Cipher Manuscripts

The Cipher Manuscripts are a collection of 60 folios containing the structural outline of a series of magical
initiation rituals corresponding to the spiritual elements of Earth, Air, Water and Fire. The "occult" materials
in the Manuscripts are a compendium of the classical magical theory and symbolism known in the Western
world up until the middle of the 19th century, combined to create an encompassing model of the Western
mystery tradition, and arranged into a syllabus of a graded course of instruction in magical symbolism. It
was used as the structure for the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Description
The folios are drawn in black ink on cotton paper watermarked
1809.[1] The text is plain English written from right to left in a
simple substitution cryptogram. Numerals are substituted by
Hebrew letters – Alef=1, Bet=2, etc. Crude drawings of diagrams,
magical implements and tarot cards are interspersed in the text. One
final page transcribes into French and Latin.[2]

The Ciphers contain the outlines of a series of graded rituals and the
syllabus for a course of instruction in Qabalah and Hermetic magic,
including Astrology, occult tarot, Geomancy and Alchemy. It also
contains several diagrams and crude drawings of various ritual
implements. The Cipher Manuscripts are the original source upon
which the rituals and the knowledge lectures of the Hermetic Order
of the Golden Dawn were based.[3]

The actual material itself described in the Manuscript is of known

Folio 13 of the Cipher MMS.
origins. Hermeticism, Alchemy, Qabalah, Astrology and Tarot were
certainly not unknown to 19th century scholars of the Magical arts;
the Cipher is a compendium of previously known Magical traditions. The basic structure of the rituals and
the names of the Grades are similar to those of the Rosicrucian orders Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and
the German 'Orden der Gold- und Rosenkreuzer'.

Discovery
William Wynn Westcott, a London Deputy Coroner, member of the S.R.I.A. and one of the founders of the
Golden Dawn, claimed to have received the manuscripts through Rev. A. F. A. Woodford, who was a
colleague of noted Masonic scholar Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie.[4] The papers were to have been secured by
Westcott after Mackenzie’s death in 1886, among the belongings of Mackenzie's mentor, the late Frederick
Hockley,[4][5] and by September 1887, they were decoded by Westcott.[4]

The Manuscripts also contained an address of an aged adept named Fräulein (Miss) Anna Sprengel in
Germany. According to Westcott, he wrote to Sprengel inquiring about the contents of the papers.[6]
Sprengel responded, and after accepting the requests of Westcott and his partner and fellow Mason Samuel
Liddell MacGregor Mathers, issued them a Charter to operate a Lodge of the Order in England.[6]
Westcott's first Golden Dawn temple was the Isis-Urania Temple, styled "No. 3." [6] Temple No. 1 would
have been Fräulein Sprengel's lodge, and No. 2 was supposedly an abortive attempt at a lodge by some
unnamed persons in London (possibly a reference to Mackenzie
and other S.R.I.A. members some years earlier).[7] According to
Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett, the page of the Cipher
Manuscripts mentioning Anna Sprengel was almost certainly not
part of the original. They argue that Westcott invented Sprengel in
order to give the Golden Dawn a more plausible connection to
ancient esoteric wisdom.[8]

Controversy
Considerable controversy surrounds the origins of the Cipher
Manuscripts. Westcott claimed Sprengel was a German Adept of
the 'Gold- und Rosenkreuzer' Order who wrote letters to Westcott
and Mathers granting them permission to establish the Order in
England. Mathers later claimed that only the letters were forgeries,
but it seems unlikely that Westcott or Mathers wrote the The cipher used in the manuscripts,
Manuscripts themselves, as some believe.[9] shown in a 1561 edition of
Trithemius' Polygraphia. Another
There is considerable doubt among scholars that Westcott's story is cipher known as "Theban" is given
accurate. In particular, the age and contents of the documents have above it.
been the subject of much controversy.[9] In particular, the
manuscript contains a reference to the ancient Egyptian Book of the
Dead which was not understood by scholars before the deciphering of the Rosetta stone in 1822, and not
published in translation until 1842.[10][11]

Possible sources
A variety of theories exist as to the real source of the Cipher Manuscript. Some of the more common ones
include:

Westcott and Mathers created the Manuscripts and letters themselves,[12] and created the
origin myth of "Rosicrucian Adepts" to give credibility to their new Order.[13]
Mason and clergyman A.F.A. Woodford found the Cipher Manuscript in a secondhand
bookstall on Wellington Road in London, and gave it to his friend Westcott to be decoded.[14]
The Sprengel letters were a forgery by Westcott, but the Manuscripts were written by
Kenneth Mackenzie and/or other scholars of the S.R.I.A. (to which Westcott, Mathers and
Woodman belonged as early as 1881). Fräulein Sprengel was a legend invented by
Westcott to give lineage to the newly formed order. Westcott created the mythology of the
Cipher Manuscripts' origins, knowing that a more esoteric source would carry weight with
occultists of the era.[14][15]
There was no German order; the first Golden Dawn temple was a project of a secret group
within the S.R.I.A. called the "Society of Eight". (By the time Westcott "discovered" the
Manuscripts, all the members of the Society were deceased.) Fräulein Sprengel didn't really
exist, but the Manuscript itself has true antiquarian origins, traceable to Johann Falk and
passed through the hands of Francis Barrett, Eliphas Levi, and eventually to Mackenzie,
Woodford and the S.R.I.A. (and the Society of Eight).[3]
There really was a German Rosicrucian order, sometimes referred to as the "Gold und
Rosenkreutz," and it already had a branch in London, founded around 1810. Mackenzie was
a member of this German order, into which he had been initiated by Count Apponyi of
Hungary, and obtained the rituals described in the Cipher from them.[16]
 The rituals in the Manuscripts were written by Baron Edward Bulwer-Lytton, honorary patron
of the S.R.I.A. and author of an occult novel called Zanoni - A Strange Story, or by Frederick
Hockley, the famous Rosicrucian seer and transcriber of occult manuscripts, and thence
passed to Mackenzie.[15]
The Cipher Manuscript was legitimate, and the Golden Dawn is a valid offspring of an older
Jewish order in Bavaria called Loge zur aufgehenden Morgenröthe, which translates to
"Lodge of the Approaching Morning Light"[15] or "Lodge of the Rising Dawn". This Order was
founded to allow German Jews to conduct Masonic-style lodges since, at the time, Jews
were banned from participation in Freemasonry.[17]

In any case, no evidence has ever proven the existence of Fräulein Sprengel or her Lodge.[7] (By Westcott's
account, the other members of the German order supposedly objected to Sprengel's chartering of the Isis-
Urania Lodge, and all further communications were cut off after she died.)[18] The Isis-Urania Charter was
written and signed only by Westcott, Mathers and William Robert Woodman.[18] There are letters by
Mackenzie that indicate the 'Society of Eight' existed, but nothing that describes what they actually taught
or practised.[3] The symbolism and philosophy contained in the Cipher Manuscripts are not very different
from that of high-degree Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism, and Mackenzie and the members of the S.R.I.A.
were capable-enough esoteric scholars, with access to works on the Qabalah, Hermeticism, and Egyptology
in Masonic libraries, to have combined it all into the form followed by the Golden Dawn.[3]

However, there is no conclusive evidence to prove any of the proposed origins of the Cipher Manuscripts.
Questions about the authenticity of the Manuscripts and the authority of the Isis-Urania Charter contributed
to the first great schism of the Golden Dawn Order in 1900.[18] In 1901, with the dissensions in the Golden
Dawn, the poet W. B. Yeats, a member of the Order, privately published a pamphlet titled Is the Order of
R.R. et A. C. to Remain a Magical Order?[19] The true origins of the Cipher Manuscripts remain a mystery
to this day.

See also
Esotericism in Germany and Austria

Notes
1. Runyon, Carroll. Secrets of the Golden Dawn Cipher Manuscripts,. C.H.S. ISBN 0-9654881-
2-8.
2. Küntz (1996)
3. Runyon (1997)
4. F. King, 1989, page 42
5. Van Den Broek (1997)
6. F. King, 1989, page 43
7. Howe (1978)
8. Decker, Ronald; Dummett, Michael (2019). A History of the Occult Tarot. London: Duckworth.
p. 87–88. ISBN 9780715645727.
9. Waite (2005)
10. Machen (1923)
11. Decker, Ronald; Dummett, Michael (2019). A History of the Occult Tarot. London: Duckworth.
p. 76. ISBN 9780715645727.
12. Tyson (1981)
13. Hopking (2001)
14. McIntosh (1998)
15. Cicero (2003)
16. Wilson (1947)
17. Prinke (1985)
18. Gilbert (1998)
19. Melton, (2001)

References
Agrippa, Henrich Cornelius, Three Books Of Occult Philosophy (Llewellyn, 1998 - orig.ed.
1531, ISBN 0-87542-832-0)
Cicero, Chic and Tabitha Sandra, The Essential Golden Dawn (Llewellyn, 2003, ISBN 0-
7387-0310-9)
Gilbert, Robert A. Golden Dawn Scrapbook - The Rise and Fall of a Magical Order (Weiser,
1998, ISBN 1-57863-037-1)
Hopking, C.J.M., The Practical Kabbalah Guidebook (Sterling, 2001, ISBN 0-8069-3121-3)
Howe, Ellic. The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order
1887-1923 (Weiser, 1978, ISBN 0-87728-369-9)
Küntz, Darcy, The Complete Golden Dawn Cipher Manuscript [1] (https://web.archive.org/we
b/20090517024746/http://goldendawntrust.com/Product-Complete-Golden-Dawn-Cipher-Ma
nuscript_12.aspx), (Holmes Publishing Group, 1996, ISBN 1-55818-325-6)
King, Francis, Modern Ritual Magic: The Rise of Western Occultism (Prism Press, 1989,
ISBN 1-85327-032-6)
Levi, Eliphas, Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual, trans. A.E. Waite (Kessinger,
1998 - orig.ed. 1855, ISBN 0-7661-0297-1)
McIntosh, Christopher, The Rosicrucians: The History, Mythology, and Rituals of an Esoteric
Order (Weiser, 1998, ISBN 0-87728-920-4)
Machen, Arthur, Things Near and Far (Alfred Knopf, 1923)
Melton, J. Gordon, editor, Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, v. 2 p. 1327, Gale
Group, 2001 ISBN 0-810-39489-8
Prinke, Rafal T., Lampado Trado, article published in The Hermetic Journal, 30 (1985), 5-14
Runyon, Carroll Secrets of the Golden Dawn Cipher Manuscripts, (C.H.S., 1997) ISBN 0-
9654881-2-8
Tyson, Donald, Ritual Magic (Llewellyn, 1981, ISBN 0-87542-835-5)
Van Den Broek, Roelof, Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times (State
University of New York Press, 1997, ISBN 0-7914-3611-X)
Waite, Arthur Edward, A Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: A Retrospective Review in the
Form of Memoirs (Kessinger Publishing, 2005, ISBN 1-4191-5539-3)
Wilson, Bruce, "The Origins of our Rosicrucian Society", from The Origins of the Rosicrucian
Society of England, (compilation, ed. an. Darcy Küntz, Golden Dawn Research Trust, Austin
TX, 2009: ISBN 978-0-9734424-8-9)

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