Sources & method

Where Unveil’s texts, tables and calculations come from, how they are checked, and what was left out.

How the texts are chosen

Quoted, not written: Where a tool interprets — a hexagram, a card, a sign, a number, a geomantic figure — it gives the words of a named source: a public-domain print where one exists, linked to the page of a scan of the copy used, with its spelling and italics.
Given whole: A period source is quoted as printed, its harsher passages included. Its date and page give the context; nothing is softened or cut.
Later tradition labelled: A meaning, name or method first printed long after the system it belongs to is marked with its author and date; where it has no early source, the tool shows it without a reading.
Left out when it cannot be traced: A meaning, correspondence or glyph that no source we could find supports is removed rather than kept without attribution.
Traced, not redrawn: Glyphs of historical scripts are traced from a primary print (Agrippa’s alphabets from the edition of 1533); the tarot cards are scans of the first edition of December 1909.

How it is checked

Texts: Transcribed from the page images and collated with the transcriptions and OCR that exist; where they differ, the scan decides: 438 differences between two OCRs of Lilly’s Christian Astrology (1647), which has no transcription, and 82 between three transcriptions of the Chinese of the I Ching. Word tables are checked against a worked example of their own period: Trithemius’s Ave Maria tables against the example in the key to his Polygraphia (1518).
Ciphers: Every solved message in the Cipher Archive, 19 of its 23, is decrypted in the tests by the app’s own code.
Modern cryptography: AES against NIST SP 800-38A and the test vectors of the GCM specification, HMAC against RFC 4231, PBKDF2 against RFC 7914, Base64 and Base32 against RFC 4648.
Planets: VSOP87 for the Sun (from the Earth) and Mercury to Neptune, Meeus for Pluto and the Moon, with ΔT, nutation and aberration, measured at 757 dates per body from 1900 to 2100. Positions within 0.001° of JPL Horizons for 1900–2050 (the Moon within 0.005°).
Ephemeris: Ingresses, stations and phases come from the same model, checked against the U.S. Naval Observatory: the number of lunar phases in 2026, and phases, equinoxes and solstices within a minute. Event times agree with JPL Horizons within a minute for the Sun, Moon and Mercury–Mars, within ten minutes for Jupiter and Saturn, and within two hours for Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, which barely move. Eclipses from NASA’s tables, 1901–2100.
Against the Swiss Ephemeris: Placidus house cusps within 0.2′; the Moon’s mean node within 1″ (1900–2100); the fixed stars within 1″ in 1900 and in 2025; progressed positions within 0.001° (the Moon 0.005°); solar returns within 90 seconds; the Lahiri ayanāṃśa within 0.001″ and a sidereal chart within 1″.

Later tradition, labelled

Numerology Chart: Each position shows where it was first printed; one first printed after 1930, such as the pinnacles and challenges, is marked Modern and given no reading.
Tarot: The three-card spread is marked modern: Waite gives no method with three cards. The trumps’ letters, paths and planets are named as the Golden Dawn’s.
Geomancy: The sixteenth figure is shown with its history — Fludd (1618), Hartmann’s “Supreme Judge” (1889), “the Reconciler” of The Equinox (1909) — and no reading. The signs the Golden Dawn used are shown as Heydon’s (1664), beside Agrippa’s and Gerard’s.
Zodiac, Date Resonance: Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are given as modern rulers, beside the traditional ones.
I Ching: The five phases of the trigrams are Xiao Ji’s (c. 600); the Shuo Kua names only four.
Lunar Mansions: The mansions are taken in the tropical zodiac, as modern practice does: Agrippa counts from the head of Aries of the eighth sphere, without an epoch.
Sacred Geometry: Names and meanings that come from modern sacred-geometry writing, such as Metatron’s Cube, are marked modern.

Left out, and why

The wording of Wilhelm and Baynes (1950): In copyright; Legge’s translation of 1882 is quoted instead. I Ching
Links from the trigrams to the Western elements, and from the hexagrams’ numbers to numerology: They joined two systems without a source. I Ching
Keyword meanings of the cards, and elemental dignities: Not Waite’s; the cards are read in his words. Tarot
Keywords for the signs and the elements: No source; the chart is described in Lilly’s and Ptolemy’s words. Natal Chart
Archetypes of the numbers (“The Leader” …) and readings in the second person: No source; the numbers are read in Balliett’s and Cheasley’s words. Numerology Chart, Root Numbers
Angel numbers: A practice of the 1990s and 2000s with no earlier source. Root Numbers
Readings in the second person and an element balance: No source; the figures are read in Cattan’s and Agrippa’s words. Geomancy
The four worlds by triads of sefirot: No source; Mathers’s scheme (1887) is used. Tree of Life
The zodiacal quinaries of the 72 angels: No print assigns them name by name. The 72 Names
The simple letters’ organs and faculties: The versions of Sefer Yetzirah disagree. The 231 Gates
Dee’s joined layout of 1584, and readings taken directly from Sloane MS 3191: No source fixes the layout’s left and right, and the manuscript has no images online. Enochian Tables
A dating of the Swedish Rite: No source was found. Calendar Systems
Lenormand, rune casting and name compatibility: No sourced interpretations.

Report an error

Each tool’s note, behind the ⓘ beside its title, ends with a link that starts an email to unveil888@pm.me naming the tool. Nothing you typed or a tool produced goes with it: say where the error is and, if you can, the source that shows it.

Works cited

187 works cited by the 77 tools, by world, from each tool’s note. A title links to the scan or edition used; where a tool quotes a passage, the tool links to its page.

CodeCiphers Cryptanalysis Encodings Steganography Modern crypto Text Archive

OccultGematria & numerology Astrology Divination Kabbalah Symbols & scripts Calendars