This symbol is in fact a combination of the symbol for the planet Mercury above and the zodiacal sign Aries below. The symbol is inextricably linked to John Dee (1527-1608/09), the creator of this symbol, to which he dedicated a famous book, Monas hieroglyphica (1564). He also used it as his personal symbol. In his explanation, Aries stands for the alchemical fire.

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In Alchymia vera from 1609, without the circle around it, it appears twice more in the text, in the verse based on the Monas.

However, it is not my intention to elaborate further on the meaning of this symbol. I would like to point out a completely different connection. The same woodblock with this symbol was used on the title page of an edition of the Chymical Wedding, one of the ‘manifestos’ of the 17th-century Rosicrucian movement. There it is turned upside down, but it is unmistakably the same woodblock. The first edition of the Chymical Wedding appeared in 1616, and the text was reprinted in the same year. However, this symbol only appears in a “pirated edition”, a reprint that appeared without the permission of the creator(s), and we do not know who this printing pirate was. Based on its use in the Alchymia vera edition, whose printer we do know, namely Levin Braun, it seems plausible to attribute the pirated edition to this printer from Magdeburg. One more small bibliographical riddle solved.

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Much later, this very symbol also caught the attention of A.E. Waite (1857-1942), who studied the history of the Rosicrucians: he used it, along with other astrological symbols, on the cover of his book The Real History of the Rosicrucians (1887). The grand master of the Lectorium Rosicrucianum, Jan van Rijckenborgh (1896-1968), was also fascinated by this symbol, which he applied on the cover of his edition of Böhme's Aurora. He coined it as “the seal of Christian Rosenkreuz”.

Link to digitized manuscript