Cryptography

Any insight into the co-occurance of magic and cryptography? I'm specifically puzzled by Trithemius' Steganographia -- scholars are of the opinion that the surface meaning was nonsense constructed to cover its cryptographic content, but if I'm not mistaken its surface content was a vital part of the development of the Western occult tradition. Any thoughts?

alex

I'm not sure I could make informed comment on this, but I might be able to help from another angle...

Which scholars, and on what basis?

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3926/is_199810/ai_n8820687/

[Edit] - The article is also available here in a more readable PDF format:

http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~reedsj/trit.pdf

Yes, a pdf would help substantially! I've been working through the online version bit-by-bit, but it might be easier to print the pdf. From the looks of it several pages in, it seems to me as though it would be irresponsible to assume the primary function of the Steganographia was cryptographic. There certainly doesn't seem to be any room to deny its role in the development of cryptography, but that was probably the means, not the end. I'll follow-up when I get through reading the article... whenever that is...

the first few pages are really the only interesting stuff, unless you're really into the mechanics of the cryptography. his basic argument is that the book is either a book of magic or a book about cryptography, and having proved it's a book about cryptography, ergo it's not about magic. that's the gist of it...

yonderboy wrote:the first few pages are really the only interesting stuff, unless you're really into the mechanics of the cryptography. his basic argument is that the book is either a book of magic or a book about cryptography, and having proved it's a book about cryptography, ergo it's not about magic. that's the gist of it...

Yeah, that's about what I get out of it too. It seems a lot like a naive reading of the source material.