From the Riddles of Ancient Egypt to Cryptography in the Renaissance — 3500 Years in the Making - Codes: The Guide to Secrecy from Ancient to Modern Times - page 42

and 32-34). He began writing Steganographia in 1499, intending it to become
an eight-volume series. For over a century the manuscript was circulated before
it was finally printed in 1606. The Roman Catholic Church, in 1609, seeing the
text as sorcery, placed it on its index of Prohibited topics , where it remained for
over two centuries. Nevertheless, other printings occurred, including as late as
1721. Yet, this topic, above all others, solidified the common belief, especially
among his colleagues, that Trithemius was a “wonder-working magician”. This
gave him the reputation as a sorcerer, which lingers to this day.
In modern topics, Trithemius is grouped with other famous occultists such
as Paracelsus (1493-1541), a German-Swiss physician and alchemist, who iron-
ically, established the role of chemistry in medicine. Another of his contempo-
rary occultists with whom Trithemius is compared today is Heinrich Cornelius
Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535), who was an acknowledged expert on the
occult, as well as court secretary to Charles V, and among many other activities,
university teacher, and public advocate at Metz, at least until he was condemned
for defending an accused witch. One of his topics, De occulta philosophia , in-
cluded numerology and fostered magic as the highest road to knowing God.
Ultimately, he was imprisoned and branded a heretic. From a historical view-
point and to better understand Trithemius's writings, it is worth discussing
other items in Agrippa's book. His notion of God as magician is called hermeti-
cism (from Hermes Trismegistus, mythical inventor of a magic seal for keeping
vessels airtight, and thus the origin of the modern phrase hermetically sealed ).
Hence, many hermeticists' goal was to reinterpret the Bible using ciphers. Such
writings were held to include the wisdom of Egyptians at the time of Moses,
and ostensibly written by an ancient Egyptian purported to have received divine
knowledge about the physical world at the time Moses received his knowledge
from God about the moral world. Along with the numerology in Agrippa's book
(one of the components of hermeticism) is also an explanation of the world in
terms of cabalistic 1.2 analysis of Hebrew letters (another aspect of hermeticism).
Hebrew letters were believed to have magical powers when arranged in certain
combinations. Hermeticists believed that breaking the “code of the Bible” would
reveal all the secrets of the universe. In the late Middle Ages, the resurgence
of neo-Platonism provided an acceptance by increased followers of hermetic be-
liefs. Later, when the beliefs were largely proved to be fraudulent, hermeticism
still had some followers and even influenced thinkers of the Renaissance, and
beyond, including Sir Isaac Newton.
In Steganographia , Trithemius describes only some elementary stegano-
graphic techniques, and much of it has nothing at all to do with cryptography,
but rather with magical incantations, thought transference, computation of nu-
merical values of the names of angels, and other concepts from the beliefs of
hermeticism.
Trithemius did turn to more serious cryptography later, but we are going to
save a discussion of these accomplishments until Section 1.5, where we will be
1.2 Cabalism refers to a system of Jewish mysticism and magic using ciphers as a device for
interpretation of scripture.