Steganographia

Record summary

Johannes Trithemius’s Steganographia presents angelic and spirit-mediated methods of transmitting hidden messages. Its first books can resemble ritual magic, while later scholarship has identified substantial cryptographic structures and mnemonic techniques. The text matters because it occupies a boundary between occult communication, cryptography, theology, and literary concealment. Dating is complicated by manuscript circulation, revisions, and the late printed edition. Researchers should compare the manuscript tradition with the 1606 print and avoid reducing the entire work either to demonic magic or to a simple cipher manual.