Aurora is the first book of Jacob Böhme (1575–1624), the shoemaker of Görlitz whose writings explored God and nature through visionary experience. Its title page is unusually precise about its beginnings: Görlitz, 1612, the author thirty-seven years old, on a Tuesday in Pentecost. It also never got finished. This is the opening volume of the 1730 collected edition, with Böhme’s portrait and the engraved Aurora plate, in its original paper boards.
The book breaks off in the twenty-sixth chapter. The clergy of Görlitz seized the manuscript and banned Böhme from writing. His explanation, written eight years later and printed here as the conclusion, gives the interruption a personal adversary: “the Devil thought to make his holiday-evening with it, because he saw that the day was about to break within it.” A good thirty quires more belonged to the book, he says. Let it stand as an “eternal memorial,” since “what is lacking has been made good in the other books.”
The 1730 edition, Theosophia Revelata, used Johann Georg Gichtel’s editorial material and was seen through the press by Johann Wilhelm Ueberfeld. This volume carries the general preliminaries, including the calligraphic title and the engraved portrait of Böhme, mild and long-haired in his oval frame. In his “Account of the Writer,” the shoemaker answers the question of where he got all this: “God has given me the knowledge. Not I, the I that I am, knows it, but God knows it in me.” The list of twenty-one books says buyers could have them gathered into volumes as they pleased, which helps explain the variety of bindings found on this edition.
A notice in those preliminaries says the editors deliberately omitted the engravings of the 1682 edition because they “stem from a foreign invention, not from the author’s spirit.” In this copy, the plate follows the warning. A banner reading AURORA stands over the great sphere of the world, wrapped in bands studded with open eyes and rising above a dark globe. The objection and the engraving have been bound together; the special title dated 1730 faces the plate.
The text runs to 405 pages in Fraktur, with Gichtel’s chapter summaries, and has no annotations. An early inscription on the flyleaf is partly legible. On the rear pastedown is a row of numbers, all within the book’s pagination, that may be a reader’s private index of passages. We have not followed the trail; the buyer may want to.
The original paper boards are the plainest thing about the volume, and among the best. Their red-patterned covering retains the handwritten spine title, “Jac: Böhm Aurora. I.” The boards are worn and the spine chipped; the book is sound.
Provenance: (1) Early ink inscription to the flyleaf, partly legible, with a numeral. (2) Row of early ink numerals on the rear pastedown (“96.” and “193. 162. 195. 73. 105. 361. 269.”), all falling within the book’s pagination — possibly an early reader’s private index of passages.
Aurora, oder Morgenröthe im Aufgang. Volume I of the Theosophia Revelata, the collected edition of Böhme’s works, 1730, with the edition’s general title, preliminaries, and the engraved portrait of Böhme. In original stiff paper boards, entirely unsophisticated.
BÖHME, Jacob (1575–1624). Aurora, oder Morgenröthe im Aufgang, das ist: Die Wurtzel oder Mutter der Philosophiæ, Astrologiæ und Theologiæ aus rechtem Grunde (written 1612). Volume I of 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. Letterpress half-title and general title to the edition; engraved portrait of Böhme; 32 pp. of preliminaries (Vorrede; Böhme’s “Rechenschaft des Schreibers”; Verzeichniß of the twenty-one books; “Erinnerung an den Leser”); engraved emblematic plate numbered I. (the Aurora sphere with its bands of eyes) facing the special title, dated 1730; 405 pp., ending with the author’s Beschluß and terminal ENDE with floral woodcut ornament; initial blank and two terminal blanks. Fraktur type, Gichtel’s chapter-summaries throughout.
Binding: Original stiff paper boards covered in red-patterned paste-paper, spine with manuscript ink title “Jac: Böhm Aurora. I.”; an untouched, unsophisticated period state. Boards rubbed and worn, spine chipped with small losses.
Condition: Clean and sound throughout, without annotations to the text; paper toned and foxed as usual with this stock; two-inch tear to one terminal blank. A complete copy in its original boards.
Aurora is the first book of Jacob Böhme (1575–1624), the shoemaker of Görlitz whose writings explored God and nature through visionary experience. Its title page is unusually precise about its beginnings: Görlitz, 1612, the author thirty-seven years old, on a Tuesday in Pentecost. It also never got finished. This is the opening volume of the 1730 collected edition, with Böhme’s portrait and the engraved Aurora plate, in its original paper boards.
The book breaks off in the twenty-sixth chapter. The clergy of Görlitz seized the manuscript and banned Böhme from writing. His explanation, written eight years later and printed here as the conclusion, gives the interruption a personal adversary: “the Devil thought to make his holiday-evening with it, because he saw that the day was about to break within it.” A good thirty quires more belonged to the book, he says. Let it stand as an “eternal memorial,” since “what is lacking has been made good in the other books.”
The 1730 edition, Theosophia Revelata, used Johann Georg Gichtel’s editorial material and was seen through the press by Johann Wilhelm Ueberfeld. This volume carries the general preliminaries, including the calligraphic title and the engraved portrait of Böhme, mild and long-haired in his oval frame. In his “Account of the Writer,” the shoemaker answers the question of where he got all this: “God has given me the knowledge. Not I, the I that I am, knows it, but God knows it in me.” The list of twenty-one books says buyers could have them gathered into volumes as they pleased, which helps explain the variety of bindings found on this edition.
A notice in those preliminaries says the editors deliberately omitted the engravings of the 1682 edition because they “stem from a foreign invention, not from the author’s spirit.” In this copy, the plate follows the warning. A banner reading AURORA stands over the great sphere of the world, wrapped in bands studded with open eyes and rising above a dark globe. The objection and the engraving have been bound together; the special title dated 1730 faces the plate.
The text runs to 405 pages in Fraktur, with Gichtel’s chapter summaries, and has no annotations. An early inscription on the flyleaf is partly legible. On the rear pastedown is a row of numbers, all within the book’s pagination, that may be a reader’s private index of passages. We have not followed the trail; the buyer may want to.
The original paper boards are the plainest thing about the volume, and among the best. Their red-patterned covering retains the handwritten spine title, “Jac: Böhm Aurora. I.” The boards are worn and the spine chipped; the book is sound.
Provenance: (1) Early ink inscription to the flyleaf, partly legible, with a numeral. (2) Row of early ink numerals on the rear pastedown (“96.” and “193. 162. 195. 73. 105. 361. 269.”), all falling within the book’s pagination — possibly an early reader’s private index of passages.
Aurora, oder Morgenröthe im Aufgang. Volume I of the Theosophia Revelata, the collected edition of Böhme’s works, 1730, with the edition’s general title, preliminaries, and the engraved portrait of Böhme. In original stiff paper boards, entirely unsophisticated.
BÖHME, Jacob (1575–1624). Aurora, oder Morgenröthe im Aufgang, das ist: Die Wurtzel oder Mutter der Philosophiæ, Astrologiæ und Theologiæ aus rechtem Grunde (written 1612). Volume I of 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. Letterpress half-title and general title to the edition; engraved portrait of Böhme; 32 pp. of preliminaries (Vorrede; Böhme’s “Rechenschaft des Schreibers”; Verzeichniß of the twenty-one books; “Erinnerung an den Leser”); engraved emblematic plate numbered I. (the Aurora sphere with its bands of eyes) facing the special title, dated 1730; 405 pp., ending with the author’s Beschluß and terminal ENDE with floral woodcut ornament; initial blank and two terminal blanks. Fraktur type, Gichtel’s chapter-summaries throughout.
Binding: Original stiff paper boards covered in red-patterned paste-paper, spine with manuscript ink title “Jac: Böhm Aurora. I.”; an untouched, unsophisticated period state. Boards rubbed and worn, spine chipped with small losses.
Condition: Clean and sound throughout, without annotations to the text; paper toned and foxed as usual with this stock; two-inch tear to one terminal blank. A complete copy in its original boards.
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