Theban alphabet translator

Type on the left and the Theban letters are drawn on the right. Spaces keep the words apart. Digits and punctuation have no Theban letters, so they're left out, and the notes under the result list them.

Theban has no J, U or W. J is written with the letter for I and U with the letter for V, which is how they're usually written. W is two Vs by default. Some later charts put W under the last sign instead, and the W option does that.

Download saves the result as an SVG, which stays sharp at any size, for a card, a tattoo sketch or a page of a Book of Shadows. It only runs one way: the letters are drawn, so there's nothing to type back in. Read them off the chart below.

Theban was first printed in Johannes Trithemius's Polygraphia in 1518, where he credits it to Honorius of Thebes, citing Pietro d'Abano. It isn't known to appear in anything d'Abano wrote.

His student Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa printed it again in De occulta philosophia (Cologne, 1533), Book III, chapter 29. The letters on this page are traced from that plate, in the Library of Congress copy. Twenty-three letters run from A to Z, and the last sign is labelled Ω, a mark for the end. The End mark option adds it after your text.

Letter shapes drift from book to book. The 1613 reprint closes some loops, and modern charts redraw others. Agrippa's plate is the one they're all copied from, so if a chart you've found disagrees with this one, it's probably the newer one that changed.

Early modern occultists used Theban, and it's popular in Wicca today, mostly as a way to keep magical writing such as a Book of Shadows from casual readers. That's where the name witches' alphabet comes from. It's also called the Honorian alphabet, or the runes of Honorius, though it has nothing to do with runes.

It's a substitution of letters, not a language. English written in Theban is still English, and anyone with the chart can read it.