Alchemical and magical manuscripts are filled to the brim with obscure seals and secret scripts. The vast majority of these figures remain undeciphered today. Which is why the vast majority of modern magicians, following the highly pragmatic nature of their art, tend to simply accept these seals and sigils as orthodox practice. No further questions asked. For most of us, the collective memory for deciphering such diagrammed riddles only begins in very recent times - in the early 20th century, to be specific, when both the Golden Dawn and A.O.Spare began to reveal more overt techniques to either generate one’s own glyphs and seals, or to reconstruct the ‘correct’ versions of more ancient ones.

The tendency to be lax about such things was not at all shared by a manuscript we came across as part of the research on a ritual related to the Arbatel. Quite the opposite indeed: While confusing the reader with its secret script on previous pages, it provides the actual key to the alphabet at its end. Furthermore, it goes into specific detail on how to apply it as part of its Cabbalistic practice.

The manuscript we are referring to is part of the massive magical archive that one of the most important researchers and writers on Western Occultism left behind after his death, Karl Kiesewetter (1854-1894). While subsequent authors were wondering about the occult nature of Kiesewetter’s rare sources, these can now all be accessed online in their digitalised form. I am speaking of thousands manuscript pages from the late 18th century, waiting to be rediscovered, transcribed, translated and hopefully one day, published with careful annotations.

Here, in the seventh volume on Alchymica we find the magical script- and seal-generator, that very well might have inspired the Golden Dawn’s evolution of drawing seals from their version of the Rosy-Cross. The following images are taken from the manuscript. They show several of the double pages of the text, including the secret script, and then the circular masterkey at its end. The German text around the key says:

The figure of our secret script.

Who understands this figure right here,

He sees how our writing is placed inside,

And how all things that exist, are generated from it,

And [how they] will ascend to the double cross.

As you can see, an eager reader of the manuscript - possibly Kiesewetter himself? - had unlocked the code of generating the simple letters from the circular master-key, and carefully annotated the previous pages. Following their lead, we overlaid each letter onto the master-key to make the process more visible, how one is intended to ‘draw out’ the letters from it. The following images give you the master-key and then the full alphabet of letters extracted from it. Of course, as in any manuscript, personal handwriting came into play, which is why each letter on the previous pages might look slightly different. But if you go back to the above pages, you’ll get the hang of it quickly.

Of course, the entire manuscript deserves thorough research and investigation, and this short post does not intend to speak about the actual alchemical secrets guarded by the ciphered script. Of particular interest for future investigation, however, would be the mentioning of no other than the famous Johan Arndt (1555-1621) as the original author of this text. A truly fascinating lead into late the 16th century current of mago-mysticism.

Yet, we want to share one more observation on the master-key. The actual instructions on its use are short and crisp. Not only is the script placed inside of it, but it is meant to generate anything that exists. We see the diagram praised as a truly universal key. Now, the extraction of the angular letter-shapes certainly is not a hard riddle. So one should wonder if such an obvious use alone, already let the author to praise this key so highly? The following pages of the document are concerned with numeric keys of Christian Cabbala; and subsequent manuscripts in the same volume begin to give specific and long instructions on the conjuration of several little know planetary princes. What if, therefore we might ask, the mater-key had a second use - beyond generating the simple cipher-letters. What if we used it to generate spirit seals instead?

Below we are giving two simple examples, of how to draw the seals of the Tetragrammaton and the divine Hebrew name AGLA from the master-key. Now, the final line of the instructions underneath the seal, could begin to make sense? For it the diagram was meant to generate spirit seals to be used in conjurations, it truly is turned into a source of all things that exist and it would allow the practitioner through proper use to ascend to the double cross.