Westcott was able to find the key to the Cipher Manuscripts, a simple letter-for-letter substitution encryption found in a book entitled Polygraphiae by Abbot Johann Trithemius, to decode the papers into plain English written right-to-left. Once deciphered, these papers outlined a set of initiatory rituals and graded lessons in esoteric subjects such as astrology, alchemy, geomancy, Qabalah, Tarot and Hermetics. Soon after Westcott deciphered the papers, he asked Samuel Liddell “MacGregor” Mathers, who held the honorary VIIIth degree of Magister in the SRIA, to help him flesh out the rituals and the curricula into a format that could be used as a foundation for a mystery school. Westcott also pulled the then current Supreme Magus of the SRIA, Dr. William Robert Woodman, into the project.
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