I am certainly not a purist when it comes to the languages on the Cypher Wheel, so some explanation may be in order for the foreign Alphabets. The Modern Latin alphabet that we use today has 26 letters but none of the other alphabets used on the Cypher Wheel have as many letters. So some adjustments had to be made to accommodate the 26 spaces on the wheel. Further, the alphabets used on the wheel, in their natural states of origin, would be in a different order than they appear on the wheel. I rearranged them in an attempt to match the foreign letter to its Modern Latin counterpart by their phonetic sound. I will explain these adjustments as we go.

On the outer edge of the wheel is ancient Celtic Runes or what is called the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc. The Anglo-Saxon Futhorc began to form sometime around the fifth century AD in northern Europe. This group of letters developed from simple pictographs into a workable alphabet which could be used for written communication. The Celtic Runes Futhorc does not contain an equivalent for our letters V or Z so two other letters that are in the Futhorc but are not in our alphabet have been substituted for them. For V the Celtic letter sound io, and for the Z the Celtic letter sound ng.

The next set of letters, on top of the first ring, is Theban. This alphabet is traditionally ascribed to Honorius the Theban, who probably wrote “Liber Juratus” a medieval book on magic. Theban is sometimes called the Witches’ Alphabet. It normally reads right to left. Theban does not have a symbol for our letters J or V. So I have filled in the space for J with a symbol of my own imagination, and for V, I have inserted the Theban symbol that acts as our “period” or is used at the end of a thought.

The next two lines, the inside of the outer ring, and the outside of the second ring on the Cypher Wheel, are Modern Latin. The earliest known inscriptions in the Latin alphabet date from the 6th century BC. It was adapted from the Etruscan alphabet during the 7th century BC. This is the familiar alphabet used in our everyday English, and is the alphabet used to set the 26 spacings on the wheel.

On the inside of the second ring is Ogham (pronounced oh-yam) The Celtic Ogham alphabet dates from the fourth century AD. This alphabet is named for Ogmos, the Celtic god of knowledge and communication. The alphabet consists of twenty main letters, each named for a different type of tree, believed to be sacred to the Druids. Examples of Ogham writing have been found all over the British Isles, Spain and Portugal. Once again, to fill the 26 spaces I substituted letters for the letters missing in Ogham. Those missing are J, K, V, W, X, and Y. For these I substituted on the wheel, letters in Ogham that do not appear in Latin.

On the inner ring, around the outer edge is Enochian. This alphabet is also known as Angelic Script, and was supposedly given to the magicians Edward Kelly and Dr. John Dee in 1583 by an angel with whom Kelly was communicating. This script is used when working with angels (aka Enochian magick) and is typically written right to left. The Enochian alphabet lacked a few letters to fill the 26 spaces; they are J, K, V, and W. I created replacements for these based on like sounding letters and filled the spaces.

The remaining two lines of script on the inner circle are upper case Greek and lower case Greek or the Hellenic alphabet. This is much like the Koine Greek used to pen the New Covenant Bible at the time of the Messiah. Greek, of course is short two letters as compared with Modern Latin. They are J and Q, whose positions have been marked by artistic renderings of the matching Latin letters.

Inscription on the back of the Cypher Wheel