#ritman library

[rqbossman]

TMAGP 19

Hey y'all, Just thought I would try something this week and give a couple of thoughts on today's episode. (I might do it again in future, I might not, let's see.) Personal Thoughts: I have to admit I was nervous about this one. I have taken lead researching the historical elements of Protocol and part of me is always terrified that someone will drop me a line and be like "FYI this makes no sense" and then I realise they are right. That said, I have checked and double checked though so it's probably fine right? Also frankly I didn't really have to make that much stuff up. History in this period is absolutely bananas. Fun fact for this episode: The Gilded Gallows. Look it up. Backstage insight: I don't deliberately keep including Newton in my work. The guy just has a lot of links to him on Wikipedia y'know? Also I super enjoy writing old-timey. Further Reading: If you are interested in the topics I recommend the following (on the understanding that they do not contain secrets for the show or anything I just think they are good): 1) Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood 2) Outliers Podcast S2E1 Crack of Thunder by Gabrielle Urbina of Wolf359 fame 3) The Ritman Library in Amsterdam

[33-108]

ZOHAR AND LILITH:

"References to Lilith in the Zohar include the following:

She roams at night, and goes all about the world and makes sport with men and causes them to emit seed. In every place where a man sleeps alone in a house, she visits him and grabs him and attaches herself to him and has her desire from him, and bears from him.

And she also afflicts him with sickness, and he knows it not, and all this takes place when the moon is on the wane.

This passage may be related to the mention of Lilith in Talmud Shabbath 151b (see above), and also to Talmud Eruvin 18b where nocturnal emissions are connected with the begettal of demons.

According to Rapahel Patai, older sources state clearly that after Lilith's Red Sea sojourn (mentioned also in Louis Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews), she returned to Adam and begat children from him by forcing herself upon him.

Before doing so, she attaches herself to Cain and bears him numerous spirits and demons.

In the Zohar, however, Lilith is said to have succeeded in begetting offspring from Adam even during their short-lived sexual experience.

Lilith leaves Adam in Eden, as she is not a suitable helpmate for him.

Gershom Scholem proposes that the author of the Zohar, Rabbi Moses de Leon, was aware of both the folk tradition of Lilith and another conflicting version, possibly older.

The Zohar adds further that two female spirits instead of one, Lilith and Naamah, desired Adam and seduced him.

The issue of these unions were demons and spirits called "the plagues of humankind", and the usual added explanation was that it was through Adam's own sin that Lilith overcame him against his will.

17th-century Hebrew magical amulets

Medieval Hebrew amulet intended to protect a mother and her child from Lilith (see picture)

A copy of Jean de Pauly's translation of the Zohar in the Ritman Library contains an inserted late 17th century printed Hebrew sheet for use in magical amulets where the prophet Elijah confronts Lilith.

The sheet contains two texts within borders, which are amulets, one for a male ('lazakhar'), the other one for a female ('lanekevah').

The invocations mention Adam, Eve and Lilith, 'Chavah Rishonah' (the first Eve, who is identical with Lilith), also devils or angels:

Sanoy, Sansinoy, Smangeluf, Shmari'el (the guardian) and Hasdi'el (the merciful).

A few lines in Yiddish are followed by the dialogue between the prophet Elijah and Lilith when he met her with her host of demons to kill the mother and take her new-born child ('to drink her blood, suck her bones and eat her flesh'). She tells Elijah that she will lose her power if someone uses her secret names, which she reveals at the end: lilith, abitu, abizu, hakash, avers hikpodu, ayalu, matrota ...

In other amulets, probably informed by The Alphabet of Ben-Sira, she is Adam's first wife. (Yalqut Reubeni, Zohar 1:34b, 3:19

Charles Richardson's dictionary portion of the Encyclopædia Metropolitana appends to his etymological discussion of lullaby "a [manuscript] note written in a copy of Skinner" [i.e. Stephen Skinner's 1671 Etymologicon Linguæ Anglicanæ], which asserts that the word lullaby originates from Lillu abi abi, a Hebrew incantation meaning "Lilith begone" recited by Jewish mothers over an infant's cradle.

Richardson did not endorse the theory and modern lexicographers consider it a false etymology."- Adam van norden

[rhaissamachado]

Discover a library with over 23.000 books in the fields of Alchemy, Hermetica, Cabala, Magic, Rosicrucianism and Mystic! Watch legendary first editions, rare books, manuscripts and learn more about the hidden stories and secret symbols of Esotericism...

https://coludiss.click/movies/play/6581616-the-ritman-library-amsterdam-2017?mid=17&sid=5q5004ntcqqkcgm9pc798dmm3f&sec=fe737b52f160fdda03ffa13a6970c39ab884e02a&t=1673312690

[jamesdsass]

The Ritman Library - Amsterdam

[thekultofo]

Embrace the darkness… #ambient and #industrial

Original artwork: Own picture shot at the Ritman Library, Amsterdam

I'd like to thank my Patreons who supported this show: Dafreeze, Strayd0g, ivan & R. Relique.

If you also want to support The Kult of O, and get more content, then consider becoming a Patreon:

Deep Dark - Coals of the Mind [Noctivagant] Corona Barathri - Astaroth Sapientia Summa [Cyclic Law] Clavicvla - Sepulchral Blessing [Cyclic Law] Black Earth - Lurking Hounds Stagger in the Deep [Cyclic Law] Maninkari - Untitled 04 [zoharum ] Zoat Aon - Dark Grammar [Aural Hypnox] Folkstorm - XI [Cold Spring] Brighter Death Now - Payback excerpt [Tesco Germany]

https://www.thekultofo.com/adamantis-20221122/

[argentvive]

Lyra, the Alchemical Eve

From the Latin and German manuscript Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer [Secret Figures of the Rosicrucians], before 1785, at the Ritman Library.  

I’ve posted at length how Lyra being called the new Eve in HDM was a very positive thing, alchemically speaking.  The Ritman Library makes the same general point:

This evocative image of Sophia or Wisdom describes her as ‘the heavenly and earthly Eve, the mother of all creatures in heaven and on earth’. It is a very positive description, as Eve usually had quite a bad press in the history of Christianity. There are many references to the Old and the New Testament, but the lower part of the image, with its small globes circling around a central globe inscribed with the word ‘Chaos’, is purely alchemical. To us, ‘chaos’ sounds alarming, but to alchemists it represented the primal form or matter that was full of potential and with which they could work in their laboratories. The crown worn by Sophia is characteristically topped by the symbol for the Philosopher’s Stone: ‘Der Stein der Weisen’, as we read left and right to the symbol in red.

You can see why Sophia would be a perfect name for the female protagonist in an alchemical story.  The only one I know about is Sophie Newman, in Michael Scott’s Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series.  Does anyone know any others?  

[dr-archeville]

[Note: Article is from February 2018.]

Back in December we brought you some exciting news.  Thanks to a generous donation from Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown, Amsterdam’s Ritman Library — a sizable collection of pre-1900 books on alchemy, astrology, magic, and other occult subjects — has been digitizing thousands of its rare texts under a digital education project cheekily called “Hermetically Open.”  We are now pleased to report, less than two months later, that the first 1,617 books from the Ritman project have come available in their online reading room.  The site is still in beta, so to speak; in their Facebook announcement, the Ritman admits they are “still improving the whole presentation,” which is a bit clunky at the moment.  But for fans and students of this literature, a little inconvenience is a small price to pay for full access to hundreds of rare occult texts.

Visitors should be aware that these books are written in several different European languages.  Latin, the scholarly language of Europe throughout the Medieval and Early Modern periods, predominates, and it’s a peculiar Latin at that, laden with jargon and alchemical terminology.  Other books appear in German, Dutch, and French.  Readers of some or all of these languages will of course have an easier time than monolingual English speakers, but there is still much to offer those visitors as well.

In addition to the pleasure of paging through an old rare book, even virtually, English speakers can quickly find a collection of readable books by clicking on the “Place of Publication” search filter and selecting Cambridge or London, from which come such notable works as The Man-Mouse Takin in a Trap, and tortur’d to death for gnawing the Margins of Eugenius Philalethes, by Thomas Vaughn, published in 1650.

The language is archaic — full of quirky spellings and uses of the “long s” — and the content is bizarre.  Those familiar with this type of writing, whether through historical study or the work of more recent interpreters like Aleister Crowley or Madame Blavatsky, will recognize the many formulas: The tracing of magical correspondences between flora, fauna, and astronomical phenomena; the careful parsing of names; astrology and lengthy linguistic etymologies; numerological discourses and philosophical poetry; early psychology and personality typing; cryptic, coded mythology and medical procedures.  Although we’ve grown accustomed through popular media to thinking of magical books as cookbooks, full of recipes and incantations, the reality is far different.

Encountering the vast and strange treasures in the online library, one thinks of the type of the magician represented in Goethe’s Faust, holed up in his study,

Where even the welcome daylight strains But duskily through the painted panes. Hemmed in by many a toppling heap Of books worm-eaten, gray with dust, Which to the vaulted ceiling creep

The library doesn��t only contain occult books.  Like the weary scholar Faust, alchemists of old “studied now Philosophy / And Jurisprudence, Medicine,— / And even, alas! Theology.”  Click on Cambridge as the place of publication and you’ll find the work above by Henry More, “one of the celebrated ‘Cambridge Platonists,’” the Linda Hall Library notes, “who flourished in mid-17th-century and did their best to reconcile Plato with Christianity and the mechanical philosophy that was beginning to make inroads into British natural philosophy.”  Those who study European intellectual history know well that More’s presence in this collection is no anomaly.  For a few hundred years, it was difficult, if not impossible, to separate the pursuits of theology, philosophy, medicine, and science (or “natural philosophy”) from those of alchemy and astrology.  (Isaac Newton is a famous example of a mathematician/scientist/alchemist/believer in strange apocalyptic predictions.)

Given the Ritman’s alacrity and eagerness to publish this first batch of texts, even as it works to smooth out its interface, we’ll likely see many hundreds more books become available in the next month or so.  For updates, follow the Ritman Library and The Embassy of the Free Mind — Dan Brown’s own Dutch library of rare occult books — on Facebook.

Enter the Ritman's new digital collection of occult texts here.

Related Content:

3,500 Occult Manuscripts Will Be Digitized & Made Freely Available Online, Thanks to Da Vinci Code Author Dan Brown

Isaac Newton’s Recipe for the Mythical ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ Is Being Digitized & Put Online (Along with His Other Alchemy Manuscripts)

Aleister Crowley Reads Occult Poetry in the Only Known Recordings of His Voice (1920)

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

Looks like there are now over 2,100 items in the collection.

[libraryjournal]

Brown, the Ritman notes, “is a great admirer of the library and visited on several occasions while writing his novels The Lost Symbol and Inferno.” Now he's giving back. Some of the revenue generated by his bestselling novels, along with a €15,000 contribution from the Dutch Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, will allow the library’s core collection, “some 3,500 ancient books,” to come online soon in an archive called “Hermetically Open.

[samouchka4259]

Access to hundreds of rare occult texts! thanks to a generous donation from Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown, Amsterdam’s Ritman Library—a sizable collection of pre-1900 books on alchemy, astrology, magic, and other occult subjects—has been digitizing thousands of its rare texts under a digital education project cheekily called “Hermetically Open.” The first 1,617 books from the Ritman project have come available in their online reading room.

[uacboo]

If there’s one thing The Da Vinci Code’s Dan Brown and “The Library of Babel”’s Jorge Luis Borges have in common it is a love for obscure religious and occult books and artifacts. But why do I compare Borges—one of the most highly-regarded, but difficult, of Latin American poets and writers—to a famous American writer of entertaining paperback thrillers? One reason only: despite the vast differences in their styles and registers, Borges would be deeply moved by Brown’s recent act of philanthropy, a donation of €300,000 to Amsterdam’s Ritman Library, also known as the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica House of Living Books.

The generous gift will enable the Ritman to digitize thousands of “pre-1900 texts on alchemy, astrology, magic, and theosophy,” reports Thu-Huong Ha at Quartz, including the Corpus Hermeticum (1472), “the source work on Hermetic wisdom”; Giordano Bruno’s Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (1584); and “the first printed version of the tree of life (1516): A graphic representation of the sefirot, the 10 virtues of God according to the Kabbalah.”

Brown, the Ritman notes, “is a great admirer of the library and visited on several occasions while writing his novels The Lost Symbol and Inferno.” Now he's giving back. Some of the revenue generated by his bestselling novels, along with a €15,000 contribution from the Dutch Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, will allow the library’s core collection, “some 3,500 ancient books,” to come online soon in an archive called “Hermetically Open.”

For now, the curious can download the 44-page guide to the collection as a free ebook, and watch the animated video at the top, a breezy explainer of how the books will be transported, digitized, and uploaded. Just above, see a trailer for a documentary about the Ritman, founded by businessman Joost R. Ritman in 1984. The library holds over 20,000 volumes on mysticism, spirituality, religion, alchemy, Gnosticism, and more.

To continue reading about this fabulous resource:

http://www.openculture.com/2017/12/3500-occult-manuscripts-will-be-digitized-made-freely-available-online.html

[argentvive]

I just discovered that the Ritman Library in Amsterdam is producing and selling its own alchemy masks.  The top one is the well-known image from Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens, the middle one is a rebis/hermaphrodite, and the bottom one is Sophia--all from the library’s collection.  You can go to their Facebook page for more information and to order.  

[rhianna]

[iamvirgostarlight]

Dan Brown Helps Ritman Library Digitize Its Occult Manuscripts

Dan Brown Helps Ritman Library Digitize Its Occult Manuscripts

The Ritman Library has been aiming to digitize its collection since beginning its Hermetically Open project in 2012. A play on the library’s status as a hub of printed materials in the field of Hermeticism, it was the start of an effort to bring these precious materials to a wider audience. Luckily for the library, they had a fan in Brown, who had visited the Ritman on several occasions while…

[furtherfurther]

Kabbala, Amsterdam