There is a vast amount of coded material in Bessler’s books and this web site barely scratches the surface. The following items are examples of more small piecs of code.

On the title page of the Apologia, the first word is ORFFYREI, the significance of which might escape the notice of anyone not familiar with Bessler’s games. In fact using the albam method of encoding names, we can see that substituting the letters one gets BESSLERV, which is another nice pointer to the number five. He repeats this at the beginning of his declaration of faith, by writing his pseudonym as ORFFYREIsche, using the fractal font for the last four letters.

It has been pointed out to me that if the 24 letter alphabet is used then the word would be BESSLERW which is even better as the W serves to point to the number 55.

Also on the title page we can see that near to the bottom of the page he has written his pseudonym again but this time it appears to have been corrected after printing. It was originally printed as ORFFYREUM and subsequently the M was clearly and deliberately crossed out with three horizontal lines and the U altered to an O. To emphasis the point only the letters ORFFYREO are underlined. Why? Because using the alpha-numeric substitution, the original ORFFYREUM added up to 127 but the altered ORFFYREO totals 108, a pentagonal number. The numbers in a pentagon are 72 degrees, being a fifth of a circle; 180-72=108. The two base angles are 54 (2 x 54 =108).

Again it has been suggested that this is merely a correction to an incorrect Latin ending but, I repeat, if so, what a coincidence!

For more information about Johann Bessler and to obtain copies of his books with English translations go to www.free-energy.co.uk

Copyright © 2009 John Collins