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.

[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.

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.

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'.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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.