Brice Matthews
Dr. Linda Harned
Communication 1201-240
28 Aug 2015

Learning the Freemason's Cipher

Don't be threatened by the name, this is actually one of the most simple ways of writing a secret message, or cipher, that there is. Before we get into the specifics of the certain cipher I am going to be teaching you today, the first thing you need to know is the difference between the terms code and cryptography. Code is the broader term, which most of us are familiar with, simply meaning “a system of rules to convert information”. One of the earliest examples of code being the invention of language itself, because it allowed a form of communication to convert information. Today though, we are mostly going to be focused on cryptography. All cryptography is code but not all code is cryptography; codes can be a code of law, a code of conduct, or a dress code. It is simply a way of giving information in a way that is comprehensible. Cryptography is the use of ciphers and code to protect a message or secret. A cipher is a secret/disguised way of writing code. In order to effectively decode (a term we are all familiar with) a cipher, you need to possess the knowledge of the way it was originally ciphered. Ciphers can be kept solely in your mind and then spread through word of mouth, or written on a piece of paper or even implemented into mechanical device, which is then required to break the cipher, unless you can remember that information and store it. All ciphers can technically be deciphered without having any knowledge of the original cipher, although this requires a long process of recognizing patterns and also knowing the most common letters of the alphabet. The most common letters of the English alphabet are E, T, and A. This means that for any cipher using the English alphabet the 3 most common symbols will also be E, T, and A. The longer the message, the easier it is to crack, because more information and symbols are given to you to decode and find out the patterns. The shorter the cipher, the less symbols you are given, which means you can't find which ones are more frequent. The general idea works in all languages so it's vital to know if you are every trying to crack a cipher. The class of cipher we are going to be looking at today are mono-alphabetic substitution ciphers. This simply means each letter of the alphabet is replaced according to a visual key with another letter or symbol. The earliest wide spread use of this form of cryptography was the Caesar Shift Cipher, which Julius Caesar invented himself to conceal messages spread throughout the Roman Empire. A more recent but probably the most widely known form of this cipher is Morse code. Morse code is an Mono alphabetic Substitution because you are literally taking the letters of the alphabet and substituting them with symbols in the form of 36 different arrangements of dots and dashes, 26 of them being from the alphabet and the other 10 being the numbers 0-9.
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Today I am going to be teaching you a type of mono alphabetic substitution that goes by the name “the pigpen cipher”. It also goes by the name of the Freemason's cipher, due to the Freemasons use of it in the 18th century to make their records more private. Symbols from this cipher have also been found on many Freemason graves as secret messages for loved ones. They have been found engraved into the bricks of many old churches, such as Trinity Church in New York city. In the grave yard of the church there is a message written in Freemason's cipher that translates into “remember death”. During the civil war this code was used by some union prisons to communicate in secret through post or while in confederate prisons. Even though it sounds like a top secret form of communication it is actually amazingly easy to learn and is found today in many children books on secret codes and ciphers. There are many ways to arrange this cipher, and it has changed through the years many times, but what they all have in common is two shapes in which the whole alphabet fits inside of. The most common and widely used shapes are the tic-tac-toe shape (#), and an X shape, which are the shapes used by the Freemasons. Simply put, Instead of using letters to write your word, you are simply using the shapes the letters are inside of instead of the actual letter. It is important to note that the second letter in each separate slot will have a dot included with its character, the dot is vital for knowing whether the symbol represents the first or second number of that particular shape. Every single letter of the English language is represented by these two shapes so literally any word can be written, all numbers have to be written in word though. That's the simplest way to put it down in words, the best way to learn how to write this cipher is to see the cipher for yourself, because it is a physically visual cipher like we talked about before. I hope you have learned plenty about ciphers and the history behind them, enjoy writing secret messages to your friends and if you ever see a Freemason cipher out in public somewhere, you now know how to decode it. Here is a fully decoded Freemason's alphabet to help you see how the letters translate into the shapes of the tic-tac-toe grid and the X shown in the picture on the previous page.
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Works Cited

Sutherland, Denise, and Mark Koltko-Rivera. "Understanding the Freemason’s Cipher." - For Dummies. Cracking Codes & Cryptograms For Dummies Cheat Sheet, 5 Sept. 2012. Web. 28 Aug. 2015.

Unknown. "THE FREEMASON CIPHER."The Masonic Cipher. The Masonic Trowel, 22 Mar. 2004. Web. 28 Aug. 2015.