This little volume ends with the end of the world, and Böhme is glad about it. "Now think what you are doing! For Babel stands already in flames, and burns; there is no quenching it any more, and no medicine: she is known to be evil, her kingdom goes to its end. Halleluja!" Then ENDE, and the printer's knot. That is the close of the Mysterium Pansophicum, the third of three treatises gathered here, finished, as its title records, on the 8th of May, 1620.
Jacob Böhme was a shoemaker in Görlitz whose visions turned him into an author, and nearly everything he wrote came in a rush in the last five years of his life. All three treatises here belong to one year of that rush, 1620. Sex Puncta Theosophica, the Six Theosophical Points, is the longest: six points on the tree of life, how it grows out of the three principles of Böhme's system and how a life growing in it can spoil, offered on its title page as "an open gate of all the secrets of life, wherein the causes of all beings are known." Sex Puncta Mystica follows, a short companion explaining six mystical points. The Mysterium Pansophicum, a thorough report of the earthly and heavenly mystery in nine compact texts, promises "a wholly wondrous revelation, taken from the highest Arcanum," written for the children of God who will flee out of burning Babel. On his last page Böhme turns on the false wonder-workers, giving them Matthew 7:22 with his own additions: "Depart from me, you stinking goats, I know you not… You have done it out of false magia, and were never known in my spirit and will."
The volume carries two of the edition's emblematic plates, and both of them stare back. Plate VI., under a banner reading "Sechs Puncten," sets interlocking triangles lettered with the divine name inside a great ring of eyes, with UNGRUND and EWIGE FREYHEIT arched over the top. The legend around the rim explains: the abyss and the eternal freedom, God beyond nature and creature. Plate VIII., its numeral engraved backwards as IIX., faces the Mysterium: the all-seeing eye in a triangle under an imperial crown, a wheel rimmed with flames and tulips, and at the center a cross whose titulus is lettered in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. The engraver tucked a scourge and a broom into the corners. The editors of 1730 left the engravings out of the edition on principle; buyers who wanted them bought the suite separately and had it bound in.
The text appears here in the celebrated edition of 1730, the Theosophia Revelata, a revised collected edition of Böhme's works, assembled from the editorial apparatus of Johann Georg Gichtel and carried through the press by his disciple Johann Wilhelm Ueberfeld. The three treatises are paginated as one, 111 pages in all. The title of the Six Mystical Points says Böhme wrote the book in 1720. He wrote it in 1620; the compositor slipped a hundred years, and nobody caught him.
The binding is the original one: stiff paper boards covered in red-daubed paste-paper, the spine titled in ink in an eighteenth-century hand that lists all three works. An early owner set his inked monogram beside Böhme's name on the first title page; the interlaced initials so far resist a confident reading. Light worming affects the gutters of the opening leaves, touching no print. Otherwise this is a good clean copy, without annotations.
Provenance: Early ink ownership monogram on the first title page.
Sex Puncta Theosophica, Sex Puncta Mystica, and the Mysterium Pansophicum, three works written in 1620 and bound together in the eighteenth century. From the Theosophia Revelata, the collected edition of Böhme's works, 1730, with two emblematic plates. In original stiff paper boards, entirely unsophisticated.
BÖHME, Jacob (1575–1624). Sex Puncta Theosophica, oder Von sechs Theosophischen Puncten hohe und tiefe Gründung [with:] Sex Puncta Mystica, oder Kurtze Erklärung Sechs Mystischer Puncte [and:] Mysterium Pansophicum, oder Gründlicher Bericht von dem Irdischen und Himmlischen Mysterio (all written 1620, the last dated 8 May). From the Theosophia Revelata, the collected edition, ed. Johann Georg Gichtel, seen through the press by Johann Wilhelm Ueberfeld. No place or printer: "Gedruckt im Jahr des ausgebornen grossen Heils," 1730.
Physical Description: Small 8vo. Three works paginated continuously, 111 pp. in all, each with a separate title page, the first with its Verzeichniß of points and chapters; two engraved emblematic plates, numbered VI. ("Sechs Puncten") and IIX., i.e. VIII ("Irdisch und Himlisch Mysterium"), facing the first and third titles; opening blank and final blank; terminal ENDE with calligraphic knot ornament. Fraktur type, Gichtel's summaries throughout.
Binding: Original stiff paper boards covered in red-patterned paste-paper, spine with manuscript ink title listing the three works; an untouched, unsophisticated period state. Boards rubbed, spine ends chipped.
Condition: Light worming to the gutters of the opening leaves, never touching the print; paper toned as usual with this stock. Clean of annotations; the plates fresh; final blank present.
This little volume ends with the end of the world, and Böhme is glad about it. "Now think what you are doing! For Babel stands already in flames, and burns; there is no quenching it any more, and no medicine: she is known to be evil, her kingdom goes to its end. Halleluja!" Then ENDE, and the printer's knot. That is the close of the Mysterium Pansophicum, the third of three treatises gathered here, finished, as its title records, on the 8th of May, 1620.
Jacob Böhme was a shoemaker in Görlitz whose visions turned him into an author, and nearly everything he wrote came in a rush in the last five years of his life. All three treatises here belong to one year of that rush, 1620. Sex Puncta Theosophica, the Six Theosophical Points, is the longest: six points on the tree of life, how it grows out of the three principles of Böhme's system and how a life growing in it can spoil, offered on its title page as "an open gate of all the secrets of life, wherein the causes of all beings are known." Sex Puncta Mystica follows, a short companion explaining six mystical points. The Mysterium Pansophicum, a thorough report of the earthly and heavenly mystery in nine compact texts, promises "a wholly wondrous revelation, taken from the highest Arcanum," written for the children of God who will flee out of burning Babel. On his last page Böhme turns on the false wonder-workers, giving them Matthew 7:22 with his own additions: "Depart from me, you stinking goats, I know you not… You have done it out of false magia, and were never known in my spirit and will."
The volume carries two of the edition's emblematic plates, and both of them stare back. Plate VI., under a banner reading "Sechs Puncten," sets interlocking triangles lettered with the divine name inside a great ring of eyes, with UNGRUND and EWIGE FREYHEIT arched over the top. The legend around the rim explains: the abyss and the eternal freedom, God beyond nature and creature. Plate VIII., its numeral engraved backwards as IIX., faces the Mysterium: the all-seeing eye in a triangle under an imperial crown, a wheel rimmed with flames and tulips, and at the center a cross whose titulus is lettered in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. The engraver tucked a scourge and a broom into the corners. The editors of 1730 left the engravings out of the edition on principle; buyers who wanted them bought the suite separately and had it bound in.
The text appears here in the celebrated edition of 1730, the Theosophia Revelata, a revised collected edition of Böhme's works, assembled from the editorial apparatus of Johann Georg Gichtel and carried through the press by his disciple Johann Wilhelm Ueberfeld. The three treatises are paginated as one, 111 pages in all. The title of the Six Mystical Points says Böhme wrote the book in 1720. He wrote it in 1620; the compositor slipped a hundred years, and nobody caught him.
The binding is the original one: stiff paper boards covered in red-daubed paste-paper, the spine titled in ink in an eighteenth-century hand that lists all three works. An early owner set his inked monogram beside Böhme's name on the first title page; the interlaced initials so far resist a confident reading. Light worming affects the gutters of the opening leaves, touching no print. Otherwise this is a good clean copy, without annotations.
Provenance: Early ink ownership monogram on the first title page.
Sex Puncta Theosophica, Sex Puncta Mystica, and the Mysterium Pansophicum, three works written in 1620 and bound together in the eighteenth century. From the Theosophia Revelata, the collected edition of Böhme's works, 1730, with two emblematic plates. In original stiff paper boards, entirely unsophisticated.
BÖHME, Jacob (1575–1624). Sex Puncta Theosophica, oder Von sechs Theosophischen Puncten hohe und tiefe Gründung [with:] Sex Puncta Mystica, oder Kurtze Erklärung Sechs Mystischer Puncte [and:] Mysterium Pansophicum, oder Gründlicher Bericht von dem Irdischen und Himmlischen Mysterio (all written 1620, the last dated 8 May). From the Theosophia Revelata, the collected edition, ed. Johann Georg Gichtel, seen through the press by Johann Wilhelm Ueberfeld. No place or printer: "Gedruckt im Jahr des ausgebornen grossen Heils," 1730.
Physical Description: Small 8vo. Three works paginated continuously, 111 pp. in all, each with a separate title page, the first with its Verzeichniß of points and chapters; two engraved emblematic plates, numbered VI. ("Sechs Puncten") and IIX., i.e. VIII ("Irdisch und Himlisch Mysterium"), facing the first and third titles; opening blank and final blank; terminal ENDE with calligraphic knot ornament. Fraktur type, Gichtel's summaries throughout.
Binding: Original stiff paper boards covered in red-patterned paste-paper, spine with manuscript ink title listing the three works; an untouched, unsophisticated period state. Boards rubbed, spine ends chipped.
Condition: Light worming to the gutters of the opening leaves, never touching the print; paper toned as usual with this stock. Clean of annotations; the plates fresh; final blank present.
