An Encrypted Description of a Secret Magic Machine in an 18th Century Alchemy Book

#cryptology, #cryptography, #cryptanalysis

The alchemy book "Das zweyte Silentium Dei in Königs Salomonis des Weisen paradiessischen Lustgarten“ (Engl.: The second Silentium Dei in king Solomon’s paradisian pleasure garden) contains several encrypted small parts and a larger encrypted ciphertext. The ciphertext describes a "magic machine". The book is a hand-written copy created in the 18th century. The content is attributed to Johann Arndt, a German Lutheran theologian from the 16th and 17th centuries.

In this video, we have a look at that particular ciphertext and decipher and discuss its content. Clearly, the ciphertext was deciphered before. Thanks to George Lasry for providing the transcription of the ciphertext :-)

The original hand-written book is located in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University Library.

Some links:
- Interesting work including information about the book (and the deciphered plaintext): Alchemical Catoptrics light , matter and methodologies of transformation in moving image practice “
by R. Ashrowan (see https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/31017)
- Link to the scans of the book in the Beinecke library: https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/10187248
- Link to transcription: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10qS3ipaCiKnB2vlbCkPMvk9AVYAoLuhi/
- Link to key: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10vHrOrfEqj1zfbF8_1Q7MWPyRXKR586U

If you are interested in learning the fundaments of cryptology, let me invite you to have a look at our video series about the basics of cryptology, also for beginners: https://youtu.be/jbumW7Ym03o

You can download the latest version of CrypTool 2 from here: https://www.cryptool.org/en/ct2/downloads

Видео An Encrypted Description of a Secret Magic Machine in an 18th Century Alchemy Book канала Cryptography for Everybody