Athanasius Kircher's

    Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680), a German Jesuit polymath, is often credited with first calling scholarly attention to Egyptian hieroglyphics, but not with any success at translating them. Kircher was no Champollion, and the Rosetta stone had not yet appeared. Tom IIA approaches the hieroglyphics indirectly, through classical sources and wild guesses. That said, the work is of lasting value. Students of John Dee will find the "Hieroglyphic Monad" discussed at length. The studies of various subjects in both Tom IIA and IIB are very important for Golden Dawn source research and "Western Qabalah" generally. Mathers took many ideas from part A, while Westcott cites and mistranslates a small portion of part B in his Sepher Yetzirah. Tom IIB collects Notariqon on important aspects of Kabbalah, provides the seminal variation of the Tree of Life diagram used by Western Occultists and delves at length into both Jewish and Islamic mystical studies. Some scholars attack Kircher's material, not without cause, as being filled with error. Much of the error is easily correctible typos, and the issues of right or wrong about traditional Kabbalah are moote — in as much as the value of the work is in what it has done, both in terms of starting serious studies and in presenting key material not found elsewhere in European language sources. "Qabalah" or "Cabala" is not "Kabbalah" (traditional and religious Jewish mysticism of the late Middle Ages up to the modern times). The difference is utility and focus. The former approaches organize knowledge and mystical experience, while the latter are rightly considered an essential element in Jewish religious focus. Both are based in Literary Criticism.

    The microfilm images are © UCBerkeley. The additional work here, comprising scans of the microfilm and organization of the images on this page and in the PDF versions are © Bill Heidrick. This work should not be placed on other web sites or sold in any form without the explicit permission of both the University of California at Berkeley and Bill Heidrick. Thanks are due to the staff at the Bancroft Library at UCB for allowing public access on this web site.

    This work is available in two forms: collected ZIP files of the scans of the pages and two PDF's of the same scans, with bookmarked tables of content. The ZIP files are available immediately below. The PDF versions can be accessed near the bottom of this page.