Unsolved: Two partially encrypted texts from an old Masonic book
The monograph “Masonic Writings” from 1862 describes numerous Masonic ciphers. These include two partially encoded texts. Can my readers solve them?
Peter Raabye, Grand Archivist of the Danish Order of Freemasons, drew my attention a few weeks ago to an extremely interesting monograph from 1862: “Maurerische Chiffren” by C. A. Göpel. This 65-page publication presents several dozen Masonic ciphers. It is available for download here, here and here (I had to split it into three parts due to size).
Göpel’s “Masonic Ciphers
I have never seen such an extensive list on the subject of Masonic ciphers. It is all the more astonishing that this monograph is apparently completely unknown. I have not found a single web page in a Google search that even mentions this publication.
In February I presented a couple of encryption procedures, a diary with cryptological content and two encrypted inscriptions (on a lodge sign and on a gold ring) from this monograph. My readers, as usual, published some interesting comments on them, but no one has been able to solve the two inscriptions in particular. Here they are again:
Quelle/Source: Maurerische Chiffren
These inscriptions are quite short, which of course makes things difficult.
“Masonic Ciphers” has even more to offer, however. The following excerpt, for example, shows three variants of the Pigpen cipher, intended for apprentices, confreres and masters:
Quelle/Source: Maurerische Chiffren
Apparently, apprentices, confreres and masters used different ciphers so that, for example, the confreres could not read the masters’ messages. In terms of security, I see no difference between the three ciphers.
The following diagram shows 19 Masonic ciphers at once:
Quelle/Source: Maurerische Chiffren
An encrypted text
The encrypted texts without a solution that can be found in this book are particularly exciting. You can read the following example on page 11:
Quelle/Source: Maurerische Chiffren
Unfortunately, the plain text is already difficult to read. Perhaps a reader can help.
The encoded part of the text is based on an alphabet in which many numbers occur. I suspect that expressions like “+16” or “:16” each stand for a letter. This reminds me of the encryption method used by the child murderer Joseph Peter Smith. Can a reader find out more about this?
Another encrypted text
On page 41 there is another partially encrypted text (again, unfortunately, the plain text is difficult to read):
Quelle/Source: Maurerische Chiffren
This time the scrambled passages look like a simple letter substitution. Can a reader decode them?
Even more open questions
There are more interesting ciphers and encrypted texts in “Maurerische Chiffren”. I will probably present these in another blog article.
Many thanks again to Peter Raabye for making this monograph available to me. I hope my readers will help to make the excerpts shown from this work more understandable.
If you want to add a comment, you need to add it to the German version here.
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