The Manuscripts
The folios are drawn in black ink on cotton paper watermarked 1809. The text is plain English written from right to left in a simple substitution cryptogram. Numerals are substituted by Hebrew letters – Aleph=1, Beth=2, etc. Crude drawings of diagrams, magical implements and tarot cards are interspersed in the text. One final page translates into French and Latin.
The Ciphers contain the outlines of a series of graded rituals and the syllabus for a course of instruction in Qabalah and Hermetic magic, including Astrology, Tarot, Geomancy and Alchemy. It also contains several diagrams and crude drawings of various ritual implements. The Cipher Manuscripts are the original source upon which the rituals and the knowledge lectures of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn were based.
The actual material itself described in the Manuscript is of known origins. Hermeticism, Alchemy, Qabalah, Astrology and Tarot were certainly not unknown to 19th century scholars of the Magical arts; the Cipher is a compendium of previously known Magical traditions. The basic structure of the rituals and the names of the Grades are similar to those of the Rosicrucian orders Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and the German 'Orden der Gold- und Rosenkreuzer'.
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