Oct 2, 2021
A book filled with strange symbols from hundreds of years ago is every codebreaker’s dream — or nightmare, depending on how long it takes to crack the codeaccording to moneyversed.com. Such was the case with Christiane Schaefer, whose bizarre going-away present kicked off a decade-long mystery involving ancient ciphers, eccentric professors, and maybe even brushes with the devil. Schaefer was desperate for an answer, but she never thought her curiosity would end up revealing sinister secrets from the past...
"Top secret"
It was 1998 when the German-born Schaefer took the package and found herself face to face with a warning: “TOP SECRET.” But that wasn’t even the part of the package that interested Schaefer the most. Instead, it was the collection of symbols scrawled across the outside of the gift that piqued her interest.
Something's different
As a philologist, or an expert in the history of languages, Schaefer dedicated her career to the study of languages living and dead. She’d seen, studied, and cracked all kinds of ancient runes and codes, but there was something about this one that made her hair stand on end.
A mess of symbols
The gift itself was around 100 pages of symbols, obviously dating back hundreds of years. Her first instinct — to parse out any recognizable characters — was immediately a bust, since the code seemed to be a mess of mathematical symbols, Roman letters, ancient runes, and shapes, none of which connected.
Collecting dust
But Schaefer’s gut told her that these pages weren’t a mess — on the contrary. She deduced that it was a cipher, or a secret code written to purposely throw the reader off. Well, it worked: after a few unsuccessful attempts at cracking the code, Schaefer put the manuscript on a shelf for thirteen years.
Meeting Kevin Knight
It wasn’t until 2011 that the mysterious manuscript once again caught Schaefer’s eye. And this time around, she had modern technology and another brilliant mind on her side. Schaefer was attending a lecture about computational linguistics when she first met Kevin Knight.
Knight's unique perspective
Knight, who worked as a machine translation specialist at the University of California, had a unique perspective when it came to language, one that immediately made Schaefer remember her long-forgotten book of symbols. She recognized a big opportunity.
Unlocking language
Throughout his career, Knight had become a codebreaker of a slightly different variety. Algorithms, he proposed, could be used as more than mathematical or computational rules to follow. They could also be used to unlock entire languages — especially those that relied on symbols as words.
Huh?
Knight saw practically every language as a series of solvable ciphers. In order to solve these “codes,” he had to figure out the ruleset, or “key” — basically, how that particular language worked. For those of us who aren’t language or codebreaking experts, this may sound like a bunch of gibberish.
Becoming a codebreaker
Simply speaking, every language has its own set of rules, whether grammatical or contextual. For instance, if you were translating a coded word into English, and you deduced that the first letter is “q,” then you’d know that the second letter is most likely “u” based on your knowledge of the English language.
The nifty algorithm
Still, you may be thinking that this way of solving codes is pretty tedious. Knight thought so, too, which was why his use of algorithms was so groundbreaking. The algorithm would pick up on patterns in coded languages faster than any person. Schaefer wondered: could this guy and his nifty algorithms actually solve the cipher in her manuscript?
There's danger afoot
Luckily for her, Knight was in the market for a challenge. “If you’ve got a long coded text to share, let me know,” he told his lecture attendees. But despite his initial enthusiasm, Knight was hesitant to help Schaefer when she told him about her mysterious manuscript. Ciphers like that, he said, were dangerous.
Fact or fiction?
Why? He explained that you could invest countless time and energy into solving the cipher only to be faced with a codebreaker’s biggest nightmare: a hoax. But when Schaefer presented him with the manuscript, Knight couldn’t look away. There was something about the symbols, each so different from the next, that struck Knight as genuine.
Picking up patterns
So, Knight got to work. He pored over the manuscript for clues, repetitions, and any cracks that could potentially lead to a word. Knight’s process was just as mind-boggling as the cipher itself, so we’ll sum it up like this: 16 pages into the manuscript, he and his algorithms started to pick up on patterns.
So easy, a kid could do it...
One of these patterns — the repetition of a specific group of Roman letters — indicated that the hidden language was Western, perhaps even European. This alone made a chill go down Knight’s spine. It’s possible, he thought, that this whole time, they were dealing with a cipher about as complicated as a decoder ring.
What's the hidden language?
With that, Knight devised a new theory. Maybe all of the symbols and shapes didn’t have any real purpose beyond that of distraction. With this in mind, Knight’s next move was to figure out which language was really being used here — a task that’s easier said than done, even with Knight’s high-tech equipment.
Guten tag!
Eventually, Knight’s algorithm showed a preference for German, a theory supported by the German spelling of the name “Phillip” that appeared in the manuscript. Knight didn’t speak a single word of German, but it didn’t matter. All he had to do was pick up on the language’s set of rules.
Carefully protected message
Bit by bit, letter by letter, Knight started to put words together. After months of painstaking work, he realized that the code was far more complex than he’d originally given it credit for. Multiple symbols, he realized, stood for just one letter. Clearly, whoever wrote this code really didn’t want anyone to solve it.
"The candidate answers"
This became even clearer when Knight had another epiphany. The Roman letters, he realized, didn’t spell out anything. They actually functioned as spaces to separate the text. With that, words started to come together, including “der” (“the” in English) and “antwortet” (“the candidate answers”).
Finally translating
As the German words came together, Knight knew he needed a native speaker to translate. Thankfully, he knew just who to call: Schaefer! When she received Knight’s email, which contained two lines of translated text from the manuscript, she immediately sent back her own English translation.
Welcome, brother...
“This stroke is the sign/the symbol and the beginning of the confidentiality/familiarity that the brother, from now on companion, can expect of us…” This sentence ended up being crucial to their understanding of the text. It wasn’t a hoax at all — it was an initiation.
The initiation
Specifically, it was an initiation ritual into a mysterious secret society. Even with this break in the case, though, there was one symbol that continuously left the experts scratching their heads. It was a symbol Knight referred to as “lip,” because, well, it looked like a doodle of an open mouth.
The Copiale Cipher
Schaefer, Knight, and Schaefer’s boss, Beáta Megyesi, worked diligently on the pages of code — which they eventually called the Copiale Cipher — but the lip symbol left them stumped. They knew the symbol stood for a word and not a letter, but it wasn’t until Megyesi had an epiphany of her own that they knew for sure.
The mysterious eye
“It’s not a lip,” Megyesi told Schaefer. “It’s an eye.” That’s when Schaefer told Megyesi about her own epiphany. The phrase “light hand” was seen repeatedly in the text, and it had always tugged at Schaefer’s memory. She’d read something once before that also used the phrase, and she’d only then remembered what it was.
The Society of Oculists
She’d read about it in an academic article about a secret order in Germany called the Great Enlightened Society of Oculists. The manuscript mentioned how the master of the “secret society” had to have a “light hand” — could the Copiale Cipher have originated within the Society of Oculists?
1700s-era eye doctors
The Oculists were believed to be early 1700s-era ophthalmologists who had a real disdain for those who operated on the eye without fully appreciating it or its symbolic power. For that reason, they formed their own secret society. What was strange, however, was the ritual detailed in the Copiale Cipher.
They weren't only doctors
The Oculists seemed to be more interested in the symbolic meaning of an eye instead of its medical significance. In the outside world, they were eye doctors, but inside the secret society, they were something much different — something the writers of the Copiale Cipher were eager to keep hidden forever.
A secretive history
Confused by this new discovery, Schaefer, Knight, and Megyesi turned to historian Andreas Önnerfors for help. Önnerfors specialized in clandestine societies of the past, and what he told them shed light on the symbol-ladden Copiale Cipher.
The Freemasons
Thanks to Enlightenment ideals of free-thinking and social liberty, 18th-century Europe was brimming with secret societies, most notably the Freemasons. When the Pope forbade Catholics from joining up with the Freemasons, rumors spread about what really went on inside the Masonic Temple. Of all the theories, devil-worshipping was among the most popular.
An extreme bunch
So, these secret societies went underground. That meant that everything had to be, well, secret...especially whatever it was that went on during meetings. When Önnerfors read the Copiale Cipher, he told Knight, Schaefer, and Megyesi that the Oculists were a rather extreme bunch.
Threatened by the Oculists
“To someone at the time,” Önnerfors explained, “this would be like reading a manifesto from a terrorist organization.” Though the Oculists did have a fascination for the human eye, they were really concerned with free-thinking when it came to politics, social issues, and religion — and that made them a threat.
Obsessed with the Freemasons
The Copiale Cipher made it clear that the Oculists weren't only focused on their own goings-on, but on the secrets of other societies at the time. In fact, the Oculists seemed to know secrets about the Freemasons that wouldn’t come out for decades. Maybe the Oculist’s obsessions with the Freemasons went back to their founder.
Count Friedrich August von Veltheim
The Oculists were founded by Count Friedrich August von Veltheim, a guy who seemed to be more obsessed with secret societies than anyone else. He belonged to multiple societies, including one called the Order of the Golden Poodles. When he died, however, it was the Oculists whom he left special instructions for.
What's inside?
Before he died in 1775, the Count locked up his secret Oculist heirlooms in a leather trunk. He told his son that no one but “the duke” was allowed to open it...which never happened since the trunk wasn’t opened again until 1918. The objects inside were just as baffling as the Copiale Cipher had been.
Creepy amulets
There was a cataract needle with a bone as a handle, and bright green aprons that were almost certainly worn by members of the Oculists. There were also five amulets inside the trunk, each emblazoned with blue anatomically correct eyes. Lastly, there were more papers covered with code.
Uncrackable?
Judging by this new cipher, it was deduced that the Oculists hadn’t only hidden meaning in symbols and letters, but in numbers. Upon realizing this, the three codebreakers — Schaefer, Knight, and Megyesi — immediately got to work cracking the code...but it has proven itself to be uncrackable.
A huge revelation
That doesn't mean the codebreakers haven't had other revelations about the Oculists. After consulting with Önnerfors and pouring over the Copiale Cipher again, Schaefer and her team discovered that the Oculists weren't just obsessed with the Freemasons — they perhaps were the Freemasons.
They were underground for a reason...
Though it's unclear if all of the Oculists were Freemasons, there's a good chance that Count Friedrich was. It's also very possible that the Oculists were simply a cover for the Freemasons, a way for them to write down the Masonic rites without breaking their own rules or being discovered by the government or Vatican.
Shh!
Whatever the truth is, we still don't know. For now, the Oculists and their many ciphers and codes will continue to hold their secrets. Until another team like Schaefer, Knight, and Megyesi comes along with an itch to crack ancient ciphers, mysteries will continue to swirl around the secret societies of the past.
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