August 2025

“If he [Man] cultivates his vegetable seeds, he will become a plant. If he cultivates his sensitive seeds, he will become brutish. If he cultivates his rational seeds, he will become a heavenly animal. If he cultivates his intellectual seeds, he will be an angel and a son of God.

……….And if he is not contented with the fate of any creature, he will gather himself into the center of his own unity and, [having] become one spirit with God, will join the solitary darkness of the Father, who is above all things, and will stand ahead of all things. Who will not wonder at this chameleon?”

— Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola (1463-1494), Oration on the Dignity of Man, hailed as ‘the manifesto of the Renaissance’. Quoted in Craig Truglia, ‘Al-Ghazali and Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola on the Question of Human Freedom and the Chain of Being’, in Philosophy East and West, Vol. 60. No. 2 (April 2010): pp. 143-166.

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For this month, I decided to write about four mysterious, very thick, black manuscripts always ominously sitting behind me in the old book room. Natalie has written about a beautiful 17^th-century compilation of apocalyptic prophecies currently on display in our exhibition. Kyra has focused on a beautiful 16th-century Jewish work in our collection that involves a dialogue on the theme of uniting love and wisdom.

Paul’s contribution concerns his recent puzzling over modern ways of determining how authors and their works interacted, or perhaps more likely, did not interact. In this example, he has tinkered with ‘network analysis’ methods to see if they can be helpful. Barbara has written about ‘Neoplatonic Psychoanalysis and Hermetic Magic’, connecting the phenomenology of Heidegger to Jungian thought in a beautiful way.  Charlotte’s piece concerns the opening of our new bookstore, the Amsterdam Antiquarian Bookstore, which was celebrated with a fantastic event in our lovely garden.

Each issue of the Codex contains a selection of articles written by our contributors, exploring the themes and traditions at the heart of the hermetic world.