PREFACE

...human speech would be turned into the gravest suspicion: no one, no matter how holy and honest their writings, would believe without fear, and few would place trust in letters. Because, however honest and modest the words might be, guile, fraud, and deception would always be thought to lie beneath them; and men would become fearful of everything, being for the most part as suspicious of friends as of adversaries. Nor could anyone, even if they lived for a thousand years, become so learned and expert in this science with their teacher that there would not remain infinite ways—secretly, most occultly, and most securely—of writing in this very art, and, according to the will of any expert, ways sufficient for all operations, which he himself has not yet grasped with his preceptor. For just as the aerial spirits, both good and evil, created by the highest God for our ministry and progress (through whose intelligence all the secrets of this art are revealed), are to us without number, infinite and entirely incomprehensible: so too all the modes, ways, differences, qualities, and operations of this art of ours—which we call Steganography original: "Steganographiam" — a term coined by the author, literally meaning "hidden writing." (containing secrets, mysteries, and arcana perfectly open to no mortal, however studious or learned)—can never, in all eternity, be fully penetrated. For this science is a chaos of infinite depth, which no one can perfectly comprehend: because no matter how learned and expert you are in this art, you have always grasped less than what remains unknown to you. For this profound and most secret art has this property: it easily renders the student incomparably more learned, so to speak, than the master; provided that he is naturally disposed to proceed and is studious in those things which he has perceived in the Cabalistic original: "Cabalistica" — here referring to a method of mystical or coded transmission rather than specifically Jewish Kabbalah. tradition. And lest any future reader of this work—when in the process he frequently encounters the names, offices, orders, differences, properties, prayers, and any other operations of spirits original: "spirituum" — in Trithemius's system, these spirits often represent the cryptographic keys or planetary influences used to transmit messages. through whose intelligences all these secrets of this science are closed and opened—should believe or think me to be a Necromancer original: "Necromanticum" — a sorcerer who conjures the dead, a charge the author vehemently denies. and a Magician original: "Magum", or to have contracted a pact with demons, or to have used or be using any other superstition: I have deemed it necessary and opportune to preserve my reputation and name from such great ruin, injury, fault, and stain by a solemn protestation in this prologue original: "prologo", claiming it with the truth. I say, therefore, and before Almighty God, from whom nothing at all can be hidden,