Here are the first ten pages of Robert Morris’ “Written Mnemonics” (I bought myself a copy, one of the 3000 that were originally printed in the 1860s):
Denslow’s 1931 book The Masonic Conservators gave examples (although deliberately inexact) of how parts of the cipher worked.
It seems very unlikely that the Written Mnemonics could be decrypted without (a) the carefully large dictionary of Masonic terms that originally went with the little blue booklet of tables; and without (b) the instructions on how to read each table in turn.
Hi Nick,
I am a Masonic historian researching the Conservators and 19th c. Masonic ritual. I was wondering if I could use your scanned images of “Written Mnemonics” on a web page about my research project? I will of course give you credit.
Thank you!
i have an original copy of this book an have decided to sell it if you would know of someone please let me know email or text me at (four oh two) 301 2409thank you chad king
I would certainly be intrigued by acquiring this book if you are willing to part with it. [email protected]
Hi Nick – me again. I deciphered part of Voynich, it is Romanian. For example loC, it means “place” Do you want me to decipher any other words ?? Thanks. I could not find space on Voynich, you have to hit down arrow forever.
To those other guys above, I think you can buy a copy on Amazon.
Okalin means “member” He varied languages in this book.
I might be able to do the whole thing, if I was to get a copy readable just as it is, it is so little it is hard to read it. I used words from your correspondence. I honestly broke every one of Z ciphers including Z13 and 32. DOJ, SFPD, SFFBI says its right. Its been sitting on Olsens desk for 15 months now.
We have a copy of this available on our website and at our store. We found this page while trying figure out how to list it. If anyone is still interested in a copy our store name is Willis Monie Book, ABAA. It should be available on our website on the next few hours. http://www.wilmonie.com (607)547-8363
Thank you,
Willis Monie Books
I’ve been testing the Voynich text as if it contains shifting residue-class partitions rather than a single fixed alphabetic substitution. When I test line segments against multiple modulus periods (mod 7 / mod 9 / mod 11 etc) the text repeatedly shows non-random periodicity — but the “best period” changes line to line. This periodic residue switching still remains present even after applying different editorial transliteration normalizations (H / C / F / U variants) which suggests the structure is intrinsic and not a transcription artefact. This implies the text may not be a single uniform cipher, but a controlled dynamic encoding layer where the cipher regime / state rotates at the line level. That kind of structure would explain why brute force and classical frequency analysis keeps failing — because the statistical signature never stabilizes in one space long enough to converge. This is not a claim of solution — it’s a testable cryptanalytic behaviour pattern that others can attempt to independently verify.
Elliot: the most famous Voynich periodic decryption theory was Leonell Strong’s, who was convinced that there was a period-12 offset pattern added to the plaintext (1 3 5 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 4 2, if I remember correctly), but this never stood up to careful scrutiny. Strong’s theory convinced my old friend Glen Claston (Tim Rayhel) for many years, but it was a bust.
All the same, when Tim made his own transcription, he mentioned to me that he often felt the ‘tone’ change, as if the system was changing locally, and I don’t doubt that’s true, though it seems exceedingly hard to quantify.
Perhaps your stats are picking up on something changing dynamically within the overall system, like a change in code book, rather than a period as such. I’ve long thought that letter groups such as ee, eee, aiin, or, ol, ar, al etc may very well be enciphering single tokens, and a change in style favouring different groups could yield results that look as though they have different periodicity, so be careful. But keep looking!
Elliot. In the case of MS 408, frequency analysis is “Ineffective”. The manuscript uses homophonic substitution. And this is the destroyer of frequency analysis. The author shows this homophonic substitution at the beginning of the manuscript. Folio 2r. There is a picture of a homophonic substitution of the number 3. The root is made up of “Letters”. The letters are: C,L,S,G. They have the value of the number 3. The flowers are also 3. In order for a scientist to be able to decipher the text of the manuscript, he must perfectly master the “Kabbalist numerological system of Gematria”. This means that each character (letter) also has its numerical value. For example, number 1 = a,i,j,q,y. Number 2 = b,r,k. Number 3 = c,g,s,l. Number 4 = d,m,t. etc. The system of 8 numbers will include the entire alphabet.
Dear Professor Zlatodej,
I have been waiting many years to read your translation of the text.How much longer do you think it will take until it is ready to be shared?