Gangleri – bookreviews

It has been quite a while since I investigated the interesting Swede Johannes Bureus. There seems to be quite an interest in the man, since my articles and book reviews are relatively popular and I even got two comments in a few days time on an article speaking about Bureus. One of these comments notified me about this book. I guess I missed it, otherwise I would have bought it earlier, but if I remember correctly this is the dissertation of Karlsson and was only available in Swedish in the time I wrote my articles. Karlsson is one of the founders of the Dragon Rouge order and this German translation is published by the Edition Roter Drache. It is good that this little book has been translated to a language that is mastered by more people. First of all Karlsson is more extensive and in-depth than Stephen Flowers, but mostly, Karlsson has visited all the libraries that have writings of Bureus, so the information about for example Adalruna is not based on one version, but on all seven. Then, of course, there is quite a lot of material about Bureus and his system available in Swedish and Karlsson used all these sources too, so now we have more insight in what has been investigated already than when a non-Swedish author picks up the subject. Having written this book on college, Karlsson dived into the current scholarly field of the investigation of Western esotericism, of course including our Amsterdam chair and the Sarbonne in France.
Karlsson wanted to put Bureus in a larger perspective and therefor he starts with information about Western esotericism and the scholars in this field and he continues with a rather long chapter about gothicism and what is meant and what it means. There is little information about the life of Bureus himself, but all the more about his Kabbalistic use of his runes and his shady figures such as the cubic stone and the rune cross. What I mostly enjoy about the larger perspective is that Karlsson says a thing or two about Bureus’ predecessors and how and why his system had such little influence on later generations. Indeed, Karlsson’s book definately adds something to the subject and I would suggest an English edition to expand the readership a bit more.
2007 Edition Roter Drache, isbn 9783939459040
See here for my Bureus articles.

I don’t often get books to review, but the publisher of this book contacted me. According to the description this books holds the middle between my ‘old interests’ (magic and Western occultism) and more recent interests (comparative religion) so I decided to have a copy sent and see what this scholarly book on magic is all about. The writer (who earlier wrote a book on Agrippa) wrote an interesting preface in which he explains his new way of approaching the subject; not with one scientific discipline, but using several of them in order to get a wider picture. For this purpose he says a few things about scholars such as Frances Yates and Mircea Eliade who both he slays in a few lines, but still find their ideas “usefully incorrect”. Yates is of course the famous (popular) scholar on Western esotericism, Eliade the most famous scholar in the field of comparative religion and mythology. According to Lehring both have fallen victim to ‘wishfull thinking’ theories on fragile basis and dubious connections and further theories thereon.
The book opens with the idea of Ægypt (not Egypt) which somehow acts like “Ultima Thule” or the “Philosophia Perennis” as the source of (magical) thinking. Then Lehrich uses great names from the magical past of the West to expose his ideas; Giordano Bruno and his art of memory and John Dee (further dealing with Yates’ theories) and Athanasius Kircher to investigate the idea of encylopedianism (is it about collecting or seeking connections?) and daring theories built on quicksand. Further dealt with (sometimes separately, sometimes as a (lenghty) sidepath) are Ley-lines, Nō (the traditional Japanese puppet play) and Tarot and music. From Yates and Eliade in the beginning, Lehrich shifts towards the famous anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and later the (also French) philosopher Jacques Derrida, but numerous other writers are referred to and quoted as well.

Having read the book, the promising preface and the nice last part are interesting, because the writer puts different ideas and theories next to eachother and tells something about it. The rest of the book seems to me like lenghty digressions on small parts of the larger picture. I know this is done to underbuild his idea, but in this way the book can hardly be called a book about (Western) magic. As a matter of fact, the book more appears to be a book on the method of investigating the subject, a new methodology for scholars in the field and (as a non-scholar) I totally miss the methodology that Lehrich proposes (other than using approaches from different disciplines). Therefor the obviously well investigated texts about the systems of Bruno or Kircher may be interesting for the little information given, but they are not what the book seems to be about. Long sidepaths with nice interpretations and explanations suddenly end, because they were only meant as an example for the proposed methodology. For these reasons I have the idea that this little book (182 pages of text, the rest is bibliography, index, etc.) aims for students and scholars who (want to) investigate the subject of magic, rather than the average man who is interested in the subject, the person like myself. Therefor it is hard to say if the book is good or not. I certainly enjoyed parts of it, Lehrich’s critical view at ideas that are almost regarded as normal (even though he is harsch towards thinkers that I admire myself) and to the historical characters that he describes. Also I praise him for trying to take the scholarly investigation of magic out of the cellars of science, but overall the book seems not to be written for the reader like myself.
-2-

After the magnificent publications of the Corpus Hermeticum in Dutch (1990 Quispel and Van den Broek) and Asclepius (1995 Quispel), Van den Broek now offers smaller Hermetic texts in Dutch translation with lengthy and informative explanations. This book even contains some Hermetic texts that I didn’t have yet. You will find the Stobaeus fragments, the two short and heavily damaged fragments of Wien/Vienna, the Oxford Hermetica (Bodleian Library, Clarkianus 11), Greek and Latin “testimonia” (other writers refer to or quote Hermes Trismegistus) of Tertullianus, Julius Romanus, Lactantius, pseudo-Cyprianus, Jamblichus, Zosimus, Marcellus of Ancyra, Julianus ‘the deserter’, Didymus the Blind, pseudo-Didymus the Blind, Cyrillus of Alexandria, Hermias of Alexandria, Johannes (John) Lydus, Johannes (John) of Damascus and Symphonia; then we also have the Hermetic Definitions and the text about the eight and ninth heavenly sphere (or about the Octoade and the Enneade) from the Nag Hammadi library. Stobaeus has shorter and longer fragments, the Vienna and Oxford fragments are rather short, but the Hermetic Definitions is almost an ongoing text in which Hermes speaks to Asclepius. “About the octoade and the enneade” is the famous text that proved that Hermetica wasn’t just dry philosophising, but that it also had magical and initiatory sides. Van den Broek has written an enormous introduction with old, but also new information. Every translation is introduced and full of notes (with a strange referring system). The close off, there is a gigantic bibliography. Also I have to note that Jean-Pierre Mahé, the famous French publisher of Hermetic texts, has helped with the Armenian texts. An essential compilation of Hermetic texts in size far exceeding both the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius. Not all quotes and texts are interesting, but especially the “Hermetic Definitions” are again beautiful. Also Van den Broek has some theories about the strings of vocals, which I am going to add to some articles in which this subject is touched upon.
(17/1/07 -4-)
Read Hermetic quotes here.

In 2004 the Dutch city of Alkmaar celebrated its 750th year of existence. The organisation asked the Rosicrucian society ‘Lectorium Rosicrucianum’ to organise a symposion about the famous Alkmarian inventor Cornelis Drebbel (1572-1633). There was more about Drebbel than science. He was asked to join the court of the Hermetic emperor Rudolf II of Prague, he has Rosicrucian friends and his famous booklet about his Perpetuum Mobili (on the cover of this booklet) was followed by the first Dutch translation of the Corpus Hermeticum.

So on 19 september 2004 we drove to the Alkmaar library to attend this interesting symposium (or ‘symposion’ in Lectorian words). There were two lectures and afterwards the audience was asked if it was interested in the texts of these lecture. Of course we were! So after almost a year it proves that the Lectorium Rosicrucianum decided to make a complete symposion-bundle like they do with their own symposions. Because there were only two lectures (Lectorium symposions take a whole day, this Drebbel symposion only a few hours), not only a Drebbel chronology was added, but also a fascimile printing of the famous text about the Perpetuum Mobile with the first Dutch translation of the Corpus Hermeticum!! This not only makes this bundle the thickest thusfar (128 pages), but I also got myself another translation of the Corpus! Much recommended!
2005 Lectorium Rosicrucianum, isbn 9067323160

Here we have the most interesting booklet in the Lectorium Rosicrucianum “symposion”-series. First the Kabbalah Philo of Alexandria of Henk Spierenburg, then the home Sancti Spiritus ((pre-)Rosicrucian organisations) by Frans Smit, a magistral article by Jacob Slavenburg about the Hermetic path of initiation based on the Nag Hammadi text “The 8th and 9th (Celestial) Spheres” and information from the “Corpus Hermeticum”. The last article is of Rachel Ritman in which she speakes about the gnostic foundation of Christianity.

I already reviewed the earlier pressing of this translation, but here we have a completely new edition. The earlier pressings came in two 6cm thick books, this one is printed on super thin paper which resulted in one book of about 3,5 cm thick. This looks pretty strange indeed! Besides a new kind of printing the general intro, introductions to the texts, the translations and the notes are completely revised. Some intros and translations came out quite different, others remained more or less the same. There is again more information which is of course updated with the newest finding and there is now a massive index made by Henk Spierenburg. Therefor the order of the texts could now be the original order the texts were found in the codices and no longer sorted by subject. So the conclusion: even if you have the previous version, this new transation is worth the money too!

In two books of about 500 pages each, you get the complete translation of all the texts that were found in a jar near the Egyptian village Nag Hammadi in 1945 (completed by the so called “Berlin Codex”). I suppose most of you know about that discovery? Because they are mostly gnostic writings, the Nag Hammadi scriptures are often called “the Gnostic Library”. Slavenburg and Glaudemans are two Dutch gnostic experts and especially since they made this translation, they seem to almost know the scriptures by heart and refer to them a lot.

The first book opens with a short but very nice introduction to the gnostic worldview and history. Also the most probable explanation for the amount of scriptures in one jar is given. Around 367 BC Theodorus, abbot of the Pachomius-monastry of Tabannasi was ordered to translate the 39th “Easter Letter” into the local language Coptic and spread it. In this Easter Letter the determination is made what scriptures would later become the New Testament. All not-mentioned scriptures were from then on forbidden and the possession of them penal. Monks therefor decided to hide their beloved scriptures to prevent them from being burnt. They hid 52 scriptures in 13 codices (leather bindings) in a jar and burried it to be found by an Egyptian farmer 1500 years later. The farmer and other inhabitents of his village, recognised the scriptures as Christian and found them of no value. Some were used to light stoves, others sold, others hidden and many were put away and forgotten. Nobody in the West cared about the discovery and only a handfull were bought by investigators. One codex was bought by the Jung society and now this codex is known as the “Jung codex”. The Dutchman Gilles Quispel also got his hands on a few scriptures.
When the value of the discovery was finally acknowledged, investigators had a hard time to get all the scriptures together, both because many got lost, but also because the Egyptian government obstructed the process. When finally photos could be made of all available scriptures, different people in different parts of the world started to make translations. Unfortunately these were only available to experts. Later seperate writings filtered through to the larger audience and in the early 90′ies, Slavenburg and Glaudemans thought that it was time for a complete translation available for everyone.

Each scripture is introduced and explained, then given in a readable translation and then elucidated in notes. The translations are based on existing translations in other languages, but also on the different versions of the Coptic translations when the translators had their doubts. The scriptures were most likely originally written in Greek, but almost none have been found in their original form. Fortunately in most cases, Coptic copies Greek quite accurately. Some scriptures were found in the jar in different versions and the translators made the best possible translation of these. Since there are quite some pages missing, blind spots on the scriptures, etc. the text had to be completed here and there, which results in text that have a lot of [ ]‘s, ()’s, etc. Overall everything turned out pretty readable, especially when reading the introduction first.

Slavenburg and Glaudemans have divided the texts in sections, like Jezus of Nazareth, Hermes Trismegistos, creation-myths, to put texts that somehow go well with eachother can be read together.

So, getting these books will give you access to a lot of apocryphical gospels, like “The Gospel Of The Thruth”, “The Gospel Of Thomas”, “The Gospel Of Philip” or “The Gospel Of Mary (Magdalene)”. Also more esoteric works like “The Secret Book Of Jacob”, “The Secret Book Of John”, “The Testimony Of Thruth”. But also Hermetic writings and typical Gnostic writings all with explanations and in a good translation. Everybody interested in early Christianity, Gnosticism, Hermeticism or the esoteric traditions of the West in general should make a small investment and get these classics for their bookshell!

And to those non-Dutch-speaking having read this review, in 1977 the first complete English translation was made under the title “The Nag Hammadi Library In English” (by James M. Robinson), so I am sure the complete works are available in English too.

Every now and then the magnificent Dutch library “Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica” has an exposition of a part of her own collection and that of others, based around one theme. Over ten years ago the subject was “the Hermetic Gnosis” which then was still fairly unknown. The exposition was composed by Frank van Lamoen and as things to at the BPH, Lamoen also made the exposition-book which is still available.

These books of the BPH are simply, but nicely printed, and always extremely informative. After some introductionary texts, you will get all information you could possibly want about every single book from the exposition. This time these are Bibles from the 16th century, Plato-translations by Marsilio Ficino and others, other Greek classical texts, the Atalanta Fugiens of Michael Maier (1618), different versions and translations of the Corpus Hermeticum, theological writings such as those of St. Augustine or the pseudo-Dionysius, writings of mystics such as Tauler, De Cusa or Boehme and renaissance writings like those of Ficino, Pico, Agrippa and Reuchlin. Of each text you can see which version was present and read some of the content and context of the texts. Through the book you get to see the different influences and efficacies of Hermetism and Hermeticism and all that for the more than reasonable price of E 5,- (excluding shipping). Of several books there are versions in different languages, so be sure to check out ritmanlibrary.nl to find out more.

“Along Hermes’ Paths” is the latest exposition that the Italian Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana and the Dutch Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica had. Long after I had visited this exposition in Amsterdam, I ran into the little book accompanying this exposition. You will get some nice information about Hermetic history, a hermetic chronology and then detailed information about the exhibited books. Always good to lay my hands on a BPH-publishing!

Every now and then the magnificent Dutch library “Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica” has an exposition of a part of her own collection and that of others, based around one theme. Over ten years ago the subject was the textual history of the Corpus Hermeticum.

These books of the BPH are simply, but nicely printed, and always extremely informative. After some introductionary texts, you will get all information you could possibly want about every single book from the exposition. This time you can read about Asclepius and Corpus Hermeticum editions in handwritten and printed editions in Greek and in translations and some information about other texts ascribed to Hermes. Lamoen did a splendid job giving interesting informations about -for example- editions used for modern translations and is highly informative about the older editions as well. Should you be interested in not only the texts of Hermes, but also the history of these texts and their translations, this is the book to get.

And that for the more than reasonable price of E 7,50 (excluding shipping). Of several books there are versions in different languages, so be sure to check out ritmanlibrary.nl to find out more.