"History of Ciphers" (part 3) - The Latin ciphers

    Dear Reader,

 

 

    In this third part of "History of Ciphers", I will be talking about some well-known systems of Latin Gematria, in particular:

– The so-called "Jewish" (actually Agrippa) cipher and its true origins;

– The first time I saw this cipher and its specific use in an oracular (divinatory) context;

– The Latin cipher used by Beatus de Liébana, a Spanish monk and theologian who lived during the 8th century A.D.;

 

– An example of the use of Beatus' Latin cipher in his "Commentaria in Apocalypsin" (Commentary on the Apocalypse), particularly in his list of the "Names of the Antichrist";

– Some brief considerations on how these two ciphers (Agrippa & Beatus) reflect different stages of evolution of the Latin alphabet;

– The cipher known as English Extended (the reason for this cipher being included here will become obvious by then);

– The Latin Ordinal and Reduction ciphers;

– Other known Latin ciphers;

    As in the other parts of this series, I will also provide some examples of uses and personal explorations of these ciphers, as I believe that by showing our work, others can have new (or different) ideas and try to explore different areas, or even different approaches.

    This being the case, let us begin this study of the Latin ciphers.

 

 

History of Ciphers

by Luís Gonçalves

 

Part 3: The Latin Ciphers

 

 

    We'll begin by mentioning the so-called "Jewish" cipher. This cipher is presented in the following way in Derek Tikkuri's Gematrinator:

    As was the case with the "Francis Bacon" and "Franc Baconis" ciphers that were briefly dealt with in the previous post, there are some problems with this cipher, namely the fact that this is not a "Jewish" cipher, and that the ampersand (&) is wrongly attributed the value 800. However, contrary to what most people who've had doubts about this cipher would think, this "strange" sequence of letters does in fact have an internal consistency and logic, and that too will hopefully be explained with all detail in this text.

    In order to explain that, however, it is necessary to tell you some of my story with this peculiar cipher.

A Cipher and an Oracle – The "Hand of Fatima"

    I first knew the "Jewish" Latin cipher, albeit in a different form and not knowing "what" it was, in 1994, in a book which I still own called "A Magia dos Números" (in Italian, "Magia dei Numeri", or "Magic of the Numbers") by Jorg Sabellicus, a pseudonym of Sebastiano Fusco. This was the first contact I had with Numerology, and it was a really good one. This book wasn't as elaborate as most modern books about Numerology but it had all the essentials, and its highly curious descriptions of the symbolical and occult nature of numbers are absolutely fascinating. Besides, its appendix contained a number of numerical oracles that seemed to be some centuries old, and that I never, ever, was able to trace to older sources. Well, at least not until some time ago. I don't doubt that the sources of all these oracles exist, however, and in fact I was able to trace one of the numerical ciphers in these oracles to a book that was first published in the early/mid 16th century.

    Of these oracles, the only one that will be of interest in the context of the Latin ciphers is the one called the "Hand of Fatima". Even though I didn't know of any available information in English about this oracle, in these last few days I was able to find one; so the earliest English reference to this oracle that I know of at this time of writing is The Encyclopedia of Occult Sciences, published in 1939 by Robert M. McBride and Company (pages 417-419).

    The historical informations about how this oracle came to existence are contradictory at best. The book I have from Jorg Sabellicus tells that it was an originally Arab oracle and that the numerical correspondences for the Arabic letters were adapted to the Latin alphabet by Count Cagliostro. The Encyclopedia I indicated before tells, instead, that Count Cagliostro "found" this oracle in an old manuscript in the Castle of Saint Leon. Be that as it may, the most important factor in this oracle which ultimately allowed me to discover its true origin, is its table with the values of the letters of the alphabet – shown in the shape of a Hamsa, a well-known palm-shaped amulet that is believed to symbolize good luck, and to protect against the evil eye:

 

 

    You may notice the similarities between the cipher here being reproduced and the "Jewish" cipher we talked about earlier. At this time I'll ask you not to focus on the differences between them, as that will be treated later in this text. Instead, I ask you to read carefully the following description of the oracle and, above all, to either use it wisely or don't use it at all. You'll understand why I'm saying this.

 

    The functioning of this oracle is rather simple. In order to find a person's life, character, abilities or destiny, we add the values of the letters contained in the (full / birth) name of this person. That will be that person's individual number. Then the interpretation is done by first analyzing the hundreds, the tens and then the units. The thousands are usually discarded except 1000, which means "Ambition", and some combined numbers like 24, 313 or 1260, are also interpreted. In Sabellicus' book the example given is the name of John Fitzgerald Kennedy:

 

A page from my old copy of Jorg Sabellicus' book, already with loose pages and lacking the cover.

 

 

   Going through the table of meanings of the numbers and analyzing this specific number, we can thus extract the following path or destiny connected to the name "John Fitzgerald Kennedy". Be aware that this is not a copy of the meanings as shown in the link I just gave you, but instead my translation of the meanings as found in Sabellicus' book. There are differences between them:

        1000 = "Ambition";

          900 = "Brave soldier, cross, decoration";

            34 = "Suffering, woe, sacrifice";

            30 = "Marriage, fame";

              4 = "Courage, liberality, power".

 

     I was so amazed with this interpretation of JFK's name that I immediately tried with other names. The first one I picked was "Titanic", since by that time I had just learned about the events leading to the well-known disaster:

 

 

     Using the table of meanings:

 

        200 = "Irresolution";

          60 = "Widowhood";

            2 = "Destruction, death, catastrophe".

 

     WHOA! When I saw this I didn't even have words to describe what I was feeling. After that I tried another name that is not indifferent to any of us – "Adolf Hitler":

 

    I was immediately intrigued by the presence of this "curious" number, 222. So I decided that I should read the interpretations for all three numbers. The total of the name is 303:

        300 = "Burning faith, philosophy";

            3 = "Mysticism, meditation, platonic love".

    The first name, "ADOLF", sums 81:

          81 = "Inclination towards the fine arts, intellectual culture";

          80 = "Disease, healing, long existence";

            1 = "Passionate character, ambition, zeal".

    And the final name, "HITLER", sums 222:

        200 = "Irresolution";

          22 = "Invention, prudence, mystery";

          20 = "Sorrow, severity, austerity";

            2 = "Destruction, death, catastrophe".

 

    Obviously, after all of this I HAD to try other names. My own name, the name of my father, my mother, my brother, the pretty girl next door... well, every single full name I was able to grab. This turned out to have a good side, and a really bad side to it. The good aspect is that this was the first system of Latin gematria I had contact with. I was studying the Hebrew Qabalah and some numerical patterns in the Greek New Testament, and this book showed me that there was also a system for the Latin alphabet, so I used it a lot and made a lot of calculations and discoveries with it.

    The really bad aspect of all this is that you can become fascinated with these apparently "prophetic matches", as it were, and become an easy victim of the false doctrine that the future of a person can be "guessed" through her name alone; and, even worse, if you happen to belong to the "unlucky ones" whose individual number ends in "2", you will be constantly worried that some accident or catastrophe might happen in your life. Please DON'T do that. Use your tools wisely, don't become their victim; and keep focused on your work but always without attachment. Probabilistically speaking, 1 person in each 9 has an individual number ending in "2", and it is quite improbable that their lives will all be connected to some type of disaster or catastrophe. Or it may happen the opposite. This oracle may show you how brilliant your "destiny" would be, and you may expect very positive things that will never happen. You have to be extremely cautious about this. So if you want to use this oracle, you are free to use it the way you want. But my advice is to always use it with caution, moderation and responsibility, and to never fall prey to the belief that this oracle allows for "future prediction" and is always right. I've been there and I've done that, so I know what I'm talking about. The only such oracle we have is in our brain, but we still don't know how to use it.

* * *

    Getting back to the cipher as shown in this oracle, it's notorious its similarity with the "Jewish" cipher; however, there are still certain differences between them. The "Jewish" cipher contains &=800 and W=900, while the "Hand of Fatima" cipher contains "Hi"=800 and "Hu"=900. I'm calling it the "Hand of Fatima cipher" because that was essentially my only source for a system of Latin Gematria that I knew for a lot of years... until one day, during my researches into the occult arts, I came to see this cipher again, where these strange combinations of letters ("Hi" and "Hu") were duly explained. It was in Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, first published in 1533 AD.

Agrippa's Latin cipher

    In his Second Book "Of Occult Philosophy", in the chapter 20 called "What numbers are attributed to letters; and of divining by the same", Agrippa presents the following system of Latin Gematria:

    Agrippa explains:

 

    "(...) But those numbers which are deputed to each letter, we have above showed, in the Greek, and Hebrew letters, the alphabet being divided into three classes, whereof the first is of unities, the second of tens, the third of hundreds. And seeing in the Roman alphabet there are wanting four to make up the number of twenty-seven characters, their places are supplied with «J», and «V», simple consonants, as in the names of «John», and «Valentine», and «hi» and «hu», aspirate consonants, as in «Hierom», and «Huilhelme», although the Germans for «hu» the aspirate use a double vv; the true Italians, and French in their vulgar speech put «G» joined with «U» instead thereof, writing thus, «Vuilhelmus», and «Guilhelmus»"

    In other words, as the (Classical) Latin alphabet only had 23 letters, there were needed 4 extra letters in order to fill the three orders of numbers: 9 units, 9 tens, and 9 hundreds, just like it happens with the Hebrew and Greek alphabets. In fact, the Classical Latin alphabet looked like this:

 

A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z

 

     In the Latin alphabet you should remember that both "I" and "J" were considered the same letter, as well as "U" and "V" – that's why in Latin we can write either Ianuarius or Januarius for "January", and both Lux or LVX for "Light". So basically, what Agrippa did was to take the order of the letters in the Classical Latin alphabet, from A to Z, and give them the values 1 through 500 (units first, then tens, then hundreds). After that sequence he added the "extra letters" in the Latin alphabet – first the letter "J" (the consonant that corresponds to the vowel "I"), then the letter "V" (the consonant that corresponds to the vowel "U"), and finally two aspirate sounds that correspond to these two letters: "Hi" and "Hu". Agrippa also adds that the for the aspirate sound "Hu" the Germans use the letter "W", so in the modern alphabet we can safely exchange "Hu" for "W" – just like it happens in the so-called "Jewish" cipher.

    The aspirate "Hi" sound, corresponding to the number 800, was used in some specific Latin names, like "Hierosolyma" (Jerusalem) and "Hieronymus" (Jeronymo), but as that combination of letters does not make much sense in most of the modern languages, that value and combination of letters can be safely discarded. That's why in the MasonCode webpage, Agrippa's Latin cipher is depicted in the following way:

 

     The author(s) of this brilliant webpage also left the following explanation:

 

    "The Latin based code appears a bit irregular when presented in this way. The reason for this is that it is based on the 23 letter Latin alphabet. The additional letters ‘J’, ‘V’, ‘Hi’ and ‘W’ (‘Hu’) were recognised as representative of separate sounds and used to increase the alphabet to 27 letters – and three tiers of nine digits."

 

     Now that we understand the real logic behind this cipher (first the Classical Latin 23-letter alphabet, then the extra 4 letters), it now becomes clear how absurd it is to use an ampersand (&) in place of "Hi" in the so-called "Jewish" (actually Agrippa's) cipher:

 

     On a second thought... I can almost imagine how this strange "Jewish" equivalence came to be. What it seems to me is that whoever had the idea of adding this "Jewish" cipher to the Gematrinator took this interpretation quite literally, since after the Latin alphabet they literally added "J V & W"!!! 👀

    ... which makes sense! LOL! In fact, I even thought about baptizing this cipher the "Jv&wish" cipher, instead of "Jewish"... 😂 I'm sorry, this is so funny that I couldn't resist!

    In terms of our modern alphabet, this is a much better way of presenting this cipher:

    Note that the place corresponding to "Hi" in this case is void, as it should be, since it corresponds to a combination of letters that only makes sense specifically in the Latin language. However, even in Latin this combination was frequently interchangeable with a simple "J" or "I", so one could either write "Hierosolyma" or "Jerosolyma" (Jerusalem), and both forms would be equally valid.

 

    If, for example, we're calculating the value of the English word "high", we will obviously NOT going to use "Hi"=800, but instead H=8 plus I=9, since it doesn't make sense to analyze an English word using Latin rules of orthography. So that is the reason why the place corresponding to 800 is kept void. 

 

 

Some examples of the use of Agrippa's cipher

 

 

        Very recently, when I bought a fresh new copy of Sabellicus' book containing the oracle of the Hand of Fatima, I also discovered something... peculiar. It's nothing extraordinarily interesting, but during all these years that I had this book, I had never, ever, calculated the numerical value of the pseudonym chosen by this author. Also, I never knew the origin of it, and it was in this new copy that I found that the name "Jorg Sabellicus" was in fact inspired on Georgius Sabellicus, a charlatan and a self-proclaimed wizard from the 16th century who styled himself as Faustus Junior and "prince of necromancers". Some people believe that the historical Georgius Sabellicus was the model for the well-known tragical history of Johann Georg Faust, who "sold his soul to the devil".

 

     How curious it is, then, that Sabellicus' name adds to 888 (a thrice repeated number like 666), and his title "Faustus Junior" adds to 1666! The author's pseudonym, "Jorg Sabellicus", also seems to have some connection with the name "Georgius Sabellicus", since if we divide its total sum into two parts and add them, the final result is 11 + 77 = 88.

 

    This number, 1177, also corresponds to Janus Pater, a title of the Roman god of doors, passages, and beginnings, which gave its name to our month of "January" – and which in Stregheria (Italian Traditional Witchcraft) is associated with Dianus, the Horned God who is the male consort of Diana, the goddess of the Moon and of hunting. Remember that Sebastiano Fusco, or "Jorg Sabellicus", is Italian, and he has written about Witchcraft (although not specifically about Stregheria, as far as I know):

     Speaking of Faust and the Devil, it's curious to note that in Agrippa's Latin cipher, two of the Latin names of the Christian Devil share exactly the same value:

    A similar thing happens with the name "Jesus" and the Latin word "Veritas" meaning "Truth":

 

    Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which means "house of bread", which of course is made from cereals. Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture, fertility and grain crops, is the origin of the word "cereal":

    And speaking about Jesus... It is widely known that one of the mottos (or the main motto) of the Society of Jesus – the Jesuits – is "Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam". In researching about the possible origins of this motto, I came to read the article about the Society of Jesus in the Latin Wikipedia (Vicipædia) and I found something that is NOT found in the English Wikipedia... or, in fact, in most English webpages about the Society of Jesus across the Internet. This is what the Latin Wikipedia says at a certain point:

 

    This can be very loosely translated as: «The motto of the Society is "(Everything) For the greater glory of God" whose letters can be written as AMDG or OAMDG». As I tend to prefer the Latin ciphers when I'm analysing Latin texts (for obvious reasons), I immediately calculated the value of this complete sentence:

    This, if course, can be just a coincidence. However, it is strange that this motto is much less known that the more usual "Ad maiorem Dei gloriam", to the point of being largely ignored in most cases – while it has such an interesting numerical correspondence in this Latin cipher.

 

* * *

 

    To conclude this part about the cipher of Agrippa, I should explain to my Readers that even though this was the first system of Latin Gematria that I knew, I wasn't always completely satisfied with it. In fact, the strange order of having first the 23-letter Classical Latin alphabet and then the extra letters didn't seem completely "right". So what I did was to study the evolution of the Latin alphabet and then try to devise a more "logical" system of Latin Gematria. And after I finally devised it, I was amazed when I found that it already existed, even though it was called by a strange name. "Beatus of Liébana" was it called... and it became my absolute favorite system of Latin Gematria.

 

 

 The Latin cipher of Beatus de Liébana

 

 

    First of all, who was Beatus de Liébana? Saint Beatus was Spanish monk, theologian and geographer who lived in what is now the modern region of Asturias (Northern Spain) during the 8th century A.D., and is best known by his "Commentaries on the Apocalypse" (Commentaria in Apocalypsin). You can read more about some of the fascinating manuscript copies of this book here and here. I first read his name in John Opsopaus' Isopsephia Calculator, as well as in his Alphabet Charts. In these pages, the letters of the Latin alphabet are given the following values:

 

    If my Reader has understood the logic behind the Agrippa cipher, this table will look much more reasonable, as it is clear that in the "Beatus" cipher the extra Latin letters (J V and W) are treated as equal to the letters from which they came. Thus:

– "J" came from "I", so both have the same value = 9;

– "U" and "V" were originally the same letter, so both = 200;

– "W" was also derived from the letter U/V, so it is given the same value as U/V.

    Beatus' "Commentaries on the Apocalypse" contains a very interesting section about the "Names of the Antichrist", and that section contains a clear example of the use of Beatus' Latin cipher.

One of the "Tables of the Antichrist", in one of the manuscript copies of Beatus de Liébana's "Commentaries on the Apocalypse". Click to enlarge.

    On the section about Revelation 13:18, where the "Mark of the Beast" and the "number of its name" are mentioned, Beatus de Liébana writes the following:

    «This is he who is named with seven names, for the seven heads that are the seven kingdoms subjected to him; and he will have an eighth name, which we have said above is ACXYME, the name in which will be made the mark on the hand and on the forehead. And by your charity, let us explain these seven names.

    One is EVANTAS — that is what is called “serpent” in Latin, for the one who deceived Eve first.

    He has the second name DAMNATUS, for the one who brought in great damage to the world.

    He has the third name ANTEMUS — that is, abstemious to strong drink — that is, wine — as if abstaining from wine.

    He has the fourth name GENSERICUS, from the Gothic tongue. [Gaeseric who invaded Africa.]

    He has the fifth name ANTICHRISTUS in all tongues.

    He has the sixth name TEITAN, from Greek.

    He has the seventh name DICLUX [DIC LUX = “say light”], from Latin, by which name we understand the Antichrist is expressed through an antiphrasis [using a word to mean something opposite to its usual meaning]; presuming to call himself “light,” he “transfigures himself into an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14) — he who will be deprived and cut off from supernal light.»

    (Source: Beatus of Liebana's Bloggentary)

    All of these names can be decoded through three different systems in order to arrive at the number 666. Six of these names are decoded with Greek Isopsephia:

    One name is decoded with Roman numeration ("Dic Lux" = DCLXVI = 666):

    And finally, the remaining name is to be decoded with Beatus' Latin cipher:

 

     You will notice that in this last example, the Beatus cipher delivers exactly the same value as the Agrippa cipher, as these two ciphers are exactly equal except in the case of the letters "J", "V" and "W". So only in the case that a word or name contains any of these letters is it justified to use both ciphers and check the numbers they give, as they will invariably deliver different results.

    You will also notice that in this case, Saint Beatus had to use a different orthography for "Antichristus" (Latin for "Antichrist") as the usual word would not deliver the specific number 666. However, there is more to this than meets the eye, and it was only some few days ago, while I was writing this text, that I found something extremely interesting about this. It seems that sometimes things happen for a reason, and it is only when we need answers that they come to us. That's exactly what happened this time.

    This makes part of a "larger picture" which I will unveil later in this text. In order to do that, however, it is necessary that I talk first about the Latin Ordinal and Reduction ciphers, so that's exactly what I'm going to do now.

The Latin Ordinal and Reduction ciphers

    In my work with the Latin ciphers I came to understand that, just like these "Extended" (i.e. with units, tens and hundreds) ciphers were used for the Latin alphabet, so there were its corresponding Ordinal and Reduction ciphers. I like to imagine the connections between these ciphers as a kind of "fractal construct", where the smallest part reflects the All, so I *do* use the Extended, Ordinal and sometimes the Reduction Latin ciphers. As I said in previous posts, however, my use of Reduction ciphers is very, VERY limited, as the small range of its numbers (from 1 to 9 only) allows for easy "matches", probabilistically speaking, even if there isn't any real match between words or names.

    These are the Ordinal and Reduction ciphers corresponding to the Agrippa Key:

 

 

    And these are the Ordinal and Reduction ciphers corresponding to the Beatus cipher:

 

   (Congratulations to Saun Virroco for his amazing work on his fresh new GEMATRO – Gematria Calculator. My work would never be possible without the tools you gave us.)

    I know at least two historical examples of the use of two of these ciphers: Agrippa Reduction and Beatus Ordinal. The first example of the use of Agrippa Reduction comes from the book "The Kabala of Numbers" by Sepharial (Walter Gorn Old), published in 1920, where he mentions a "Pythagorean" system that looks exactly like Agrippa Reduction. This is the way that it appears in the PDF I have of this book (link here):

 

 

    There are two things that must be said about this table. The first thing is that this table contains a very clear error, since two lines are repeated – I just can't tell if it looks like this in the original book, as I don't have the original (only a modern PDF copy). A more correct rendition of this table, based on the explanations contained in Agrippa's "Three Books of Occult Philosophy", would be this:

 

    It's clear that this table is a reduced table of the Agrippa cipher, as the two combinations of letters "Hi" and "Hu" can easily demonstrate. And the second thing that I should mention about this table is the fact of it being called "Pythagorean" by Sepharial. Any student of Numerology will notice that this table is very different from the "Pythagorean" table that is nowadays applied to the modern English alphabet. The reason for this is simple to grasp, once you understand that the Alphabet we all know didn't always have the same shape or number of letters. And so it becomes apparent that a "Pythagorean" table of correspondences between letters and numbers is merely a Reduction table that can be used either for the Classical and/or Medieval Latin alphabet (as is the case of Sepharial's table) or for the modern English alphabet (as is the case in the more widely known modern "Pythagorean" table). Hopefully this will help you, my dear Reader, to dispel some myths and fantasies surrounding modern "Pythagorean" Numerology.

 

 * * *

 

     The second historical use of these ciphers that I know of is what we currently call the "Beatus Ordinal" cipher. This cipher was in fact older than Saint Beatus de Liébana, and it was used and explained by the Venerable Bede (also called in Latin Beda Venerabilis) in his book "De Temporum Ratione" ("The Reckoning of Time"). Bede, or Beda, was an English Benedictine monk who lived in the 7th/8th centuries A.D., and his name is referred to in John Opsopaus' online Thesis Calculator in conjunction with the cipher bearing the same name – which, as I've said before, is technically equal to "Beatus Ordinal". The Venerable Beda's cipher is so interesting that it deserves its own dedicated section.

"Beatus Ordinal" and the cipher of Beda Venerabilis

    In his book "The Reckoning of Time" (read about it here), Saint Bede wrote the following:

    «There is also a second type of computation worked on the joints of the fingers which, since it pertains to the reckoning of Easter, will be more conveniently explained when we have arrived at that point. From the kind of computation I have just described, one can represent a sort of manual language, whether for the sake of exercising one’s wits, or as a game. By this means one can, by forming one letter at a time, transmit the words contained by those letters to another person who knows this procedure, so that he can read and understand them even at a distance. Thus one may either signify necessary information by secret intimation, or else fool the uninitiated as if by magic. The method of this game or language is as follows. When you wish to show the first letter of the alphabet, hold up ‘‘one’’ with your hand; for the second, ‘‘two’’; for the third, ‘‘three’’ and so on in that order. For example, if you wish to warn a friend who is among traitors to act cautiously, show with your fingers 3, 1, 20, 19, 5 and 1, 7, 5; in this order, the letters signify caute age [‘‘act cautiously’’]. It can be written down in this manner, if greater secrecy is demanded.»

    In other words, what Beda is explaining is a substitution cipher that can be used to deliver messages in two ways: either by making with the hands certain gestures that correspond to numerical values (and thus convey the corresponding letters of the alphabet), or else by writing down the values of the letters "if greater secrecy is demanded". As by the time that the Venerable Bede lived there were no "J", "V" or "W", we can thus conclude that these values match with those present in the Beatus cipher. But which hand signs were these? In the same book there are some graphical representations of these gestures, of which a modern depiction can be seen here:

(click to enlarge)

    And here's an original depiction, as found in one of the manuscript copies of this book:

 

    To be honest with you, dear Reader... I can't even make some of these hand gestures, so I guess it will be improbable that someday you'll see me transmitting some secret message by making these hand gestures! LOL. However, this "gesture" cipher is of great historical value, while it could also be used to decode some "strange" hand signs that can be seen everyday, everywhere (in the case that those represent a willingful use of this, or another similar, cipher) so that's why I'm presenting it to you. The more we know about these ciphers, the easier it will be for us to "decode" the reality surrounding us.

 

    Now that I've presented this cipher to you, it's time for us to return to the Beatus cipher... and a "riddle of the Antichrist".

 

 

The Antichrist, the Number of the Beast, and the Evening Star

 

 

     From the section of this text about the Latin cipher of Beatus de Liébana, you'll remember that I wrote the following:

 

    «You will also notice that in this case, Saint Beatus had to use a different orthography for "Antichristus" (Latin for "Antichrist") as the usual word would not deliver the specific number 666. However, there is more to this than meets the eye, and it was only some few days ago, while I was writing this text, that I found something extremely interesting about this. It seems that sometimes things happen for a reason, and it is only when we need answers that they come to us. That's exactly what happened this time.»

 

     In fact this was something that really intrigued me for some time... until very recently. To be honest, I thought it was like "cheating", using a different (and grammatically incorrect) orthography for the word "Antichristus" ("Antichrist" in Latin) in order to achieve the desired number: 666. However, what I found recently showed me that the word "Antichristus" is also connected to the number 666 in a very specific and curious way.

 

    During my studies of these Latin ciphers, I noticed a curious correspondence between the Latin words "Antichristus" (Antichrist) and "Vesperus" (Evening Star):

    "Vesperus" is a valid alternative to "Vesper" meaning the same thing: Venus as Evening Star. I thought this was extremely curious from a symbolical point of view, since in the Bible, more specifically in the book of Revelation, we can read the following:

    «I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.» (Revelation 22:16, KJV)

    In this verse, Jesus is unequivocally connected to the "Morning Star", which is another name for Venus when it appears in the sky before the Sun rises. In this way, if Jesus is the "bringer of light" (just like Venus as Morning Star announces the "birth of the light"), it makes sense if the Antichrist is connected to the Evening Star – thus being symbolically compared to the "bringer of darkness". In fact, the Latin word "aversus" meaning "facing away" or "hostile", sums 666 in the Beatus cipher!

 

     The surprises, however, didn't stop here. In Greek, the word for "Evening Star" is Hesperos (Ἓσπερος). Linguistically speaking, however, this was not the original form of the name. In fact, prior to the extinction of the (now obsolete) Greek letters Vau/Digamma, Qoppa and Sampi, the name Hesperos was originally written as Ϝέσπερος (wesperos), which ultimately led to the Latin word Vesperus (source). And guess what? In Greek Isopsephia, the value of this word is... 666 !!!

    So there seemed to be something "fishy" here! I went back to the words "Antichristus" and "Vesperus" which both add to 730 in the Beatus cipher, to see if there was "something special" about the number 730 that I could be missing. Well... hell yeah! You see, using only Mathematics, the number 730 has EIGHT divisors, and the sum of those 8 divisors is 1332 – which is 2 x 666:

 

 

    Not only that, but the number 730 (in our base 10 numeration system) is written as 1332 in base 8 !!! Notice how both Ϝέσπερος and Vesperus have 8 letters each? And notice how Beatus de Liébana gave a list of eight names of the Antichrist? Maybe, only maybe, this was NOT a coincidence.

 

     At this time I couldn't believe my eyes. It was too good to be true... however, there it was for all to see. This "riddle", however, doesn't end here.

 

    I am one of the fortunate guys who has had the priviledge of having been using a fantastic tool for Gematria before its official release. That tool is called Gematria for Truth and it's being developed by my friend Greg, and I can do nothing but acknowledge the superb work he has been doing. This tool will revolutionize everyone's work with Gematria, and it has already revolutionized my own work, particularly concerning the gematrical analysis of the Bible, which is one of the tools in that software that I have used the most. The results have been absolutely... amazing!

 

    So I wondered if there were more surprises about this, and I configured "Gematria for Truth" to search in the King James Bible for verses adding up to 730 (the value of "Antichristus") in the Latin ciphers. There was one that immediately caught my attention:

 

    «And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison.» (Revelation 20:7, KJV)

(click to enlarge)

 

    And with this, I rest my case!

Other known ciphers based on the Latin alphabet

    In this section I will only briefly refer to other Latin ciphers. I won't explore them by giving practical examples as, to be honest with you, I have never ever worked with them. My main source for these ciphers is John Opsopaus' Isopsephia Alphabet Charts, which I highly recommend to my Readers.

 

    This first cipher is called by Opsopaus Æquicalculus (a Latin literal translation of the Greek word "Isopsephia") or Genetic System, in that "it assigns numerical values to Roman letters on the basis of the Greek letters from which they were derived". I've only worked this cipher a couple of times, but never long enough to get satisfying results with it, so I'll just leave here the table of correspondences for my Readers' future reference:

 

     John Opsopaus also mentions another "Common System" which he explains that was in use during the 10th and 11th centuries, but this cipher is so confusing and lacking an internal logic that I won't even bother explaining it. Like Opsopaus rightly says, it seems to have been modelled after the Hebrew numerical assignments to the letters, even though "not entirely successfully". From what I've studied about the evolution of the Hebrew, Greek and Latin alphabets, I entirely subscribe to his words.

    There is another cipher that is very well-known nowadays, and this paper wouldn't be complete if it wasn't mentioned in this article. It's the English Extended cipher, which can also be found in the "Gematrinator" website as well as in a ton of other websites dedicated to Gematria, under a variety of different names. My Readers may be curious as to why I say that this paper, dedicated to traditional Latin ciphers, wouldn't be complete without mentioning a modern cipher like English Extended. Well, the fact is that just like the Beatus and Agrippa ciphers are Extended ciphers for the classical-late Latin alphabet, the English Extended cipher is an Extended cipher for the modern English alphabet. So that's why this paper wouldn't be complete without mentioning this cipher. It is quite simple to memorize and it follows the same method after which the Agrippa and Beatus ciphers were modelled: first the units, then the tens, and finally the hundreds, in alphabetical order:

 

    Right now, as I was writing these words, I decided to give this cipher a try in Greg's Gematria for Truth software, and I searched the King James Bible for any string of words, verse, or even sole words, adding up to 666, 730 or 1332 (= 2 x 666), and the result was... quite curious! We all know that verse from Revelation 13:18 that mentions the (in)famous Number of the Beast. The result is self-explanatory:

    (Have I mentioned before that the number 1332 has exactly 18 divisors – or 6+6+6?)

Final words – and my own uses of the Latin ciphers

    By the time you're reading this, it will be apparent to you that I tend to work with the Latin ciphers whenever the Latin language is involved – for obvious reasons. As I live in Europe, more specifically in Portugal, there are a lot of modern cities that were previously Roman cities with their own Latin names. Paris, for example, was called Lutetia, while London was called Londinium. Some of the modern names of the cities even resemble their ancient Latin names, like for example Vienna of Austria and its Roman equivalent Vindobona, or the towns in my own native country: Braga (Portuguese) and Bracara Augusta (Latin), or Aveiro (PT) and Aviarium (Latin). The inhabitants of the Portuguese town of Santarém, for example, are called escalabitanos, which has nothing to do with the modern name of the town, but in fact with the original Roman name of this city, which was Scalabis. I like to calculate the numerical value of some of these ancient Roman sites, as well as known phrases in Latin that are still used nowadays. The example I gave in this text of the Jesuit motto "(Omnia) ad maiorem Dei gloriam" is a nice example of this. I am also doing my own research within the Vulgata (the Latin Bible) while using the Latin ciphers, and this, I believe, will bring some very interesting results. In fact, it already has given some pretty satisfying results.

    Regarding the English Extended cipher, that cipher I don't use it ONLY with Latin names or sentences, as it is a modern cipher and it is perfectly apt for being applied to any language that uses the modern Latin/English alphabet. However, I would never use the modern English Extended cipher to analyse Latin words or sentences, as the Latin alphabet contained fewer letters than the modern alphabet, so it wouldn't make sense to mix the two systems. I tend to keep very strict criteria about this, as in my opinion it is fundamental to use the ciphers in the right context. That is something that I always give the utmost importance to.

* * *

 

    My dear Reader, I sincerely hope that this paper has given you enough "food for thought", and maybe some new ideas about how you can use your ciphers. If at any time you have any question, or would like to share your own ideas, or even if you would like to talk with me about anything that I wrote, please feel free to send me a word or two. I am more than willing to talk with my Readers, as that will always be an enriching experience for me too. This blog would never make sense without my Readers – and that means YOU. You are a fundamental key to this Blog too.

    In the next part of this series "History of Ciphers", I will be talking about the Thelemic Ciphers. There are the ciphers that are known, for all those using the "Gematrinator", as the so-called "Kabbalah" ciphers: the "ALW" cipher, the "KFW" cipher, and the "LCH" cipher. In the next part I will be explaining some of the history behind these ciphers, as well as letting you know who created (or discovered) them, the true names of these ciphers, and, of course, the right context to use them.

Until then! 😊

My best regards to You,

Luís Gonçalves