Look at this most interesting thing: an enigmatic message written in an unintelligible code for over 300 years was finally unraveled thanks to a decoder available on the deep web. The most fascinating thing about the whole story is that the text - made up of a series of symbols and letters - was written by an Italian nun named Maria Crocifissa della Concezione who was supposedly possessed by the Devil.

According to Rossella Lorenzi of the Live Science website, the message was written in August 1676 when Maria was 31 years old and lived in the convent Palma di Montechiaro in Sicily. According to records at the time, the nun was reportedly found on the floor of her cell with her face covered in paint and holding the text. She would also have said that the note had been written by the Devil - in an attempt to make her turn against God and worship the Capiroto.

Hey Satan!

The message consists of 14 lines and was decoded by researchers at the Ludum Science Museum in Sicily using a computer program available on the deep internet. The team also analyzed historical records about the nun's life to find out more about the “possessed” since, according to museum staff, in the case of historical cryptography, the psychological profile of the creator of the message cannot be ignored.

Satanic message by Maria Crocifissa della Concezione (Beata Corbera)

The researchers found that the baptismal name of Maria Crocifissa della Concezione was actually Isabella Tomasi, and that she entered the convent at the age of 15. The team suspected that the message appeared to have been written in some kind of simplified language or perhaps in a code created by the nun from letters and words of ancient alphabets such as Arabic, Runic, and Greek.

Possession

To decode the message, the museum's researchers first analyzed the repetition of syllables and graphics present in the text to identify the vowels, and from there they used an algorithm to refine the decoding of the content. In fact, the museum staff hoped to discover the meaning of some loose symbols, nothing that made much sense.

However, to the team's surprise, the nun had a good command of ancient alphabets, which allowed the researchers to make sense of the decoded fragments. Basically, the text consists of ramblings and therefore some parts are incomprehensible, but in it Mary accuses the Holy Trinity - that is, God defined as Father, Son and Holy Spirit - of being "dead weights."

Palma di Montechiaro Convent in Sicily (Wikimedia Commons)

The nun still says something about God thinking that he can set mortals free, but that the system works for no one, and that perhaps the Styx is right. According to the researchers, in Greco-Roman mythology, this was the name of the river that separated the living world from the underworld.

At the time, the message was considered by the Church to be evidence of the nun's clash with countless evil spirits, and there are records that these evil forces attempted to force the woman to sign the message. However, she would have been able to heroically oppose the demands of the demonic specters and return to the Lord's arms.

Museum personnel suspect the poor religious woman is likely to suffer from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and soon a study of her findings will be published in a scientific journal.