The decoding effort started as a sort of game between two friends that eventually engulfed a team of experts in disciplines ranging from machine translation to intellectual history.
As it turned out, Schaefer had made a discovery of her own. A phrase in the Copiale text, a reference to the "light hand" required to be a master of the society, had seemed familiar to her. So she dug up anshe had read some time before about a secret order in Germany that called itself the Great Enlightened Society of Oculists. The "light hand" was mentioned in their bylaws.
Centered in the town of Wolfenbüttel, Germany, the Oculists, it was believed, played the role of gatekeepers to the burgeoning field of ophthalmology. They kept out the "charlatans" who could cause someone to "lose their eyesight forever." Schaefer contacted the state archives in Wolfenbüttel, which housed a collection of Oculist materials. The archives had a coded text just like the Copiale—and some cool amulets too.
Instead the Copiale noted that the master had to "show his skill in reading and writing of our cipher." These Oculists might have been presenting themselves as ophthalmologists in public. But inside the order's chambers, the light hand must have meant something else. Could it have been about keeping secrets through cryptology?
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