Theban alphabet from De Occulta Philosophia 1533

The Theban alphabet, also known as the witches' alphabet, is a

writing system A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...

, specifically a

substitution cipher In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encrypting in which units of plaintext are replaced with the ciphertext, in a defined manner, with the help of a key; the "units" may be single letters (the most common), pairs of letters, t ...

of the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

, that was used by early modern occultists and is popular in the

Wicca Wicca (), also known as "The Craft", is a Modern paganism, modern pagan, syncretic, Earth religion, Earth-centred religion. Considered a new religious movement by Religious studies, scholars of religion, the path evolved from Western esote ...

movement.

Publication history

It was first published in

Johannes Trithemius Johannes Trithemius (; 1 February 1462 – 13 December 1516), born Johann Heidenberg, was a German Benedictine abbot and a polymath who was active in the German Renaissance as a Lexicography, lexicographer, chronicler, Cryptography, cryptograph ...

's ''Polygraphia'' (1518) in which it was attributed to Honorius of Thebes "as

Pietro d'Abano Pietro d'Abano, also known as Petrus de Apono, Petrus Aponensis or Peter of Abano (Premuda, Loris. "Abano, Pietro D'." in ''Dictionary of Scientific Biography.'' (1970). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Vol. 1: p.4-5.1316), was an Italian philos ...

testifies in his greater fourth book". However, it is not known to be extant in any of the known writings attributed to D'Abano (1250–1316). Trithemius' student

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (; ; 14 September 1486 – 18 February 1535) was a German Renaissance polymath, physician, legal scholar, soldier, knight, theologian, and occult writer. Agrippa's ''Three Books of Occult Philosophy'' pub ...

(1486–1535) included it in his '' De Occulta Philosophia'' (Book III, chap. 29, 1533). It is also not known to be found in any manuscripts of the writings of Honorius of Thebes (e.g. ''Liber Iuratus Honorii'', translated as ''

The Sworn Book of Honorius ''The Sworn Book of Honorius'' (, also ''Liber sacer'', ''sacratus'' or ''consecratus'') is a medieval grimoire purportedly written by Honorius of Thebes. The Latin word ''juratus'', which is typically translated "sworn", is intended to mean " ...

''), with the exception of the composite manuscript found in London,

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

Manuscript Sloane 3853, which however openly identifies Agrippa as its source.

Uses and correlations

Eglwys_Sant_Myllin_Llanfyllin_Powys_North_Wales_58

It is also known as the Honorian alphabet or the Runes of Honorius after the legendary

magus Magi (), or magus (), is the term for priests in Zoroastrianism and earlier Iranian religions. The earliest known use of the word ''magi'' is in the trilingual inscription written by Darius the Great, known as the Behistun Inscription. Old Per ...

(though Theban is dissimilar to the Germanic

runic alphabet Runes are the Letter (alphabet), letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see ''#Futharks, futhark'' vs ''#Runic alphabets, runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were ...

), or the witches' alphabet due to its use in modern

and other forms of

witchcraft Witchcraft is the use of Magic (supernatural), magic by a person called a witch. Traditionally, "witchcraft" means the use of magic to inflict supernatural harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meanin ...

as one of many

substitution ciphers In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encrypting in which units of plaintext are replaced with the ciphertext, in a defined manner, with the help of a key; the "units" may be single letters (the most common), pairs of letters, tri ...

to hide magical writings such as the contents of a Book of Shadows from prying eyes. The Theban alphabet has not been found in any publications prior to that of Trithemius, and bears little visual resemblance to most other

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

s. There is one-to-one correspondence between Theban and the letters in the old

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

. The modern characters J and U are not represented. They are often transliterated using the Theban characters for I and V, respectively. In the original chart by Trithemius, the letter W comes after Z, as it was a recent addition to the Latin alphabet, and did not yet have a standard position. This caused it to be misinterpreted as an

ampersand The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram , representing the grammatical conjunction, conjunction "and". It originated as a typographic ligature, ligature of the letters of the word (Latin for "and"). Etymology Tradi ...

or end-of-sentence mark by later translators and copyists, such as Francis Barrett. Some users of those later charts transliterate W using the Theban characters for VV, parallel to how the English letter developed. Some Theban letter shapes have changed from book to book over time. Theban letters only exist in a single case.

Eric S. Raymond Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is an American software developer, open-source software advocate, and author of the 1997 essay and 1999 book ''The Cathedral and the Bazaar''. He wrote a guidebook for the R ...

, an American software developer and author, has created a draft proposal for adding the Theban alphabet to the

Universal Coded Character Set The Universal Coded Character Set (UCS, Unicode) is a standard set of character (computing), characters defined by the international standard International Organization for Standardization, ISO/International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC ...

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

Notes

External links

*
Theban alphabet at Omniglot

Theban alphabet at Theban Today

Computer font "Theban_TGEA.ttf", based on Trithemius's Polygraphia (1518)
* [https://www.mediafire.com/file/j7cuj259czlg9aq/ThebanBMagic.ttf Computer font "ThebanBMagic", based on Agrippa/Barrett, with added symbols for punctuation, numbers, etc.] {{DEFAULTSORT:Theban Alphabet Artificial scripts used in mysticism Ciphers Wicca Language and mysticism