THE LOGO IN ‘DAS TRIUMPHIRENDE..’

In his last and most professional-looking publication, ‘Das Triumphirende…’ which Bessler produced in 1719, there are a number of drawings and a logo-like doodle that at first sight seem attractive to the eye but without useful information.  As usual with Bessler there is more to them than meets the eye.  For instance on page 144 there is the following curious logo.  I have reproduced it here and it is easy to see the features incorporated with in it.  The logo is composed of a crown with some curious lettering beneath, some of which on closer inspection looks like the word Orffyre which was Bessler’s name according to the atbash cipher and before he Latinised it.  There is some additional lettering reversed on the left sidictuictue of the middle circle. 

If I transcribe the letters into modern font it will be easier to read.
It says:- “HTARORFFYRE”, which, when the left side is reversed, reads “RATH ORFFYRE”, which means “COUNCILLOR ORFFYRE”. I can’t reproduce a modern version of the reversed letter ‘R’ but you can see how it fits on the left side of the middle circle.

Below that there are 5 letters evenly spaced, which could for instance, stand for Doctor of Mathematics, Medicine and Perpetual Motion, attributes he claimed for himself.

Using the 24 letter alphabet we can substitute the letters for numbers. D = 4, M = 12, and P = 15. 4 + 12 +12 + 15 + 12 = 55! So once again Bessler is telling us about the importance of the number 55, and of course there are just five letters.

But there appears to be more to the logo than the simple explanation just given and it was typical of Bessler to try to cram as many secret pieces of information as possible into each of his clues.  What of the drawing of the letters themselves? Notice that the letter ‘P’ is wrongly depicted. It could also be a lower case ‘P’ because its tail projects below the writing line. This oddity cannot just be overlooked, because we know that nothing Bessler wrote or drew was ever in error; all apparent mistakes were deliberate and designed to inform.

There is another anomaly; look at the letters under the crown, notice that the two ‘Fs’ on the right side are conjoined. Also the next two letters ‘Y and R’ are also conjoined. On the left side there are no conjoined letters. So including the middle ‘O’ there are five letters in all on the left. Counting each two conjoined letters as one, there are also five letters on the right side.

Taking this a step further, using the two groups of five letters we can see that the
 ‘D.M.M.P.M.’ can be aligned with them. It is possible to associate the five letters, D.M.M.P.M. below with the five above, and because there are five each side this applies to both sides.  So the letter ‘P’ is to be associated with the conjoined ‘Y R’, and this suggests that the

H T A R O D M M P M

O R FF YR E D M M P M

letter ‘P’ is also to be taken as a conjoined letter, in other words an amalgamtion of two letters. The right side should be read as shown in the right side box adjacent.

This is a work in progress and I shall post more as I uncover the reasons behind it.

ed1"The crown in the logo represents Karl, the ruler; ‘Rath Orffyreus’ tells us that Bessler was a councillor under Karl; The large ‘O’ which starts his pseudonym also represents his wheel and includes the axle in confirmation. Finally, the leaf design is similar to the leaves of the Arondo Domax giant reed, which was commonly used in Organ Pipes of that period, and still is today for that matter. This is a reference to Bessler’s skills in organ building.

So within the logo there appears to be an attempt to convey the same message as before - nothing too dramatic but further evidence of the importance Bessler attributed to the number 55, whatever its meaning might have been.

Copyright © 2011 John Collins.