The Theban alphabet is used widely by Traditional Wiccans both ritually, and in their books of shadows. The first published reference to it is in Francis Barrett's The Magus, published at London in 1801. It is reputed to have been invented by Honorius of Thebes (an ancient city in Greece), hence the opt-used designation "The Runes of Honorius," but there is no credible supporting evidence to this fact. Its usage by Traditional Wiccans is based on its usage by the founder of modern Wicca, Gerald Gardner.
For the most part, this alphabet is used as a substitution cipher, occluding the original text in symbols. This has many purposes: to "encrypt" a message,
spell, or text so that it's meaning is not obvious, to impart a mystical quality to the text so written, abstracting it from the native language of
the user, to enable more effective magickal workings.
The correspondence between Theban and Latin letters. Note that
in Theban, there is no "J" or "U"; shown are common substitutions.
Download a Theban TrueType font for your computer:
theban.zip
