How Angel Magic Gave Us the Internet - The Steganographia of Trithemius

0:00 In 1499, the abbott of Spanheim wrote a letter to his Carmelite friend Arnold Bostius, claiming to have been revealed, divinely revealed something incredible, an art by which to create unbreakable ciphers, to learn Latin in only a couple of hours. the ability to conjure angels and employ them to instantly dispatch messages at vast distances, even to transmit one's thoughts over those vast distances, even deep into the most secure dungeon. Indeed, it was an art that would eventually illuminate the soul itself, mystical illumination. This art of staganographia revealed to the abbott Trius would quote be marveled

0:48 at by the entire world as he wrote to his friend Bosius who as bad luck would have it died right before the letter arrived and the prior there in Kent read the letter with abject horror. This was baldly the conjuration of spirits, demons really, to engage in subtrifuge, criminal necromancy, praised as divine revelation by one of the most educated men of the church of that day. And thus, Trmius's reputation as a dark sorcerer burst onto the scene of the 16th century. But what exactly is the art of the Staganographia? Is it angel

1:34 magic or demonic conjuration hiding something deeper still? What exactly was the magical theory and practice of Trathemus? Probably the most learned person in the study of the occult in his day. He was the teacher of a grippa, the inspiration to Dr. John D. foundational for the wouldbe Rosie and the founder of modern cryptography. Make sure to subscribe here to Esoterica for explorations and topics of esoteric history. And if you'd like to support this work of providing evidencebacked, free and accessible content, then I'd hope you consider taking a look at my Patreon or considering picking up some of the cool merch we here have on the channel. If you're new to the study of esotericism and you want to get a reliable lay of the land, make sure to

2:20 check out my study guide, which is also freely accessible. And if you're interested in actual historical books on magic and the occult, check out esoterica rare books. You can find all those links in the description and in the pin comment below. But now, let's explore at some significant depth the world of ciphers, angel magic, spiritual illumination, and practical prophecy. The world of trimeus. I'm Dr. Justin Sledge and welcome to Esoterica, where we explore the arcane and history, philosophy, and religion.

3:20 Born in 1462, from a young age, Johan Heidenberg, later became known as Trathenius, was deeply, even rebelliously dedicated to learning. This was deeply opposed by his stepfather, and the young Johan would sneak out in the night to learn the alphabet and then bits of Latin before entire prayers and smatterings of grammar. still learning to read at the age of 15 he was shown a vision where he could choose between a written tablet and one with only pictures on it and he chose the tablet with the writing and at the age of 17 he just ran away from home seeking further education roaming between Trier the Netherlands and Cologne before he eventually settled at the University of H Highleberg for formal education apparently rapidly metriculating however

4:08 after being caught in a snowstorm and taking refuge in the nearly ruined abbey at Spawnheim in 1482. He would come to settle there as a neophite before being elected only a year later. A year later at the tender age of 21 as Abbott. Elected due in part to his education, but also for his zeal and probably being young enough to be manipulated by the elder monks there, Trusia set to reform, rebuild, and expand Spanheim. In particular, Trathenius radically expanded the Aby's library from a measly 48, though that's still respectable at this time, but from 48 to over 2,000 volumes with significant holdings on occult topics. He was apparently known for his strictness, being especially

4:55 resented by his monks for insisting upon still producing handwritten copies of volumes despite the advent of the printing press during his lifetime. Indeed, by 1505, he would resign his position, probably quitting as much as being ousted at the age of 43 before becoming the abbott of St. James at Versburg, a Scottish monastery of all things. In that position, he would hold until his own death in 1516. Trius was extremely productive as a writer with his own administrative task along with composing numerous works on monastic history, annals of Germanic history, well chronicles which honestly at times border on historical fiction more than anything else. Various works on spirituality, works on monastic reform and works alone that would earn

5:41 him, if only he were known for that as one of the early great early monastic humanists. But the writings of Trathenius also reveal a kind of internal tension, even seeming contradiction between his noted demonological writings and his own specifically occult works. But to understand this, it's worth taking stock of the development of the world of the occult around him in the last third of the 15th century, a period of utter dynamism in both the demonological context and in the rise of the occult philosophy. So on the one hand we have the mature demonological worldview concerning diabolical witchcraft which was beginning to solidify into what scholars now call the elaborated theory of witchcraft along with the maturity of demonic magic, alchemy and astrology as

6:28 inheritances from the medieval period. Now, I have done a lot of episodes on the development of the witch idea, but suffice to say, this was a shift from witchcraft merely understood as sin to now being understood as a worldwide woman-led diabolical heresy bent on the destruction of Christendom, most infamously stated in the 148687 Malas Malificarum. And while Kramer's position on witchcraft was especially misogynistic and even psychopathic, there's a reason why the Malas became as popular as it did. It clearly synthesized prime material. It diagnosed what people took to be the current state of the worst of the witchinfested world and provided the means by which this heresy could be combed in a way that allowed its audience to make sense of

7:15 the world around them. The Malas wasn't popular for no reason. And again, if you want more on the Malas, you can check out my episode if you want to understand that important and rightfully infamous text. But given what I'm sure many of you know about Trathenius's occult works, you may be surprised to learn that his demonological convictions were shockingly similar to those found in texts like the Malas, primarily worked out in works of his like the Intipulus Malificorum, the Libra Octoionum, and his unfinished textbook demon. But in short, Trmius's position was that demonic manifestation really only occurs with human cooperation or invitation or just through active sin, especially lust, or through passive sin, mostly in

8:01 the case of men, through the sin of Aadia. Now, you know, the idol hands or the devil's workshop, that kind of idea. Demons only operate through trickery for trimeus prestigious. And God allows such demonic molestation to occur to test the free will of his subjects. Contrasted to demonic trickery, of course, are miracles directly caused by God in violation of natural law and marvels caused by God or angels through a human agent. Keep this concept of marvels handy. It's going to matter a lot in a moment. Unlike other scholars, Trathemus rejects the notion of marbles produced merely by natural magic, arguing that such feats must have some kind of underlying supernatural causation. Thus,

8:47 natural magic is at root always either angelic or demonic. He's especially concerned with learned demonic magic, which he believed was simply endemic among the clergy of his time. That is the using the force of the sacramental exorcism to bind and manipulate demons for various ends. Which again following Augustine he rejects that demons have magical knowledge for instance of where buried treasure is rather just really really ancient and have been storing up riches for the coming of the antichrist. Yes, buried treasure is for most medieval demonology a kind of demonic credit union for the coming of the antichrist such that the demons reveal these riches or at least tempt people with these riches to greedy clerics to tempt them into luring them to their

9:33 deaths or other kinds of vicious traps or just more into the world of greed and eventually damning their soul. Or my favorite that he mentions is that demons can use glamour magic to turn treasure into manure resulting in, you know, hilarity for everybody. Haha, jokes on you. It wasn't uh magic. It was just poop. Beside the Middle Ages being mostly poop jokes in Dn D. At any rate, Trusius was complaining constantly about the clerical necroantic underground is admittedly pretty rich as we'll see. As for witches, Trmia position is pretty straightforwardly Augustinian with a touch of the misogyny of texts like the Malas. The ethical and spiritual weakness of women inherited to them from Eve makes them more likely to fall for

10:19 demonic trickery more generally. The specific demon associated with witchcraft for trthmius is the light shunner, the luifum, the light fleer, which he avoids light, but he also avoids the aerial region where sound is transmitted. And thus, he's better suited to the unlearned sorcery of women, which doesn't rely on the complex incantations of those clerics engaged in the necroantic underground business. along with the standard litany of malevolent witchcraft which includes of course infanticide, meteorological evils, inducing various illnesses such as blindness, epilepsy, insanity, especially demonic poisoning to cause such a condition and then the witch is using a cure to have power over life or death or at least apparently have that power. Trathemus, like Kramer, is taken

11:07 with the sexual powers of the witch to paradoxically both nullify procreation, making the Veral member vanish, as witches were apparently want to do, but also to inflame lust through unnatural sexual acts and demonic populations with succubi and incubi. While Trmius admits that women suffering from melancholia, what we would now denote as a wide range of mental illnesses are more likely to be subjects of demonic temptation, such a condemnation actually doesn't actually negate their free will and thus is not exculpatory. However, unlike Kramer's Malas, Trathenia spends a lot of more time investigating and castigating the range of learned forms of magic,

11:53 especially Solomonic magic, natural magic, alchemy, and astrology. Unlike others of his time, Traius argues that such books of sorcery should be collected and studied to better understand their enemy rather than just consigned to the pers. Thus, learning about necromancy wasn't the problem for Trmius. Practicing it was. Further, it was necessary to combat those charlatans that falsely claimed to produce marvels, thus leading the masses into more and more sinful delusions. Here, he singles out none less than Dr. Foust, that self-soured fountain of necromancy, as a fraud who should be chastised with whips. You can check out Trmius's Only Fans for more on that. In fact, Trius says that he and Fa actually stayed at

12:40 the same inn at Gellhousen in 1506. And then when Tmius tried to call Foust out, like tombstone style, but with necromancers, I guess, Faustst fled in fear of being publicly revealed as a fraud by the Black Abbott. At least as far as Trmius tells it. I'd like to hear false side of the story. Another figure to earn Trathemus's condemnation is the bizarre hermetic messiah, Giovani Mercurio Decorio. This guy was so strange that historians just didn't think he existed until recently. At any rate, this Mercurius Secundus, as he was known, the second coming or reincarnation of the Egyptian sage Hermes, claimed to have had divine wisdom. He

13:26 produced marbvels allegedly and even convinced the first self-styled hermeticist Loviko Lzerelli of his powers. Recording a visit of Decorio to France in 1501, Trathenius basically thought he was delusional, self arandizing crazy person, a pretender more than a necromancer with some adjunct of mental illness, but perhaps, you know, low-key in league with demonic forces. So Foustus and Couio didn't really strike Traththemius of much note whatsoever. Of course, as I noted a moment ago, Trathemus also held that there were people who were attempting to use the power of exorcism as a means by which to manipulate demonic forces, classic

14:11 Solomonic binding magic. And Tertimius had perhaps one of the greatest collections of just those manuals in history, deeming them either spiritual traps, dangerous nonsense, or trifold which should be collected and studied rather than burned. However, of his vast collection of magical manuals, 39 treating explicit demonic magic and 37 treating implicit demonic magic and many many others besides there he seems to tread with a bit more of a light touch. and the works ascribed to Peter Abano in his magic of celestial spirits as laid out in texts like the Heptronon and the Consiliator, the text of Raymon Lu like the RS combinatoria by which metaphysical truths can be deduced through a series of mystogical

14:58 calculations and the RS notori by which memory and eloquence can be enhanced and through which the liberal arts rapidly could be acquired through the contemplation of magical symbols filled with incantations. These three texts stand out for Trmius as being partially true and partially vain with some genuine profound mystical truths mixed in with so much superstition. Now, for what it's worth, I've made episodes on the Heptron, on Oano's Consiliaturator, and on the RS Notori if you want to check those out to get more into these texts that truly redeemable. Though, I still do need to cover Amundo Lol though. He's just so intimidating. At any rate, alchemy and astrology were also targets of specific

15:45 criticism for Tremius. He denotes alchemy as the casta meritatrix, the chasteed whose seductions promise delights, but despite payment after payment, she never delivers on the goods. Early modern Germans are were as vulgar as they were clever. Ain't that right? Looking at you over there, Paraselus. And you, Martin Luther. Oh, I don't think I have any Martin Luther. Yeah, you, Martin. At any rate, the alchemists were for the most part either dupes or frauds. However, despite his disdain for most of his of alchemy, he will deem the famed emerald tamt of Hermes Tristaggistus as containing authentic alchemical secrets, which I'll discuss here in just a bit. Astrology for Tresemmius was a bit of a two-edged

16:32 sword. On the one hand, it could eject free will and become just anathema to Christian doctrine. And on the other hand, the planetary intelligences through which God communicates astrological information could become entities of worship and glorification, thus opening the door to what scholars now called astral necromancy. The kind of stuff that got people like Czech Doli burned. Yes, I have an episode on him as well. While Trathemus held that the planetary intelligences, which I'll come back to in a minute, most often identified with angels, did structure the cosmos so as to inform the process of history, astrology probably understood was more akin to prophecy than pagan divination. For Trathenius, the upper heirs were also just home to a host of demonic entities that you had to

17:18 be careful with. Thus, improper worship of celestial entities could be intercepted by demonic entities and used to manipulate and eventually damn the would-be astral necromancer. Thus, astrology was very important for Trmius, but also like alchemy and Marvel producing natural magic was more akin to walking a metaphysical tightroppe than simply taking the whole thing at once. All right, that's Trmius's position in the context of northern and central European occultism and demonology in and around the 1480s, 1490s or so. The primary takeaways being his relatively typical but tremendously educated position on demonic magic and witchcraft, a largely negative but nuanced view of alchemy and astrology.

18:05 However, he did accept that marvels can be produced through natural magic with both angelic or demonic assistance. This position is that there's no purely natural magic isn't really typical of anyone of the period. But for Trimeius, behind any marvel is either an angelic or demonic associate. Finally, Trathemia seems to accept that there is at least some truth in the celestial magic and worldview, the sort of structure of the cosmos laid out by Peter Abano, the computational mysticism of Rando Lol, and the rapid acquisition of knowledge through symbols of the Rs Notori. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you know, you know, you know what's coming. But we're not there yet. We got to get there. Remember when I said that to understand Trathemus, we have to have one hand to take stock of

18:51 the development of the world of the occult around him in the last third of the 15th century. Well, we just covered that one hand. We have the mature demonological worldview concerning diabolical witchcraft which was again beginning to solidify into what scholars now call the elaborated theory of witchcraft along with a more mature position on medieval demonic magic, alchemy and astrology as the inheritances again of the medieval world for trimeus. But what's the other hand? The other hand is the hermetic cobalistic revolution flowing out of Italy beginning in the 1460s or so. An enormous volume of ancient Greek wisdom such as the works of Plato but

19:36 especially the mystical literature associated with neoplatanism along with what was to be taken as the primordial Egyptian wisdom of Hermes Trismagistus was being translated by Marcelio Facino into Latin for the first time for Western scholars. And around the same time, Jewish cabalistic texts were being commissioned for translation by people like Picico de la Morandela also making them available for a wider readership for the first time. Much of this hermetic cabalistic platonic Pythagorean revolution would be exported across the Alps by the German scholar Johannes Royland whose texts like Deerbo on the wonderworking world and de articilistica would prove foundational for non-Jewish

20:24 cababala including eventually the development of occult cababala centuries later and indeed it would be Royland that would introduce Trathmus to these Italian developments. ments perhaps there at H Highenberg when he was a student specifically to Pico's notion that true magic was simply marrying heaven to earth an idea shared by hermeticism and cababala and that it was the practical side of magic which actually proves the truths of Christianity further from Roylandius would come to understand that the manipulation of language especially the Hebrew divine name and angelic names could bring to bear marvelous changes in the terrestrial world around us. This idea spelled out in Royland's on on the

21:10 wonderworking world claimed that the divide name in Hebrew y vi with a shin placed into the center thus spelling out a name a bit like Jesus Yahosua had the power to transform and perfect nature an idea found in the New Testament. Further, this linguistic mysticism could also be applied to a Pythagorean understanding of numbers or mathematicals more generally as a kind of divine language all its own. Leaning into all of this hermetic, cabalistic, and Pythagorean ideas, sometime in the 1490s or so, this would all be brought together into one occult theory brought on by the arrival of a vision for Trimeius, the second big vision of his life, and a relatively strange visitor

21:56 to the abbey at Spawnheim. In 1495, a certain Lebanonius Galas, really Fernando of Cordova, who seemed to Trusius to have an encyclopedic knowledge of virtually everything, a vast and exact memory along with fluency in numerous languages, including Aramaic and Hebrew, claimed to have gained his abilities after he rejected earthly riches, and went to learn the arcane from a Mayorcan hermit monk named Pelagius. Now, exactly what was taught to Tatimius isn't clear, but these occult teachings do survive in some manuscripts that I'm going to be making another episode on, but they seem to have included the nature of good and evil spirits, how to produce a specific exorcism powder, and various mysteries of nature. At around the same time,

22:41 Trathemus is actively experimenting with some combination of alpha numerical manipulation in combination with some form of angelic astrological elections. The exact nature also isn't clear. The cauldron out of which his theory is bit vague to us. But contemplating all of this, Trathemus tells us that he fell into a sleep vision whereby a shadowy entity informs him that he is actually on to something important. A marvelous key that is impossible for the human mind to sort out by their powers alone. Thus this entity revealed the theory and practice of this system combining cababala Pythagoreanism hermetic cosmology, alchemical symbolism and angelic magic that trimeus would

23:28 eventually call the stagraphia, the hidden writing. This art would find expressions in three works of the abbott of spawnheim. An incomplete work by that title in two and a half books. Two books in a fragmentaryary third book. The polygraphia and deceptum secundes or on the seven secondary intelligences. So let's now get into the staganographia but as a theory and practice in a general sense but also as its particular expression in that infamous aonomous work. While preparing the text that became the sagonographia as we know it, Trathenius composed a series of letters from around 1503 to 1507 that increasingly expressed his emergent

24:14 theory of magic. The first of those letters to Prince Johannes of Veesterberg expressed Trathenius's deep connection of Pythagorean and cababalistic numeral speculation with the practice of magic that is of the union of beings such that the primeval monad gives rise to the decad and then to the turnary the quatinary the denary and finally to the realm of multiplicity to the world all around us. think the Pythagorean tetricus meets the cobalistic spherote here. The point being that no ontological dignity is lost in the transition from the one to the many. Thus, those of us who dwell in the world of the many, in the world of becoming, can wield the power of the original one, at least under certain

25:00 conditions. But this link from the realm of becoming and multiplicity back to the realm of being and the one allows for such marvelous feats as curing the sick, combating demonic forces, and engaging in prophecy, knowing the future. But how is this return to the one affected? By some combination of internal spiritual and moral purification and divine illumination in turn, though trimeus is obscure on both of these points. However, he does for that the simplicity impurity of monastic life is a sure foundation for such purification and illumination. So you might need to be a monk. Further he argues to vonvestenberg that even if one did obtain all the books of magic, you knew all the

25:46 prerequisite astrology and have knowledge of all the secret seals of all the supernatural creatures, it would all be for not without the proper moral and spiritual purifications along with that divine illumination. Thus again, books of magic are simply inert without the proper use, and they shouldn't be burned then on principle. Further, if one isn't going to engage the work of deepening faith in virtue, there's no reason to waste one's time and money on such volumes in the first place. Here, Trathemus develops a kind of three principle magical virtues: faith, virtue, and knowledge. And only those combined in the magus or the astrologer or the alchemist will allow them to prove their art successfully. Faith, moral virtue and knowledge all combined

26:34 somehow can trigger divine illumination. Similar sentiments are actually echoed in his other epistle of tow of Brandenburgg in 1503. But here trmius details just why magic has such a poor reputation those days. Most practitioners are simply foolish or fraudulent than diabolical. Not that the devil doesn't use their stupidity and fraud to his own ends. And secondly, when the foolish would be megas inevitably falls, they do turn to diabolical aid for success, doubly condemning themselves as not only stupid but damned. He laments that the maga sancta adona, the sacred and good magic, has largely been forgotten and he hopes that it can be returned to its form of purity by kind of magical reformation.

27:21 And to that end, Trathemus actually enumerates 11 rules of magic. That is to say, he thinks one should be naturally disposed to its practice to understand its technical vocabulary to obtain all the appropriate books that you would need to get a good teacher unless you've been graced with divine illumination. You understand the relationship of the macrocosm with the microcosm, a very hermetic principle here. You learn all the proper astrological timings and their sympathies. You know which spirits attend to which celestial entities. You surround yourself only with worthy people. And you be firm in your confidence and only relate all of these matters to trustworthy people. You keep it secret, keep it safe, as one wizard rightly advised. Again, all great advice, but still quite vague, still

28:08 quite theoretical rather than practical in the idea of doing magic. And in his 1505 letter to Johannes Capilerius, the text of the Staganographia must already have been coming along because at this point, Capilerius actually requests to see some parts of it. Trathemius, for his part, now urges the wouldbe adept that he must now combine knowledge with love, the unconditional Christian love of God. the love for one's neighbors and even the love that Christ teaches for one's enemies in order that knowledge not be corrupted into vanglory. Here Traius is linking his magical program with the longstanding mystical tradition that really originates in a significant sense with Bernard of Clairvo. We now

28:54 have a kind of dialectical process for the development of magical virtues and magical powers which result as I said in quasi divine magical powers and laid out now in his 1505 letter but the same year to Ge keep gan in mind he's going to matter more in a minute but trus tells us that study generates knowledge knowledge prepares love gives way to similarity similarity to communion communion to virtue virtue to dignity Dignitas dignitas to potencia to power and it is power that performs the miracle or the marvel indeed this letter is a tour deforce of magical theory expertly co-mining much of trus's

29:39 inheritance of medieval occultism with the world of renaissance arcana emerging from Italy specifically engages in an extended analysis of the emerald tablet of Hermesistus employing a specifically Pythagorean coalistic hermeneutic to it that's often difficult to follow. But here the tablet is understood to be describing the flowing out of all things from a primal unity such that the progeny from that one bear at least some of the potential power of the primal one. And by returning to the one through spiritual, ethical and epistemological purification, he akins this to the purifying fire of the alchemist, one can regain such lost divine powers. For

30:25 trthmius, this is the vera alchemia, the true alchemy, the combination of virtue, theory, and practice which eludes would be alchemists, necromancers, and astrologers. Lacking all three, they simply prod about in the dark. All the while demonic influence and worldly temptations seek to stoaltify and eventually to damn them. Indeed, astrologers seek to find the fate of human beings in the stars. But this is also just both heretical and impossible. The human mind and by extension the human will is never affected by astral influence. A position that he may be adopting from Picodella Mirandela. Rather astrological conditions provide the specific stage upon which free will human wills interact and produce the

31:12 future. Thus true astrology for trthmius is prophetic rather than determinative of the human will. It denotes the historical conditions into which human beings will endure but can never predict much less determine what any given will will do. Indeed, the human mind has a kind of super celestial link with astral bodies and entities, which precisely allows them a supernatural kind of causal relationship, as we'll see in just a minute. We kind of bypass astral power, even if we can pull it down and still use it terrestrially. But even in this period where Trmius is still stitching together a radically new theory and practice, as we'll see in a moment, of magic, it's worth pointing out that this magic is not the end goal

32:00 of his speculations. Rather, divine illumination, the illumination well known from the Christian tradition is somehow both the means by which true magic, true alchemy and true astrology are accomplished, but also the final goal, the final endgame of the whole thing, the mystical vision which precedes the beatotific vision following death. Trusius wishes to restore a lost path back to the divine where obtaining the powers of magic are a sign that one is truly on that road. Neither the sign nor the road are the point of the journey. Returning to the divine one is the ultimate goal for Trimeius. We're now in a position to begin to flesh out Trusius's mature system of magic, a project that he very much self-modled on

32:47 a previous Magus, his hero Albertus Magnus. But I want to do so not so much in the order of his literary output but in the metaphysical logical order from more abstract cosmological theories and his theories of history to the more specific textbook and practice of the saganographia. Thus to start with we should understand his steptum secundes or on the seven secondaries that is to say the seven secondary intelligences that is to say the planetary intelligences to the primary intelligence which is of course the divine. But to understand what he means by secondary intelligences we need a little background in Aristotle or at least how medieval people understood Aristotle. For the staggerite only entities with some degree of

33:33 intelligence were capable of moving themselves. Well, the planets appear to be moving and thus something must be causing them to move either of themselves or an outside force and there was a lot of medieval debate about just this topic. But following Peter Abano, Trusius held that the planets were ruled and thus moved by angelic intelligences, the seven secondary intelligences. But using astrological data along with the Bible, Trathemus reasoned that the world was created on March 15th, some 5,26 years before the coming of Christ. And counting conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn in cycles, we know that these markoff periods of about 354 years or so, really 354.33

34:18 cycles, each ruled over by a specific angel. The first being Saturn and its angelic intellig. Thus, each cycle of 354 years finds a new planet and angel in dominion of the conditions of world history. If you're curious, we've been ruled by the sun and the angel Michael since November of 1879, which will give way again actually to sat Saturn and Orifiel again in March of 2233, the 22nd such cycle since creation. This text is most famous for not only grouping world history into a logical system of astral historical development, but also issuing forth a final ominous prediction. Just as Marshall Samuel had ruled over the

35:03 destruction of the world by the flood and the destruction of the Trojans, so too would the world be rent aunderder before the end of that cycle in 1525. Specifically, Trathemus argued that quote, "A great religious sect would arise and with it the destruction of the old religions. This new institution of religion would appear near the end of the epoch and result in that great loss of unity." Yeah, some people have thought that Tremius is actually prophesying the coming Protestant Reformation. I mean, you could think about the battle of Frankenhausen occurring in 1525. But beyond that date, he notes the future of the series requires prophecy. But two points about

35:49 all this astrological world history are key here. The first is that the secondary intelligences set the stage but don't force the actors. Free will is always completely intact in this system. And secondly, decept does allow for a rationalization of history as a cyclical process at least weekly cyclical by which the initiated could with divine illumination derive some sense of the future from the past. Thus the source of prophecy wasn't only divine illumination but some degree of arcane knowledge illuminated as it were and thus something we could actually learned and cultivated. you could make yourself into a prophet rather than being only chosen as a prophet. This is an arcane skill

36:35 that could at least in some sense be learned. Finally, this system of the secondary angelic intelligences also sets the broadest possible stage for a much fuller development of angelic or at least spiritual entities to populate the celestial spheres. Specifically, he subordinated to the seven angelic intelligences, the secondary intelligences, two inferior realms of spirits. The first comprised of 31 or 32 regional or district spirits ruling over as many domains or mansions tracking to the absolute cardinal and ordinal directions of the universe. Sort of a rose direction compass of the universe along with 11 or so wandering spirits. Then a second division comprised 24 more

37:20 temporal spirits ruling over the astrological days and night. Beneath these he placed thousands of further spirits in various ranks of spiritual dukes servants commanders companions ministering spirits, all obscurely distributed from 70 quintilion spirits to just a dozen or so per grouping. And it would be through interacting with these spirits directly that would form the means and the mode of the stagographic art which made trus infamous. In 1503 during the course of both the theoretical and practical development of trus's magical system of the saganographia he was paid a visit by the French scholar cowless boilus who was given access to a partially

38:06 completed edition of that text. He was cordial during the visit and Boilus would eventually write to Gmanus de Gana, the same person that Trathemus was talking to, that same Gana I mentioned a minute ago, that Trathenius was merely a magician, not in the least distinguished in philosophy. He details what he took to be hideous necroantic work, scrawling with spirits, or should I say demons, he writes, complete with sigils to conjure them along with the means to do so. Finally, he linked Trathus as closer to the pagan originator of magic, Zorasteraster, than to any Christian saint. Trathmias had again blundered, breaking his own rule of only revealing true magic to those with eyes to

38:52 understand what they beheld before them. And now he truly paid the price. That letter of Bilis was given its own lurid details of necromancy gone wild widely copied and between the boastius blunder of 1499 and the letter which began to rapidly circulate in 1506 or 1509 the dating of this letter seems corrupted's reputation as a necromancer took wings rumor fugit tales conflating trmius and fa began to appear such as him conjuring spirits of dead heroes Even the wife of Emperor Maxmleon I, Mary of Burgundy, began to circulate at this time. It's likely that at this time he also just abandoned work on the Staganographia after this public

39:39 relations nightmare. And depending on how we date this letter, it also was probably the final straw in the relationship with his brothers in the abbey. They were just tired of him either being known as a necromancer or just doing angel magic. Around this time he also was forced out of the abbey at Spawnheim, forced to abandon most if not all of his prize library. So what about the Stagandographia was just so foul, so evil to ferment such turmoil? It isn't clear when Trmius began work on the Staganographia to be honest, but probably sometime around the turn of the 16th century, usually dated to like 1499. He aimed it to be several volumes, and it would be an art by which you could

40:25 create unbreakable ciphers, to learn Latin in only a couple of hours, the ability to conjure angels and employ them to instantly dispatch secret messages over vast distances, and even to transmit one's thoughts over those vast distances, even into the most secure dungeon, even into the tomb of horrors. an art which would eventually illuminate the soul itself according to right Catholic principles he said and through perfectly natural means though recall that even natural magic forthius always has some underlying supernatural assisting agent either an angel or a demon and trimeus inconveniently does not tell us how to distinguish between the two as the book survives it consists of two complete books and an incomplete

41:11 third the first details the employee of 31 1 or 32 regional or district spirits ruling over as many domains or mansions tracking to the absolute cardinal and ordinal directions of the universe. In addition, there are some 11 or so wandering dukes which are not directional and usually have to do with the elements or regions of the earth or the underworld. The next deals with a second division comprising 24 temporal spirits ruling over the hours of the day and night. The final book would have dealt with the three spirits of the seven planetary angels or planetary spirits beginning with Saturn and that section alone was completed. The first two books ostensibly detail the means by which to transmit a message through angelic means. The format for both books

41:57 one and two are pretty similar. They're spirit registers. Here there is a header with a specific spirit along with their assistance or entourage and columns printed in red and black. at least in later editions or at least denoted as such in earlier editions and it details how to employ these spirits to dispatch a secret message. It includes the appropriate sigil of the spirit, the opening conjuration. Later editions would include a cryptographic key, more on that in just a minute, and along with draft letters written by Trathenius to display the cryptographic method that he has in mind. And finally, a conjuration by which to return a message through angelic means. In the first book, these angels or spirits are described beginning facing east and working clockwise east southeast southeast etc. all the way back to east, northeast

42:44 denoted by the classical winds and the specific spirits involved. Let's work through a brief example using the eastsoutheast spirit of Pel with 10,000 dal spirits and 200,000 nocturnal spirit ministers with many others beside. We learned that unlike the first spirit of the east, which are troublesome spirits and not for beginners, they cause all kinds of problems. These are relatively easy to work with. These ones of the eastsoutheast are kind, quiet, and tranquil. So, we face the direction of the spirit's mansion. Easts southeast in this case. We invoke the spirit with the supplied conjuration. And upon their appearance, we finish the letter that we're writing out. We want to dispatch. We attach the appropriate spirit sigil and dispatch the plain text of the

43:30 address of our message with a specific address. Again, the plain text doesn't matter. Podial and his spirits were actually going to convey the real message of our minds to the recipient. The receiver then recognizing the correct sigil turns eastsoutheast and recites another conjuration whereby the true message will be revealed. It's of note that Padiel and his spirits are best for quote announcing secret advice for the correction, imprisonment, and punishment of malifactors. Further, Trmius lays out a set of very specific rules for anyone wishing to employ the stanographic art. The sender and the receiver must engage studiously with all of the art, all the while maintaining strict esoteric secrecy. One must become intimately familiar with the world of

44:16 the spirits, their location, their ranks, their position, their tasks, and their specialties. I suspect this also has something to do with maintaining some degree of secrecy, given that you don't want to have elaborate charts of spirits and textbooks of their imations just lying around for anyone to see, for the Inquisition to see. So, you need to commit a lot of this to memory. Further, Trathenius insists that the conjurations be strictly adhered to and not altered at all. They have to be learned perfectly and pronounced properly, probably to interrupt the seemingly inevitable creep of gibberish into them via the game of occult telephone that always occurs in these textbooks. The strengthographic art also should be employed with only the strictest secrecy is required. You shouldn't just use it to send DMs to that hottie. And the

45:02 transmission of the messages should be taken with all due seriousness. Again, not to send uh to creep in someone's DMs. Again, Tresmia stresses that understanding the nature of the spirits involved and to perform this art only in private because the spirits quote detest and flee the throng of men and they hate public gatherings. I'm kind of like one of those spirits. Finally, one must take extreme care in copying the specific sigil of the spirit being invoked. Unlike many other grimoars where spirits often have elaborate sigils, those with the stenographic art are often very subtle, probably meant to appear as simply a medieval abbreviation or flourish to the untrained eye. Thus, we have the means and the mode by which to engage in the stanographic art. Now,

45:49 each chapter is a little bit different in the particulars, but overall this is the gist of the book. The second book deals with specifically the spirits of the planetary hours of the day and night, not the fixed hours of a 24-hour cycle. And the third book deals with the specific spirits of the ruling planets and their attendant angels for which a given day must be divided into quarterly planetary hours for our solar period. That would be Michael in the first hour and pael, Vonriel and Zabdiel following respectively. Though again, only Trathenius lays out Saturn in his book. Of course, as you progress through the text, one no longer has to write down the plain text to dispatch it via a messenger. The angels just communicate it directly, as if through angelic telepathy. It's as if the more carefully

46:36 one tunes one's astrological timings, the greater power one has to directly communicate via the angels. And while we know that the book was planned to have some eight or more sections with some manuscripts boasting of a sperious fourth book, only two and a half of them are extant. Regardless, as we've seen, the book inspired a complete scandal and in turn profound interest for anyone interested and inclined to occult knowledge. And for good reason. What trthmia seems to have developed is a universal system of history built upon a highly structured angelology which unites classical astrology from which a range of magical operations are possible including virtually instantaneous secret

47:22 communication and what person interested in the occult or just any politician isn't interested in that and to his credit is self-aware of this fact the book is dedicated to the most serene prince Lord Philip Count Palatine of the Rine, Duke of Bavaria, and Prince Elector of the Holy Roman Empire. He's cozying up to become the DoD or the I don't know, the secret intelligence bureau of the Holy Roman Empire. And it's clearly meant to extend the knowledge of the Cabala to the state for obvious ends of state craft and espionage. Again, he's setting himself up as the leader of the KGB. Trathemus is offering the Holy Roman Empire an information theory centuries before Claude Shannon. A strange theory of

48:09 information, but a theory of the storage, processing, and utilization of information just the same. It's astro angelic TCPIP with an adjunct for a protocol with secure connectivity. This is something like angelic information theory centuries before Claude Shannon. But the cat was out of the bag and with Trathemus facing serious scrutiny both inside and outside the world of his cloister, it seems that the he abandoned the specific project of the Staganographia. But this would be by no means signal the end of his interest in both the illumination of the soul and the relationship of that process to something like we might identify as cryptography. And by 1508, Cimeius had

48:55 produced another textbook on secret writing, now totally devoid of the elaborate system of angelic dispatch. But the preface and dedication along with his tracing the history of secret writing make it clear that engaging in the polygraphic art is also a spiritual exercise. How? Because of the deeply cobalistic conception of language that he has actually maintained from the Staganographia in the polygraphia. Trathemus maintains that language given that it flows as a multiplicity from the one literally many languages from the period from before the confusion of the languages following the Tower of Babel reflects the underlying metaphysical reality of the Monad giving birth to diversity. Again,

49:40 we have this metaphysical linguistic angle on a kind of Pythagorean point. For him, manipulating the multiplicity of language points us back in the direction of a primal language and that linguistic or cryptographic process is an echo, a mirror of the spiritual process happening in our souls. Thus, the manipulation of language through the polygraphic art allows our soul to reach back to that adamical pre-lapserian language through which speech and being were united. And from that linguistic leap of the many to the one, can the soul also be aided in that journey? The polygraphic art shows the way to infinity as he has it. Again, while the

50:28 book itself is seemingly free of occult themes with a couple of exceptions I'll come back to in just a second, the spiritual motivation of its composition remains deeply hermetic, cababalistic, and Pythagorean. The manipulation of language is metaphysical because the relationship between symbiotics or representation and ontology or being are fused for trias. Locking and unlocking code, ciphers, the manipulation of arcane symbols, etc. are also always means by which we can turn inward and purify and elevate our own souls. And for what it's worth, the text also produced an alphabet attributed to Henorius of thieves, the magical use of which became the thieban or witches alphabet as popularized by dozens of magical textbooks down to this day.

51:15 Further, he also deploys some alchemical symbols or decknamin which again could be used as a kind of cryptic alphabet. Again, while the text doesn't employ the elaborate system of angel conjuration of the stagonographia, it is by no means sterile of occult material or spirituality. It was, as he had it, secular consequence of the ability of the soul, especially empowered by God by magical means to reach earth to heaven. Again, the polygraphic art still shares the same fundamental occult aspirations. the mystical aspirations of the Staganographia. And despite his attempt to distance himself from more explicit magical writings and oult philosophy, Tremius's

52:02 reputation was sealed by the first decade of the 16th century. So much so that when a young Heinrich of Netshime in his early 20s at the time produced a grand synthesis of the occult philosophy in 1510, he would vet it by the now Abbott of St. James at Versburg. This three-part lengthy essay, at least in 1510, would be greatly expanded and eventually published by Hinrich Cornelius Agria in 1533 as the three books of occult philosophy. And in it, we have the wonderful correspondence between the youthful Agria and the kindly but careful Abbott encourage him to soar upwards toward the divine like a bird rather than dwell among the ignorant cows. the Boves, no doubt a

52:48 punning jab at Boilus, whose letter to Ganet had so marred Trimeius's reputation. And true to fashion, his April 15 letter urges a Grippa to keep up his work and keep his ideas from the eyes of the ignorant. Amazingly, the very manuscript of the occult philosophy, as it was known, survives to this day in the Versburg library. And aside from reprinting the Thean alphabet along with several other mystical ciphers, Agrippa's entire occult philosophy is infused with Trmius's spiritual aims of divine illumination and its attending magical powers. Agria was clearly the intellectual and spiritual heir of Trmius. along with a grippa. It's also said that that great

53:34 alchemical iconoclast, you can say his name with me if you like, Filipus Arielus bombassis fenhoanim paracelis also studied with trthmius but the evidence here is far more circumstantial and I think it's more that trimeus inspired paracelianism more than paracelis studied with trthmius now with a reputation as a necromancer despite his autobiographical defense of magic and himself in the 150 07 Nepiakus tension with Maxamelius over a 1611 church council and yet continuing to work on his monumental textbooks of monastic history and Sax and chronology. Trimeius would pass from this world in 1516 at the age of 54. He would not live

54:21 to see his occult works printed. The polygraphia saw its first printing in 1518. His astrological history of the world went to the press in 1545. in the infamous Danaography we printed in6008 before going on the index of prohibited books in6009 right after the608 edition and the controversy over the abbot of Spanheim would only continue to rage through the centuries the monastic world would defend him at least his non-magical works and sought to rescue him as it were from himself in their apologies demonologists of both Catholic and Protestant stripes would label his magical works outright diabolic ical heresy or just silly superstition. For the Protestants, including Martin Luther himself, Trathenius became the poster

55:07 boy for how melancholic monasticism lured even the most learned and pious into necromancy and damnation. Indeed, they argued it was more proof of popish superstition and even diabolical expressions of Antichrist within the Catholic Church itself. If Trathemus was the most learned and he still went to magic, what does that say about the church? They argued for the Catholic's part Jean Bodden condemned trmius's work as filled with prayers to demons. The bishop Antonio Zara condemned a septum secundis as noting that the concept of intelligence is cleaving to the heavens must be completely rejected. Literally he writes explode. It needs to be exploded. The Jesuit demonologist, perhaps the most learned demonologist of the entire period, Martin Del Rio, would

55:55 condemn Trmius along with Agria and his monumental 1599 investigations into magic and it became the true intellectual and spiritual heir of the Malas Malificarum. Further, as I mentioned, the Stagonographia was banned in6009. And for the humanists, they felt that at best the cryptographic elements of his work could be salvaged, but the rest was basically dangerous nonsense. And for centuries, he was hailed as the father of modern cryptography, all the while ignoring the trappings of all that, you know, pesky occult angel magic stuff. We don't like any of that stuff because we're enlightened. Speaking of those occult elements, those

56:40 were features, not bugs for, well, the occultists of the time. As soon as the book appeared in manuscript, it was sought after by those interested in the occult arts in mass. And judging by its far-spread reputation and representation in surviving manuscripts, the text was clearly in high demand. Famously, Dr. John D noted that it was a book for which a thousand crowns could be offered and yet could not be obtained. A book for which many a learned man has long sought and daily does seek. A book whose use is greater than its spread fame. The stagraphia. A book for your honor or a prince so mit so needful and so commodious as in human knowledge none could be meter or more

57:25 behov. So high praise for Dr. John D. Indeed would eventually handcopy the volume in Antworp in 1563 and then again copy it in 1593 when that volume was lost. And that partial copy from 1593 still survives in the National Library of Wales. Of course, 1563 is an important date in the occult works of John D. And given the cobalistic and Pythagorean nature of the staganographia, it's unsurprising to see those exact details and language deployed to explain his own monus hieroglyphica, a symbol by which to manipulate all of reality published only a year later in 1564. Thus, there is a direct intellectual and spiritual throughine from trmius to John D. In

58:10 fact, when True and Faithful Relation was published in 1659 detailing the spiritual conversation between D and Kelly and all those weird angels, Kelly is depicted as studying Triimmius. Of course, D wouldn't be alone in being impacted by the Staganographia. Giovanni Batista de la Pora's 1563 handbook on cryptography would be directly influenced by the book along with the polygraphia the paracelians and the wouldbe Rosie cadras like Jacqu Ghori Gard dorm Buasar Robert flood a kirker and the famed English astrologer William Lily who actually translated on the secondary seven intelligences to English for the first time and only time that I know of. All of these among many many

58:57 others will become enthusiastic followers of trimeus for various ends whether they be cryptographic, magical, astrological or all of the above even as a means of healing the great rift between the Protestants and the Catholics through a kind of Christianity reformed along hermetic lines. Thus, Trththemius was claimed as a founding member of the emergent Rosieian enlightenment and even in Cartisian circles and in the English royal society, not so much a bastion of occultism, though more than you would think actually, Trethus was praised, if only for his contributions to the emergent science of cryptography by people like Robert Hook. Thus his actual ideas endured and when that failed he became a kind of projection board for

59:42 the dreams and aspirations of generations that followed him. In effect, Trathemus has become the icon of occult knowledge for the early modern period. And there is perhaps no better expression of this than in the compilation that becomes the most important, if not one of the most important books of magic of that entire period down till now, the lamegaton, the lesser key of Solomon. Following the demonic register of the Goisha, which is admittedly the most popular section of that book, we find that the urgia goisha and the rs Paulina. And these texts detail the 32 spirits of the compass points, the wandering dukes, and of the astrological hours of the day and night. Yeah, these two infamous grimoars are

1:00:29 actually using the spirit registers found in book one and two of the stagraphia, but adding hosts of sigils for all of these spirits with a specific eye to their general conjuration. Rather than being restricted to transmitting messages, these grimoars now greatly expand upon the scope of what can be accomplished through the conjuration of these spirits. Thus, the sagonographia becomes the blueprint for one of the most important operational books of magic in the modern and contemporary period. It goes from being specifically about conjuring angels to deploy messages to magic writ large. Indeed, it is possible that the entire collection that becomes the lame megaton or the lesser key of Solomon was already housed

1:01:17 in C2 at Spawnheim outlined in the list of condemned magical texts by trthmius in his antipulus malifikiorum and I've actually done a whole episode on that forbidden list of magical books if you want to check it out. But I do think in oo all those books are there in some sense. Thus, Trimemius's impact on the development of Western magic from the Renaissance down to chaos magic and Alistister Crowley and the Golden Dawn, all of it. He may be ground zero for the lion share of what became contemporary occultism. And this may all have been one giant misunderstanding, one of the greatest tricks ever pulled in the history of the occult. After Trusius was

1:02:02 accused of consorting with demonic spirits, various clav stagraphia began to appear and were appended always to the printed editions. What they reveal is alarming. The names of many of the spirits and their conjurations are simply covers for instructions for a dizzying array of encryption techniques. Let's go back to our second spirit of the eastsoutheast, Piel. So I've taken his conjuration as it appears in the original606 printing and applied the specific key which tells us to skip every other word reading every other letter with the first and last words being of the conjuration basically being nulls. The angel names here being nullles. What this reveals is a phrase reading something like the first letter

1:02:49 of then it's garbled the rest may speak the art. Similarly, the second conjuration allegedly to be used by the receiver has to quote take the alternating first letters. Again, there's some garbling here. And sure enough, when we look at Trathemus's example message, skipping the introduction and then reading the first letter of each alternating word, what do we find beneath the Latin plain text? a fine prayer for the mercy of Christ. We find a message in the German vernacular warning us that the bearer of the message has committed some serious mishap and should be detained until our arrival. Remember what Pio specializes in? Makes sense. Now, another example using a similar encoding method holds a

1:03:35 secret text detailing a secret late night meeting. In effect, the names of the spirits are seemingly nothing more than the specific names for a wide range of encryption techniques. Reduced to that, there doesn't appear to be any angel magic here at all. And this seems to be true for each and every spirit of the Staganographia. Of course, it's clear from the manuscript to the printing process some degree of corruption has snuck in, meaning that the conjurations have become somewhat garbled. This shouldn't be surprising to us because one, we see this in the transmission of grimmooars just generally. And two, with the text being the compositors were likely just to make some mistakes. Long S's look like Fs,

1:04:21 B's and P's get flipped, M's and N's, you know. Also, Trathenia seemed to have worried about just this possibility. Remember all those stagographic rules about being extremely precise in the angel names and especially in the conjurations. I suspect that it wasn't so much about magic but perhaps about preventing the corruption of the encryption keys so as to preserve the integrity of the system overall. And yet despite the corruption, the Staganographia was revealed to contain a handbook of cryptography concealed beneath a veneer of angel magic. Even the incomplete third book was revealed to contain an elaborate substitution cipher by Jim Reeds in 1998. I remember being a teenager when he published that paper. The same scholar, by the way, that discovered the means of

1:05:07 incipherment used in John D's book of Soya. And it's worth mentioning that D, despite his work in espionage and codes and mathematics, never seems to have really worked out how any of these codes work, so far as we can tell. But we're faced with a with a real conundrum here. How do we square everything has said about magic in all his other writings with what appears to be an essentially non-magical book on cryptography. Clearly Trathemus was not only deeply interested in magic but was also convinced that the its reformation was an essential task of the pious. Yet the stenographia just doesn't seem to be performing that task. But, and this is

1:05:54 important as well, why in the world would you conceal your book on cryptography beneath the appearance of a forbidden book on angel magic? This seems to be a shockingly dangerous choice of medium. A veneer that could not only ruin one's reputation, which it did to Drathus, but could just land you before the Inquisition being burned alive. Of all the cover texts to choose, it's it's a daring, if not completely reckless decision. And yet, it's a convincing one. Convinced even John D. Why? Because probably Trathenius is actually basing the angel magic cover on an actual text

1:06:42 of angel magic from his library. The ancestor of which would become the theory of Goisha and the RS Paulina and the lesser key of Solomon. So it's a convincing cover because it's actually using magic at least to some significant degree to hide the whole encryption system. But do we need to choose between cryptography or magic in all of this? Recall that Trmius's discussion of the illuminative power of the Cababalav language in his later calligraphy. Remember all that business about how it can lead you to the infinite. Remember there he argued that manipulating language would be spiritually restorative. And of course the relationship between language and metaphysics was anything other than arbitrary unlike in contemporary semiodics. For this whole school of Pythagorean, hermetic cabalistic occult

1:07:27 philosophers. I suspect the same spiritual sentiments raised by trmius in the preface to the later polygraphia would also apply to the combination of angel magic and cryptography of the printed staganographia. Thus, I think some scholars and magic practitioners for that matter have been forced into a false dichotomy when evaluating the nature of the staganographia. Is it

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