The Theban alphabet is a writing system with origins lost to the flow of time. It was first published in Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's Libri Tres de Occulta Philosophia (Three Books about Occult Philosophy) in 1531, where it was reputed to have been created by Honorius of Thebes . Also known as the Runes of Honorius (Theban is not, however, a Runic alphabet) after the legendary magus, and the Witches Alphabet due to its almost exclusive use by modern Wicca as a substitution cipher to hide magical writings such as the contents of a Book of Shadows from prying eyes, the Theban alphabet bares little resemblance to other alphabets, and has not been found in any previous publications prior to Aggrippa's. There is one-to-one correspondence between Theban and all the letters in the modern Latin alphabet except for j, u, and w, which use the same letters as i, v, and a literal 'vv' or double-v respectively. Some written forms of Theban use a dot as a word separator. Theban letters only exist in a single case, with the need for a separate majuscule (upper-case) and miniscule (lower-case) letters never being established. The Theban character set also only contains specific reference to an 'end of phrase' character, or full stop, with no other punctuation being specificed either in Aggrippa's original publication, nor any subsequent publications drawing on subsequent documents, with the word separator being added for ease of reading. There are no numerals in Theban that have been found, assuming the reputed creation by Honorius is valid, with many people assuming either their own numerals, or using Roman numerals for numbers.

The Alphabet

See Also

• Ogham
• Wicca
• Thebes
• Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

External Links

• Draft Proposal to add Theban to ISO/IEC 106463
• Theban alphabet at Omniglot