[An excerpt from the section “Steganographia” in John Crowley’s novel FLINT AND MIRROR:]
Books of common phrases with fixed hidden meanings: every court possessed them, all differing from the books of other courts. The counting of the lines, the numbers of the letters, the variation of typefaces—anyone could do the arithmetic that revealed the meanings. But none of the tricks and devices common to earthly cyphers were of use in angelic communion: the face message might be cast in the most recondite language the writer possesses, only to baffle mere human investigators and spycatchers; the more urgent message beneath or behind the face message is directed to the angels, who flock to the writings of men, which they can never have enough of, because they cannot themselves create such things; even their consumption of them can be said to be more like eating and drinking than the human activity of reading. But the message they alone can carry and deliver, the message merely embodied in the outward paper and ink, is produced like the orderly web of a spider from the writer’s own body and soul, and is transmitted to the angel bearers by the writer’s hope and need as much as by his letters red and black.