Masonic Cipher Book
Magdalen Dano
The Pigpen cipher offers little cryptographic security. It differentiates itself from other simple monoalphabetic substitution ciphers solely by its use of symbols rather than letters, the use of which fails to assist in curbing cryptanalysis. Additionally, the prominence and recognizability of the Pigpen leads to it being arguably worthless from a security standpoint. Knowledge of Pigpen is so ubiquitous that an interceptor might not need to actually break this cipher at all, but merely decipher it, in the same way that the intended recipient would.
In 1531 Cornelius Agrippa described an early form of the Rosicrucian cipher, which he attributes to an existing Jewish Kabbalistic tradition.[12] This system, called "The Kabbalah of the Nine Chambers" by later authors, used the Hebrew alphabet rather than the Latin alphabet, and was used for religious symbolism rather than for any apparent cryptological purpose.[13]
On the 7th July 1730, a French Pirate named Olivier Levasseur threw out a scrap of paper written in the pigpen cipher, allegedly containing the whereabouts of his treasure which was never found but is speculated to be located in Seychelles. The exact configuration of the cipher has also not been determined, an example of using different letters in different sections to further complicate the cipher from its standard configuration.
Variations of this cipher were used by both the Rosicrucian brotherhood[14] and the Freemasons, though the latter used the pigpen cipher so often that the system is frequently called the Freemason's cipher. Hysin claims it was invented by Freemasons.[15] They began using it in the early 18th century to keep their records of history and rites private, and for correspondence between lodge leaders.[3][16][17] Tombstones of Freemasons can also be found which use the system as part of the engravings. One of the earliest stones in Trinity Church Cemetery in New York City, which opened in 1697, contains a cipher of this type which deciphers to "Remember death" (cf. "memento mori").
George Washington's army had documentation about the system, with a much more randomized form of the alphabet. During the American Civil War, the system was used by Union prisoners in Confederate prisons.[14]
The core elements of this system are the grid and dots. Some systems use the X's, but even these can be rearranged. One commonly used method orders the symbols as shown in the above image: grid, grid, X, X. Another commonly used system orders the symbols as grid, X, grid, X. Another is grid, grid, grid, with each cell having a letter of the alphabet, and the last one having an "&" character. Letters from the first grid have no dot, letters from the second each have one dot, and letters from the third each have two dots. Another variation of this last one is called the Newark Cipher, which instead of dots uses one to three short lines which may be projecting in any length or orientation. This gives the illusion of a larger number of different characters than actually exist.[18]
Another system, used by the Rosicrucians in the 17th century, used a single grid of nine cells, and 1 to 3 dots in each cell or "pen". So ABC would be in the top left pen, followed by DEF and GHI on the first line, then groups of JKL MNO PQR on the second, and STU VWX YZ on the third.[2][14] When enciphered, the location of the dot in each symbol (left, center, or right), would indicate which letter in that pen was represented.[1][14] More difficult systems use a non-standard form of the alphabet, such as writing it backwards in the grid, up and down in the columns,[4] or a completely randomized set of letters.
The Templar cipher is a method claimed to have been used by the Knights Templar and uses a variant of a Maltese Cross.[19] This is likely a cipher used by the Neo-Templars (Freemasons) of the 18th century, and not that of the religious order of the Knights Templar from the 12th-14th centuries during the Crusades.[20]
There are many types of historical ciphers, including the Caesar Cipher, Atbash Cipher, Simple Substitution Cipher, Vignre Cipher, and Homophonic Substitution Cipher. Read more about these historical ciphers here.
According to legend, in 1730 when the pirate Olivier Levasseur was hanged, he ripped his necklace off and threw it into the crowd, crying out about a secret treasure. The necklace supposedly contained a 17-line Masonic (Pigpen) Cipher. Unfortunately, when decrypted, the note revealed to be a jumbled message in French that did not allude to any treasure, but possibly for an ancient traditional folk remedy or spell.
Pigpen Cipher is used extensively in Freemason documentation. There are still surviving examples of letters written using the cipher from the 16th Century. It can also be found on Masonic medals, certificates, tokens and even gravestones.
In 1934, a well-respected historian by the name of Charles Bourrel de la Roncire published a book about a cryptogram he had deciphered. It was allegedly the work of the infamous pirate, Olivier Levassuer, also known as The Hawk (La Buse).
Bourrel had identified the cipher, which was a form of pigpen, and translated that into plaintext. However, that was where his problems began, as the message seemed to simply be a recipe for a folk remedy rather than the location of a hidden treasure.
English actress and blonde bombshell, Diana Dors, was once considered a rival to Marilyn Monroe. When she passed away at the age of 52, she left behind an encoded message which only her husband had the key to. The message, it was said, led to millions of pounds which the actress had hidden.
Take a 3x3 grid and write the alphabet in it, three letters to each square. Under each letter place a dot. Now, when you want to encode a message you draw the shape of the grid around the letter just like pigpen, but you place the dot in a different place for each letter. For example:
In standard pigpen, the letters are written over two grids and two crosses. By changing the order of grids, you can make a cipher that looks like simple pigpen but will take a little longer to decrypt. For example, rather than using the standard grid, grid, X, X, you could switch to grid, X, grid, X or X, grid, X grid. For example:
There is also a variant of Pigpen which includes the numbers 0-9. This version expands the X grid to be 3 x 3. The letters take their usual places on the outside, while the digits are spread through the internal squares.
Pigpen is often used as an introduction to cryptography because it is simple, visual, and effective. Of course, that also makes it one of the least secure ciphers. Even a person who had never heard of pigpen would stand a chance at cracking the code using frequency analysis.
See also: Code-Breaking overview Adfgvx cipher Adfgx cipher Affine cipher Atbash cipher Baconian cipher Beaufort cipher Bifid cipher Caesar cipher Columnar transposition Cryptogram Double transposition Enigma machine Four-square cipher Gronsfeld cipher Keyed caesar cipher One-time pad Playfair cipher Rail fence cipher Rot13 Route transposition Trifid cipher Variant beaufort cipher Vigenere cipher
The Freemasons have long used ciphers to encrypt their ceremonies and messages. Both the ciphers on this page use the classic Masonic Cipher, which is also known as the Pigpen Cipher, as the alphabet is written into a series of grids, with some passing resemblance to pigpens.
Despite appearances, these ciphers are all simple substitution cryptograms, so the frequency of each symbol will give you clues as to which letters are E, T and A. Other solving tricks for cryptograms will work equally well here.
Mark E. Koltko-Rivera, PhD, is a 32degree Freemason and expert on the major symbols and ceremonies of Freemasonry. Using this expertise, he analyzed prepublication clues to uncover and blog about key elements of The Lost Symbol. He co-hosts the weekly podcast Masonic Central.
The Pigpen Cipher, also sometimes called the Freemason's cipher, is a very simple substitution cipher. The thing that I like most about it is that one can easily remember how the pattern is drawn and, if ever in a jam, can easily recreate the cipher with a pencil and paper. Personally, I've memorized it and can recreate each individual symbol without the need to sketch out the diagram.
Here is a solution that I invented that is backwards compatible with the Pigpen cipher, meaning that messages written in the Pigpen cipher still work, but additional symbols have been added to represent numbers:
This solution is rather elegant since the (X) symbols has simply been expanded into a rotated (#) symbol. This expansion conveniently adds exactly 5 slots to each X, resulting in the perfect space to add 10 numbers. Like the original it is still easy to memorize and recreate the symbols. By being backwards compatible each letter can still be decoded using the original Pigpen cipher.
Licensing: I've had multiple people reach out and ask if they can use the Extended Pigpent Cipher in their projects / publications (someone even included it in a textbook). That's totally fine, I just ask that you attribute this to me (Thomas Hunter II). It's also nice if you send me a copy of what you've made with it but that's up to you. This license is CC BY-SA 4.0.
Thomas has contributed to dozens of enterprise Node.js services and has worked for a company dedicated to securing Node.js. He has spoken at several conferences on Node.js and JavaScript and is an O'Reilly published author.
N.p.: N.d. [circa 1900]. 16mo., pp. [1]-116; pebbled cloth; boards and spine with several scratches and dings; joints split; leaves clean. Surface insect damage to the cloth. Endpapers plain, fore-edge has cloth flap (marbled on the inside with some losses) to close and protect the book but without any closure device. We've reviewed this example with the National Heritage Museum in Lexington MA who has a large collection of Masonic material. They contributed the following understanding of this item "[It is] a Masonic cipher ritual. 'Fr La To Re' stands for 'From Labor to Refreshment a phrase from Masonic ritual. [The first] page covers the part of the ritual where, essentially, the closed/tyled lodge is temporarily recessed (rather than formally closed) so that other business may be carried out in an open lodge (e.g. have a non-Mason give a presentation to the lodge). [ A later page headed ] 'LSI EAD' is the beginning of the examination of the Entered Apprentice. EAD = Entered Apprentice Degree. The cipher itself just abbreviates words (rather than using a substitution code or something along those lines). It's an aide-memoire for a text that has already been (ideally) memorized. ...it's a Masonic Craft/Symbolic/Blue Lodge ritual book because of the names of the officers (WM=Worhipful Master; SW=Senior Warden; JW=Junior Warden) and the names of the degrees (EA=Entered Apprentice; FC=Fellow Craft; MM=Master Mason)." They further noted that many of these Cipher Rituals have false title pages as an attempt to mislead the reader, not present in this example. Fair. Hard Cover. [20209]
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