Khunrath, Heinrich

Abstract

Heinrich Khunrath was a German Paracelsian physician and theosopher who was the author of a series of esoteric works promoting various kinds of alchemy and magic, as well as a particularly Christian form of Kabbalah around the turn of the seventeenth century. His most influential work, the baroquely illustrated Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae (Amphitheater of Eternal Wisdom) was first published in a very limited high-status edition in Hamburg in 1595, later reissued in a more widely available edition in Hanau in 1609. In the expanded 1609 edition, Khunrath intimates – and occasionally elaborates – on the complex interconnections between physico-chemistry, Christian Cabala, and Divine magic, in the context of theosophical reflections on 365 scriptural verses drawn mainly from the Solomonic books of the Old Testament. The Amphitheatre is famed in occult circles for its inauguration of a “theosophy of the image” (Faivre, ARIES (15): Magie du Livre, Livres de Magie, 42–48, 1993, idem, Theosophy, imagination, tradition: Studies in Western esotericism. Trans. C. Rhone. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), whereby the author explores interconnections, parallels, and harmonies between different levels of existence through four complex circular “hieroglyphic” and five rectangular “theosophical” figures, the best-known of which emphasizes the necessary relations between the Christian Cabalist oratory and the physico-chemical laboratory (Töllner, Der unendliche Kommentar. Untersuchungen zu vier ausgewählten Kupferstichen aus Heinrich Khunraths “Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae solius verae” (Hanae 1609). Ammsersbek bei Hamburg: Verlag an der Lottbek, 1991).