Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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One question, and what would settle it.

Which of the circulating Theban forms for W, if any, is the one Trithemius actually printed in 1518?

Why it is open. W is the awkward letter of the set. It was not a letter of the Latin alphabet the cipher was built on, and in the original chart it stands after Z rather than in alphabetical position, as a recent addition. Later copyists appear to have misread that presentation, and the printed sign for W differs between sources. Which of the circulating forms is faithful to the 1518 chart has never been established, so the atlas cannot say which sign for W it is showing.

What would resolve it. A collation of the surviving copies and early impressions of Polygraphiae against the Theban charts in Agrippa's De occulta philosophia and the later grimoire reprints, reading the 1518 sign for W from the earliest surviving impressions directly rather than from any redrawing, and tracing where the divergent forms enter the tradition.

Field. Analytical bibliography and description of early printed books, palaeography

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