Collaborative Transcription

[Incognitus]

As most of you have probably seen in another thread, Mart and SkullTraill have posted pictures of 2 handwritten Masonic manuscripts. We now have a web portal that can be used for the community to collaborate on transcribing the documents. Currently, the The Seven Planetary Degrees or Fraters of the Seven Planets manuscript is uploaded and ready for transcription. The Masonic rituals - The Twelve Zodiacal Degrees manuscript will be uploaded soon.

It's my hope that in the future we're able to add more manuscripts and be the first group to transcribe them. Even if this isn't necessarily your area of interest, it's exciting to be able to be one of the first few people to read these handwritten documents. It's historical, if nothing else.

Just a warning - the handwriting is terrible! It's not going to be an easy transcription, although the transcription web site does have tools to change brightness, contrast, and zoom. We would like to invite anyone that is interested to sign up for an account. If you want to help transcribe, please browse to the site and sign up, then send me a private message on here with your username and I will set your account so that you can help contribute.

The website is: <link removed>

You do not need an account if you just want to follow along. You can view currently transcribed pages without a login. You just won't be able to contribute to the actual transcription.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Shoutout to SkullTraill and Mart!

 

[SkullTraill]

Thank you for hosting this effort.

As noted, the handwriting is truly terrible... so the more eyes we have on this, the better.

It's a community effort, and it would be great to transcribe this manuscript together, and produce a piece of work collaboratively that belongs to all of us members at WF.

So please support the effort, sign up, and help transcribe.

 

[Incognitus]

The second book, Masonic Rituals - The Twelve Zodiacal Degrees, has been added to the site for transcription.

 

[Mart]

Ok, so I've registered, but it won't let me do anything

 

[Incognitus]

Ok, so I've registered, but it won't let me do anything

I have to give accounts permission, else we'll end up with a ton of spammy BS. I updated your account, so you should be able to transcribe on both.

 

[SkullTraill]

We are making progress guys! Very exciting.

Please contribute!

 

[SkullTraill]

Spoiler: Stats

bump

 

[Incognitus]

Remember if you sign up and want to transcribe, please send me a message on here letting me know what your account name is so I can give it transcribe rights.

 

[Incognitus]

The transcription site will be down for about an hour. Core router is being replaced.

 

[Incognitus]

It's back. Nice new shiny router.

 

[SkullTraill]

Bit busy with work, will be back at this on Wednesday.

 

[Incognitus]

This is so weird. I can't find anything googling the "Brotherhood of the Seven Planets". This is perhaps completely new information to most people. Do we have any experts on Freemasonry here?

I also notice in one of these documents, there is a prayer/hymn that appears to reflect both Christianity and paganism:

let us all agree to love the Lord to bless the Lord - and so mote it be

 

[Incognitus]

Ahh, in this case it's the equivalent of "amen":

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[Protestant Priest]

Ok, I just got to this seance. I better get to the transcription poste haste.

Ahh, in this case it's the equivalent of "amen":

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Freemasonry is as esoteric as it comes and is notoriously popular for adopting local esoteric culture into its practices. I sure as hell experienced that in Togo. So the "mote it be" would probably be borrowed from witchcraft rites from that time. After all, the Scottish did burn witches by the thousands from the 16th century onwards.

 

[Mart]

Ahh, in this case it's the equivalent of "amen":

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It's the same as "so may it be", "so it is done", "my word has been spoken" or any other equivalent phrase to end the ceremony.

 

[Incognitus]

Good news - several more pages have been transcribed, needing fixes and some words filled in. Bad news - It appears to only be me working on it, which kind of nullifies the whole collaborative part of this.

I'm honestly not too broken up about it, because I find it interesting, but was hoping for at least one or two other people to put different eyes on the words that are hard to make out. My wife is going to try and help out.

 

[Scottish_Pride]

I was gonna pitch in, but then school happened and now I'm booked. I do wanna help over Christmas break, though!

 

[SkullTraill]

Good news - several more pages have been transcribed, needing fixes and some words filled in. Bad news - It appears to only be me working on it, which kind of nullifies the whole collaborative part of this.

I'm honestly not too broken up about it, because I find it interesting, but was hoping for at least one or two other people to put different eyes on the words that are hard to make out. My wife is going to try and help out.

Sorry man. Sad truth is even I have a lot of things to focus on right now.

Don't let it get you down... this is more of a slow burn thing anyway. Let's try to just chip away at it whenever we can. Don't stress too much.

 

[Mart]

Good news - several more pages have been transcribed, needing fixes and some words filled in. Bad news - It appears to only be me working on it, which kind of nullifies the whole collaborative part of this.

I'm honestly not too broken up about it, because I find it interesting, but was hoping for at least one or two other people to put different eyes on the words that are hard to make out. My wife is going to try and help out.

I'm opening it up from time to time, but then get frustrated about being unable to make anything out and have to leave, which is why I've submited these texts in the first place, for anyone to give their best shot at.. All my attempts have been pretty maddening so far.
I'll try to get into a few more pages once I feel up to it. All the effort is highly appreciated!

 

[SkullTraill]

Damn, just lost the work I was doing on page 75 of The Seven Planetary Degrees, because of some parsing errors. So Be careful when pasting in/editing if there are some non-unicode/stray "<" characters.