Fun with Rosslyn Chapel, or, What *was* the Templar's Cipher, anyway?

[R. A. Hettinga]

--- begin forwarded text


Status:  U
To: <rah at shipwright.com>
From: "T. Wolf" <traw at arcormail.de>
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 00:00:51 +0100
Subject: Re: Fun with Rosslyn Chapel, or, What *was* the Templar's Cipher,
anyway?

Dear RAH,

I just found the old attached message of yours doing a web search.
Coincidentally, I'm currently looking for the very the same thing (i.e. the
ciphers the Templars used for their bearer certificates).

Since your message is two years old already, I'm hoping you found the
solution by now. If you did, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me!

Thanks,
Thomas

-----
Your old message
(http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/crypto/2000-q2/0315.html)
-----
I'm dong an IBUC shirt for EFCE2K, and, given that we're in Edinburgh, and
Rosslyn Chapel, the famous Templar, um, Mecca, is here, and the Templars
ran the original money transfer business, using cryptography no less,
Fearghas and I popped out to Roslin to root around for stuff to stick on
the aforesaid shirt.


Close, but, more or less, no cigar. We saw the faded remains of a Templar
floriated cross on the Earl of St. Clair's supposed crypt-cover (kinda
small, people speculate about all kinds of goodies in there), which might
have been cool, but it was all eroded and I haven't found line art of one
on the web and it's late.


I've gotten a couple kinda-crypto things, of which I'll pick one for the
shirt tomorrow morning before we mail it out to the silkscreener, but what
I'd *really* like to know, if it's not one of the many "secrets" of the
Templars [like the shroud of Turin is DeMolay, or that the Templars were
Masons, or vice versa, or that they had the head of John the Baptist (or
christ, or Joseph, or the original Green Man) or that they *really* had the
Ark of the Covenent, or the Holy Grail, or that DeMolay was the Second
Gunman on the Grassy Knoll :-), or, whatever] is...


Has anyone ever figured out, or "discovered" or whatever, what kind of
cryptosystem the Templars used to encrypt, decrypt, sign/modify the chits
(dare I say bearer certificates? ;-)) they used so that people could go
from preceptory to preceptory, getting cash/food/whatever, all the way to
the holy land (and get the remains of their money back, or a bill :-), when
they returned home?


Cheers,
RAH,
Who, oddly enough, and by the sheerest coincidence (and I swear on a stack
of Illuminati), lives in the Roslindale section of Boston, named for
Roslin, home of Rosslyn Chapel....

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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