Steganographia by Johannes Trithemius, 1721

Description

TRITHEMIUS (Johannes). Steganographia: quae hucusque a nemine intellecta … nunc tandem vindicata reserata & illustrata, Johann Friedrich Rüdiger: Nuremberg, 1721

In-8, Pivotal printing of Johannes Trithemius’s famous treatise on cryptography and magic edited by Wolfgango Ernesto Heidel with crucial “keys” (clavis) for decoding the text. Original full vellum binding,

Condition: One of the most finally preserved books I have seen from this time period. Author and title in manuscript on spine. Perfect condition.

Steganographia is Johannes Trithemius’ most notorious work. Many today consider it a work of cryptology with a system of angel magic only at its surface. However, It need not one or the other. It is equal parts magic and cryptography that together form a highly sophisticated system of angel magic. The preface to his Polygraphia equally establishes this notion that cryptography was conceived by Trithemius as a “secular consequent of the ability of a soul specially empowered by God to reach, by magical means, from earth to Heaven.”

Trithemius, mentor to Henrich Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus, wrote his Steganographia in 1499 which circulated in manuscript form for many years. In a limited release, it received such reactions of fear that Trithemius decided it should never be published. It was eventually published posthumously in 1606 at which time it was instantly placed onto the Index librorum prohibitorum.

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