ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationship between the occult tradition and cryptography, the seventeenth-century rhetorical campaign to establish the reputation of cryptography as a legitimate technical practice pivots on Trithemius's intentions. Further, Trithemius and Selenus's teachings have eliminated the need for readers to learn the Egyptian model: the moderns have surpassed the knowledge of the ancients. Though by 1641 Trithemius and Selenus were respected in some circles as technical innovators, it was Wilkins's English-language manual that would finally position the discipline of cryptography as a legitimate subject of study for the wider public, minimizing the immediate connotation reader might have had when hearing the names of these controversial earlier figures. Examination, first, of the textual precedents before, including, and after Trithemius and Selenus's writings for the seventeenth-century cryptography manual and, second, of the ongoing negotiations with controversial character of cryptographer as at once magician and scientist, help us better understand what was unique about rhetorical campaign of the 1640s through 1680s.
