Böhme’s first book announces on its title page exactly when it came into the world: Görlitz, in the year of Christ 1612, its author thirty-seven years old, on a Tuesday in Pentecost. It also never got finished. The Aurora breaks off in the twenty-sixth chapter, because the clergy of Görlitz seized the manuscript and banned the shoemaker from writing. At the end of this volume stands Böhme’s own explanation, written eight years later and printed here as his conclusion: the book was never completed, “for 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 it, he says, but the storm broke it off; let it stand now “as an eternal memorial, because what is lacking has been made good in the other books.”
This is the volume that opens 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. It carries the edition’s general prelims: the half-title, the great calligraphic general title, and the engraved portrait of Böhme himself, mild and long-haired in his oval frame, born 1575, died 1624, with a verse beneath warning that this is only the shadow of the vessel of honors.
Thirty-two pages of preliminaries follow, and they are worth reading. The preface presents this as the third printing of Böhme in modern times, collated afresh against his own manuscripts after the editions of 1682 and 1715. Böhme’s “Account of the Writer” answers the question every reader of the Aurora asks, where a shoemaker got all this, in his own words: “God has given me the knowledge. Not I, the I that I am, knows it, but God knows it in me.” A catalog of the twenty-one books follows, with the note that they may be gathered into volumes as each buyer pleases, which helps explain the variety of bindings found on this edition. And then comes the strangest leaf: a notice in which the editors announce that they have deliberately left out the engravings of the 1682 Holland edition, because such plates “stem from a foreign invention, not from the author’s spirit.” Turn the page of this copy and there stands the engraving: a banner reading AURORA over the great sphere of the world, wound in bands studded with open eyes, rising over the dark globe. The plates were engraved and sold all the same, buyers had them bound in, and the copies with the plates are the ones collectors have hunted ever since. The special title faces it, dated 1730.
The text runs 405 pages in Fraktur with Gichtel’s chapter-summaries, the author’s preface and all twenty-six chapters, ending with the conclusion quoted above. This copy is clean throughout, with no annotations. Two early owners left small riddles instead: an old ink inscription on the flyleaf, partly legible, and on the rear pastedown a row of inked numbers (193, 162, 195, 73, 105, 361, 269) every one of them a page number that exists in this book. These may be an early reader’s private index of passages. We have not followed the trail; the buyer may want to.
The binding is the plainest thing about the volume and among the best: original stiff paper boards covered in red-daubed paste-paper, the spine titled in an eighteenth-century hand, “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.
Böhme’s first book announces on its title page exactly when it came into the world: Görlitz, in the year of Christ 1612, its author thirty-seven years old, on a Tuesday in Pentecost. It also never got finished. The Aurora breaks off in the twenty-sixth chapter, because the clergy of Görlitz seized the manuscript and banned the shoemaker from writing. At the end of this volume stands Böhme’s own explanation, written eight years later and printed here as his conclusion: the book was never completed, “for 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 it, he says, but the storm broke it off; let it stand now “as an eternal memorial, because what is lacking has been made good in the other books.”
This is the volume that opens 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. It carries the edition’s general prelims: the half-title, the great calligraphic general title, and the engraved portrait of Böhme himself, mild and long-haired in his oval frame, born 1575, died 1624, with a verse beneath warning that this is only the shadow of the vessel of honors.
Thirty-two pages of preliminaries follow, and they are worth reading. The preface presents this as the third printing of Böhme in modern times, collated afresh against his own manuscripts after the editions of 1682 and 1715. Böhme’s “Account of the Writer” answers the question every reader of the Aurora asks, where a shoemaker got all this, in his own words: “God has given me the knowledge. Not I, the I that I am, knows it, but God knows it in me.” A catalog of the twenty-one books follows, with the note that they may be gathered into volumes as each buyer pleases, which helps explain the variety of bindings found on this edition. And then comes the strangest leaf: a notice in which the editors announce that they have deliberately left out the engravings of the 1682 Holland edition, because such plates “stem from a foreign invention, not from the author’s spirit.” Turn the page of this copy and there stands the engraving: a banner reading AURORA over the great sphere of the world, wound in bands studded with open eyes, rising over the dark globe. The plates were engraved and sold all the same, buyers had them bound in, and the copies with the plates are the ones collectors have hunted ever since. The special title faces it, dated 1730.
The text runs 405 pages in Fraktur with Gichtel’s chapter-summaries, the author’s preface and all twenty-six chapters, ending with the conclusion quoted above. This copy is clean throughout, with no annotations. Two early owners left small riddles instead: an old ink inscription on the flyleaf, partly legible, and on the rear pastedown a row of inked numbers (193, 162, 195, 73, 105, 361, 269) every one of them a page number that exists in this book. These may be an early reader’s private index of passages. We have not followed the trail; the buyer may want to.
The binding is the plainest thing about the volume and among the best: original stiff paper boards covered in red-daubed paste-paper, the spine titled in an eighteenth-century hand, “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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