In 1612 a shoemaker in Görlitz named Jacob Böhme wrote his first book and gave it a title of no small ambition: Aurora, the Dawn Rising, that is, the Root or Mother of Philosophy, Astrology, and Theology. He wrote it as a private record of what a flash of illumination had shown him about the birth of God, nature, good, and evil. A local nobleman borrowed the manuscript, set copyists on it, and then the copies got loose. When the chief pastor of Görlitz learned what the shoemaker was up to, he denounced Böhme from the pulpit, had the manuscript confiscated, and extracted a promise that he would never write again. The ban held for some seven years. The book it failed to suppress became the founding text of German theosophy.
The Aurora is Böhme’s attempt to describe, from the inside, how God and nature come to birth. He unfolds the process through seven “qualities” or source-spirits that forever generate one another, a churning drama of desire, wrath, fire, and love; the natural side of the system comes from Paracelsus, the title from the Song of Songs, the whole from what Böhme insisted was direct vision. It was written in the very years of the Rosicrucian Chymical Wedding, and it reads like a wild mixture of Lutheran piety, alchemy, and visionary experience. Novalis, a devoted reader two centuries on, called Böhme’s subject the “dynamic of the spirit realm.”
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. This is the Aurora volume of that edition: 405 pages in Fraktur with Gichtel’s chapter-summaries, the author’s preface and all twenty-six chapters, the last of them, on the planet Saturn, breaking off where Böhme’s manuscript was seized. It opens with an emblematic engraved frontispiece.
And this copy is extensively annotated in red ink: there are underscores, pointing-marks down the margins, nota-bene monograms, and a running handwritten index. Where Böhme explains that his book treats Philosophia, Astrologia, and Theologia, each term gets its marginal gloss; where he describes the eyes and ears of the angelic body, “Augen” and “Ohren” stand written beside the text. Against charged passages the reader sets sigils, among them a six-pointed star drawn beside the parable of the tree and its fought-over root, and at the head of one page he answers Böhme with what appears to be Scripture: “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.” It is a working copy of the Aurora, with evidence of close reading throughout.
The volume comes from a run of five treatises of the 1730 edition uniformly bound, at a later date, in dark half morocco over marbled boards, the spines gilt in the late-Baroque manner with red and tan lettering-pieces. Each of the five carries a circular engraved ex libris signed by Karl Heinrich Grünler (1761–1823), a Leipzig engraver of the book trade. The paper is somewhat browned; the binding is firm and handsome.
A note for collectors. This volume is one of five from a uniformly bound run of the 1730 edition, each offered separately: the Aurora, the Mysterium Magnum, De Signatura Rerum, De Tribus Principiis, and the Psychologia Vera (Forty Questions of the Soul, bound with De Incarnatione Verbi). Take 10% off any two volumes, 15% off any three or four, and 20% off the complete run of five. The discounts apply to whichever volumes remain available, and the chance to assemble the complete uniform run lasts only until the first volume finds a home.
Provenance: (1) Circular engraved pictorial ex libris etched by Karl Heinrich Grünler (1761–1823, Leipzig engraver, pupil of Geyser), signed “Grünler fec.”, in each volume of the run. (2) Extensive early annotations in red ink in an old German cursive throughout: underscores, marginal pointing-marks, nota-bene monograms, keyword glosses (“Augen,” “Ohren,” Philosophia / Astrologia / Theologia on the preface), marginal sigils including a six-pointed star, and several longer notes.
Aurora, oder Morgenröte im Aufgang. From the Theosophia Revelata, the collected edition of Böhme’s works, 1730. One of five uniformly bound volumes of the edition, offered separately; see the note for collectors above.
BÖHME, Jacob (1575–1624). Aurora, oder Morgenröte im Aufgang, das ist: Die Wurzel oder Mutter der Philosophiae, Astrologiae und Theologiae aus rechtem Grunde (written 1612). [From the Theosophia Revelata, the revised collected edition, ed. Johann Georg Gichtel, seen through the press by Johann Wilhelm Ueberfeld.] No place or printer, 1730.
Physical Description: Small 8vo. Emblematic engraved frontispiece, special title, and index of chapters; 405 pp., paginated in one block (author’s preface to p. 23; twenty-six chapters, the last, Von dem Planeten Saturno, from p. 384); final blank. Fraktur type, Gichtel’s chapter-summaries throughout. Extensive early reading-marks and glosses in red ink (see Provenance).
Binding: Later dark half morocco over marbled paper boards, leather corners; spine with five raised bands, gilt-tooled in the late-Baroque manner, red and tan lettering-pieces. One of five volumes uniformly bound.
Condition: A good, complete copy. Paper somewhat browned as usual with this stock, the frontispiece a little foxed at the edge; the two leaves bearing pp. 73–76 damaged, with staining and some loss touching the text. Binding firm.
In 1612 a shoemaker in Görlitz named Jacob Böhme wrote his first book and gave it a title of no small ambition: Aurora, the Dawn Rising, that is, the Root or Mother of Philosophy, Astrology, and Theology. He wrote it as a private record of what a flash of illumination had shown him about the birth of God, nature, good, and evil. A local nobleman borrowed the manuscript, set copyists on it, and then the copies got loose. When the chief pastor of Görlitz learned what the shoemaker was up to, he denounced Böhme from the pulpit, had the manuscript confiscated, and extracted a promise that he would never write again. The ban held for some seven years. The book it failed to suppress became the founding text of German theosophy.
The Aurora is Böhme’s attempt to describe, from the inside, how God and nature come to birth. He unfolds the process through seven “qualities” or source-spirits that forever generate one another, a churning drama of desire, wrath, fire, and love; the natural side of the system comes from Paracelsus, the title from the Song of Songs, the whole from what Böhme insisted was direct vision. It was written in the very years of the Rosicrucian Chymical Wedding, and it reads like a wild mixture of Lutheran piety, alchemy, and visionary experience. Novalis, a devoted reader two centuries on, called Böhme’s subject the “dynamic of the spirit realm.”
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. This is the Aurora volume of that edition: 405 pages in Fraktur with Gichtel’s chapter-summaries, the author’s preface and all twenty-six chapters, the last of them, on the planet Saturn, breaking off where Böhme’s manuscript was seized. It opens with an emblematic engraved frontispiece.
And this copy is extensively annotated in red ink: there are underscores, pointing-marks down the margins, nota-bene monograms, and a running handwritten index. Where Böhme explains that his book treats Philosophia, Astrologia, and Theologia, each term gets its marginal gloss; where he describes the eyes and ears of the angelic body, “Augen” and “Ohren” stand written beside the text. Against charged passages the reader sets sigils, among them a six-pointed star drawn beside the parable of the tree and its fought-over root, and at the head of one page he answers Böhme with what appears to be Scripture: “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.” It is a working copy of the Aurora, with evidence of close reading throughout.
The volume comes from a run of five treatises of the 1730 edition uniformly bound, at a later date, in dark half morocco over marbled boards, the spines gilt in the late-Baroque manner with red and tan lettering-pieces. Each of the five carries a circular engraved ex libris signed by Karl Heinrich Grünler (1761–1823), a Leipzig engraver of the book trade. The paper is somewhat browned; the binding is firm and handsome.
A note for collectors. This volume is one of five from a uniformly bound run of the 1730 edition, each offered separately: the Aurora, the Mysterium Magnum, De Signatura Rerum, De Tribus Principiis, and the Psychologia Vera (Forty Questions of the Soul, bound with De Incarnatione Verbi). Take 10% off any two volumes, 15% off any three or four, and 20% off the complete run of five. The discounts apply to whichever volumes remain available, and the chance to assemble the complete uniform run lasts only until the first volume finds a home.
Provenance: (1) Circular engraved pictorial ex libris etched by Karl Heinrich Grünler (1761–1823, Leipzig engraver, pupil of Geyser), signed “Grünler fec.”, in each volume of the run. (2) Extensive early annotations in red ink in an old German cursive throughout: underscores, marginal pointing-marks, nota-bene monograms, keyword glosses (“Augen,” “Ohren,” Philosophia / Astrologia / Theologia on the preface), marginal sigils including a six-pointed star, and several longer notes.
Aurora, oder Morgenröte im Aufgang. From the Theosophia Revelata, the collected edition of Böhme’s works, 1730. One of five uniformly bound volumes of the edition, offered separately; see the note for collectors above.
BÖHME, Jacob (1575–1624). Aurora, oder Morgenröte im Aufgang, das ist: Die Wurzel oder Mutter der Philosophiae, Astrologiae und Theologiae aus rechtem Grunde (written 1612). [From the Theosophia Revelata, the revised collected edition, ed. Johann Georg Gichtel, seen through the press by Johann Wilhelm Ueberfeld.] No place or printer, 1730.
Physical Description: Small 8vo. Emblematic engraved frontispiece, special title, and index of chapters; 405 pp., paginated in one block (author’s preface to p. 23; twenty-six chapters, the last, Von dem Planeten Saturno, from p. 384); final blank. Fraktur type, Gichtel’s chapter-summaries throughout. Extensive early reading-marks and glosses in red ink (see Provenance).
Binding: Later dark half morocco over marbled paper boards, leather corners; spine with five raised bands, gilt-tooled in the late-Baroque manner, red and tan lettering-pieces. One of five volumes uniformly bound.
Condition: A good, complete copy. Paper somewhat browned as usual with this stock, the frontispiece a little foxed at the edge; the two leaves bearing pp. 73–76 damaged, with staining and some loss touching the text. Binding firm.
