Seal of the United States. One other very interesting detail about the reverse of the Great Seal (the one with the pyramid) is that it looks suspiciously similar to another pyramid, which was drawn in a carpet that was used in the Illuminati Minerval assemblies. Notice how there are two letters besides the Illuminati pyramid, just like there are two words above the US pyramid; also, there are three (stones?) below the Illuminati pyramid, as there are three words below the US pyramid. There is a difference of exactly 2 months and 3 days between the founding of the Bavarian Illuminati (May 1, 1776) and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America (July 4, 1776).

Source: Tom Hiddell's very informative webpage IlluminatiRex.com.

    The letters "D.P." near the Illuminati pyramid stand for "Deo Proximo". In some earlier sketches of the Great Seal of the United States we could read the words "Deo Favente Perennis".

     Also, note how above the Great Seal stand the words "Deo Favente" only. Remember how the letters "D.P." in the Illuminati pyramid stand for "Deo Proximo"?

 

     And perhaps not a coincidence...

    Coincidence or not, the Washington Monument is precisely 169 (13 x 13) meters high (approx. 555 feet).

    But there are other interesting patterns in the reverse of the 1 Dollar bill, and one of them has to do with the total number of letters in it:

 

– "The United States of America" = 24 letters;

– "One Dollar" = 9 letters;

– "In God We Trust" = 12 letters;

– "ONE" = 3 letters;

– four times the word "ONE", in each of the corners = 4 x 3 = 12 letters;

– "The Great Seal" (below the Great Seal's reverse) = 12 letters;

– "of the United States" (below the Great Seal's obverse) = 17 letters;

– "Annuit Coeptis" = 13 letters;

– "Novus Ordo Seclorum" = 17 letters;

– "MDCCLXXVI" = 9 letters;

– "E Pluribus Unum" = 13 letters;

 

Total number of letters: 24+9+12+3+12+12+17+13+17+9+13 = 141.

    At this time this number won't be especially meaningful to you, but by the time you read the next post, to be dedicated to Francis Bacon's ciphers, you will get a more perfect picture of what I am implying here. In the meantime I invite you, dear Reader, to research about these names, to see if what I'm showing you resonates with any intuition that you might have about this.

 

 

 

    Still with me? Now read the words of Manly P. Hall in his masterpiece "The Secret Teachings of All Ages". A single paragraph says it all:

    In "The Secret Destiny of America", Manly P. Hall specifically mentions an "Order of the Quest" which was, according to him, responsible for bringing to life the plan described by Bacon in his "New Atlantis", by creating the first American Democracy. Well, in the Illuminati cipher "Quest" = 81 = "Illuminati", and that would mean that the Order of the Quest mentioned by Hall was in fact the Order of the Illuminati:

 

 

    In case we still have some doubts, the value of "United States of Atlantis" in the Illuminati Novice cipher is 287, a well-known numerical signature for Lord Bacon himself:

 

    When I found this I had serious doubts about my mental sanity. These can all be coincidences, and I don't say they aren't. However, there seem to exist too many "curious" "coincidences" with this cipher that prevent me from stop using it. I believe that by now you will at least be intrigued with this cipher.

    In time, you will also feel the need to navigate between some of my posts in this series about the History of the Ciphers, as each one has specific keys, and sometimes small riddles that will keep you motivated and engaged. As I said in another occasion, I like to make my Readers think. =)

The Illuminati Novice cipher and the ciphers of Sir Francis Bacon

    At this time you may wonder what is the connection between Sir Francis Bacon and the Illuminati cipher I've been talking about until now. Even though a dedicated presentation of Bacon's ciphers will be left to the next part of this series, I feel that I must give you a preliminary explanation of why some of my discoveries and intuitions led me this way. First of all, there is a striking similarity between the Illuminati Novice cipher and Francis Bacon's Simple & Reverse ciphers:

    If you have studied the works of Sir Francis Bacon, you'll be aware of his passion for Cryptography, and you will understand that, in fact, the Baconian ciphers work in group, not separated. That's exactly my opinion, but I include the Illuminati cipher there as well. Some ciphers really do work in group. I use the Illuminati and Bacon ciphers because it makes sense to use them together. Francis Bacon himself used the Simple, Reverse and Kaye ciphers (more on these in the next part). At the same time, the Illuminati cipher seems to be a mixture between Bacon's Simple and Reverse ciphers, besides the fact that there exist some striking similarities in terms of symbols and objectives between Sir Francis Bacon and the Illuminati – namely the supreme and sublime purpose of the Perfectibility of Man, or their connection to Minerva/Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom and “Spear-Shaker”, whose symbol was an Owl, which was so important to Bacon and was also a fundamental part of the doctrines and symbols of the Bavarian Illuminati. I don’t know of any actual connections between the Bavarian Order of the Illuminati and Sir Francis Bacon. However, I do believe that Sir Francis Bacon's works may have been an important inspiration to the Bavarian Illuminati, and that the Illuminati cipher was inspired on Bacon's ciphers. So that's why I use them together. 

    Eventually, after comparing the Illuminati cipher with the ciphers of Sir Francis Bacon, I thought that there should be a complementary cipher to the cipher of the Illuminati, just like Bacon's Simple cipher is a reflection of Bacon's Reverse cipher. And so, the Illuminati Reverse cipher was born. I ask you to remember, though, that this cipher has no historical antecedents, and so you should always use it with caution. Personally I am convinced of its validity, but that's a conclusion that each one of my Readers should take, based on their own work (or not) with these ciphers.

 

The Illuminati Scottish Knight cipher – Some personal notes

 

 

    As I explained earlier, Robert Anton Wilson's "Illuminatus!" Trilogy contained the numerical cipher of the Illuminati... but it contained yet another substitution cipher that replaced each letter of the alphabet by one of two symbols or glyphs, at choice. Now, that specific cipher, which I will call the "glyph cipher", was, as I found out later, used in the Illuminati Masonic degree of Scottish Knight. There were some variations of this cipher with slight differences between them. This is the version of the glyph cipher (together with the numerical cipher) as it appears in RAW's "Illuminatus!" Trilogy, Appendix Beth:

Despite the names that are here given to the ciphers, those were not the original names. The numerical cipher (here called "Zwack") was simply the Illuminati cipher used in the degree of Novice; while the two sets of glyphs, here called "Weishaupt" and "De Molay", were both part of the cipher that was used in the Illuminati Masonic degree of Scottish Knight. This variation of the cipher coincides with the one given in Arkon Daraul's "A History of Secret Societies".

    And this is a more "standardized" form (I would say "correct", by comparing it with other versions) of the same cipher, taken from Tom Hiddell's webpage containing the Illuminati cipher fonts at IlluminatiRex.com.

    It may seem strange, but contrary to what most wild theories say about the Illuminati and their symbols in the Great Seal of the United States, the Eye in the Triangle (the "Eye of Providence") actually never was a symbol of the Bavarian Illuminati. In fact, it was the Circumpunct, or Circled Dot (⊙), which was used as the official symbol of the Order in the private correspondences of its members.

In the documents of the Illuminati, the Order was always represented by a Circumpunct ⊙, a well-known symbol of the Sun, the Monad in Pythagorean mysticism, and also the All-Seeing Eye of God. Kind of ironic, isn't it?

    You may have certainly noticed that in the Illuminati glyph cipher, one of the two symbols that represent the letter "S" is precisely the Circumpunct. There are some interesting connections about this, but I'll list only two of them:

    1. The value of the letter "S" is 18, or 6+6+6, in the Illuminati Novice cipher, and its symbol is the Circumpunct, or Circled Dot, which for centuries has been a traditional symbol for the Sun. In Hebrew Qabalah 666 is precisely considered a Solar number, representing the name of the Spirit of the Sun, Sorath (סורת);

    2. Here's a neat trick. A dot is represented in the Illuminati Scottish Knight cipher as something like a six (6). Right? Three dots, thus, look like three sixes. 666. Right? Now... in the Morse code, three dots correspond to the letter S, which in the Illuminati Novice cipher corresponds to 18, or 6+6+6.

    To complement this, I would like to leave here the words of Terry Melanson in his wonderful book "Perfectibilists – The 18th Century Bavarian Order of the Illuminati", page 218:

 

    "The chosen date of May 1^st for the Order's birth also has semiotic significance. Traditionally, May Day celebrations are a remnant of fire and sun worship, variously known as Beltane in the British Isles, and Walpurgisnacht in Germany and northern Europe. Weishaupt was aware of these "fire festivals" on the first of May, and instituting his Order on that day – in tandem with professing fire worship as the religion of Illuminism – was, symbolically speaking, a stroke of genius."

Conclusion – And my personal uses of this Cipher

    By now it should be apparent to you that I tend to use this cipher in some very specific contexts, which tend to include studies related to certain Secret Societies (Illuminati, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, the works of Francis Bacon, etc). Nowadays I tend to pay much more attention to context when working with the ciphers, as it was precisely when I strayed from this "focus on the context" that people did not take me seriously. Yes, like a lot of people who work with ciphers, there was a time when I used this cipher to try to decode everything – and while that can be an interesting exercise, it can become seriously flawed and misguiding when we loose the focus. The same happens with any cipher. This is very important, and it's something that everyone should seriously ponder upon. Focus, objectivity, impartiality, even looking for errors or dubious factors in our own findings, are always, always, extremely important. If you want to prove yourself right, try to prove yourself wrong first. That alone will make a BIG difference in the quality and inner consistency of your own work.

    Speaking only for myself, I think these ciphers (including the Illuminati and Baconian ciphers) tend to show more specific connections in the questions regarding Sir Francis Bacon, the Fraternity of the Rosy+Cross, Freemasonry, Bacon's New Atlantis, the creation of the United States of America, and – in my specific case – a possible historical use of the Illuminati cipher to encode certain correspondences and "coincidences" in the Great Seal of the United States. However, the implications of this are enormous.

 

     "Coincidences" like the ones I showed you can really be coincidences. However, there are cases, like a cryptographic riddle I found in Manly P. Hall's most famous book (to be exposed in the next part of this series) where these are numerical signatures that are there for a reason, not just mere coincidences. Now, if someone involved in the creation of the Great Seal of the United States used the Illuminati cipher to encode hidden messages in it, what would the implications of that be? I'm only sharing this because I think this should be known, so that anyone with more knowledge than me on the Bavarian Illuminati and the events leading to the creation of the Great Seal can find some effective clue about this. That would be quite enlightening about the mission of the USA, as Manly P. Hall wrote in "The Secret Destiny of America"... but I seriously doubt it could would be widely shared in the media. "The people is already satisfied with enough conspiracy theories – we don't need to tell them the truth." Isn't that how it works? Please note that as I said before I do not consider myself a "conspiracy theorist" (even though I do believe in conspiracy practices). I know that some of my readers will find it strange when I say this, while I'm writing an article on Gematria, the Illuminati, the 1 Dollar bill, and, after all, the possibility of a conspiracy involved in (a) the creation of the United States and (b) the design of the Great Seal. This shouldn't be seen as a contradiction, but in fact, what I'm doing here is showing possibilities, not undeniable proofs of anything. However, the reason why I'm doing this is because there are people who know a LOT more about this than me, and if those people are willing to share what they know, I am more than willing to learn and to read what you have to say. That's why we are here, after all. To learn and to cooperate with each other.

 

    My dear Reader, I hope this text has brought you some "food for thought". In the next post I will be covering the ciphers of Sir Francis Bacon, including:

1. the Simple & Reverse ciphers;

2. the "Kaye" ciphers;

3. Bacon's Biliteral cipher;

4. the true origin of the ciphers currently known as "Francis Bacon" and "Franc Baconis", in Derek Tikkuri's "Gematrinator" calculator;

5. and also, some discoveries that me and my friend "Casey" from Discord have made while studying this stuff. =)

 

In the meantime, please feel free to send me a word or two.

Your opinion, my fellow Reader, is very much appreciated.

My best regards to all,

Luís Gonçalves