Theban W's deeper modern history runs through print rather than through any older tradition its 16th-century origin, discussed elsewhere in this atlas, might suggest. Among the several cipher and pseudo-angelic scripts Renaissance magicians collected, Theban is the odd one out: Celestial, Malachim and Passing the River, also covered in this atlas, all recode the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet letter for letter, and Enochian claims an entirely separate twenty-one-letter language of its own, but Theban is simply the twenty-six letters of the Latin alphabet redrawn, with no Hebrew or Enochian layer underneath W's own shape at all. W is itself the youngest letter of the Latin alphabet, discussed elsewhere in this atlas, and its Theban form dates only to the cipher's original 1518 printing rather than to any older layer of the script.
Modern Wiccan reference books, most influentially Scott Cunningham's widely read 1988 guide for solitary practitioners, printed a Theban chart as a ready private script for journalling, and the alphabet has since become one of the most commonly reproduced ciphers in general Wiccan and neopagan reference material, appearing on everything from printed grimoire templates to jewellery and tattoo designs.