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© Peter J. Forshaw, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004702073_003
Chapter 3
Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of
Divine Wisdom
‘For GOD loveth none but him that dwelleth with WISDOM’
(Wisdom 7:28) […] This saying of the Sage struck […] my mind when
I read it. Good GOD, what is this? GOD loves none but him that
dwells with WISDOM. He does not dwell, however, with WISDOM,
unless he walks in her ways, he loves GOD with all his heart, and
his Neighbour as himself, who first and before all things seeks the
kingdom of GOD, who fears GOD, and works righteousness, that is,
a THEOSOPHER, who alone is a countryman of true WISDOM.1
∵
This chapter considers the general conceptual framework within which Khun-
rath embedded his cabala, magic, and alchemy. In the majority of his works
he describes himself as a ‘Theosopher’ (Fig. 3.1), or rather a ‘faithful lover of
Theosophy’, and is listed as such in Johann Jacob Brucker’s Historia critica phi-
losophiae (Critical History of Philosophy, 1743).2 To most people, this probably
conjures up visions of the ‘Teutonic Theosopher’ Jacob Boehme (1575–1624)
1 Amph.II, 155 ‘Perculsit … animum meum, dum legebam, Vox haec Sapientis. Devs bone,
quid hoc est? neminem diligere Devm, nisi eum, qui cum Sapientia inhabitet: Inhabitat
autem cum Sapientia, non nisi in viis eius qui ambulat; qui Devm ex toto corde amat, &
Proximum sicut seipsum; qui primùm & ante omnia quaerit regnum Dei; qui timet Devm,
& operatur iustitiam, hoc est, T<h>eosophvs, qui solus verae Sapientiae incola.’ Carlos
Gilly, ‘The Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae of Heinrich Khunrath’, in Carlos Gilly and Cis
van Heertum (eds.
This chapter considers the general conceptual framework within which Khun-
rath embedded his cabala, magic, and alchemy. In the majority of his works
he describes himself as a ‘Theosopher’ (Fig. 3.1), or rather a ‘faithful lover of
Theosophy’, and is listed as such in Johann Jacob Brucker’s Historia critica phi-
losophiae (Critical History of Philosophy, 1743).2 To most people, this probably
conjures up visions of the ‘Teutonic Theosopher’ Jacob Boehme (1575–1624)
1 Amph.II, 155 ‘Perculsit … animum meum, dum legebam, Vox haec Sapientis. Devs bone,
quid hoc est? neminem diligere Devm, nisi eum, qui cum Sapientia inhabitet: Inhabitat
autem cum Sapientia, non nisi in viis eius qui ambulat; qui Devm ex toto corde amat, &
Proximum sicut seipsum; qui primùm & ante omnia quaerit regnum Dei; qui timet Devm,
& operatur iustitiam, hoc est, T<h>eosophvs, qui solus verae Sapientiae incola.’ Carlos
Gilly, ‘The Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae of Heinrich Khunrath’, in Carlos Gilly and Cis
van Heertum (eds.), Magia, Alchimia, Scienza dal ‘400 al ‘700. L’influsso di Ermete Trismegisto/
Magic, Alchemy and Science 15th–18th Centuries: The Influence of Hermes Trismegistus, 2 vols.
(Florence: Centro Di, 2002), Vol. 1, 325–350, at 342 points out that the word Sapientia
(Wisdom) occurs over three hundred times in the Amphitheatre.
2 Johann Jacob Brucker, Historia critica philosophiae (Leipzig, 1743), Vol. IV, Part 1, Chapter
III ‘De Theosophicis’, 675. For a brief introduction to Brucker, see Wouter J. Hanegraaff,
Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 63f. For a more
extended discussion, see Fernando Vidal, The Sciences of the Soul: The Early Modern Origins
of Psychology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 166ff.
3Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom
or the Russian Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) and the Theosophical Society.3
Blavatsky does indeed number Khunrath among the members of her extremely
eclectic tradition, describing him as ‘a most learned Kabalist, and the great-
est authority among mediaeval Occultists’,4 and one early owner of the 1609
Amphitheatre saw fit to bind Boehme’s Four Tables of Divine Revelation into his
copy.5 Khunrath’s Theosophy, however, should not be confused with either of
these forms, for it displays a more active engagement with all levels of reality
(physical, hyperphysical and divine) than his slightly younger contemporary,
Boehme, and, save for the occasional reference to gymnosophists, contains lit-
tle of Blavatsky’s orientalism, nor, of course, her anti-Christian orientation.6
Both Dorn and Khunrath more closely resemble Paracelsus in the encyclopae-
dic or pansophic scope of his activities,255 propounding a truly ‘Catholic’ the-
osophy in the sense of one that was all-encompassing in its endeavours.256
12 Khunrath’s Theosopher
Khunrath refers to the theosopher or theosophers at various points in the
Amphitheatre. His most complete description is found in the Isagoge or Intro-
ductory Commentary to the Amphitheatre’s most famous engraving, Circular
Figure 4, the Oratory-Laboratory (Fig. 3.3). There we learn that the Theosopher
is one who:
1) has the ideal of a healthy body and a healthy mind;257
2) avoids Sophistry but pursues ‘Eternal Wisdom’;
3) is not caught up in the pursuit of impure worldly wisdom;
4) is taught by God, mediately or immediately, by a spiritual or corporeal
master,258 and by the Books of Scripture and Nature;
5) has sufficient wealth to guarantee his independence of thought;
6) has practical experience in Physico-Chemistry;
7) observes God’s majesty as revealed in the activity of his minister, Nature,
in the physical world;
8) studiously imitates and attracts Nature in his work;
9) patiently and serenely waits in the Fear of God for the fruits of his works
in order to use them charitably for the help of his neighbour; and
10) keeps the secrets of divine wisdom for fear of their abuse and his conse-
quent punishment.259
Grataroli: sivè, ne fugiens prius avolet, quàm ipsum persequens, ut habet textus Dornej)
und das sich das Fewer lest machen …’. See Dorn (ed.), Trevisanus De Chymico Miraculo,
Quod Lapidem Philosophiae appellant. Dionys. Zecharius Gallus de eodem. Auctoritatibus
varijs Principum huius artis, Democriti, Gebri, Lullii, Villanovani, confirmati &
illustrati per Gerardum Dorneum (Basel, 1583), 40 ‘ne fugiens prius avolet quam ipsum
persequens.’
255 Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine, 9.
256 Amph.II, 89.
257 Amph.II, 212. See too 86, 168.
258 Cf. Calumniators: ‘Traditio Praeceptoris, Lumini naturae fideliter congruens’ (The
Instruction of a Teacher, faithfully agreeing with the Light of Nature). See also Khunrath,
Confessio, 3–4 ‘Ego partim habeo a Magistro, cui in aeternum sit bene, amen: partim vero
ex Revelatione divina.’
259 See Amph.II, 212–3 for all these criteria.
53Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom
The latter stipulation is reinforced a few pages later, with a reminder of the
advice from Matthew 7:6, not to give that which is holy to dogs, accompanied
by the wish,
May you fraternally talk together about the wonderful works of God;260
in the company of TheoSophers, that is, of those who thirst for, follow
and love from the bottom of their hearts the TRUTH OF TRUE WISDOM,
even in defiance of the devil and his scales.261
I. Recognise (Agnoscere) GOD and IHSVH Christ through Christian-Cabalist
prayer in the Oratory, on the basis of the Sacrosanct Scriptures;
II. Know (Noscere) THYSELF (Microcosm), through Divine Magic;
III. Understand (Cognoscere) the greater WORLD (Macrocosm) and its SON,
MAGNESIA of the Philosophers, through Alchemy in the Laboratory.353
Each of these goals is interconnected: the recognition of God, for example,
cannot take place without an understanding of Scripture ‘in and from’ God,
oneself, and the greater world; indeed, all three goals require knowledge of
all three ‘books’. The Recognition or Apprehension of God (Agnitio Dei) is
communicated Christian-Cabalistically, Self-Knowledge (Cognitio sui ipsius)
Divinely-Magically, and Understanding of the Macrocosm (Cognitio Mundi
maioris), Physico-Chymically.354 As the Summary explains, these three meth-
ods are taught ‘by praying in the Oratory’ and ‘by working in the Laboratory’. In
the final, concluding column of the table, Khunrath exults:
This is SOPHIA! This is highest PHILOSOPHY! This is the Theosophical,
Ter-triune, Universal, Direct, only true WAY to It, and by which the
OTHER goods (Oh! how innumerable! Oh, how wonderful!) are given to US!
Everything else is either superficial or circumferential, or false and void.355
19 I. The Book of God in the Ternary
As has been touched on above, Khunrath variously represents this knowledge
as one, two, or three ‘books.’ The notion of the world as a book had already
appeared, for example, in Synesius’s early fifth-century treatise on dreams
353 Khunrath’s editor, Erasmus Wolfart, summarises the aims in Amph.I, 10.
354 Amph.I, 7 ‘Agnitionem, Cognationem, Unionem & Fruitionem Jehovae; Cognitionem
Sui ipsius; Cognitionem ac Fruitionem Mundi Maioris’ (Recognition, Association, Union
and Enjoyment of Jehovah; Understanding of Oneself; Knowledge and Enjoyment of the
Greater World). See also Wolfart’s Greetings to the Reader, Amph.I, 10 where he writes,
‘VALE, & hoc Amphitheatro fruere, ad Agnitionem DEI, Cognitionem tuiipsius, digno-
tionem Naturæ, ad illuminationem Animæ, puritatem Spiritus, sanitatem Corporis’
(Farewell, and have the use and enjoyment of this Amphitheatre for the Recognition of
God, Knowledge of yourself, the discernment of Nature, illumination of the Soul, purity
of the Spirit, [and] health of the Body).
355 Summa table: ‘Hæc Sophia! Hæc Philosophia Summa! Hæc ad Hanc Via Theosophica,
Tertriuna, Catholica, Linearis, sola vera; quâq[ue] CÆTERA bona (ôh quàm innumera! Ôh
quàm miranda!) adiiciuntur Nobis! Alia omnis, vel superficialis; aut circumferentialis; aut
falsa & nulla.’
76 Chapter 3
As with Weigel, Arndt’s emphasis is less on the book-learning of professional
theologians and more on personal devotion:
Everyone now endeavors to be eminent and distinguished in the world,
but no one is willing to learn to be pious. Everyone now seeks out men
of great learning, from whom one may learn the arts, languages, and wis-
dom, but no one is willing to learn from our only teacher, Jesus Christ.104
Arndt had praised the Amphitheatre as early as 1596/97 in his work against
Calvinist iconoclasm in the duchy of Anhalt, the Ikonographia or commentary
on the right use and misuse of pictures in the Bible.105 As Wilhelm Schmidt-
Biggemann explains in his discussion of Arndt’s ‘Theology of Emblems’, in
his defense of images Arndt argues that pictures and the art of painting have
their origin in God, from the visions and revelations of the holy patriarchs and
prophets, which are received in four different ways:
1. Face to face, as was the case with Moses;
2. Through the Holy Spirit in the hearts and minds of prophets, as was the
case with David, particularly when he played his harp; the prophet Elijah
also heard spiritual string music;
3. When seers have waking visions, as was the case with the prophets
Samuel and Zechariah;
4. In dream visions, while sleeping, as in Jacob’s vision of the ladder.106
Most significantly for our story, in a discussion of the Signatures of nature in
the ninth chapter of Ikonographia, we read:
For as the Lord God revealed divine mystery through images, in the old
and new Testament, so Nature too, and God planted the prophecies
through images in Nature. For the whole of Nature, and all elements, ani-
mals, vegetables, minerals, are full of wondrous figures, characters, and
images, by which they give themselves to be known, and reveal all their
mystery through images, and from them can all things be learned, that is
natural, indeed just as well as from a written book, as now an excellent
Kühlmann and Joachim Telle (eds.), Der Frühparacelsismus (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer
Verlag, 2001), Part 1. For more on Arndt in Basel, see Wallmann, Theologie und Frömmigkeit
im Zeitalter des Barock (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1995), 153ff.
104 Arndt, True Christianity, 21–22.
105 Gilly, ‘The Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae of Heinrich Khunrath’, 345. See also Illg,
Ein anderer Mensch werden, 21ff, 285ff; Jörg Jochen Berns (ed.), Von Strittigkeit der Bilder:
Texte des deutschen Bildstreits im 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), 923.
106 Schmidt-Biggemann, Philosophia perennis, 22, citing Arndt, Ikonographia, 13v–14r.
22 Chapter 3
Philosopher, and investigator of nature, writes in his glorious and won-
derful Amphitheatre of divine and human wisdom.107
This is an extremely early reference to Khunrath’s 1595 Amphitheatre, made
just a year or two after its publication.
349 Amph.II, 107 ‘Tu sciole, qui parum Christianè negas, Devm à nobis cognosci non posse,
litiga super verbis hisce cum Sapiente nostro.’
350 Amph.II, 55 ‘Diuinorum mysteriorum cognitionem; politicae administrationis & guberna-
tionis prudentiam; totiusque Naturae rerum ordinem, causas, affectus, caelestium virtu-
tes, & terrestrium vires.’ See also Amph.I, 11.
74 Chapter 3
In two synoptic tables Khunrath sets forth his ‘Ter-tri-une, Catholic, True
Philosophy and the Method of Philosophising’,351 or ‘Tri-une Apocalyptic
Key,’352 to theoretical and experiential knowledge of these three domains: the
Divine, the Micro- and the Macrocosmic worlds. In the first of these tables, the
Summary of the Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom (Fig. 3.9), Man is exhorted to
learn to
351 Amph.II, 216.
352 Amph.I, 7 ‘APOCALYPTICA CLAVIS TRIVNA’.
Figure 3.9 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), inserted table: Summary of the Amphitheatre of Eternal
Wisdom. Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam, PH3246
75Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom
I. Recognise (Agnoscere) GOD and IHSVH Christ through Christian-Cabalist
prayer in the Oratory, on the basis of the Sacrosanct Scriptures;
II. Know (Noscere) THYSELF (Microcosm), through Divine Magic;
III. Understand (Cognoscere) the greater WORLD (Macrocosm) and its SON,
MAGNESIA of the Philosophers, through Alchemy in the Laboratory.353
Each of these goals is interconnected: the recognition of God, for example,
cannot take place without an understanding of Scripture ‘in and from’ God,
oneself, and the greater world; indeed, all three goals require knowledge of
all three ‘books’. The Recognition or Apprehension of God (Agnitio Dei) is
communicated Christian-Cabalistically, Self-Knowledge (Cognitio sui ipsius)
Divinely-Magically, and Understanding of the Macrocosm (Cognitio Mundi
maioris), Physico-Chymically.354 As the Summary explains, these three meth-
ods are taught ‘by praying in the Oratory’ and ‘by working in the Laboratory’. In
the final, concluding column of the table, Khunrath exults:
This is SOPHIA! This is highest PHILOSOPHY! This is the Theosophical,
Ter-triune, Universal, Direct, only true WAY to It, and by which the
OTHER goods (Oh! how innumerable! Oh, how wonderful!) are given to US!
Everything else is either superficial or circumferential, or false and void.355
19 I. The Book of God in the Ternary
22 Filius Theanthropos – the Divinely-Human Son
This discussion of the filial brings us to the second person of the Trinity, and
the epitome of the beneficent aspect of divinity, Christ as God the Son, or in
Khunrath’s usage, God the Brother, a sentiment also found in Weigel.407 As
θεανθρωπος [theanthrōpos], God-Man or Divine Man, a term Khunrath possibly
took from Reuchlin’s On the Wonder-Working Word,408 Christ is the most per-
sonal of the hypostases and as such the focus of Khunrath’s devotion, the sym-
bol of man’s perfection, the perfect microcosm, linking God and the universe
he embodies, as both the purest image of the divine exemplar and the highest
perfection of creation.409
Thus it is that we find the Hebrew words חכמה אל (Chochmah-El) on the
tent-like tabernacle of the Oratory in the fourth circular figure, signifying
400 Amph.II, 107, 157.
401 Amph.II, 125. See Figure 1 for the Decalogue and Shema prayer, discussed in more detail in
Chapter 4.
402 Amph.II, 137.
403 Amph.II, 88, 150 (mispaginated as 148 [T3v]).
404 Proverbs 7:1, 9:10.
405 Amph.II, 102.
406 See Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 48 concerning Recanati on two types of fear: inter-
nal and external ‘The external fear is below love, and the internal is above love.’
407 Circular Figure 2. See Weeks, Valentin Weigel, 167.
408 Reuchlin, De Verbo Mirifico, in Pistorius, Artis Cabalisticae, 952 ‘theanthropos illum: id est,
Deum hominem’; in the margin: ‘theanthropou Christi confirmatio’.
409 Amph.II, 44–5, 57.
87Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom
Christ as the ‘Wisdom of God’,410 to whom all petitions are addressed, the
‘Eternal Wisdom’ of the Amphitheatre’s title.411
3.3 Comparison of Reuchlin and Pico’s Grades of Cognition 128
3.4 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1595/1609), Circular Figure 2: Ladder of
Conjunction and Union (ascending) 149
3.5 Comparison of Khunrath’s Grades of Cognition and Union with Dorn’s
meditative philosophy 187
4.1 The ten Sephiroth (descending) 222
4.2 How to unfold the Quaternarius into the Denarius 244
4.3 Comparison between Khunrath, Amphitheatrum and Reuchlin,
De arte Cabalistica 288
4.4 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1595/1609), Circular Figure 1 Hebrew in the 10
sections of the circumference 292
4.5 The Decalogue aligned with the Angelic Orders 330
4.6 Comparison of Angelic Orders 333
4.7 The Decalogue aligned with the Sephiroth 356
4.8 Correspondences between Sephiroth and Shemoth in Khunrath, Agrippa,
and Ricci 358
4.9 Claude de Bourges, Amphyteatre de la Sapience (1646), fol. 1, Divine Names
and Sephiroth 363
4.10 Divine attributes (Middoth) and corresponding human virtues 399
© Peter J. Forshaw, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004702073_002
Introductory Note
This is the second volume in a four-volume monograph on the life and works
of the German alchemist, magus and Christian-Cabalist Heinrich Khunrath of
Leipzig (1560–1605), ‘doctor of both medicines and faithful lover of Theosophy.’
Its two chapters focus on the more religio-philosophical dimensions of Khun-
rath’s writings. Chapter 3 begins with an investigation of the significance of the
theosophical approach underpinning his work, his sense of being a lover of
divine wisdom, one taught by God. This begins with notions of theosophy from
antiquity to the early modern period; then moves to some contemporary rep-
resentatives and influences on his own theosophy, Valentin Weigel (1533–1588)
and Johann Arndt (1555–1621), before paying attention to Khunrath’s approach,
including his repeated injunction ‘Ora et Labora’ (Pray and Work), how this
manifests in his reading of the Three Books of Scripture, Nature and Oneself,
and his promotion of Ten Grades of Cognition and a Ladder of Conjunction
and Union. Chapter 4 investigates Khunrath’s interest in Christian Cabala,
providing some background information about Jewish Kabbalah, discussion
of possible sources for his ideas, including Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
(1463–1494), Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), and Johann Pistorius (1546–1608),
followed by a detailed analysis of his Christian-Cabalist Sigillum Dei or Seal
of God.
© Peter J. Forshaw, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004702073_003
Chapter 3
Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of
Divine Wisdom
Peter J. Forshaw
Ph.D. (2004), London University, is Associate Professor in History of Western
Esotericism at the University of Amsterdam. He was editor of the journal Aries
(2010-2020), has edited essay collections and published articles and chapters
on esotericism and occult philosophy.
Aries Book Series Texts and Studies in Western Esotericism / 38
ARBS
38
The Mage’s Images:
Heinrich Khunrath
in His Oratory
and Laboratory
Volume 2
Theosopher & Christian Cabalist
Peter J. Forshaw
Th
e M
age’s Im
ages: H
ein
rich
K
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u
n
rath
in
H
is O
rato
ry an
d
Lab
o
rato
ry
V
o
lu
m
e 2
Theosopher &
C
hristian C
abalist
P
eter J. Fo
rsh
aw
Front Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Figures
Tables
Introductory Note
Chapter 3 Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom
1 Pre-Modern Uses of the Term Theosophy
2 Characteristics of Early Modern Theosophy
3 Proto-Theosophers and Theophrastia Sancta
4 Valentin Weigel (1533–1588)
5 Johann Arndt (1555–1621)
6 Enthusiasm
7 The Anti-Trinitarians’ Contempt of Divine Tri-Unity
8 An Unorthodox Lutheran?
9 A Faithful Lover of Theosophy
10 Theodidaktos – Taught by God
11 Hermetic Philosophy and Pansophy
12 Khunrath’s Theosopher
13 Qualifications to be a Magus
14 Ora et Labora
15 Ora, Oratio, Oraculum
16 Exegesis: Interpreting the Three Books
17 Labora
18 The Triune Apocalyptic Key
19 I. The Book of God in the Ternary
20 Book of God, Book of Scripture
21 Deus Pater Archetypos – God, the Father, the Archetype
22 Filius Theanthropos – the Divinely-Human Son
23 Spiritus Polypoikilos – Multiform Spirit
24 II. Book of Nature, Book of Creation
25 Χαος – Chaos
26 אלהים רוח – Ruach Elohim – Spirit of the Lord
27 שמים – Schamaim – Heaven
28 Three Heavens
29 1) The Lower Sublunar Heaven
30 2) Rachia: the Firmament of Heaven
31 3) The Super-Supreme Empyrean
32 III.
135Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom
according to Averroes or Albertus Magnus,680 Khunrath’s notion of ‘MIND, or
the Divinely inspired SOUL of man’, has a definite sense of being part of the
human soul, though perhaps indeed ‘external’ in the sense of ‘incorporeal’.681
34 The Threefold Eye and Three Kinds of Vision
Khunrath speaks more than once of the ‘ears as much of the reason, intellect
and mind, as of the senses or the body’682 and likewise of the ‘eyes of my mind,
intellect, reason and senses,’683 or more generally of the doors ‘of your senses,
reason, intellect and mind.’684 In this he may well be revealing the influence of
Augustine, who writes of three kinds of vision: visio corporalis, spiritualis and
intellectualis, involving the outer eye, inner eye (seeing images presented to
the imagination), and eye of the mind,685 or indeed of Valentin Weigel, who
develops the concept of a threefold eye in Der güldene Griff, from the outer-
most, the Visus sensualis or imaginatio, related to the senses; moving inwards
to the Oculus rationis, and finally the innermost eye, Oculus mentis seu intel-
lectus, closest to the eternal or inner eye of God.686 Moving from the eyes of
the senses to those of the mind, drawing from Platonising philosophy and
Solomonic wisdom in support of his theosophy, Khunrath remarks in a com-
mentary on Wisdom 8:2,687
Who (as Cicero the Pagan rightly writes about WISDOM, from Divinely
illumined Plato) if she were seen with sensual eyes, she would arouse
680 Bernard Blankenhorn, The Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian Mysticism in Albert
the Great and Thomas Aquinas (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press,
2015), 163.
681 Amph.II, 90 ‘Trivna, videlicet. Primò, Natvra atque Creatvra, hoc est, Mundus maior
totus, cum creaturis Spiritualibus; & Corpus ac Spiritus Hominis, id est, Mundi minoris:
Secundò, Mens, siuè Anima homini Diuinitus inspirata: Tertiò SS.a Scriptura; quod est
Verbvm Dei Biblicè scriptum.’
682 Amph.II, 3 ‘Auribus tam rationis, intellectus & mentis, quam sensuum siuè corporis’.
683 Amph.II, 82 ‘oculos mentis, intellectus, rationis ac sensuum meos.’
684 Amph.II, 113 ‘Assidentem foribus, &c.] Quibusnam? Sensuum tuorum, Rationis, Intellectus
ac Mentis.’
685 Veerle Fraeters, ‘Visio/Vision’, in Hollywood and Beckman (eds.), The Cambridge Compan-
ion to Christian Mysticism, 178–188, at 179.
686 Weigel, Der güldene Griff (Frankfurt, 1697), caps 3, 4, 6, 7.
687 Wisdom 8:2 ‘Her have I loved, and have sought her from my youth, and have desired to
make my wife, and I was captivated by love of her beauty.’
136 Chapter 3
Language of Magic’, in Ilana Zinguer (ed.), L’Hébreu au temps de la Renaissance (Leiden:
Brill, 1992), 89–104. See Chapter 4 on Khunrath’s Cabala.
247 For a translation, see Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek ‘Corpus Hermeticum’
and the Latin ‘Asclepius’ in a new English Translation, with notes and introduction (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992; repr. 1995; repr. 2000). See also Cees Leijenhorst,
‘Francesco Patrizi’s Hermetic Philosophy’, in Roelof van den Broek and Wouter J. Hane-
graaff (eds.), Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times (New York: State
University of New York Press, 1998), 125–146; Karl Schuhmann, ‘Francesco Patrizi und die
hermetische Philosophie’, in Karl Schuhmann, Selected papers on Renaissance Philosophy
and on Thomas Hobbes, edited by Piet Steenbakkers and Cees Leijenhorst (Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004), 157–170; Wouter J. Hanegraaff, ‘Altered States of
Knowledge: The Attainment of Gnosis in the Hermetica’, The International Journal of the
51Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom
alchemy – or spiritual piety and natural science.’248 Khunrath’s philosophy is a
philosophia pia, in which the search for Truth is attained through ‘pious inves-
tigation, assiduous prayers and tireless works, in Oratory and Laboratory.’249
Just as in the Pimander Hermes Trismegistus, whom Khunrath states ‘was
inspired by the Divine Spirit’,250 asks to be taught about the nature of things
and to know God, so the Lutheran theosopher seeks knowledge not only of the
secrets of nature, but also preparation for spiritual transformation from the
Old Adam into the New.251
Indeed, Khunrath’s Theosophy has pansophical ambitions, aiming at under-
standing ‘as much in Natural, Artificial, Mechanical things, etc. as in Meta-
physical and Divine’, and as such far exceeds the scope of the predominantly
metaphysical theosophy propounded by Weigel, Arndt, or Boehme.252 With
his interest both in the mechanical arts (which generally included alchemy,
medicine, optics, agriculture and navigation)253 and in union with the Divine,
i.e. the realms of physics and metaphysics, Khunrath more closely resembles
another ‘early protagonist of mystically and theosophically-oriented alchemy,’
the Flemish chemical philosopher Gérard Dorn (c.1530–1584), editor and com-
mentator of Paracelsus, whose writings range from the construction of alchem-
ical furnaces to a philosophia speculativa leading to union with God, his works
occupying almost 400 pages in the first volume of the Theatrum Chemicum.254
471 Szulakowska, The Alchemy of Light, 24, 92.
95Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom
the Servant of the Macrocosm, the counterpart to Christ as the Saviour of the
Microcosm.472 In a gloss of Wisdom 7:22 ‘In Wisdom is the Spirit’, that sounds
like a theory of divine emanation influenced by the Kabbalistic Tree of Life,
Khunrath explains that this spirit is ‘πνευμα μονογενες και πολυμερες [pneuma
monogenes kai polymeres], Only-born or Only-begotten, and Manifold,
because, born and come forth from that simple and Unique Nature of GOD,
it spreads itself as if though branches, throughout these innumerable parts of
the World.’473 He adds that ‘Multiplicity is also attributed to this Spirit of GOD,
472 For more on the relation between Christ and the Philosophers’ Stone, see Chapter 6 on
Khunrath’s Alchemy.
473 Amph.II, 56 ‘Est & dicitur πνευμα μονογενἐς και πολυμερἐς, Vnigenus siue Vnigenitus, &
Multiplex, quod ab illa simplici Vnicaque Dei Natura ortus & profectus, se per has Mundi
partes innumeras, quasi per ramos diffundat.’ Most of this definition is not original to
Khunrath, but in fact lifted verbatim from Stephanus, Biblia Utriusque Testamenti (1557),
99r n. 22.
Figure 3.15 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), Title page, detail: Ruach Elohim mediantibus
Schamaim – Spirit of the Lord with the Heavens mediating. Royal Danish
Library, Copenhagen, Shelfmark 3, 273c, 01293 S-1977
96 Chapter 3
on account of the variety of virtues and powers infused in the Things, into
which it descends.’474
3. Micro-Cosmically, in Man, and indeed σωματικως [sōmatikōs –
somatically], that is, corporeally, or in solid matter, in body and Spirit,
by reason of the fifth Essence, simply, [in] the Soul or mind, which is a
particle of the Divine breath.475
466 Amph.II, 109 ‘in quadrante horulæ, imò in momento, (suspicor institutione Genii mei
boni gratia Dei mihi adsistentis) me plus intellexisse, quàm antea spatio anni totius.’
467 Amph.II, 111 ‘Virtute & assistentia Spiritvs huius poteris Omnia.’
468 Amph.II, 111 ‘2. Macro-Cosmicè Naturâ (quæ Rvach elohim, Gen. 1. aut Anima
Mundi) Catholicè, hoc est, vniuersali virtute ac operatione, in Lapide Philosophorum;
Particulariter, in singulis Creaturis, tam spiritualibus quàm corporalibus, & quæ ex hisce
sunt, per totum vniuersum creatum.’
469 For example, Genesis 1:2 ‘And the Spirit of God moved over the waters’. But see also Amph.
II, 9 ‘The Spirit of the Lord hath spoken by me, says David, 2 Samuel 23:2, and his word
by my tongue.’ This becomes more puzzling when we take into account Amph.II, 100 ‘It
makes the Sons of God, Romans 8:14, Whoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the
sons of God’.
470 See Miklós Vassányi, Anima Mundi: The Rise of the World Soul Theory in Modern German
Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer Verlag, 2011), Introduction, for a discussion of the Soul of
the World in Plato, Plotinus, Classical and Early Modern Conceptions of the World Soul;
Chapter 6 on Böhme and Oetinger; and Chapter 8 on Giordano Bruno’s De la causa, prin-
cipio et uno (Venice, 1584) and De l’infinito, universo e mondi (London, 1584).
471 Szulakowska, The Alchemy of Light, 24, 92.
95Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom
the Servant of the Macrocosm, the counterpart to Christ as the Saviour of the
Microcosm.472 In a gloss of Wisdom 7:22 ‘In Wisdom is the Spirit’, that sounds
like a theory of divine emanation influenced by the Kabbalistic Tree of Life,
Khunrath explains that this spirit is ‘πνευμα μονογενες και πολυμερες [pneuma
monogenes kai polymeres], Only-born or Only-begotten, and Manifold,
because, born and come forth from that simple and Unique Nature of GOD,
it spreads itself as if though branches, throughout these innumerable parts of
the World.’473 He adds that ‘Multiplicity is also attributed to this Spirit of GOD,
472 For more on the relation between Christ and the Philosophers’ Stone, see Chapter 6 on
Khunrath’s Alchemy.
214 Amph.II, 34 ‘in Minervæ templo Micro-Cosmico meo’; 99 ‘Sanctuarium Sapientiæ;
Minervæ templum MicroCosmico’.
215 Amph.II, 87 ‘Cicero Ethnicus prudens’.
216 John Warwick Montgomery, Cross and Crucible: Johann Valentin Andreæ (1586–1654)
Phoenix of the Theologians, 2 vols. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), Vol. 1, 17 f.n.
217 Fictuld, Der längst gewünschte und versprochene Chymisch-Philosophische Probier-Stein,
60 ‘Gar nothwendige drey fragen von D. Heinrich Cunrad in Leipzig, de 1607. Es sind
45Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom
It would not be correct, however, to overly identify Khunrath with Weigel or
Arndt. As a practising doctor of medicine and physico-chymist, with a concern
for the physical, psychological and spiritual, his work more fully embodies
Paracelsus’s broad spectrum of pursuits than either the pastor Weigel or the
‘prophet of interior Protestantism’ Arndt, who were both first and foremost
theologians.218 Nor would it be wise, while acknowledging the inspiration
these ‘proto-theosophers’ drew from Paracelsus, to simply assume that they
were all practising an extended Paracelsianism, or indeed an identical ‘pro-
to’-theosophy. If anything, Weigel and Arndt could be argued to represent less
an ‘extended’ than a ‘truncated’ form of Paracelsianism, more closely resem-
bling the sublimation of its discourse in the fusion of rudimentary Paracelsian
chemical theory with Christian mysticism in the theosophy of Boehme.219 As
shall be shown, although Khunrath is indeed indebted to Paracelsus and shares
much in common with Arndt and Weigel, he draws from an extremely diverse
range of sources in the formulation of his theosophy.
9 A Faithful Lover of Theosophy
Khunrath presents himself as Theosophiae Amator, a Lover of Theosophy, on
the title page of the first edition of the Amphitheatre in 1595.220 A couple of
years later, in On Primaterial Chaos (1597), he provides several glosses and
wenige Blätter, aber sein mit der Liebe Jesu erfulltes.’ Arnold, Unpartheyische Kirchen und
Ketzer Historie, Vol. 3, 12 ‘findet man zuforderst in seinen schrifften, daß er zum grunde
alles seines vortrags das göttliche wort.’
14 Ora et Labora
The Amphitheatre, Khunrath claims, Christianly teaches ‘WITH TRUE WIS-
DOM, TO WHOM, WHAT, WHERE, BY WHAT MEANS, HOW LONG, WHY, HOW,
[AND] WHEN it may and should be done’.292 Its ‘Theo-Sophical Method’293
286 This translation is from the English edition, John Baptista Porta, Natural Magick (London,
1658), Book 1, Chapter 3. The Instruction of a Magician, and what manner of man a
Magician ought to be, 3–4.
287 Amph.II, 162. Horace, Epistles, Book 1, Epistle 17, l. 36.
288 Amph.II, 121. See Galen, De differentiis pulsuum, Lib.IV, in Erasmus, Collected Works of
Erasmus, Vol. 34, Adages II vii 1 to III iii 100, translated and annotated by R.A.B. Mynors
(Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1993), 143 II.x.42.
289 Amph.II, 172: ‘Sint tibi amicorum plures, arcanum uerò tuum vix è millibus uni reuela.’ See
also Magnesia, 45.
290 Amph.II, 215.
291 Magnesia, 45. See also Amph.I, 22.
292 Amph.I, 7 ‘Sapientia vera, cvi, qvid, vbi, qvibvs avxiliis, qvamdiv, cvr, qvo-
modo, qvando, fieri possit ac debeat.’
293 Amph.II, 92, ‘methodo TheoSophica’; 154; School of Nature.
61Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom
394 Amph.II, 73–4.
395 See Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and the New, Chapter 8, “To the Unknown God”
Luther and Calvin on the Hiddenness of God. See also the London, 1647 translation by
85Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom
21 Deus Pater Archetypos – God, the Father, the Archetype
It is clear in the opening passage of the Amphitheatre, addressed to YHVH
Elohim Tzebaoth, Jehovah, Lord of Hosts, that Khunrath chooses to emphasise
the creative aspects of God’s Nature as ‘Perpetual Author, Preserver, Governor
of the whole body of formed and created things existing in the whole Universe’,
i.e. God as Creator and as Lord of the angelic hosts. As an alchemist, Christian
Cabalist and magus, Khunrath is especially drawn to the vision of God as the
Archetype of the World, the First Exemplar of the World.396 This notion of God
as Archetypos is further developed in the Amphitheatre’s second circular fig-
ure, in this case providing clues to how Khunrath perceived the relationship
between God and Man. Somewhat reminiscent of the set of three volvelles
in the thirteenth-century Franciscan logician and philosopher Ramon Lull’s
Ars Brevis, which sought to approach God through the contemplation of nine
divine ‘dignities’ or ‘axioms’ (goodness, greatness, eternity; power, wisdom,
love; virtue, truth, and glory),397 Khunrath’s second circular figure depicts ten
rays, bearing thirteen attributes (Eternal, Terrible, Just, Merciful, etc) emanat-
ing from the Sun of the divine Archetype.398
From these attributes we gain a strong impression of the Old Testament
two-fold hand of God, both Helper and Avenger, the powerful and forbid-
ding ‘YHVH Elohim Tzebaoth [Lord God of Hosts], GOD OF GODS, BEING OF
BEINGS,’ demanding recognition of the helpful hand and fear of the vengeful,
and exacting punishment from those like Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar who
ignore His authority.399 As with all Khunrath’s theosophy, acknowledgement
and knowledge of God involves practice as much as theory. It is not simply the
John Sparrow of Boehme, The Clavis or Key, or An Exposition of Some Principall Matters,
and Words in the Writings of Jacob Behmen, printed in The Works of Jacob Behmen, 2:7;
Sämtliche Schriften,
Figure 3.24
Theosopher at Prayer, Tabulae
Theosophicae Cabbalisticae
London, British Library Ms.
Sloane 181, detail. © The British
Library Board
165Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom
out from these potent symbols, which are superimposed on his face, surely
encouraging some form of mystical reflection and identification with Christ,
Eternal Wisdom and Adam, the spiritually reborn inner man, Lover of Wisdom.
39 3) Cognitio (Knowledge) and 4) Amor (Love)
In his seventeenth-century translation of the Amphitheatre, commenting on
the Ladder of Union, Claude de Bourges writes
It is necessary to meditate in order to happily attain Knowledge, which
will be to pass through the second degree of Union, for Meditation based
on the principles makes [one] configure the subject of Meditation men-
tally and in spirit until such a point that one perceives the truth which
must be put into practice as a result of Knowledge.831
When writing of Neoplatonically ascending in thought to the One,
both Ficino and Pico distinguished between logical understanding and
831 Amsterdam, Ritman Library, Ms. BPH M490 L’Amphyteatre de la Sapience eternelle, 23
‘Il fault mediter pour heureusement parvenir a la science, qui sera passer par le second
degré d’union, car la meditation appuiee sur les principes faict dessigner mentallement
et en esprit le subiet de meditation jusqua tel point que l’on appercoiue la verité laquelle
doit estre mise en pratique par l’effect de cognoissance.’
Figure 3.25 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1595), Oratory-Laboratory, detail:
Theosopher meditating in front of Amphitheatre Circular
Figures 1 & 2. Oberösterreichische Landesbibliothek, Linz
166 Chapter 3
dialectical contemplation, which is the summit of the soul’s intellectual
activity.832 Ultimately, the thought by which the human soul is able to transcend
itself is not the process of discursive reasoning concerned with the abstrac-
tion of universal ideas, but rather an intuitive vision of intelligible reality.833 In
Hugh of St Victor’s terms, this is the movement from meditation to contempla-
tion, as it were a paradigm shift of the soul, a transition from ratio to intellectus,
scientia to sapientia, epistēmē to gnōsis, to the more-than-rational conclusion
of a dialectical process in the goal of amor intellectualis. In the ‘Outline of the
Third Grade’, Khunrath’s use of the terms nosse and scire to denote two differ-
ent forms of knowledge, the one experiential, the other intellectual seems to
suggest a similar understanding.834
Cover illustration: Cover illustration: Adam Androgyne. From Heinrich Khunrath, Amphitheatrum
sapientiae aeternae (Hamburg, 1595). Duveen Collection, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at https://catalog.loc.gov
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For Wendy, Cecil, Hilda, and May
∵
Contents
Acknowledgments xi
List of Figures xv
List of Tables xxii
Introductory Note 1
3 Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom 2
1 Pre-Modern Uses of the Term Theosophy 4
2 Characteristics of Early Modern Theosophy 8
3 Proto-Theosophers and Theophrastia Sancta 11
4 Valentin Weigel (1533–1588) 13
5 Johann Arndt (1555–1621) 19
6 Enthusiasm 28
7 The Anti-Trinitarians’ Contempt of Divine Tri-Unity 35
8 An Unorthodox Lutheran? 38
9 A Faithful Lover of Theosophy 45
10 Theodidaktos – Taught by God 48
11 Hermetic Philosophy and Pansophy 50
12 Khunrath’s Theosopher 52
13 Qualifications to be a Magus 58
14 Ora et Labora 60
15 Ora, Oratio, Oraculum 62
16 Exegesis: Interpreting the Three Books 65
17 Labora 71
18 The Triune Apocalyptic Key 73
19 I. The Book of God in the Ternary 75
20 Book of God, Book of Scripture 82
21 Deus Pater Archetypos – God, the Father, the Archetype 85
22 Filius Theanthropos – the Divinely-Human Son 86
23 Spiritus Polypoikilos – Multiform Spirit 89
24 II. Book of Nature, Book of Creation 97
25 Χαος – Chaos 103
Ruach Elohim – Spirit of the Lord 105 – רוח אלהים 26
Schamaim – Heaven 113 – שמים 27
28 Three Heavens 117
29 1) The Lower Sublunar Heaven 117
30 2) Rachia: the Firmament of Heaven 118
31 3) The Super-Supreme Empyrean 119
viii Contents
79Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom
Early on in the Amphitheatre we find a passage in which Khunrath provides
a relatively straightforward explanation of the instruction received concerning
body, spirit and soul:
Instruction, which Divinely falls to one’s lot, comes to be embraced with
great quickness of mind, with heavenly and holy desire. Let it here be
noted that it is a learned Intelligence, not that vulgar, common and easily
attained kind; but that which knows celestial, Theological, macro- and
micro-cosmic instruction. It is divided into Justice, which concerns the
soul of man; Judgement, which concerns his body; [and] Rectitude, which
concerns his spirit, and morals, whose duty and calling it forms; so that
one acts religiously in divine matters, justly in human, [and] rightly in
one’s own, towards God, men and oneself.376
This passage evidently made a strong impression on one seventeenth-century
reader, whose Ramist diagrammatic rendition of the information can be found
in a copy of the Amphitheatre in the Warburg Institute, London (Fig. 3.11).377
376 Amph.II, 4: ‘Et suscipiendam] Eruditio, quæ Diuinitùs contingit, magna solertia, cælesti &
sancto desiderio amplectenda venit. Notanda etiam hîc est erudita Intelligentia; non vul-
garis illa, communis & cuiuis obuia; sed quæ cælestem eruditionem sapiat, Theologicam,
macro & microcosmicam. Hanc distribuit in Iustitiam, quæ animam hominis concernit;
in Iudicium, quod corpus; in Rectitudinem, quæ spiritum, mores, & cuiusque officium ac
vocationem conformat: vt sanctè agat in diuinis, iustè in humanis, rectè in propriis
Visible: 0% - 94%
Summary of Chapter 3: "Khunrath the Theosopher – a Lover of Divine Wisdom"
from Peter J. Forshaw, _The Mage’s Images: Heinrich Khunrath in His Oratory and Laboratory, Volume 2_ (Brill, 2025)
This chapter explores the theosophical framework underlying Heinrich Khunrath’s fusion of magic, cabala, and alchemy, emphasizing his identity as a “lover of divine wisdom” — a Theosophiae Amator — taught directly by God (Theodidaktos).
Overall, Chapter 3 portrays Khunrath as a theosopher whose religious life and scientific work are inseparable. His work offers a comprehensive spiritual epistemology where prayer, natural inquiry, and inner transformation form a single path toward divine wisdom.
continue with the next chapter. give me page number references and direct quotations of forshaw's exact words at key moments
{"queries": ["Summary of Chapter 4: Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word with key quotations and page numbers"]}
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Chapter 4 Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word
1 The Origins of Christian Cabala
2 Proto-Kabbalah of the Sepher Yetzirah
3 Bahir: Book of Illumination
4 The Works of Bereshit and Merkavah
5 Zohar: Book of Splendour
6 Ten Sephiroth on the Tree of Life
7 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and the Genesis of Christian Cabala
8 Exegetical Techniques in Jewish Kabbalah
9 Gematria
10 Notarikon/Notariacon
11 Temurah or Tziruf
12 Exegetical Examples from Pico’s Conclusions and Heptaplus
13 Johann Reuchlin’s Neo-Pythagorean Cabala
14 On the Wonder-Working Word (1494)
15 On the Cabalistic Art (1517)
16 Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy
17 John Dee’s Hieroglyphic Monad
18 Sources for Khunrath’s Knowledge of Cabala
19 Other Potential Sources
20 Cabala in Khunrath’s Works
21 Aben –
Index of Names
Index of Subjects
Back Cover
32 III. Book of Man, Book of Conscience 120
33 Ten Grades of Cognition 123
34 The Threefold Eye and Three Kinds of Vision 135
35 The Ladder of Conjunction and Union 140
36 Prologue: Seven Steps to the Sanctuary 145
37 1) Fides (Faith) 151
38 2) Meditatio (Meditation) 158
39 3) Cognitio (Knowledge) and 4) Amor (Love) 165
40 5) Spes (Hope) 171
41 6) Oratio (Prayer) 173
42 7) Conjunctio (Conjunction) 182
43 8) Frequentia (Concourse & Constant Practice) 186
44 Gerard Dorn’s Speculative or Meditative Philosophy 187
45 9) Familiaritas (Familiarity) 192
46 10) Similitudo (Likeness) 194
47 Deification 198
48 Conclusion 211
49 Ascent and Descent 212
4 Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word 215
1 The Origins of Christian Cabala 215
2 Proto-Kabbalah of the Sepher Yetzirah 217
3 Bahir: Book of Illumination 218
4 The Works of Bereshit and Merkavah 219
5 Zohar: Book of Splendour 220
6 Ten Sephiroth on the Tree of Life 221
7 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and the Genesis of
Christian Cabala 228
8 Exegetical Techniques in Jewish Kabbalah 232
9 Gematria 234
10 Notarikon/Notariacon 237
11 Temurah or Tziruf 240
12 Exegetical Examples from Pico’s Conclusions and Heptaplus 240
13 Johann Reuchlin’s Neo-Pythagorean Cabala 245
14 On the Wonder-Working Word (1494) 248
15 On the Cabalistic Art (1517) 249
16 Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy 254
17 John Dee’s Hieroglyphic Monad 257
18 Sources for Khunrath’s Knowledge of Cabala 263
ixContents
way treat of the names of God.’264 From the opening sentence, it is clear whom
he has primarily in mind with his criticisms:
Wonders are produced by the Paracelsians, promising Christian-Kabalist,
divinely-magical, physico-chymical, ter-triune, Universal [things], Fie the
Devil.265
Cabala is an identifying trait of Paracelsian philosophy, and Khunrath’s
Amphitheatre, apparently, is a prime representative.266
20 Cabala in Khunrath’s Works
What is immediately apparent on the 1609 Amphitheatre’s title-page (Fig. 4.20),
where we see the Tetragrammaton יהוה [YHVH] in a Tetratkys, אש [Esch –
Fire], שמש [Shemesh – Sun],267 and אורים יה [Urim Yah – God’s Lights] at the
264 Libavius, Appendix necessaria Syntagmatis Arcanorum Chymicorum (1615), 76 ‘Tertiam
excogitarunt interpretes rabini, qui literas & syllabas biblicas linguae sacrae colligunt,
in numeros vertunt, mutant, transmutant, atque ita tacitos sensus eiiciunt praesertim
nomina Dei mirabiliter tractantes.’
265 Libavius, Appendix necessaria Syntagmatis Arcanorum Chymicorum (1615), 76 ‘Mira pro-
duntur à Paracelsistis, promittentibus Christiano Kabalistica, divinomagica, physico-
chymica, tertriuna, Catholica, Phy Diabolo’.
266 See Daniel Sennert, Tractatus de Consensu, & Dissensu Galenicorum & Peripateticorum
cum Chymicis, Caput XIII. De Fundamentis Medicinae, in Opera omnia medica (Paris, 1641),
Vol. 1, 937 for references to Paracelsus, ‘Heinrici Cunradi in Amphitheatro’ and Croll as
sharing sentiments with Weigel; 1002 for a discussion of the ‘Cabalistica Magia Paracelsi’.
Sennert recycles Libavius’s comment: ‘Cabala Paracelsistarum commune perfugium est’,
and singles out Ernestus Burgravius, in particular his Achilles Panoplos Redivivus, seu
Panoplia physico-vulcania [sic] (Amsterdam, 1612), a work which plagiarised a great deal
of material from Khunrath. See Chapter 5 on Khunrath’s Magic for more information.
267 Amphitheatrum (1609), Title page, ‘Shemesh’. Cf.
224 On Pantheus, see Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols. (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1923–58), Vol. V, 537–40; Hilda Norrgrén, ‘Interpretation
and the Hieroglyphic Monad: John Dee’s Reading of Pantheus’s Voarchadumia’, Ambix 52:3
(November, 2005): 217–245. See also Forshaw, ‘Cabala Chymica or Chemia Cabalistica –
Early Modern Alchemists and Cabala’. For the references to “Cabala of the Metals”, see
Pantheus, Voarchadumia (Venice, 1530), ‘metallorum Cabala’, 11r, 22r; (Paris, 1550), ‘metal-
lorum Cabala’, 15r 23r; ‘cabala metallorum’, 53v.
225 Magnesia, 92 ‘Aus diesem/ und sonsten keinem andern/ natürlichen grunde gehet
VOARCH BETH ADAMOTH der alten Weisen’; 184 ‘und finden VOARCH BETH ADAMOTH,
ja alles/ was sein Philosophisch Hertz begehret.’ See also Lux in Tenebris, 23. For spec-
ulation on what these terms mean, see Michael T. Walton and Phyllis J. Walton, ‘The
Geometrical Kabbalahs of John Dee and Johannes Kepler: The Hebrew Tradition and
the Mathematical Study of Nature’, in P. Theerman and Karen Hunger Parshall (eds.),
Experiencing Nature: Proceedings of a Conference in Honor of Allen G. Debus (Dordrecht:
267Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word
1114 Gilly, ‘The Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae of Heinrich Khunrath’, 342.
1115 Amph.II, 92 ‘Media Theosophica’.
1116 Amph.II, 25 ‘per Christiano Cabalam, Diuino Mageiam, & Physico Chemiam: quod
studium Triunum, vera Theosophia Catholica’.
© Peter J. Forshaw, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004702073_004
Chapter 4
Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word
1 The Origins of Christian Cabala
VadSlg Ms. 334 ‘Secrets of Zahel’ dating from around 1550 in the Vadian Collection
(Vadianische Sammlung) in St Gallen, Switzerland.
352 Chapter 4
form of the Sephiroth (Fig. 4.45) in Oedipus Aegyptiacus (Egyptian Oedipus,
1653), with the explanation that the central letter Aleph, containing the ten
Sephiroth represents the archetypal man, while the surrounding ring, also con-
taining the ten Sephiroth, is the ‘circle of divine infinity’ and the ‘inaccessi-
ble abyss of the fount of light’, in which ‘all things are one, and God all in all
things’.579 In Chapter 2’s introduction to Khunrath’s engraving the non-Jewish
clockwise progression of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet was noted. The
same is the case for Khunrath’s Sephiroth, in contrast, for example to Kircher’s
annular form, where we find them rotating in a counter-clockwise direction.580
The same is the case with Khunrath’s presentation of the Shemoth or divine
names.581 A partial Latin translation of Cordovero’s work would be published
in the mid-seventeenth century, in Christian Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala
Denudata (Kabbalah Unveiled, 1677), together with some variant representa-
tions of the Sephiroth (Fig. 4.46).582
579 Kircher, Oedipus Aegpytiacus (1653), Vol. 2, Part 1, ‘Cabala Hebraeorum’, Cap.IX, § I. Alia
repraesentatio decem Sephiroth sub similitudine figurae humanae, 300–303, image at 302,
citing Pardes on 303, when discussing the image of the letter Aleph containing the ten
Sephiroth inside a circle that also contains the Sephiroth. The explanation given is that the
Aleph represents the archetypal man (Archetypum hominem), surrounded by the ‘circle
of divine infinity’ (circulus divinae infinitudinis) and the ‘inaccessible abyss of the fount
of light’ (fontani luminis inaccessam abyssum), in which ‘all things are one, and God all
in all things’ (omnia unum sunt, & Deus in omnibus omnia).
580 Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus (Egyptian Oedipus, 1653), Vol. 2, Part 1, 302.
581 Vide infra, Chapter 4 on Khunrath’s Cabala.
582 See, for example, the discussion of the Kliphotic realms in the analysis of Figura XVI
in Kabbala Denudata, Vol. 1, ‘Apparatus in Librum Sohar Pars Quarta, Quae continet
Figure 4.45
Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1653),
Vol. 2, Part 1, 302. Large Aleph &
Annular Representation of Sephiroth.
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich
353Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word
Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word
1 The Origins of Christian Cabala
Khunrath’s Christian engagement with the Jewish mystical tradition of
Kabbalah lies at the heart of his theosophy.1 Kabbalistic notions of emana-
tions of the Godhead into the universe and the power contained in divine and
angelic names pervade his philosophical outlook. This chapter begins with
a brief consideration of the main aspects of Jewish Kabbalah and Christian
Cabala preceding Khunrath, most notably in the works of the first Christian
‘phenomenologists of Kabbalah’,2 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494),
Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522) and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535),
before examining evidence of related ideas in Khunrath’s own works.
1 Please note: when referring to the Jewish tradition, the term ‘Kabbalah’ is used; but when
to the Christian tradition, especially in Latin, it becomes ‘Cabala’. Cf. Andreas Libavius,
Appendix necessaria Syntagmatis Arcanorum Chymicorum (Frankfurt, 1615), 76 ‘Kabbalah,
seu, ut vulgo scribitur, Cabala’ (Kabbalah, or, as it is commonly written, Cabala). On Kabbala
and Cabala, see also Pierre Béhar, Les Langues Occultes de la Renaissance (Paris: Éditions
Desjonquères, 1996), 247; Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy,
and the End of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 173.
2 Moshe Idel, ‘Jewish Thinkers versus Christian Kabbalah’, in Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann
(ed.), Christliche Kabbala (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2003), 49–65, at 63.
Figure 4.1
Tabulae Theosophicae Cabbalisticae,
detail: Christ on Cross above
IHSVH. London, British Library
Ms. Sloane 181. © The British
Library Board
216 Chapter 4
The Hebrew term קבלה Kabbalah, which translates as ‘reception’, ‘received
lore’, or ‘tradition’, refers to the Jewish esoteric teaching that emerged in the
High Middle Ages in Provence and Northern Spain,3 though with claims to rev-
elations reaching back to Moses during his encounter with Jehovah on Mount
Sinai, where he received a two-fold revelation, a ‘literal’ written and ‘spiritual’
oral Law, being told ‘These words shalt thou declare, and these shalt thou hide’
(2 Esdras 14:6). The former were the Ten Commandments; the latter secret oral
teachings transmitted from master to disciple over the generations to the elect
few.4 Others believed that God had revealed the names of all things to Adam
in the Garden of Eden, the correct pronunciation of which evoked their true
essence,5 or that Adam had learned Eternal Wisdom from the book held by
Raziel, angel of the highest Mysteries.6
apologetic and polemical purposes. The midrashic and kabbalistic method of
reading Hebrew texts without diacritic marks, that is, without any vowel indi-
cators, increases interpretative possibilities and generates multiple readings of
a single text, including the possibility of proving the supremacy of the name of
Jesus and the mystery of the Trinity.121
Pico’s Cabala should not, however, be viewed simply as Christian apologet-
ics, for he moves beyond the confirmation of Christianity. In his desire to estab-
lish the unity of truth he suggests correspondences between not just Judaism
and Christianity, but also proposes connections with Platonism, mysticism
and magic. Chaim Wirszubski emphasizes that Pico viewed Kabbalah from an
entirely new standpoint, arguing that ‘he is the first Christian who considered
cabala to be simultaneously a witness for Christianity and an ally of natural
magic.’122 Joseph Dan likewise suggests that even early Christian-Cabalist works
like Pico’s conveyed the message that non-biblical Jewish sources also held
great relevance for their Christian readers, not only as a way of strengthening
and upholding their faith, but as a way of reinvigorating the Christian religion,
discovering a deeper, more profound understanding of its nature, including the
possibility of personal transformation and spiritual transfiguration.123 Indeed,
the extreme nature of the claims Pico makes regarding the role of Kabbalah
was instrumental in ensuring a wide-spread interest in this mystical Jewish
tradition, among both sympathetic and antagonistic audiences.
13 Johann Reuchlin’s Neo-Pythagorean Cabala
Although Pico della Mirandola gets the credit for first introducing the term
Cabala into Christian circles, Khunrath’s major Christian-Cabalist source is
one of his fellow country-men, the German scholar Johann Reuchlin (1455–
1522), described by Charles Zika as ‘one of the key figures of European schol-
arship and intellectual life at the turn of the sixteenth century’.124 A close
121 Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 523.
122 Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism, 151. On the relation
between Pico’s Cabala and magic, see Flavia Buzzetta, Magia naturalis e scientia cabalae
in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2019).
123 Dan, ‘The Kabbalah of Johannes Reuchlin,’ 57.
124 Charles Zika, ‘Reuchlin’s De Verbo Mirifico and the Magic Debate of the Late Fifteenth
Century’, The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 39 (1976): 104–138, at 104. On
Reuchlin, see also Moshe Idel, ‘Johannes Reuchlin: Kabbalah, Pythagorean Philosophy
and Modern Scholarship’, Studia Judaica 16 (2008): 30–55; reprinted in Idel, Represent-
ing God, 123–148; Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, ‘Einleitung: Johannes Reuchlin und die
Anfänge der christlichen Kabbala’, in Schmidt-Biggemann (ed.), Christliche Kabbala, 9–48.
246 Chapter 4
263 Henning Scheunemann, Hydromantia Paracelsica (Frankfurt, 1613); Medicina Reformata,
seu Denarius Hermeticus Philosophicus Medico-Chymicus (Frankfurt, 1617). For a direct ref-
erence to Khunrath and his Athanor, see De Morbo Sulphureo Cagastrico (Frankfurt, 1610),
Epistola Dedicatoria, B2v.
277Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word
way treat of the names of God.’264 From the opening sentence, it is clear whom
he has primarily in mind with his criticisms:
Wonders are produced by the Paracelsians, promising Christian-Kabalist,
divinely-magical, physico-chymical, ter-triune, Universal [things], Fie the
Devil.265
Cabala is an identifying trait of Paracelsian philosophy, and Khunrath’s
Amphitheatre, apparently, is a prime representative.266
20 Cabala in Khunrath’s Works
What is immediately apparent on the 1609 Amphitheatre’s title-page (Fig. 4.20),
where we see the Tetragrammaton יהוה [YHVH] in a Tetratkys, אש [Esch –
Fire], שמש [Shemesh – Sun],267 and אורים יה [Urim Yah – God’s Lights] at the
264 Libavius, Appendix necessaria Syntagmatis Arcanorum Chymicorum (1615), 76 ‘Tertiam
excogitarunt interpretes rabini, qui literas & syllabas biblicas linguae sacrae colligunt,
in numeros vertunt, mutant, transmutant, atque ita tacitos sensus eiiciunt praesertim
nomina Dei mirabiliter tractantes.’
265 Libavius, Appendix necessaria Syntagmatis Arcanorum Chymicorum (1615), 76 ‘Mira pro-
duntur à Paracelsistis, promittentibus Christiano Kabalistica, divinomagica, physico-
chymica, tertriuna, Catholica, Phy Diabolo’.
Figure 4.10
Agrippa, De Occulta
Philosophia, Book 2,
Chapter 19, in Opera
(Beringos Fratres,
n.d.), 169 Hebrew
Alphabet. Allard Pierson,
Amsterdam PH1830
235Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word
Figure 4.11 Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia (July 1533), Book 2, Chapter 22, CXLVIII
Gematria: Divine names corresponding to the numbers of the planets. Allard
Pierson, University of Amsterdam, PH1680
nothing to do with one other on the lexical level,86 thereby revealing inter-
nal resonances within seemingly disparate sources.87 Even the most literal
and mundane-sounding text could, by means of the isopsephic equations in
the technique of Gematria, be reinterpreted in novel ways, giving it a symbolic
86 Reichert, ‘Christian Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century’, 131.
87 Dan and Kiener, The Early Kabbalah, 11.
236 Chapter 4
transvaluation, imbuing it with new depth.88 The 32 ‘wondrous paths of wis-
dom’ with which the Sepher Yetzirah opens, for example, are denoted by the
Hebrew letters ל Lamed (with the value 30) and ב Beth (with the value 2),
which combine to form the Hebrew word לב ‘Leb’, meaning ‘heart’.89 These
letters are also the first and last letters of the Torah – the Beth of בראשית
(Bereshit), the first word of Genesis 1:1 and the Lamed of ישראל (Israel), the last
word of Deuteronomy 34:12. Thus the five books of Moses constitute the ‘heart’
of the Kabbalah, together with the ten Sephiroth and the 22 letters of the alpha-
bet that form all the Shemoth or divine names.90 On a more sophisticated level,
Abulafia provides support for the traditional claim that the world was created
with ten utterances by demonstrating that the phrases the ‘Work of Creation’
-Ba-ʾasa) בעשרה השמות ’and ‘with ten names (Ma ʾaseh Bereshit) מעשה בראשית
rah ha-shemot) both add up to the same total of 1328.91 Abulafia also provides
the oldest documentation of a conversion to Christianity due to a kabbalistic
style of exegesis of Song of Songs 2:3 ‘As the apple tree among the trees of the
woods, so is my beloved among the sons.
126 ‘Smoky’, a Greek pun on Reuchlin’s surname, which he derives from the German word for
‘Smoke’ (Rauch).
127 Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, 88.
128 See Reuchlin’s concluding letter to Pope Leo X in On the Art of the Kabbalah, 357.
129 Shimeon Brisman, History and Guide to Judaic Dictionaries and Concordances (Hoboken,
NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 2000), Vol. 3, Part 1, 54. A work used by Martin Luther, who was
also familiar with De Arte Cabalistica, and consulted Reuchlin as an expert on Hebrew.
See William J. Wright, Martin Luther’s Understanding of God’s Two Kingdoms: A Response
to the Challenge of Skepticism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 94.
130 Reuchlin, In septem psalmos poenitentiales interpretatio (Tübingen, 1512); Brisman, History
and Guide to Judaic Dictionaries and Concordances, 54; Secret, Les Kabbalistes chrétiens, 51.
131 Werner Schwarz, Principles and Problems of Biblical Translation: Some Reformation
Controversies and their Background (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), 68;
G. Lloyd Jones, The Discovery of Hebrew in Tudor England: A Third Language (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1983), 25.
132 Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, 95. Joseph Dan, in The Christian Kabbalah, 63 points
out that some of these works are not regarded by Jews as kabbalistic. Eleazar of Worms,
for example, is a ‘prominent writer of the Kalonymus school of Jewish esoterics in medi-
eval Germany who are usually called the “Ashkenazi Hasidim”.’
247Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word
Figure 4.15 Reuchlin, De rudimentis hebraicis (1506), 5 Introduction to the Hebrew
Alphabet. Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam, OTM ROF A-413
248 Chapter 4
much-condemned Talmud, in his Battle of the Books with the Jewish converso
Johannes Pfefferkorn (1469–1523).133
14 On the Wonder-Working Word (1494)
The year of Pico’s death saw the publication of De Verbo Mirifico (On the
Wonder-Working Word), a conversation in three books between the Greek Epi-
curean philosopher Sidonius, the Jew Baruchias and the Christian Capnion.134
Reuchlin’s first Christian-Cabalist work was significant for its ideas about lan-
guage and the contribution it made to the Renaissance debate on the occult
powers and properties of words and names, discussing as it did the interests of
Certain curious explorers of arcane things … the recondite powers of
words, and abstruse energies of expressions, and the divine characters
of secret names … the symbols of that sacred Philosophy, and revered
signs of supernatural virtues.135
247Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word
Figure 4.15 Reuchlin, De rudimentis hebraicis (1506), 5 Introduction to the Hebrew
Alphabet. Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam, OTM ROF A-413
248 Chapter 4
much-condemned Talmud, in his Battle of the Books with the Jewish converso
Johannes Pfefferkorn (1469–1523).133
14 On the Wonder-Working Word (1494)
The year of Pico’s death saw the publication of De Verbo Mirifico (On the
Wonder-Working Word), a conversation in three books between the Greek Epi-
curean philosopher Sidonius, the Jew Baruchias and the Christian Capnion.134
Reuchlin’s first Christian-Cabalist work was significant for its ideas about lan-
guage and the contribution it made to the Renaissance debate on the occult
powers and properties of words and names, discussing as it did the interests of
Certain curious explorers of arcane things … the recondite powers of
words, and abstruse energies of expressions, and the divine characters
of secret names … the symbols of that sacred Philosophy, and revered
signs of supernatural virtues.135
It contained extraordinary examples of marvellous deeds achieved through
the wonder-working word, from feeding the hungry and curing the sick to exor-
cising demons and reviving the dead. Reuchlin makes his intentions clear in
the opening letter to the book, declaring that his task is ‘to elucidate the occult
property of names; and so from these, and from such numerous and great
names, the occasion of our finally choosing one supreme, wonder-working and
blessed name’.136
133 See Idel, ‘Jewish Thinkers versus Christian Kabbalah’, 52. For varied perspectives on
this episode, see Erika Rummel, The Case Against Johann Reuchlin: Religious and Social
Controversy in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002);
David H. Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011); Daniel O’Callaghan (ed. and trans.), The Preservation of
Jewish Religious Books in Sixteenth-Century Germany: Johannes Reuchlin’s Augenspiegel
(Leiden: Brill, 2013).
134 Schmidt-Biggemann, ‘Johannes Reuchlin und die Anfänge der christlichen Kabbala’, 9.
According to Béhar, Les Langues Occultes de la Renaissance, 21 Pope Alexander VI’s rev-
ocation of the ban against Pico in 1493 enabled the publication of Reuchlin’s De Verbo
Mirifico in 1494. For more on De Verbo Mirifico, see Zika, ‘Reuchlin’s De Verbo Mirifico and
the Magic Debate of the Late Fifteenth Century’.
182 Agrippa, De Vanitate (Lyon: Beringos Fratres, [1550]), 78 ‘Hanc rursus bifariam secant,
in Arithmantiam videlicet quae notaria convocatur, de angelicis virtutibus, nomin-
ibus signaculisque etiam daemonum ac animarum conditionibus tractans: atque in
Theomantiam, quae divinae majestatis mysteria, emanationes, sacraque nomina & pen-
tacula scrutatur: quam qui norit, hunc ajunt admirandis pollere virtutibus, ita quod dum
velit, futura omnia praesciat, toti naturae imperet, in daemones, & angelos jus habeat, &
miracula faciat.’
257Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word
the most enduring image of early modern Christian Cabala, we find a very dif-
ferent spirit. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that Agrippa only shows
knowledge of the works of Christian Cabalists like Pico, Reuchlin, Ricci and
Giorgio, rather than direct engagement with Hebrew or Aramaic sources, this
work was to become one of the most widely-consulted sources for Cabala in
the Christian world. Agrippa presents a similar intermingling of Pythagorean,
Neoplatonic and kabbalistic ideas to Reuchlin. Here we find iterated claims
to Hebrew being the ‘original language’ and the significance of the 22 letters
as the foundation of the world.183 Scholem considers the place of honour in
De Occulta Philosophia is accorded to practical Kabbalah and arithmology,
for Book 2 is a rich source of information on the occult and kabbalistic sig-
nificance of numbers,184 the Hebrew alphabet’s combination of numbers
and letters;185 while Book Three devotes whole chapters to discussions of the
Sephiroth,186 numerical calculations of the names of God, angels and spirits,187
and the significance of the Biblical matrix-languages (Latin, Greek, Hebrew) for
Agrippa’s notion of a sacralized magic.188 Here, too, we find discussed Plato’s
notion of the unity of word and referent, the natural signification of language
from Cratylus and the biblical narrative of Adam’s naming of the animals.189
Agrippa extends this idea of knowledge of the world being discovered through
the study of Hebrew to the mysteries of other early alphabets and languages,
such as Greek and Latin, much as John Dee was to attempt later in the Monas
Hieroglyphica (1564).190
17 John Dee’s Hieroglyphic Monad
47 See Purš, ‘The Habsburgs on the Bohemian Throne and Their Interest in Alchemy and the
Occult Sciences’, 99 concerning Hebraic and Cabalistic studies.
48 Purš, ‘Rudolf II’s Patronage of Alchemy and the Natural Sciences’, 170. For Ricius’s Latin
translation, see Joseph Gikatilla, Portae Lucis, Haec est porta Tetragrammaton iusti
intrabunt per eam (Augsburg, 1516); Rabi Iosephi Castiliensis, de Porta Lucis Tractatus
pulcherrimus, in Pistorius, Artis Cabalisticae (1587), 138ff; for a modern translation, Rabbi
Joseph Gikatilla, the son of Abraham, Sha ʾare Orah: Gates of Light, translated by Avi
Weinstein (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1994).
224 Chapter 4
Tree of Life diagrams
Figure 4.2
Gikatilla, Portae Lucis (1516), title
page. Ritman Library, Amsterdam
Figure 4.3
Gikatilla, Portae Lucis (1516),
sig. Kiiijv. Ritman Library,
Amsterdam
Figure 4.4
Ricius, De Coelesti Agricultura
(1541), CXIIIv. Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
Figure 4.5
Cordovero, Pardes Rimonim
(1591), 39v Tree of Life.
Allard Pierson, University of
Amsterdam, OTM ROF A-67
Figure 4.6
Cordovero, Pardes Rimonim
(1591), 43v Tree of Life.
Allard Pierson, University of
Amsterdam, OTM ROF A-67
Figure 4.7
Cordovero, Pardes Rimonim
(1591), 89v Divine Name.
Allard Pierson, University of
Amsterdam, OTM ROF A-67
225Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word
Magic reveals its mysteries through prepared images, figures, characters,
and through the commendable art of Signatures, and signed knowledge.
But Cabala shows or rather conceals, its Wisdom in dark words, proverbs,
riddles, deeply-meaningful discourse, whence the prophets spoke in a
cabalistic way in many of the Scriptures, such that beneath the letters
much heavenly wisdom lies hidden.333
Philip Beitchman is mistaken in arguing in Alchemy of the Word: Cabala of the
Renaissance, that Khunrath displays a ‘structural distrust of a Jewish Cabala,
taken to be perverted by a crassly materialistic magic, while a Christian sort
would be abstract, elevated, and spiritual,’ for, as we shall see in the following
chapter, Khunrath was greatly interested in ‘physical’ forms of magic. Nor, as
should be obvious by now, is it simply the case that ‘Cabala, to become usable
gold, needs to be cleaned of its Hebrew dross’, for Khunrath evidently found
a knowledge of Hebrew and the Jewish Kabbalistic exegetical techniques a
source of inspiration.334 One such example is his unpacking of John Dee’s enig-
matic phrase at the end of the Monas Hieroglyphica: ‘IN TE L LECTUS IVDICAT
VERITATEM’ (Fig. 4.27), which Kurt Josten simply translates as ‘intellect exam-
ines the truth’.335
Khunrath’s knowledge of Hebrew, however, enables him to provide a sec-
ondary meaning in his work On Primaterial Chaos, where he extends the
333 Arndt, Judicium, 114 ‘Die Magia offenbahret ihre Geheimnuß durch Bilderzurichten/
Figuren, Character, und durch die löbliche Kunst die Signatur, und Scientiam signatam.
Die Cabala aber offenbahret ja verberget jhre Weißheit in dunkelen worten/ Sprüchen/
Rätzeln/ tieffsinnigen Reden/ Darumb die Propheten viel in der Schrifft Cabalistischer
weise geredt haben/ da unter dem Buchstaben viel heimlicher Weißheit verborgen liget.’
334 Beitchman, Alchemy of the Word, 176.
335 Dee, Monas Hieroglyphica, 219. Josten, ‘A Translation’, 171 misses the significance of Dee’s
reference to ‘El’ in Theorem XVI, 16. NOTE: This subtlety is lost in the typography of the
1602 Theatrum Chemicum edition, 243. See Ludovica Koch et al, Etimologia: pratiche e
invenzioni (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1983), 176 ‘Te lo conferma un’altra
“etimologia”: tu stesso sei raccolto nel tuo cervello (intellectus/in te lectus); cerca solo di
non addormentarti su quel letto!’ See Peter J. Forshaw, ‘“Possibly the most obscure work
ever written by an Englishman?”: The Early Alchemical Reception of John Dee’s Monas
Hieroglyphica’, Ambix 52:3 (Nov. 2005): 247–269, at 250–251.
295Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word
Tree of Life diagrams
Figure 4.2
Gikatilla, Portae Lucis (1516), title
page. Ritman Library, Amsterdam
Figure 4.3
Gikatilla, Portae Lucis (1516),
sig. Kiiijv. Ritman Library,
Amsterdam
Figure 4.4
Ricius, De Coelesti Agricultura
(1541), CXIIIv. Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
Figure 4.5
Cordovero, Pardes Rimonim
(1591), 39v Tree of Life.
Allard Pierson, University of
Amsterdam, OTM ROF A-67
Figure 4.6
Cordovero, Pardes Rimonim
(1591), 43v Tree of Life.
Allard Pierson, University of
Amsterdam, OTM ROF A-67
Figure 4.7
Cordovero, Pardes Rimonim
(1591), 89v Divine Name.
Allard Pierson, University of
Amsterdam, OTM ROF A-67
225Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word
What has come to be the standard version, with different proportions from
Ricci’s versions, is modelled on a diagram that appeared in the Hebrew print
edition of Moses Cordovero’s Sepher Pardes Rimonim (Book of the Orchard of
Pomegranates, Figs. 4.5 & 4.6), written in Safed in 1548; published in Cracow
in 1591, where we also find representations of the divine name (such as Yah
and Hu in a large Aleph, Fig. 4.7).49 By the seventeenth century, the Christian
West had access to elaborate representations of the Tree of Life in the Jesuit
Athanasius Kircher’s Oedipus Aegyptiacus (Egyptian Oedipus, 1652–54, Fig. 4.8)
and Christian Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala denudata (Kabbalah Unveiled,
49 Segol, Word and Image in Medieval Kabbalah: The Texts, Commentaries, and Diagrams of
the Sefer Yetsirah, 170 n. 22.
Figure 4.8
Kircher, Oedipus
Aegyptiacus (1653),
Vol. 2, Part 1, between
pp. 288–9 ‘Systema
Sephiroticum’.
Bayerische
StaatsBibliothek
Munich
226 Chapter 4
1677–78, Fig. 4.9),50 the top three ‘supernal’ sefiroth often equated by Christian
Cabalists with the three persons of the Trinity.51
Following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and then from
Portugal in 1497, kabbalistic works and doctrines enjoyed a wide dissemination
throughout Europe in Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities.52 By this time,
as Moshe Idel has shown, there were three major models of Kabbalah: 1) the
ecstatic or prophetic Kabbalah of the school of the Spanish kabbalist Abraham
Abulafia (1240–1291) with its emphasis on the permutations of the Shemoth
(divine names) for possible union with the divine; 2) a Theosophical-Theurgical
Kabbalah,
appreciation of the Hebrew language as possessing unusual virtues, powers
and properties, springing from the original Adamic tongue.241 Johann Hüser’s
1603 multi-volume edition of Paracelsus’s Bücher und Schrifften, for example,
contains a wide variety of statements concerning Cabala, ranging from De
Natura Rerum’s ‘the Cabalistic Art had its origin with the old Magi’, rather than
from Jewish sources,242 to the Fragmenta Medica, where we learn that ‘Adam
and Moses … searched for that within themselves that is in man and opened it,
and it belongs all to Cabala; they knew no strange things from the devil or spir-
its, but from the Light of Nature.’243 Heinz Schott observes that such an inward
approach to the divine sources of spiritual light recalls the mystical practices
of Jewish Kabbalah, with Paracelsus’s Light of Nature evoking the Sephirotic
emanations of divine light.244
In the pseudepigraphic, but undeniably popular Aurora Thesaurusque
Philosophorum (Aurora and Treasury of the Philosophers, 1577) we find Cabala
mentioned on the very first page and later read of its prophetic nature and the
insight it provides into terrestrial and celestial creation:
distinguish sharply between genuine and spurious Paracelsian works. Joachim Telle’s
position was one of accepting the medical works as genuine; rejection of the chrysopoetic
as spurious, e.g. Joachim Telle, ‘Benedictus Figulus: Zu Leben und Werk eines deutschen
Paracelsisten’, in G. Mann and B. Fabian (eds.), Medizin historisches Journal 22:4 (1987):
303–326, at 320; idem, ‘Johann Huser in seinen Briefen. Zum Schlesischen Paracelsismus
im 16. Jahrhundert’, in Joachim Telle (ed.), Parerga Paracelsica. Paracelsus in Vergangenheit
und Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1991), 220. Urs Leo Gantenbein has a less
polarised approach concerning Paracelsus and transmutation, see e.g. ‘Paracelsus und
die Quellen seiner medizinischen Alchemie’, in Albrecht Classen (ed.), Religion und
Gesundheit: der heilkundliche Diskurs im 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011),
129–134, at 115–119. See also Andrew Weeks, ‘Paracelsus’, in Partridge (ed.), The Occult
World, 99–106. My approach in this monograph is that if Khunrath seems to present a book
as the work of Paracelsus, it is treated as such for its relevance to Khunrath’s work.
241 Paracelsus, De Natura Rerum, Lib.IX, De Signatura Rerum Naturalium, in Hüser (ed.),
Bücher und Schriften (Frankfurt, 1603), Vol. 1, 908f, at 918, in the section ‘Von ettlichen
besondern Zeichen der natürlichen und ubernatürlichen.’
83 Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 72, 225. See also Reuchlin, On the Art of the
Kabbalah, 299.
234 Chapter 4
revolutions and combinations the prophets entered into and perceived
the depths of the Torah.84
One of the most evocative and succinct statements of the exegetical potential
of these approaches is found in the Spanish scholastic philosopher Juan Car-
amuel Lobkowitz’s Cabalae totius brevissimum specimen (A very brief Expla-
nation of the Whole of Cabala, 1643), where he writes that ‘Cabala, therefore,
or the Theology of the Hebrews, has as it were six sacred faculties or species’
(namely: Transmaterialization, Transformation, Transfiguration, Transposition,
Transpunction, & Transnumeration).85
9 Gematria
Because every Hebrew letter possesses an inherent numerical value (Fig. 4.10),
every letter, word and phrase in the Torah has a mathematical significance by
which correspondences can be found between words and phrases that have
84 Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics, 177. On the Latin translation of the Sefer
ha-Niqqud for Pico della Mirandola, see Yosef Giqatilla, The Book of Punctuation: Flavius’s
Mithridates’ Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English Version, edited by Annett
Martini with a Foreword by Giulio Busi.
85 Ioan Caramvelis Lobcowitzi, Cabalae totius brevissimum specimen, in Erycius Puteanus
(1574–1646), De anagrammatismo quae cabalae pars est (Brussels, 1643), 67ff, at 68 ‘Cabala
igitur, seu Hebraeorum Theologia, sex facultates sacras (nimirum Transmaterializationem,
Transformationem, Transfigurationem, Transpositionem, Transpunctionem, & Transnu-
merationem) velut species habet.’ Lobkowitz then goes on to list them with Hebrew terms.
See Yossef Schwartz, ‘“On Rabbinic Atheism”: Caramuel’s Critique of Cabala’.
Figure 4.10
Agrippa, De Occulta
Philosophia, Book 2,
Chapter 19, in Opera
(Beringos Fratres,
n.d.), 169 Hebrew
Alphabet. Allard Pierson,
Amsterdam PH1830
235Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word
Figure 4.11 Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia (July 1533), Book 2, Chapter 22, CXLVIII
Gematria: Divine names corresponding to the numbers of the planets. Allard
Pierson, University of Amsterdam, PH1680
nothing to do with one other on the lexical level,86 thereby revealing inter-
nal resonances within seemingly disparate sources.87 Even the most literal
and mundane-sounding text could, by means of the isopsephic equations in
the technique of Gematria, be reinterpreted in novel ways, giving it a symbolic
Figure 4.14
Tetragrammaton &
Tetraktys in Agrippa,
De Occulta Philosophia in
Opera (Beringos Fratres,
n.d.), 157. Allard Pierson,
University of Amsterdam,
OTM OK 62-6338
Table 4.2 How to unfold the Quaternarius into the Denarius
Yod (10) = 10
Yod (10) + He (5) = 15
Yod (10) + He (5) + Vau (6) = 21
Yod (10) + He (5) + Vau (6) + He (5) = 26
= 72
Pico’s alleged initial motivation for studying the Kabbalah is for evangelis-
ing against heretics and Jews. In the Apologia he composed in 1487 – following
the condemnation of 13 of his theses as heretical – he avows that his motive is
‘to do battle for the faith against the relentless slanders of the Hebrews.’119 As
his second set of Cabalistic Conclusions explains, his intention is one of ‘pro-
viding powerful confirmation of the Christian religion from the very principles
of the Hebrew Sages,’ so that the Jews can be refuted by their own kabbalis-
tic books.120 His Cabala combines the Christian concept of the divine act of
redemption through Jesus with notions of creation and revelation common to
both Judaism and Christianity, in order to provide a Christian interpretation
for existing texts and adopt recognizable doctrines, symbols and methods for
119 Copenhaver, ‘The Secret of Pico’s Oration: Cabala and Renaissance Philosophy,’ 75.
120 Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man
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Summary of Chapter 4: “Christian Cabala’s Wonder-Working Word”
From Peter J. Forshaw, _The Mage’s Images: Heinrich Khunrath in His Oratory and Laboratory, Volume 2_ (Brill, 2025)
(Pages 215–295)
This chapter examines the role of Christian Cabala in Khunrath’s spiritual and magical worldview, tracing its Jewish origins, its Christian reinterpretation, and Khunrath’s own adaptations. Forshaw charts a genealogy of Christian-Cabalist figures (Pico, Reuchlin, Agrippa, Dee) and identifies specific Cabalistic elements in Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae and other works.
Let me know if you’d like a table of the 10-part Cabalist structure in Khunrath’s theology, or a diagrammatic summary of the Sephirothal mappings.