The 36 Tables of Soyga: Pattern, Code Words, and Open Questions

The famous Soyga tables have an orderly construction. The existence of a construction rule is an important discovery, but it should not be mistaken for a translation or a proof of their intended ritual use.

Number of tables: 36
Grid size: 36 × 36 letters each
Modern reconstruction: Jim Reeds

What the tables contain

At the end of the Latin treatise are thirty-six square arrays, each with thirty-six rows and thirty-six columns of letters. Reeds identifies two sequences of twelve tables labelled by the zodiac signs, followed by seven planetary labels, four elemental labels, and a final table called Magistri. Those headings make astrological language part of the work’s organization. They do not, by themselves, tell a reader what to do with any line of letters.

The labels also explain why a search for “Soyga astrology tables” reaches this subject. The categories are historical headings, not a modern natal chart or ephemeris. A 36-by-36 grid is a textual artifact made of Latin letters. The extant manuscript grids can differ at individual cells, while decorative reconstructions often smooth those differences away.

A rule for making a grid

Reeds found that a code word supplied for each table seeds a deterministic letter rule. His analysis starts with the first Aries table and follows how a repeated word and its reversal form one edge of the grid, after which a mapping and modular arithmetic generate further cells. OEIS records a documented reconstruction of that Aries table using the seed NISRAM. The computational description is modern scholarly analysis; it is not a surviving instruction printed beside each old table.

This is best understood as a discovery of construction. If the same seed and rule produce the same grid, apparently chaotic pages become a testable pattern. Reeds could also use the pattern to identify likely copying mistakes and compare manuscripts. That is a substantial historical result. Yet a reproducible output is not a decoded plaintext. The author’s purpose, the reader’s intended action, and any theological claim about the letters remain separate questions.

Worked example: construction rule versus decipherment

Start the first Aries table with NISRAM running down the left edge, followed by MARSIN, and repeat that pair until the column is full. Reeds assigns the twenty-three-letter Latin alphabet numerical positions and uses the letter immediately to the left to choose an offset. At the top left, n plus its assigned offset wraps around the alphabet to d; d then produces i, i produces z, and z produces b. Repeating the rule settles into the visible sequence dizb, dizb. The first row’s repetition is therefore generated, not random noise and not a phrase hidden by simple substitution.

That calculation answers “how can this page be rebuilt?” It does not answer “what sentence does the page say?” The distinction becomes visible if one changes a copied cell. A generation error propagates into a rectangular region because later cells depend on northern and western neighbors; a scribe’s one-cell substitution usually does not. Reeds used that difference to diagnose transmission and infer a common flawed ancestor for the two full witnesses. The rule reveals construction and copying history while leaving intended ritual meaning unresolved.

Comparing manuscript witnesses

Bodleian MS Bodley 908 and British Library Sloane MS 8 transmit closely related arrays. Reeds compares differences among their cells and finds errors unique to each as well as shared errors. His proposed family tree has both surviving books descend from an earlier flawed intermediary rather than one being a simple copy of the other. That is an inference from error patterns, not a photograph of a lost ancestor.

Eight Soyga tables also appear in Dee’s manuscript Sloane MS 3189, known as the Book of Enoch or Liber Loagaeth. Reeds argues that these are copies of Soyga tables, not only new grids inspired by their appearance. Their presence gives a concrete point of contact between the texts. The surrounding Loagaeth manuscript remains a separate witness with its own arrangement and history. Calling all of its grids “the Book of Soyga,” or all Soyga grids “Enochian tablets,” erases the evidence that makes this comparison useful.

Source distinction

Soyga is a Latin treatise; Dee’s angelic diary books and Liber Loagaeth are separate manuscripts. A copied table is evidence of contact, not identity.

Sources and records

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