CHAPTER 4

A Necessary Conjunction: Cabala, Magic,

and Alchemy in the Theosophy of Heinrich
Khunrath (1560–1605)

Peter J. Forshaw

Although Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) is often considered

“the first among Latin scholars to refer directly to the kabbalah”1 and Jean
Thenaud (1480–1542) is the first known author to write of a “Christian”

1
Gershom Scholem, “The Beginnings of the Christian Kabbalah,” in The Christian Kabbalah:
Jewish Mystical Books & Their Christian Interpreters, ed. Joseph Dan (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard
College Library, 1997), 21. This is corroborated by Johannes Reuchlin, De Arte Cabalistica: On
the Art of the Kabbalah, trans. Martin and Sarah Goodman (New York: Abaris Books, 1983; repr.
Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 89, who tells us that “the use of the
term ‘Kabbalists,’ or ‘Kabbalics,’ was first introduced to the Latin by Pico della Mirandola. Before
him it was unknown.”

P. J. Forshaw (*) University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam,

The Netherlands e-mail: p.j.forshaw@uva.nl

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature

Switzerland AG 2021
G. D. Hedesan, T. Rudbøg (eds.), Innovation in Esotericism from the
Renaissance to the Present, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and
Alternative Spiritualities,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67906-4_4
Kabbalah,
2
it is Heinrich Khunrath’s 1609 edition of the Amphitheatrum Sapientiae
Aeternae (Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom) that was to be the first published
work explicitly described as “Christian Kabbalist.” Indeed, the Amphitheatre’s
full title contains three neologisms, the compound words Christiano-
Kabalisticum, Divino-Magicum, and Physico-Chymicum (“Christian
Kabbalist,” “Divinely Magical,” and “Physico-Chymical”). These neologisms
are to be understood together as part of a grand system already foreshadowed
in his major work on magic in relation to alchemy, De Igne Magorum
Philosophorumque (On the Fire of the Mages and Philosophers, 1608), where
Khunrath declares not only the reciprocity and interconnectedness of his three
practices, but his utter conviction that “Kabala, Magic and Alchemy conjoined,
should and must be used together with and alongside one another.” 3 Although
in Alchemy and Kabbalah (1997, 2006) the great scholar of Jewish Kabbalah,
Gershom Scholem, misses the mark with the argument that Khunrath is
positing an “identification of Kabbalah with alchemy,” he is right to single him
out as responsible for a “definitive blending” of alchemy, Cabala, and magic. 4
While some of Khunrath’s favored sources do emphasize the interdisciplinary
nature of occult philosophy, none are quite so emphatic about their “necessary
conjunction.” Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535) comes closest to him,
when he points out that it is not a case of picking one faculty of magic and
neglecting the others, for without knowledge of all three (natural, celestial,
ritual) no one can possibly “understand the rationality of magic. For there is no
work that is done by mere magic, nor any work that is merely magical, that
doth not comprehend these three faculties.”5 This chapter considers Khunrath’s
evident fascination with new experimental combinations, composites, and
conjunctions in his idiosyncratic blend of early modern occult theosophy. It
argues that Khunrath

2
Joseph Blau, The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1944), 89ff; Robert J. Wilkinson, Tetragrammaton: Western
Christians and the Hebrew Name of God: From the Beginnings to the Seventeenth Century
(Leiden: Brill, 2015), 337–38; François Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chrétiens de la Renaissance
(Paris: Dunod, 1964), 153ff.
3
Heinrich Khunrath, De Igne Magorum Philosophorumque secreto externo & visibili (Strasbourg:
Lazarus Zetzner, 1608), 87: “Kabala, Magia, Alchymia Conjugendae, Sollen und müssen mit und neben
einander angewendet werden.”
4
Gershom Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, trans. Klaus Ottmann (Putnam, CT: Spring
Publications, 2006), 88–91.
5
Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, ed. Donald Tyson, trans. James
Freake (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1993; repr. 1997), 6.
was an innovative thinker who believed that there needed to be far more
interplay and more conjunctions and unions between Cabala, magic, and
alchemy in order to achieve true wisdom.
In 1595, the 35-year-old “Doctor of both Medicines and faithful Lover of
Theosophy,” Heinrich Khunrath of Leipzig (1560–1605), declared his
combined interest in Cabala, magic, and alchemy in the first edition of the
Amphitheatre. There, with the aid of four innovative circular “Theosophical
Figures,”6 Khunrath sets forth his notion of the divine wisdom to be found in
the “Three Books” of God, Man, and Nature. He emphasizes the utility of
Cabala, magic, and alchemy as handmaids of Wisdom, 7 and above all the joint
necessity of prayer in the oratory and work in the laboratory.8
Khunrath modified his description of Wisdom’s three handmaids between the
two editions of the Amphitheatre (the second edition appearing posthumously
in 1609). In the 1595 edition they appear on the title page as Cabala, Mageja,
and Alchemia, with Alchemia being glossed a few lines further down as
Physicochemicum (Fig. 4.1). Khunrath explicitly states that the theosopher is
required to be a “greatly experienced and expert manual practitioner in the
works of Physical Chemistry.”9 This seemingly anodyne term may not look
much, but at the time it was a neologism; indeed, it may come as a surprise to
historians of chemistry to discover that the term “Physical Chemistry,” usually
credited to Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765) for his “A Course in True
Physical Chemistry” (1752), was invented over a century earlier by a
theosophical alchemist.10

Totique,
Fig. celestis exercitus
4.1 Khunrath, spiritualis, militiae;
Amphitheatrum Title‫יהוה‬
(1595),prox-, Page ‫צבאותאלהים‬ Heinrich
(Courtesy of the Department of
imoKhunrath,
suo fideli,
Special
6
et sibimetipsi;
Collections, Memorialnaturae atque arti;
Library, Amphitheatrum
University Sapientiae
of Wisconsin, aeternae, solius verae
Madison)
… Cabalisticum, Magejcum, Physicochemicum, Tertriunum, Catholicon (Hamburg: Jacob Lucius
the Younger, 1595), title page: “OPVS, θεορητικὸν και πρακτικὸν, eximium, recens absolutum,
exornatum figuris quatuor Theosophicis, forma Regali in aes affabre scalptis ….”

7
Heinrich Khunrath, Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae, Solius Verae: Christiano-
Kabalisticum, Divino-Magicum, nec non Physico-Chymicum, Tertriunum, Catholicon (Hanau:
Guilielmus Antonius, 1609), Part II, 158. “mediantibus ancillis suis fidelioribus aut virginibus
quasi cubicularibus.”
8
Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II, 14, 41, 71, 73, and so on, “Orando & Laborando.”
9
Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II, 212–13: “Practicus manualis in Physicochemiæ laboribus,
multum exercitatus atque expertus.”
10
Edgar Heilbronner and Foil A. Miller, A Philatelic Ramble through Chemistry (Zurich: Verlag
Helvetica Chimica Acta/Wiley-VCH, 1998), 107. Even the acerbic Thorndike briefly
acknowledges that Khunrath “lauds Physico-Chemia,” and observes that “the very fact that these
words were included in the title of his theosophical ecstasies and cabalistic reveries is a rather
noteworthy sign that physics and chemistry were coming into their own in the thought
Apparently dissatisfied with existing alchemical terminology, such as the
classical Greek chrysopoeia (the Art of gold-making), or the Paracelsian
neologism spagiria (the Art of separating and reuniting),11 Khunrath

of the time—even in the muddiest and most stagnant and most occult thought”; Lynn Thorndike,
A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), VII,
274.
11
As a follower of Paracelsus, Khunrath would have been well aware of the various works seeking
to cast light on Paracelsus’s often puzzling neologisms, such as Michael Toxites’s Onomastica II. I
Philosophicum, Medicum, Synonymum ex varijs vulgaribusque linguis.
invents the neo-Latin copulative compound
Physico-chemicus
.
12
Anna Granville Hatcher, a specialist in the history of word formation,
highlights Khunrath’s verbal creativity, which flowered in the second, fuller
edition of the Amphitheatre:

in his first title, containing the compound physico-chymicus, the inventive

Khunrath was only warming up for the triple hurdle he was to take in his title of
1609: “Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, solius, verae; Christiano-
Cabbalisticum, divino-magicum, physico-chymicum, ter-triunum catholicum.”13

The first two compound words on the 1609 title page, Christiano-
Kabalisticum and Divino-Magicum (hybrids of Latin and Hebrew, and Latin
and Greek, respectively), well express the interdisciplinary conjunctions and
combinations in Khunrath’s oratory and laboratory. The title page drives this
message home in various ways (Fig. 4.2). Firstly, the foundations of the two
Egyptian obelisks bear the famous message of mutuality and reciprocity from
the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus: “Id quod inferius sicut quod
superius” (“That which is below is like that which is above”). 14 Secondly, the
work is polyglot, including words in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew (mixed
together in a manner that was doubtlessly horrifying to linguistic purists).
Thirdly, the Pythagorean Tetraktys15

II. Theophrasti Paracelsi: hoc est, earum vocum, quarum in scriptis eius solet usus esse,
explicatio (Strasbourg: Bernhard Jobin, 1574) or Gerard Dorn’s Dictionarium Theophrasti
Paracelsi (Frankfurt: [Christoff Rab], 1583), much of which was plagiarized for Martin Ruland’s
Lexicon Alchemiae (Frankfurt: Zacharias Palthenius, 1612).
12
Anna Granville Hatcher, Modern English Word-Formation and Neo-Latin: A Study of the
Origins of English (French, Italian, German) Copulative Compounds (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1951), 83.
13
Granville Hatcher, Modern English Word-Formation, 83. Unfortunately, she slightly spoils the
effect with a few typos: the correct terms are physico-chemicus (not chymicus), Christiano-
Kabalisticum, and tertriunum catholicon.
14
This4.2
Fig. quote originatesAmphitheatrum
Khunrath, from the translation of the
(1609), Emerald
Title Page Tablet in Chrysogonus
(Credit: Polydorus, ed.,
Wellcome Collection)
De alchimia (Nuremberg: Johannes Petreius, 1541), 363.
15
On the Tetraktys (τετρακτύς), a triangle formed of ten points arranged in four rows, representing
the entire numerological perfection from monad to denary (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10), symbol of
cosmogenesis, and kernel or epitome of Pythagorean wisdom, see Walter Burkert, Lore and
Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, trans. E.L. Minar Jr. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1972), 72, 186–88 and Robert Meurant, “The Tetraktys of Polyhedra,” in Space Structures
4:1, eds. G.A.R. Parke and C.M. Howard (London: Thomas Telford, 1993), 1140.
containing the divine Hebrew name IHVH at the top of the image is echoed by
the triangular mound at the base, with the signs for Khunrath
’
s three main protagonists in the generation of the Philosophers
’
Stone (
Sol
,
Luna
, and
Mercurius
).
The Amphitheatre’s “Theosophical Figures,” which remain the same between
the two editions, save for one or two minor changes, seem to follow the title’s
sequence: certainly Figure 1 of Christ Cruciform (here Fig. 4.3) primarily
focuses on Christian Cabala, while Figure 3 of the Rebis or Hermaphrodite
(here Fig. 4.5) addresses Physico-Chemical alchemy. The image of Adam
Androgyne, Figure 2 (here Fig. 4.4), gives us a first intimation of how
Khunrath relates these two disciplines, for it references both Cabala and
alchemy, with the distinct sense that man as theosopher is the divinely magical
conduit between the two activities. The fourth and final, best-known figure
(here Fig. 4.6), summarizes the totality of Khunrath’s theosophical work with a
scene that shifts from the two-dimensional representation of the preceding
images to an impressive deeply perspectival image of the adept at work.16

The messages of Khunrath’s four original engravings were reinforced and

supplemented in the 1609 edition of the Amphitheatre with five large
rectangular “Hieroglyphic Figures,” the elaborate title page, and a portrait of
the author. This highly original collection of occult themes constitutes what art
historian Urszula Szulakowska considers to be the “first Paracelsian
illustrative cycle.”17
In his fourth circular figure of the Oratory-Laboratory, we discover the
theosophical adept in prayer or meditation before the altar table of his Oratory,
the focal point for his Christian Cabala and divine magic, while alchemical
ingredients are being cooked in and on the laboratory furnaces opposite. As
the focus of this chapter is Khunrath’s innovative terms and combinations, it
Fig. 4.3 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1595), Theosophical Figure 1, center (Courtesy of
would be useful to provide more context. After a brief description of his life,
the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin,
following
Madison)
the sequence in the Amphitheatre’s title, let us start with Christian
Cabala.

16
Khunrath never mentions the figure in the Oratory, but later authors like Eliphas Lévi (Alphonse
Louis Constant, 1810–1875) associate him with adept knowledge. See Eliphas Lévi, Histoire de
la Magie (Paris: Germer Baillière, 1860), 369. On the term “Adept,” see also Georgiana
D. Hedesan’s contribution in this volume.
17
Urszula Szulakowska, The Alchemy of Light: Geometry and Optics in Late Renaissance
Alchemical Illustration (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 5.
Fig. 4.4 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1595), Theosophical Figure 2, center (Courtesy of
the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin,
Madison)

subsequently practiced as a doctor of both

Khunrath : a binternal and external medicine in
rief introduction
Magdeburg, Hamburg, and Trebon, and spent time at the18court of Emperor
Lauded
Rudolf IIas(1552–1612)
“one of theingreat Hermetic
Prague, philosophers,”
numbering Khunrath, son of a
Rudolf’s secondin-command,
wealthy merchant family, first studied at the University
Count Vilém Rožmberk (1535–1592), among his clientele. Khunrath of Leipzig before
died in
graduating with highest honors at the Basel Medical School in
Dresden in 1605, leaving behind a collection of occult and medical works 1588. He
published during the 1590s and early 1600s. These included Vom hylealischen
Chaos (On Primaterial Chaos, 1597),
18
“Vorbericht des Herausgebers,” in Heinrich Khunrath, De Igne Magorum Philosophorumque
(Leipzig: Adam Friedrich Böhmen, 1783), 2: “eines der großen hermetischen Philosophen.”
concerning the matter required for creating the Philosophers
’
 Stone and warnings against laboratory error and fraud, and the
aforementioned
De Igne Magorum Philosophorumque
Fig. 4.5 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1595), Theosophical Figure 3, center (Courtesy of
the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin,
Madison)

(1608).
19
The Amphitheatre, however, is
19
For academic work on Khunrath, see Umberto Eco, Lo Strano Caso della Hanau 1609 (Milan:
Bompiani, 1989), Ralf Töllner, Der unendliche Kommentar (Hamburg: Peter Jensen Verlag,
1991), Szulakowska, The Alchemy of Light, and Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Geschichte der
christlichen Kabbala (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 2013). The 2014 publication
of an eighteenth-century manuscript translation of the Amphitheatrum
into German as
Schauplatz der ewigen allein wahren Weisheit
, accompanied by learned essays by Carlos Gilly, Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Anja Hallacker,
and Hanns-Peter Neumann added new dimensions to Khunrath studies; Heinrich Khunrath,
Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae
—
Schauplatz der ewigen allein wahren Weisheit
, eds. Carlos Gilly et
 
al. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 2014). For other insightful articles, see
Hereward Tilton,
“
Of Electrum and the Armour of Achilles: Myth and Magic in a Manuscript of Heinrich Khunrath
(1560
–
1605),
”
Aries
6, no. 2 (2006): 117
–
57, Vladimir Karpenko,
“
Heinrich Khunraths
Vom Hylealischen Chaos
: Chemische Aspekte,
”
Studia Rudolphina
15 (2015): 88
–
107, Ivo Pur
š
,
“
Perspective, Vision and Dream: Notes on the Plate
“
Oratory-Laboratory
”
in Heinrich Khunrath
’
s
Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae
,
”
in
Latin Alchemical Literature of Czech Provenance
, eds. Tom
ás Nejeschleba and Jir
í Michal
ík (Olomouc: Univerzita Palack
ého v Olomouci, 2015), 50
–
89, and Martin Zemla,
“
Heinrich
Fig. 4.6 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1595), Theosophical Figure 4, Oratory-Laboratory
(Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of
Wisconsin, Madison)
Khunrath
’
s best- known work, having been praised as
“
the Theosophical Bible
”
; indeed, as “one of the most important books in the whole literature of
20

theosophical alchemy and the occult sciences.”21

Khunrath’s fields of Knowledge

Christian Cabala
The Italian Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola famously introduced the
Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah to the Christian West in his 900
Conclusiones Philosophicae Cabalisticae et Theologicae (Philosophical,
Cabalistical and Theological Conclusions, 1486), its prefatory Oration, later
titled “On the Dignity of Man,” and the Heptaplus, On the Sevenfold
Narration of the Six Days of Creation (1489).22 Chaim Wirszubski argues that
Pico viewed the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah from an entirely new
standpoint, stating that “he is the first Christian who considered cabala to be
simultaneously a witness for Christianity and an ally of natural magic.” 23
Pico’s work marks a watershed in the history of Hebrew and Aramaic studies
in Europe, leading both Wirszubski and G. Lloyd Jones to call him the

Khunrath and His Theosophical Reform,” Acta Comeniana 31 (2017): 43–62. See also my
forthcoming monograph The Mage’s Images: Heinrich Khunrath in his Oratory and Laboratory
(Leiden: Brill).
20
“Vorbericht des Herausgebers,” in Heinrich Khunrath, Warhafftiger Bericht von Philosophischen
Athanore (Leipzig: Adam Friedrich Böhmen, 1783), 12: “Dieses Werk, das einige die
Theosophische Bibel nennen.”
21
Denis I. Duveen, Bibliotheca Alchemica et Chemica (London: E. Weil, 1949), 319.
22
For translations of the Oration, see Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of
Man, trans. Elizabeth Livermore Forbes, in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, eds. Ernst
Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller and John Herman Randal (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press,
1948), 223–54; On the Dignity of Man, On Being and the One, Heptaplus, trans. Charles Glenn
Wallis, Paul J. W. Miller, and Douglas Carmichael (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing
Company, 1998). See also Brian P. Copenhaver, “The Secret of Pico’s Oration: Cabala and
Renaissance Philosophy,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 26 (2002): 56–81; Nicholas Goodrick-
Clarke, The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008), 41–46.
23
Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (Cambridge, MA.:
Harvard University Press, 1989), 151. On Pico and Kabbalah, see Secret, Les Kabbalistes
Chrétiens, Cap. III “Pic de la Mirandole et le Milieu Italien de la Kabbale Chretienne”; Klaus
Reichert, “Pico della Mirandola and the Beginnings of Christian Kabbala,” in Mysticism, Magic
and Kabbalah in Ashkenazi Judaism, eds. Karl Erich Grözinger and Joseph Dan (Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter, 1995), 195–207. On Pico as creator of the “first true Christian Cabala,” see Bernard
McGinn, “Cabalists and Christians: Reflections on Cabala in Medieval and Renaissance
Thought,” in Jewish Christians and Christian Jews: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment,
eds. Richard H. Popkin and Gordon M. Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 11–34.
“
Father
”
 ofKhunrath
24
Christianwas
Cabala.
familiar with Pico’s work, but was far more influenced by the
German humanist Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), “one of the key figures of
European scholarship and intellectual life at the turn of the sixteenth century.” 25
Reuchlin was author of two of the most influential books of Christian Cabala,
the De verbo mirifico (On the Wonder-Working Word, 1494), published the year
of Pico’s death,26 and the De arte cabalistica (On the Cabalistic Art, 1517).
Although both Pico and Reuchlin speculate on the potential for Christians to
make use of “Cabalistic” exegetical techniques to convince Jews of the truth of
Christianity, neither of them ever explicitly writes of a specifically “Christian”
Cabala. Such an idea can first be found in the Traité de la Cabale or Traité de
la Cabala chrétienne (Treatise on the Cabala or Treatise on Christian Cabala,
c.1521), by the French Franciscan monk Jean Thenaud (1480–1542); however,
the work remained in manuscript.27 Thus it is the case that Khunrath’s 1609
Amphitheatre is the first published work explicitly described as “Christian
Kabbalist” (Christiano-Kabalisticum).28

In contrast to the unillustrated works of Pico and Reuchlin, Khunrath presents

the summary of his Cabala in a figurative engraving, his first “Theosophical
Figure,” where we see a cruciform, resurrected Christ (Fig. 4.3), with a fiery
phoenix beneath his feet,29 surrounded by tongues of fire that contain a
pentagram with the five Hebrew letters of the Pentagrammaton, IHSVH,
which was Reuchlin’s Christian- Cabalist “wonder-working” name for Christ.
From that central image radiate outwards the Hebrew Shemoth or divine
names, the Cabalistic Sephiroth (divine emanations or enumerations), the
Hebrew alphabet, and the angelic orders, with the Hebrew text of the ten
Commandments on the circumference.
Khunrath describes this figure as the Sigillum Dei (“Seal of God”) or Sigillum
Emes (“Seal of Truth”), which of course allude to Christ’s

24
Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter, 185; G. Lloyd Jones, “Introduction,” in
Reuchlin, De Arte Cabalistica, 16.
25
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. On Reuchlin, see
also Moshe Idel, “Johannes Reuchlin: Kabbalah, Pythagorean Philosophy and Modern
Scholarship,” Studia Judaica 16 (2008): 30–55.
26
Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, “Einleitung: Johannes Reuchlin und die Anfänge der christlichen
Kabbala,” in Christliche Kabbala, ed. Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann (Ostfildern: Thorbecke,
2003), 9.
27
Blau, The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala, 89ff; Wilkinson, Tetragrammaton, 337–338;
Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chrétiens, 153ff.
28
The title page of the 1595 Amphitheatre simply uses the adjective “Cabalisticum.”
29
On the identification of this bird as a phoenix, see, for example, Jörg Völlnagel, Alchemie. Die
Königliche Kunst (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2012), 148.
declaration in John 14:6:
“
I am the way, and the truth, and the life,
”
 but also hold great significance for scholars of the English magus John Dee
(1527
–
1608/9).
30
while Khunrath
the lattermet
wasDee in Bremen
returning in 1589,
home from several years spent on the
Continent, performing many “Actions with Spirits” with his scryer Edward
Kelley (1555–c.1597) and their own Sigillum Dei.31 With this, we connect
with Khunrath’s second neologism on the 1609 title page, Divino-Magicum
(Divinely Magical).

Physical and Hyperphysical Magic

In the Amphitheatre, Khunrath writes more generally of “physical” and
“hyperphysical” magic, that is, practices natural and supernatural, showing
himself familiar with the cutting-edge natural magic of the famous Italian
natural philosopher, Giovanni Battista Della Porta (1535–1615), as well as the
varieties of magic presented in Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s De occulta
philosophia (1533) and in Theophrastus Paracelsus’s Astronomia Magna
(1537–38). While physical magic deals with bodies and spirits in the sense of
sensible animating principles of life, hyperphysical magic means for Khunrath
“pious and useful conversation, as much when awake as when sleeping,
mediately and immediately, with God’s fiery ministers, the good angels.”32
Khunrath also expresses an interest in Theomagia (divine magic), another term
which appears to be a new coining by him, later to be adopted in the
Anthroposophia Theomagica (1650) of the Welsh alchemist and magus
Eugenius Philalethes (Thomas Vaughan, 1621–1666), 33 and in John Heydon’s
Restoration guidebook for Rosicrucian magicians, Theomagia, or the Temple
of Wisdome (1663).34 Khunrath was undoubtedly

30
James Orchard Halliwell, ed., The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee (London: Camden Society,
1842), 31.
31
Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II, 11, 155. See John Dee, Libri Mysteriorum, London,
British Library, Sloane Ms. 3188, f.12v. For more, see Stephen Clucas, “‘Non est legendum sed
inspicendum solum’: Inspectival knowledge and the visual logic of John Dee’s Liber
Mysteriorum,” in Emblems and Alchemy, eds. Alison Adams and Stanton J. Linden (Glasgow:
Glasgow Emblem Studies, 1998), 109–32.
32
Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II, 147: “Hyperphysicomageia (respectu Naturalis & Doctrinæ
causa, sic dicta) est cum Angelis bonis, flammeis D ei ministris, sub modo delegatæ à Deo
administrationis, tam vigilando quàm dormiendo, mediatè & immediatè, pia & vtilis conuersatio.”

33
See Garth D. Reese, The Theomagical Reformation of Thomas Vaughan: Magic and the Occult
in Early British Theology (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2014).
34
Ryan J. Stark, Rhetoric, Science, and Magic in Seventeenth-century England (Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 95.
familiar with Agrippa
’
s epistolary exchange with his fellow German occult philosopher, abbot
Johannes Trithemius (1462
–
1516), on the degener
ated
35
In status of magic andwe
the Amphitheatre thefind
wayseveral
to reinstate
callsitfor
to athe
respectful status
restorative andinrenewing
the
Christian world.
reformation of magic and the extirpation of Nigromancy (i.e., necromancy).
This indeed is a major message of the Oratory-Laboratory engraving. 36
Agrippa, one of Khunrath’s favored sources, provides probably the best clue to
what Khunrath intends by the term “Divino-Magicum” in De incertitudine &
vanitate scientiarum (On the Vanity and Uncertainty of the Sciences, 1531).
Here, Agrippa equates divine magic with the theurgy discussed by
Neoplatonist philosophers Porphyry (c.234–c.305) and Iamblichus (c.245–
c.325), by which “the soul of man may be fitted to receive spirits, and angels,
and to see God.”37

Although not immediately apparent, Figure 2 of Adam Androgyne (Fig. 4.4)

contains two “ladders”, one being grades of cognition taken from Aristotle’s
De Anima, the other a sequence of steps leading to Conjunction and Union
with God. The two combined give us a sense of the ultimate significance of
Khunrath’s divine magic, which concerns itself with the cognitive ascent from
matter to spirit, aiming at the deification of man.

Alchemy
Khunrath’s alchemical interests span a broad spectrum, ranging from the
traditional medieval transmutational art of gold-making, through investigation
of the properties of plants, to the use of chemical medicines made from toxic
substances like minerals and metals. His spagyric work, Quaestiones Tres
(Three Questions, 1607), discusses philosophical saline solutions of gems and
stones as treatment for Tartar-related ailments, which was a major concern of
Paracelsian physicians. He is also interested in laboratory technology and
writes of his invention of a special alchemical

35
See Noel L. Brann, Trithemius and Magical Theology: A Chapter in the Controversy over
Occult Studies in Early Modern Europe (New York: S.U.N.Y. Press, 1999), 153–54.
36
See Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II, 210 and 104 (mispaginated as 92).
37
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, De incertitudine & vanitate scientiarum declamatio invective
(Cologne: Melchior Novesianus, 1531), Cap. XLVI. De theurgia, sig. [hvir]; sig hviv: “Verum de
hac theurgia sive divinorum magia plura disputans Porphyrius, tandem concludit theurgicis
consecrationibus posse quidem animam hominis idoneam reddi, ad susceptionem spirituum &
angelorum, ad videndos deos, reditum vero ad deum hac arte praestari posse inficiatur omnino.”
English translation from Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, 699.
furnace with a transparent glass cover in the
Warhafftiger Bericht Vom Philosophischen Athanore
(
Truthful Report Concerning the Philosophical Athanor
, 1599), and the same consideration of the importance of fire for alchemy also
appears in
De Igne Magorum Philosophorumque
(1608). With the term
“
Physico-Chemical
”
introduced in the
Amphitheatre
, Khunrath is emphasizing his interest in the investigation of the properties of
matter and the secrets of nature, as a complement to his engagement in
“
Physical Medicine
”
(
Physico- Medicina
).
38
At the same time, in the very same work, Khunrath broaches what has now
become a contentious subject: the consideration of alchemy as a model for
personal spiritual transformation.39

interdisciplinary combinations

Khunrath’s Youthful Support of Paracelsian Alchemy, Cabala,

and Magic
Anyone who had paid careful attention to Khunrath’s 1588 graduation theses at
the University of Basel would have noticed that he had quietly but bravely
declared not just his advocacy of the notoriously unorthodox Paracelsian
alchemical medicine, but also adherence to the Christian Cabalist ideas of
Reuchlin. Khunrath’s 28 theses De Signatura Rerum Naturalium (On the
Signatures of Natural Things, Fig. 4.7)40 have been described as a precious
document of the academic recognition of the Paracelsian-alchemical
interpretation of nature in the Basel Medical Faculty, and as support for the
revolutionary Paracelsian call for a reform

38
Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II, 147: “Physicomedicina est ars cognoscendi Librum Naturae
(Macro & MicroCosmicè) magnum: ita, vt legere possis (tam vniuersaliter, quàm particulariter)
Temetipsum in Mundo maiore; & contra Mundum maiorem in Teipso: ad humani corporis
sanitatem tuendam, morbosque profligandos.”
39
Useful discussions of this subject can be found in Daniel Merkur, “The Study Of Spiritual
Alchemy: Mysticism, Gold-Making, and Esoteric Hermeneutics,” Ambix 37, no. 1 (1990): 35–45,
Fig. 4.7 Khunrath,
Hereward Tilton, The De signatura
Quest rerum naturalium
for the Phoenix: theses and
Spiritual Alchemy (1588), Title Pagein(Courtesy
Rosicrucianism the Work
of
of Count Michael Maier (1569–1622)
Universitätsbibliothek Basel) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), and Mike
A. Zuber, “Spiritual Alchemy from the Age of Jacob Boehme to Mary Anne Atwood, 1600–1900”
(PhD diss., University of Amsterdam, 2017). For the most influential argument against most
claims of spiritual alchemy earlier than the nineteenth century, see Lawrence M. Principe and
William R. Newman, “Some Problems with the Historiography of Alchemy,” in Secrets of Nature:
Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe, eds. William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton
(Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 2001), 385–431.
40
Heinrich Khunrath, De Signatura Rerum Naturalium Theses (Basel Typis Oporinianis, 1588).
of medicine.41 In the Amphitheatre, Khunrath expresses the pride he felt at
being the first in Germany to have promulgated the doctrine of signatures
(often considered Paracelsian), just before the publication of the

Manuel Bachmann and Thomas Hofmeier, eds. Geheimnisse der Alchemie (Basel: Schwabe &
41

Co. AG. Verlag, 1999), 157–58.

Phytognomonica
(
Interpretations of Plants
, 1588) by Della Porta.
42
Khunrath clearly saw himself as a promoter of this influential new (or
revived) doctrine, which was soon to be adopted by iatrochemical thinkers
such as Joseph Du Chesne (1544–1609)43 and Oswald Croll (1563–1609).44

The presence of Reuchlin’s wonder-working Christian-Cabalist name of

Christ, IHSVH, at the conclusion of the 1588 theses (Fig. 4.8) proves that
Khunrath was already influenced by Reuchlin’s work in his twenties, long
before the publication of the Amphitheatre.45 What most readers probably
didn’t know, however, is that the name IHSVH was embedded in a phrase
taken from a fifteenth-century manuscript of Christianized ritual magic, the De
Arte Crucifixi Pelagii Solitarij (Pelagius the Hermit’s On the Art of the
Crucifix): “Ihsvh veritatas aeterna ostende veritatem” (“Jesus, Eternal Truth, Show the
Truth”). Repetition of these words before sleep would enable the suitably
prepared practitioner to see a vision of Christ in a dream. 46 This is an early
indication of Khunrath’s readiness to cross, blur (or transgress) disciplinary
boundaries. These are not simply references to Cabala and magic, but an
implication that both are relevant in the context of Paracelsian alchemy and
medicine.

42
Giovanni Battista Della Porta, Phytognomonica (Naples: Horatius Salvianus, 1588). For
references to Della Porta’s Phytognomonica, see Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II, 152. On
Della Porta, see William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval
and Early Modern Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), especially Chap. 6
“Natural Magic and the Secrets of Nature.”
43
Joseph Quercetanus [Du Chesne], De Priscorum Philosophorum veræ medicinæ materia (St
Gervais: Heirs of Eustathius Vignon, 1603), 88 for reference to Della Porta.
44
Oswald Croll, Basilica Chymica (Frankfurt: Claude de Marne & the heirs of Johann Aubry,
1609), 14.
45
See Khunrath, De signatura rerum, sig. Avir: “Ihsvh veritas aeterna ostende veritatem” (IHSVH Eternal
Truth, Show [us] the Truth). The same phrase appears in a manuscript connected with Khunrath:
London, British Library, MS. Sloane 181 “Tabulae Theosophiae Cabbalisticae.” See Peter
J. Forshaw, “‘Behold, the Dreamer Cometh’: Hyperphysical Magic and Deific Visions in an Early-
Modern Lab-Oratory,” in Conversations with Angels: Essays Towards a History of Spiritual
Communication (1100–1700), ed. Joad Raymond (Palgrave: Basingstoke, 2009), 175–200.
Fig. 4.8 Khunrath, De signatura rerum naturalium theses (1588), Final Page (Courtesy
ofSee
46
Julien Véronèse, “La notion d’‘auteur-magicien’ à la fin du Moyen Age: Le cas de l’ermite
Universitätsbibliothek Basel)
Pelagius de Majorque,” Médiévales 51 (2006): 119–38, esp. 133–34; Julien Véronèse, “Magic,
Theurgy, and Spirituality in the Medieval Ritual of the Ars Notoria” in Invoking Angels: Theurgic
Ideas and Practices: Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries, ed. Claire Fanger (University Park, PA:
The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 37–78, and Stephen Clucas, “Regimen Animarum
et Corporum: The Body and Spatial Practice in Medieval and Renaissance Magic,” in The Body in
Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture, eds. D. Grantly and N. Taunton (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2000), 113–29.
 Binary Conjunctions and Underlying Symmetries
Khunrath’s message of combinations, composites, compounds, and con-
junctions is driven home by the dominant images in each of the circular
engravings. In Theosophical Figure 1 (here Fig. 4.3) we have Christ as
Theanthropos
, god and man, or divine man. Furthermore, in contrast to most depictions of
Christ in Reformation art, the
Amphitheatre
’
s Christ is naked
47 48
This is in keeping with Khunrath’s
; and, when examined closely, curiously hermaphroditic.
presentation of Wisdom in the Amphitheatre as both the female figure of
Sophia or Sapientia in the Old Testament and as Christ as the “Eternal Wisdom
of the Father” in the New Testament.49 In Figure 2 (here Fig. 4.4), Adam is androgynous,
a single body with two heads; this is Adam before the division into Adam and
Eve, before Original Sin and the Fall. In Figure 3 (here Fig. 4.5), we see the
hermaphroditic conjunction of Mercury and Sulphur for the production of the
Philosophers’ Stone. As already mentioned, Figure 4 (Fig. 4.6) is the
combination and summation of the preceding engravings in the symbolic space
of the Oratory-Laboratory. These conjunctions underpin the whole message of
Khunrath’s oeuvre.

Closer scrutiny of these images brings out parallels and congruencies between Oratory
and Laboratory. In a discussion of sympathies existing between the cosmos and man, the
macrocosm and the microcosm, Khunrath explains that there are indeed two “Lesser
Worlds” or microcosms, one, the human being, created from the slime of the earth and
the breath of God; the other, the alchemical microcosm, the closed vessel in the
laboratory, in which the Philosophers’ Stone is created. 50 A comparison of the figures of
Khunrath’s Androgyne (Theosophical Figure 2—here Fig. 4.4) and Hermaphrodite
(Theosophical Figure 3— here Fig. 4.5) reveals underlying symmetries and symbolic
geometries connected with the quaternary of the four elements, the ternary of body,
spirit, and soul, the binary of opposites, and unity.

In Theosophical Figure 2 (Fig. 4.4), we have both the generation of the four

elements of the macrocosm and the creation of Adam Protoplast,
Fig. 4.9 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1595), Adam-Androgyne detail: AnimaSpiritus-
Corpus (Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library,
47
See Kathryn
University of Moore Heleniak,
Wisconsin, “Naked/Nude,” in Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography,
Madison)
Vol.2, M-Z, ed. Helene E. Roberts (Chicago, IL: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1998), 643.

48
James Elkins, What Painting Is: How to Think about Oil Painting, Using the Language of
Alchemy (New York/London: Routledge, 2000), 180: “Here Jesus is nude, like the unfinished
hermaphrodites and homunculi.” See also Leah DeVun, “The Jesus Hermaphrodite: Science and
Sex Difference in Premodern Europe,” Journal of the History of Ideas 69, no. 2 (2008): 193–218.

49
See Bernard McGinn, ed., Meister Eckhart, Teacher and Preacher (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press,
1986), 267 on Christ as the “Eternal Wisdom of the Father.”
50
Khunrath, De Igne Magorum Philosophorumque, 50: “in Laboratorio aut Athanore Physico-
Chymico hoc est, Microcosmo, ita loquendo, nostro artificiali.”
first-formed man. Adam Androgyne is enclosed within a square that is surrounded by
the four elements (Fig. 4.9): earth at the bottom, water to the right, air to the left,
and fire above. Inside this square there is a triangle, on the sides of which we
see (highlighted in red) the words: Corpus (Body) at the bottom, Anima (Soul)
on the left, male side of the Androgyne, and Spiritus (Spirit) on the right,
female side; Adam and Eve constitute the binary that is united as the
Androgyne. The Cabalistic nature of this image
is emphasized by the words (in green):
“
Linea viridis Cabalistarum girans universum
”
(
“
The Green Line of the Cabalists encircling the universe
”
Fig. 4.10 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1595), Rebis or Hermaphrodite detail: Anima-
Spiritus-Corpus (Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library,
University of Wisconsin, Madison)

). These geometries and key terms are echoed in Theosophical Figure 3 (Fig. 4.5), in which the
51

Hermaphrodite is a Rebis, literally res bina (a “twothing”); holding the

circular Philosophers’ Stone (Fig. 4.10). Inscribed within the Stone we see yet
again a square, containing a triangle: the four elements and three principles of
life, which have identical placements to those in Theosophical Figure 2.
51
On this topic, see more below in Section “An Instance of Commonality: Greenness.”
Thus, what may at first glance appear to be separate activities, with dif
ferent places of practice, in Khunrath
’
s perspective
52
share common
The necessary ground,
combination of although
alchemy hewith
is careful to assert
spiritual (andanalogy
physical)
rather than identity.
purification is brought together in a novel way in Theosophical Figure 2
(Fig. 4.4), where we discover that the Cabalistic Androgyne is surrounded by
the four elements, which contain a message of the purification of the adept in
alchemical language. As a Physico-Chymist, Khunrath is by no means
reducing his work to a “Spiritual Alchemy.” Although A.E. Waite is justified in
asserting the Amphitheatre’s importance as the very first work to intimate of
such a kind of practice, 53 this in an undeniable instance of a practicing
alchemist making use of alchemical, mineralogical, and cabalistic language to
express self-transformation, through a penitential process described in terms of
an alchemical rotation of the elements.54 At the base of the figure, for example,
we read,

the[υνονγοδρἀν],the Microcosm[ΜΙΚΡΟΚΟΣΜΟΝ ],Adam[ ‫ אדם‬Exsolve

androgyne], universal [καθολικον] in nature and form, [but] earthly in person,
base and impure on account of his sins, by grinding with the fiery pestle of the
ΔΕΚΑΛΟΓΟΥ [Dekalogue, 10 Commandments] of Contrition, into a powdery mass,
growing green with the fertile Salt of Conversion.55

Khunrath progresses through Water and Air, until finally, at the top of the
square of the elements, we read of man’s purgation and perfection by
Fire: “Let [universal] Fiery-Minded
καθολικος ‫א‬ [Adam], thrice
‫ד‬
52
Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II, 203: “Quod, in
‫ם‬
Cabala, est hominis ad Monadis
simplicitatem reducti, cum Deo, Vnio: id in PhysicoChemia ad Lapidis nostri plusquamperfecti &
gloriosi, cum Macrocosmo, in partibus eius, F ermentatio” (That which, in Cabala, is the U nion of man
reduced to the simplicity of the Monad with G od, is, in Physico-Chemistry, the Fermentation of our
glorious and surpassingly perfect Stone with the Macrocosm, in its parts).

53
Joscelyn Godwin, The Golden Thread: The Ageless Wisdom of the Western Mystery Traditions
(Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2007), 118.
54
Heinrich Khunrath, Vom hylealischen, Das ist pri-materialischen catholischen oder Algemeinem
natürlichen Chaos der Naturgemessen Alchymiae und Alchymisten (Magdeburg: Heirs of Andreas
Genen, 1597), 127.
,ΜΙΚΡΟΚΣΜΟΝ )1609 & 1595( ‫םדא‬, Circular Figure 2: “ AmphitheatrumKhunrath,55
ἀνδρόγυνον, et formatione et naturâ καθολικον, personâ terrenum, ob peccata vilem atque
immundum, flammeo ΔΕΚΑΛΟΓΟΥ contritionis pistillo, in glebam pulveream, conuersionis sale
foecundo viridantem, reverberando exoluito.”
re-united, evil being abandoned, be sublimated by being regenerated.
” As stated earlier, Khunrath conceived of two microcosms, Man and the
56

Philosophers’ Stone, presumably on the understanding that the same elements

present in the Stone are also present in the human being; both have a tripartite
division of body, spirit, and soul, and must undergo similar processes of
purification toward perfection.

Khunrath’s analogous thinking (or parallel-processing) is evident in a novel

comparison that he draws between Theosophical Figure 1 (Fig. 4.3) of Christ
and Figure 3 (Fig. 4.5) of the Philosophers’ Stone. This was already noted by
the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1875–1961), who argued in Alchemical
Studies (1968, 1983) that the Stone may be understood as “a symbol of the
inner Christ,” pointing out that “Khunrath formulated for the first time the
‘theological’ position of the lapis: it was the filius macrocosmi as opposed to
the ‘son of man,’ who was the filius microcosmi.”57 According to Khunrath,
cited by Jung,

Without blasphemy I say: In the Book or Mirror of Nature, the Stone of the
Philosophers, the Preserver of the Macrocosm, is the symbol of Jesus Christ
Crucified, Saviour of the whole race of men, that is, of the Microcosm. From the
Stone you shall know in natural wise Christ, and from Christ the Stone. 58

Again, this is not an expression of identity, but an analogy between Christ,

Son of the microcosm, savior and redeemer of mankind, and the stone, Son of
the Macrocosm, redeemer and restorer of nature.59

56
Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1595 & 1609), Circular Figure 2: “Derelicto malo, tri
.” ‫ םדא‬,καθολικος ,mentignevsreunitus, regenerando sublimetur,
57
Carl Gustav Jung, Alchemical Studies, trans. R.F.C. Hull (New York: Princeton/ Bollingen, 1968,
repr. 1983), 96.
58
Jung, Alchemical Studies, 126. The original is in Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II, 197.

59
Jung was one of the first to discuss comparisons between Christ and the Philosophers’ Stone,
originally in an Eranos lecture “Die Erlösungsvorstellungen in der Alchemie,” Eranos-Jahrbuch
1936 (Zürich: Rhein-Verlag, 1937), 13–111, and then more extensively in Psychologie und
Alchemie (1944, 1952). See Psychology and Alchemy, trans. R.F.C. Hull (New York: Bollingen
Foundation, 1953; 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968; 1 st paperpack 1980), Part
III, Chap. 5 The Lapis-Christ Parallel, 345–431. Khunrath is mentioned on various occasions, for
example, Khunrath’s novel notion of the Stone as filius macrocosmi or Son of the Macrocosm
(313); A.E. Waite’s opinion that Khunrath was “the first author to identify the stone with Christ”
(357); Khunrath’s Oratory-Laboratory engraving (291). For more on comparisons of Christ with
the Stone, see Leah DeVun, Prophecy, Alchemy and the End of Time: John of Rupescissa in the
Late Middle Ages (New York: Columbia
K
ABALA
,
M
AGIA
,
A
LCHYMIA
C
ONIUNGENDAE
All these examples, however, still represent binary, dyadic thinking, drawing
comparisons or analogies between two of Khunrath’s areas of practice, be that
between the two microcosms, Man and the Philosophers’ Stone, or Christ and
the Stone. Yet, as any astrologer knows, there can be stelliums, conjunctions of
several planets coming together in the heavens; likewise alchemical
compounds frequently had more than just two ingredients.

An Instance of Commonality: Greenness

There are passages where Khunrath intimates of more extended common-
alities or congruencies between his practices; one such appears in a rhap-
sodic passage in the Amphitheatre on the color green:

Oh Blessed Greenness, maKing all things grow. Contemplate [this] Greenness, in the first, second and
third figures of this Amphitheatre, [and], oh Theosopher, you will find the R uah Elohim
[Spirit of the Lord]; you, oh Cabalist, the Green Line, encircling the Universe; you, Mage,
Nature; [and] you, Physical-Chemist, The Green Lion, Duenegh Viride; Adrop,
60
The Quintessence.

This correspondence was evidently important for Khunrath, for he recycles the
message two years later in On Primaterial Chaos (1597):

I saw the Green Catholic Lion of Nature and the natural alchemists: the green
Duenech: Catholic Venus of the Philosophers, that is, the fruitfulness of N ature,
coming to and in all natural things, synoptically-universally: … I have with care
catholically taken the Green Line of the Cabalists, catholically naturally
penetrating the whole world: I have smelt and tasted the blessed natural Green of
Natural Magicians, that naturally cultivates all natural things, induces their
growth and ripening.61

University Press, 2009), 109–16 who provides examples from Petrus Bonus’s Pretiosa margarita
novella, Arnald of Villanova’s De lapide philosophorum, and John of Rupescissa’s Liber lucis.

Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II, 67: “O Benedicta viriditas, faciens res cvnctas germinare. Contemplare
60

viriditatem,
figuris Amphitheatri huius prima, secunda, & tertia, reperies tu TheoSophe, R vah Elohim:
Cabalista, Lineam viridem, girantem vniversvm: Mage, Natvram: PhysicoChemista, Leonem viridem; Dvenegh viride;
Adrop; Essentiam qvintam.” See also Amphitheatrum (1595), 8.

61
Khunrath, Chaos (1597), 91–93: “ich sahe den GRUNEN Catholischen LÖWEN der NATUR
und Naturgemessen Alchymisten: Das grüne DUENECH: VENEREM
Here the clear message of commonalities and correspondences is expressed in
words: we are told to note the presence of greenness in the first three circular
Theosophical figures. For the theosopher, intent on divine wisdom, it is
represented by the Hebrew
Ruach Elohim
, the Spirit of God that hovered over the waters at the moment of creation in
the book of Genesis (Gen. 1:2). Certain Cabalists wrote of the Green Line that
encircles the universe, interpreting it, for example, as Heaven or the
Neoplatonic
Anima Mundi
(
“
Soul of the World
”
). For the magician, greenness represents the power of Nature, which Khunrath
62

equates with the Ruach Elohim and also with the Anima Mundi. Finally, for the
alchemist or physico-chymist working with matter in the laboratory, it is the
Green Lion, best known from the image of the Rosarium Philosophorum
(1550), where it is seen devouring the Sun, denoting either philosophical
Mercury or Vitriol dissolving gold. Khunrath is not simply comparing
philosophical systems, he is implying that there is an essential underlying unity
among them.

Hybrid Sciences: Existing Models for Conjunction

Khunrath is anything but explicit on what he intends by the insistence that
alchemy, magic, and Cabala be practiced together, but let us consider existing
models, with which he was familiar, for combining at least two

Philosophorum Catholicam, das ist/ die Fruchtbarkeit der NATUR/zu und in alle Natürliche dinge
kommende/ kurtzbegrifflich-Universalisch: … Das ich hab in acht genom-men die GRUNE die
gantze Weld Catholisch durchgehende Naturliche LINEAM der Cabalisten/Catholisch: Das ich
habe gerochen und geschmedet die GESEGNETE der Naturgemessen Magorum Natürliche
GRUNE/ so alle Natürliche dinge Natürlich zeuget/ in jhr wachsen und grünen treibet.”

62
For Pico della Mirandola’s references to the Green Line, see S. A. Farmer, Syncretism in the
West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486)–The Evolution of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems
(Tempe, AR: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998), 349: “When Solomon says in his
prayer in the Book of Kings, Hear O heaven, by heaven we should understand the green line that
circles the universe.” For other references to this Green Line, see Secret, Les Kabbalistes
chrétiens, 97, 319 and Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter, 26, 181, who equates it
with the third Sephirah, Binah. See also Chaim Wirszubski, “Francesco Giorgio’s Commentary on
Giovanni Pico’s Kabbalistic Theses,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 37 (1974):
154 on how Francesco Giorgio “correctly grasped the implication of the interrelation between the
view that a green line (Intelligence) encircles the universe and that God is everywhere and
nowhere.” On the Green Line as Anima Mundi, see Arcangelo da Borgonuovo, Cabalistarum
selectiora obscurioraque Dogmata (Venice: Franciscus Franciscius, 1569), 210r; 217v.
practices before we speculate on the
 
possible harnessing of all three. The easiest connection to make is between
Cabala and magic. In his
Conclusiones
, Pico della Mirandola had stressed the value of combining the two arts, as in
his notorious declaration that
“
There is no science that assures us more of the divinity of Christ than magic
and Cabala,
” as well as in other statements regarding the privileged status of the Hebrew
63

language in relation to magic.64 Inspired by Pico, Reuchlin wrote of the virtue

of Hebrew as the original language of Creation, supremely necessary in
magical operations, particularly in the writing of characters on images. These
syncretic tendencies were reinforced by Agrippa in De occulta philosophia, in
which Cabala was related to natural, astral, and ritual forms of magic.

Another of Khunrath’s sources, the Venetian priest Giovanni Agostino Pantheo

(fl. 1517–1535), developed a hybrid “Cabala of Metals” in the Ars
transmutationis metallicae (Art of Metallic Transmutation, 1518), published
with a Commentarium Theoricae Artis Metallicae Transmutationis
(Commentary on the Theory of the Art of Metallic Transmutation), dated 1519,
and the Voarchadumia contra alchimiam (Voarchadumia against Alchemy,
1530).65 In these works Pantheo promoted a cabalistic reading of alchemical
texts and a cabalistic investigation of the secrets of alchemical substances and
processes.66 Paracelsus also showed himself intrigued by the possibilities of this
new art, and its relevance to both alchemy and magic.67

In what is now considered a pseudonymous work, the Archidoxis Magicae

(Chief Teachings of Magic, first published in 1570),68 Paracelsus provides a
recipe for the creation of electrum magicum (“magical electrum”), that is, an
alloy made of all the seven planetary metals,69 and

63
Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 497 (9>9).
64
Secret, Les Kabbalistes chrétiens, Cap. III; Reichert, “Pico della Mirandola and the Beginnings
of Christian Kabbala,” 195–207.
65
Giovanni Agostino Pantheo, Ars transmutationis metallicae (Venice: Giovanni Tacuino, 1519);
Giovanni Agostino Pantheo, Voarchadumia contra Alchi’miam: Ars distincta ab Archimi’a, et
Sophia (Venice: n.p., 1530).
66
Peter J. Forshaw, “Cabala Chymica or Chemia Cabalistica—Early Modern Alchemists and
Cabala,” Ambix 60, no. 4 (2013): 371ff.
67
Forshaw, “Cabala Chymica or Chemia Cabalistica,” 376f.
68
The first editor of Paracelsus’s complete philosophical works, Johannes Huser (c.1545– c.1601),
was uncertain about the authenticity of this treatise, while the modern editor of Paracelsus’s works,
Karl Sudhoff (1853–1938), rejected it as spurious. Nevertheless, Khunrath made use of it and
apparently considered it genuine, or at least relevant to his work.
69
Tilton, “Of Electrum and the Armour of Achilles,” 129.
then goes on to provide detailed instructions on how to fashion a magical
mirror. Magic mirrors were part and parcel of medieval catoptromancy (mirror
divination), being used for scrying
—
seeing visions of spirits
—
as an alternative to the crystallomantic use of beryl stones and crystal balls. A
mirror fashioned of electrum probably required knowledge of alchemy as
much as metallurgy. Paracelsus also wrote of a necromantic bell that he saw in
Spain: when the magician wrote various words and characters on the bell and
then rang it, all sorts of spirits and specters appeared.
70
The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna possesses a small handbell (Fig.
4.11), considered to be of electrum, made for Emperor Rudolf II around
1600,71 covered with images of the seven planetary deities, Sun, Mercury,
Venus, and so forth, with their related astrological signs, and names for the
planetary angels in Arabic or Syriac,72 Greek script on the inside of the bell
and Hebrew on the clapper. Here we have an object, made of metal, province
of alchemy, covered in symbols, including the Hebrew of Cabala, undoubtedly
intended for ritual magic purposes; as such an expression of the ideas found in
the Archidoxis Magicae.73

Triune Conjunction in Consilium de Physico-Magica (1597)

The Archidoxis Magicae brings us closer to Khunrath’s three-headed chimera,
his triune conjunction. In an unpublished manuscript, the Consilium

70
See Paracelsus, Archidoxis Magicae, in Paracelsus, Bücher und Schrifften, ed. Johann Huser
(Frankfurt: Johann Wechels Erben, 1603), X, 319–59, especially Liber Sextus, De compositione
metallorum, concerning the necromantic bell and Virgil’s bell, at the sound of which all the
Fig. 4.11 Alchemical table bell of Rudolf II, Courtesy of Kunsthistorisches Museum
adulterers at the court of King Arthur fell into the river, pushed by an invisible force. On this, see
Wien, ©KHM-Museumsverband
John Webster Spargo, Virgil the Necromancer: Studies in Virgilian Legends (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1934), 209–10.
71
See Beket Bukovinská and Ivo Purš, “Die Tischglocke Rudolfs II: über ihren Urheber und ihre
Bedeutung,” Studia Rudolphina 10 (2010): 89–104; Domagoj Akrap, Klaus
(Bielefeld: Kerber Verlag, 2018), Kabbalah ‫ הלבק‬Davidowicz, and Mirjam Knotter, eds.
136–39. See also the article by Corinna Gannon, “The Alchemical Hand Bell of Rudolf II—A
Touchstone of Art and Alchemy,” Studia Rudolphina 19 (2019): 81–98.
72
Bukovinská and Purš, “Die Tischglocke Rudolfs II,” 94. See also Ivo Purš, “Rudolf II’s
Patronage of Alchemy and the Natural Sciences,” in Alchemy and Rudolf II: Exploring the Secrets
of Nature in Central Europe in the 16th and 17th Centuries, eds. Ivo Purš and Vladimir Karpenko
(Prague: Artefactum, 2016), 181 for higher quality close-ups of Rudolf’s bell.
73
For more, see Hereward Tilton, “Bells and Spells: Rosicrucianism and the Invocation of
Planetary Spirits in Early Modern Germany,” Culture and Cosmos: A Journal of the History of
Astrology and Cultural Astronomy 19, no. 1–2 (2015): 5–26.
de Physico- Magica Vulcani fabrefactione armorum Achillis (Counsel con-
cerning Vulcan’s Natural-Magical Forging of the Arms of Achilles), in a
dramatic mixture of magic, metallurgy, and metal-smithing, 74 Khunrath
provides details of the production of electrum magicum for the fashioning of
armor. He employs Paracelsus’s recipe for creating the alloy, then

Swedish Royal Library, Stockholm, Ms. Rai 4, Consilium de Vulcani magica Fabrefactione
74

Armorum Achillis (1597). Khunrath refers to this work in De Igne Magorum, 37: “Consilium oder
Rhatsames Bedencken/ bey und uber Vulcanischer auch natürlich Magischer Fabrefactione
Armorum Achillis.”
describes the smithing of the armor and the striking of a sigil of Mars into it,
the latter designed in accordance with instructions found in Agrippa
’
s
De occulta philosophia
. This is accompanied by a verbal “magical” or “cabalistic” performance: a
75

Latin incantation to be recited (or rather growled or bellowed) during the

striking of the sigil, one that simultaneously draws down the powers of the
macrocosmic stars and their intelligences through the recitation of verses
expressing the requisite star’s qualities, and draws on the stars of the inner
microcosmic heaven within the adept.76

The “Necessary” Triune Conjunction: The Philosophers’ Stone

In the Amphitheatre and On Primaterial Chaos, Khunrath’s focus is on stones,
both universal and particular, so let us conclude with a brief consideration of
their significance for him. In addition to the alchemical production of metals for
magical objects, we also find one of the major promoters of full-spectrum
Paracelsian philosophy, Gerard Dorn (c.1530–1584), writing of artificially
creating gemstones in the laboratory, which can then be used for making
magical talismans.77 One of the most famous instances of the discussion of
magical stones in an alchemical context is surely the Theatrum Chemicum
Britannicum (1652), in which Elias Ashmole (1617–1692) describes
“supernatural stones” conferring “special intellectual or spiritual powers.”78
One of these stones, the “magical” one, has the power both to present any part
of the world to the adept’s vision and to endow them with the capacity to
understand the language of animals. While this stone relates to animals and the
sublunary world of creation, the “angelical stone”

75
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, De occulta philosophia libri tres (Cologne:
Johannes Soter, 1533), Book 2, Chapter 22, CL.
76
Khunrath, Consilium de Vulcani magica Fabrefactione Armorum Achillis, 36: “Sonderlich aber
soltu keinesweges vergessenn Cooperation oder mitwirckung Microcosmischen innerlichen
gestirnes, astrorum coeli Microcosmi darneben anzuwenden, ohne welche in arte Magicorum man
zu keinem vollenkommen ende gereichen noch kommen kann.”
77
Gerard Dorn, Artificii Chymistici Physici, Metaphysicique, Secunda pars & Tertia. (N.p.,
1569), II, 376–86; Gerard Dorn, De Lapidum preciosorum structura, in Theatrum Chemicum I
(Strasbourg: Heirs of Eberhard Zetzner, 1659), 485–90.
78
Principe and Newman, “Some Problems with the Historiography of Alchemy,” 399.
is so subtill
…
that it can neither be seene, felt, or weighed; but Tasted only.
…
 79
A Stone, that will lodge in the Fire to Eternity without being prejudiced. It hath
a Divine Power, Celestiall, and Invisible, above the rest; and endowes the
possessor with Divine Gifts. It affords the Apparition of Angells, and gives a
power of conversing with them, by Dreames and Revelations: nor dare any Evill
Spirit approach the Place where it lodgeth. Because it is a Quintessence wherein
there is no corruptible Thing: and where the Elements are not corrupt, no Devill
can stay or abide.

It is not unusual to find alchemists talking about three kinds of stone, usually with each
relating to a different kingdom of nature: Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral. 80 As far as I
know, however, Khunrath’s presentation of the threefold use of the Philosophers’ Stone,
which works on macrocosmic, microcosmic, and divine levels of being, is unique. In the
band of text surrounding the central image of the 1595 Oratory-Laboratory engraving
(Fig. 4.6), we read that Macrocosmically, the Stone transmutes metals, creates artificial
gemstones, makes metals and gems potable, cures animals, revives plants, and makes a
perpetually burning water.81 Microcosmically, it is the best medicine for mankind,
routing all internal and external maladies of body, spirit, or soul, conferring long life; it
stimulates the mind, exalts the memory, and removes melancholy. 82

by whichhummimT ‫ תמים‬andrimU ‫אורים‬Finally, on a Divine level, it is the “

Thrice Great YHVH Cabalistically gives an answer, speaks and utters his sayings
about great and hidden things, to the Theo-Sopher.”83

79
Elias Ashmole, Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (London: J. Grismond for Nathaniel Brooke,
1652), B2v. See Matthew D Rogers, “The Angelical Stone of Elias Ashmole,” Aries 5, no. 1
(2005): 61–90.
80
Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II, 199: “Vegetabilis, quoque, Animalis & Mineralis est & dicitur.”
On the three kinds of stones discussed in George Ripley’s Medulla, see Jennifer M. Rampling,
“The Alchemy of George Ripley, 1470–1700” (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2009), 29.

81
In the 1609 edition, this information appears in the Isagoge (Introductory Commentary) to
Figure 3. See Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II, 204–5. 82 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II,
204 and Khunrath, Warhafftiger Bericht Vom Philosophischen Athanore auch Brauch unnd Nütz
desselbigen (Magdeburg, n.p., 1603), 18–20.
, per quod, presente, rimU )1609( ‫םירוא‬, II, 204: “Est enimAmphitheatrumKhunrath,83 de
maximis &vocem
loquitur & abstrusis, Cabalicè
emittit dat TheoSopho responsa, termaximvs
suam.” ‫ הוהי‬hummimT ‫& םימת‬
c
onclusion
Invited to discuss innovation in the context of Khunrath’s works, we began this
chapter with his three neologisms, the compound adjectives in the 1609 title of
the Christian-Cabalist, Divinely-Magical, and Physico-Chemical
Amphitheatre. Representing Khunrath’s readiness to alchemically reduce and
reconstitute matter and cabalistically deconstruct and refashion language, these
are the verbal hybrid counterparts to his visual program of circular
Theosophical figures representing various kinds of conjunction, be that the
hermaphroditic compound of Mercury and Sulphur, the prelapsarian
androgynous unity of Adam and Eve, or the theanthrophic union of Christ’s
divine and mortal natures. We looked at what he meant by Christian Cabala,
magic, and alchemy, and then considered a few models for his experimental
combinations of these three fields of knowledge, initially in binary form, but
culminating in his novel assertion that the three must necessarily be conjoined.
While the rhapsodic passages on the polysignificance of the color green offer
us insight into underlying correspondences in his worldview, and the brief
account of the fashioning of magical armor provides some performative sense
of his approach, the most substantial evidence for what Khunrath intends by
his “necessary” conjunction is when he discusses the Philosophers’ Stone, such
as when he declares that “Our Stone is One” and at the same time “Triune,
namely, Terrestrial, Celestial and Divine.”84

This is undoubtedly what Khunrath intended with his unusual assertion about
the absolutely necessary conjunction of the three arts, the three handmaids of
Wisdom. Let’s end this chapter in memory of Nicholas, who offered me so
much support in my early career, and helped me bring together some of my
ideas, with a passage from Khunrath’s most alchemical work, On Primaterial
Chaos, in which he encourages and exhorts his fellow seekers after
knowledge, inspiration, and wisdom:

I speak too with you both, Christian Cabalist and Divine Mage, who should
theosophically seek and find a true and heavenly R evelation of past, present and
future things, in the Stone of the Wise. Urim.85

84
Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II, 199: “Vnde Lapis noster Trinus existit & Vnus,
h.e. Triunus, videlicet, Terrestris, Cælestis atque Divinvs.”
85
Khunrath, Chaos (1597), 313–14: “Ich rede auch mit euch beiden/ du Christlicher CABALIST
und Göttlicher MAGE/ die jhr/ eine wahre und Himlische APOCALIPSIN/
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䘀椀最
䘀椀最 ⸀㐀1600–1900.
⸀⸀㄀ PhD diss., University
䬀栀甀渀爀愀琀栀 ⰀⰀⰀ of Amsterdam.
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渀猀椀渀
渀猀椀渀 Ⰰ
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⸀㐀⸀㈀䬀栀甀渀爀愀琀栀
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