KIRCHER, Athanasius. "Typus Hydrophylacy intra Alpes Rheticas, quod Fundit totius Europae Celeberrima Flumina uti patet”, being a map salvaged from a beyond-repair copy of the great Mundus Subterraneus, ("Athanasii Kircheri Mundus subterraneus in XII libros digestus... "), 1678, from the second section “Officium Globi Terreni”, p. 71; 6”x 8” on a 15”x 9” sheet. Very Good condition. $175
“The foundations of the whole of the famous European rivers” or so the title reads.
The great semi-mystifying polymath Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) lived for a long time and filled his life with ideas and words, producing dozens of books during his time on Earth, some of which were never published even though written, some manuscripts lost forever. His was a massive output of extraordinary breadth. He wasted little time that I can see, writing on a spectac
ular range of subjects: enlightening people, confusing people, generating great theories and some occasional bad ideas.
The images presented here comes from his Mundus Subterraenus , published in 1678, which was concerned mainly with geology and the theory of the Earth. There is an enormous amount of wide-ranging thinking going on in these two volume, most of which were scientific and experimental, and some of that being flavored and coated by hermetic and religious influences, while some bits were entirely religio-speculative. A product of the great Jesuit institution, the Collegio Romano, he postulated and dove fearlessly into the structure of the interior of the Earth, the origin of heat, the source of the tides, the composition of light, mechanics, the structure of music, linguistics, astronomy, astrology, alchemy, fossils, fluid dynamics, mining, and of course the existence of anthropomorphic images in stone (for example, the Virgin Mary found in agate). There was also a fair amount of work on one of his side interests that populated a number of his works, alchemy and the search for the organization of materials. He also sought a primum mobile so to speak, a force or reckoning that was beyond what he recognized as the creator's, a cosmic pansperma, an automatic/spontaneous cosmic energy at the root of change of all things.
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