At the end of his life Jacob Böhme sat down to explain the book of Genesis. He began before 1622 and finished in 1623, a year before his death, and the result is his longest and most ambitious work: 896 pages on the first book of Moses. Creation, Adam, the serpent, Cain and Abel, Babel, the patriarchs: each becomes a chapter in his account of how the eternal world gives birth to this one and how the soul finds its way home. The title page states the double program: an explanation of the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace, of what Adam and what Christ is. It is the summa of his last years, and for the English Behmenists who translated it in 1654, the essential Böhme.
The frontispiece is the famous one. Across the opening, under the words Messias and Moses, the haloed Messiah and the hooded prophet bend toward each other over the great starry globe of the world, wound in its spiral rings; a trumpet sounds between them, and on the facing page a crowned figure with a flowering branch stands upon the nested circles of creation. The title page is dated 1730 and records the composition dates, begun before 1622 and completed 1623.
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 Mysterium Magnum volume of that edition, in Fraktur with Gichtel’s chapter-summaries, closing with the appended “Extract der hochsinnlichen Betrachtung,” whose final sentence ends: “then the outer shell falls away, and there stands a spiritual tree of life in God’s field.” Then ENDE, and the printer’s knot.
This copy has had an American life. A blind-embossed stamp reads LANCASTER, PENNA., and inked accession numbers on the frontispiece and the last page mark the shelf of some Pennsylvania institution: the volume made its way to the country where German mystical piety went when it crossed the ocean, and Lancaster County is the heart of it. An early reader has also been through the text in pencil, setting crosses beside the alchemical chapters, where Böhme compares the buried image of God in man to gold hidden in lead, waiting for the artist.
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.”: an urn on its pedestal in a wooded garden, with serpent and owl. (2) Blind-embossed stamp reading LANCASTER, PENNA., with inked accession numbers on the frontispiece (13549) and last page (4115): an unidentified Pennsylvania institutional library. (3) Early pencil reading-marks: marginal crosses beside key passages, among them the alchemical chapters of the Genesis commentary.
Mysterium Magnum, oder Erklärung über Das Erste Buch Mosis. 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). Mysterium Magnum, oder Erklärung über Das Erste Buch Mosis (begun before 1622, completed 1623). [From the Theosophia Revelata, the revised 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. Double-page engraved frontispiece (Messias and Moses over the starry globe); special title dated 1730; 896 pp., closing with the “Extract der hochsinnlichen Betrachtung” and terminal ENDE with calligraphic knot ornament. Fraktur type, Gichtel’s chapter-summaries throughout. Early pencil reading-marks (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: Very good. Paper somewhat browned as usual with this stock; dampstain to the upper area of roughly the last twenty leaves, the final leaf more browned. Binding firm.
At the end of his life Jacob Böhme sat down to explain the book of Genesis. He began before 1622 and finished in 1623, a year before his death, and the result is his longest and most ambitious work: 896 pages on the first book of Moses. Creation, Adam, the serpent, Cain and Abel, Babel, the patriarchs: each becomes a chapter in his account of how the eternal world gives birth to this one and how the soul finds its way home. The title page states the double program: an explanation of the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace, of what Adam and what Christ is. It is the summa of his last years, and for the English Behmenists who translated it in 1654, the essential Böhme.
The frontispiece is the famous one. Across the opening, under the words Messias and Moses, the haloed Messiah and the hooded prophet bend toward each other over the great starry globe of the world, wound in its spiral rings; a trumpet sounds between them, and on the facing page a crowned figure with a flowering branch stands upon the nested circles of creation. The title page is dated 1730 and records the composition dates, begun before 1622 and completed 1623.
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 Mysterium Magnum volume of that edition, in Fraktur with Gichtel’s chapter-summaries, closing with the appended “Extract der hochsinnlichen Betrachtung,” whose final sentence ends: “then the outer shell falls away, and there stands a spiritual tree of life in God’s field.” Then ENDE, and the printer’s knot.
This copy has had an American life. A blind-embossed stamp reads LANCASTER, PENNA., and inked accession numbers on the frontispiece and the last page mark the shelf of some Pennsylvania institution: the volume made its way to the country where German mystical piety went when it crossed the ocean, and Lancaster County is the heart of it. An early reader has also been through the text in pencil, setting crosses beside the alchemical chapters, where Böhme compares the buried image of God in man to gold hidden in lead, waiting for the artist.
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.”: an urn on its pedestal in a wooded garden, with serpent and owl. (2) Blind-embossed stamp reading LANCASTER, PENNA., with inked accession numbers on the frontispiece (13549) and last page (4115): an unidentified Pennsylvania institutional library. (3) Early pencil reading-marks: marginal crosses beside key passages, among them the alchemical chapters of the Genesis commentary.
Mysterium Magnum, oder Erklärung über Das Erste Buch Mosis. 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). Mysterium Magnum, oder Erklärung über Das Erste Buch Mosis (begun before 1622, completed 1623). [From the Theosophia Revelata, the revised 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. Double-page engraved frontispiece (Messias and Moses over the starry globe); special title dated 1730; 896 pp., closing with the “Extract der hochsinnlichen Betrachtung” and terminal ENDE with calligraphic knot ornament. Fraktur type, Gichtel’s chapter-summaries throughout. Early pencil reading-marks (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: Very good. Paper somewhat browned as usual with this stock; dampstain to the upper area of roughly the last twenty leaves, the final leaf more browned. Binding firm.
