“Is it a social club? Is it an entertainment? Is it a secret society? Is it a pyramid scheme, a Ponzi scheme, a cult? Is it a game?” he said. “If you believe it is a game, then it is a game with very high stakes.”
http://blog.longreads.com/2015/09/24/we-value-experience-can-a-secret-society-become-a-business/
It was actually an accident that brought to light the symbolic “sight-restoring” ritual. The decoding effort started as a sort of game between two friends that eventually engulfed a team of experts in disciplines ranging from machine translation to intellectual history. Its significance goes far beyond the contents of a single cipher. Hidden within coded manuscripts like these is a secret history of how esoteric, often radical notions of science, politics, and religion spread underground. At least that’s what experts believe. The only way to know for sure is to break the codes.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/ff-the-manuscript/all/