1651 - The Computational Kabbalah of Lull

$6,000.00

The Catalan scholar, theologian, and philosopher Raymond Lull (1232–1316) developed a profound system of ars combinatoria, a mystical-logical method by which the truths of natural and metaphysical philosophy could be demonstrated through reasoned combinations of divine and elemental principles. Known simply as “The Art”, this system sought nothing less than a universal science; an instrument for the reconciliation of faith and reason.

Lull’s vision was centuries ahead of its time. His use of symbolic letters, rotating figures, and combinatorial diagrams to exhaust the possibilities of thought directly prefigured the formal logic and computational models that would later underpin the work of Leibniz, who explicitly credited Lull as the origin of his own project for a characteristica universalis, a machine for mechanical reasoning. In this way, The Art stands as one of the earliest conceptual ancestors of modern computing and artificial intelligence.

Yet the book is equally essential to the history of Western esotericism. Its wheels, sigils, and logical trees echo the Kabbalistic search for divine correspondences and the Neoplatonic ladder of being. So potent were its hermetic resonances that this edition includes the commentaries of Cornelius Agrippa and Giordano Bruno, two of the most important magi and philosophers of the Renaissance, who read Lull’s method as a spiritual as well as logical technology, a means to ascend the cosmos through symbolic reasoning.

This volume includes Lull’s Ars Brevis, De auditu Kabbalistico seu Kabbala, Duodecim principia Philosophiae Lullianae, Dialectica seu Logica, Rhetorica, and Ars Magna, with extensive marginal diagrams and emblematic devices.

A truly pivotal book, bridging the mystical and the mathematical, the medieval and the modern, and a cornerstone for anyone tracing the intertwined histories of computation, logic, and the occult. Exceptionally scarce on the market.

1561.  Raymundi Lullii. Opera Ea Quae ad adinventam ab Impso Artem Universalem. Commentaries of Cornelius Agrippa and Giordano Bruno, etc., 1651, Strasbourg: Lazaro Zetzner.  Octavo.  18th century leather over boards, gilt title and decor on spine. Title page repaired.  Numerous foldouts and woodcut computational designs. Significant browning and foxing.  Complete.  Rare.

The Catalan scholar, theologian, and philosopher Raymond Lull (1232–1316) developed a profound system of ars combinatoria, a mystical-logical method by which the truths of natural and metaphysical philosophy could be demonstrated through reasoned combinations of divine and elemental principles. Known simply as “The Art”, this system sought nothing less than a universal science; an instrument for the reconciliation of faith and reason.

Lull’s vision was centuries ahead of its time. His use of symbolic letters, rotating figures, and combinatorial diagrams to exhaust the possibilities of thought directly prefigured the formal logic and computational models that would later underpin the work of Leibniz, who explicitly credited Lull as the origin of his own project for a characteristica universalis, a machine for mechanical reasoning. In this way, The Art stands as one of the earliest conceptual ancestors of modern computing and artificial intelligence.

Yet the book is equally essential to the history of Western esotericism. Its wheels, sigils, and logical trees echo the Kabbalistic search for divine correspondences and the Neoplatonic ladder of being. So potent were its hermetic resonances that this edition includes the commentaries of Cornelius Agrippa and Giordano Bruno, two of the most important magi and philosophers of the Renaissance, who read Lull’s method as a spiritual as well as logical technology, a means to ascend the cosmos through symbolic reasoning.

This volume includes Lull’s Ars Brevis, De auditu Kabbalistico seu Kabbala, Duodecim principia Philosophiae Lullianae, Dialectica seu Logica, Rhetorica, and Ars Magna, with extensive marginal diagrams and emblematic devices.

A truly pivotal book, bridging the mystical and the mathematical, the medieval and the modern, and a cornerstone for anyone tracing the intertwined histories of computation, logic, and the occult. Exceptionally scarce on the market.

1561.  Raymundi Lullii. Opera Ea Quae ad adinventam ab Impso Artem Universalem. Commentaries of Cornelius Agrippa and Giordano Bruno, etc., 1651, Strasbourg: Lazaro Zetzner.  Octavo.  18th century leather over boards, gilt title and decor on spine. Title page repaired.  Numerous foldouts and woodcut computational designs. Significant browning and foxing.  Complete.  Rare.