But given that the Vigenčre cipher was viewed as uncrackable, was there a perceived need for anything else? I suspect that the urge to invent new encryption methods has always been strong: if you have a cool idea based on your own field of expertise, you will suggest it (after all, if you cannot break it, it must be unbreakable!). In fact, the use of a transformation of the previous column seems to be like an autokey cipher. The first real autokey cipher was suggested ion 1556 by Cardano in De Subtilitate, but the first useful on was invented in 1564 by Giovan Battista Bellaso. Vigenčre published one in 1586. Liber Soyga was mentioned by Dee in 1583. Could the Soyga automaton be the result of somebody working on an autokey method, perhaps getting the bright idea of applying it again and again to itself? It would seem to fit into the time. Of course, the border between cryptography and angelic communication might have been blurry. Maybe the tables were seen as both. Sufficiently advanced cryptography is indistinguishable from magic.

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