January 2026

“all again grew still, in silence hush’d;
And in the East there dawned, uprising slow,
A roseate blush, a tinge of golden light,
The herald sure of a more glorious morn,
A time of rest, if not the reign foretold
Of peace on earth! And so the vision passed!”

- William Sharpe, M.D., ‘The Conquerer’s Dream’ (1894), cited in The Unknown World no. 2. Vol. 1., p.93.

Dear Codex Hermeticus readers!! Welcome to the New Year, and welcome back to the Codex! Accept our warm greetings from frozen Amsterdam, where snow has blanketed the local environs and shut down nearly all businesses (can’t use snowplows on cobblestones, go figure). Time to dive in to the Codex’s maiden voyage of 2026, here’s what we have for you this month:

Firstly, there is a short reflection about the feedback which we received last month. Getting into the content, I am so happy this month to feature the work of Oxford PhD candidate Ellen Hausner. Ellen spent several months with us this Autumn consulting the alchemy manuscripts in the collection, and her piece concerns the special ‘characters’ used by an alchemist in one of our alchemical manuscripts.

Kyra’s piece addresses one of the several important female authors in our collection, Madame Guyon. We could really have a recurring piece dedicated to the many female thinkers in our collection – it was ‘bad enough’ that their ideas strayed from the mainstream, but the fact that they were women writing them? Absolute heresy!! Kyra honors this French mystic in exploring her system of reaching and uniting with the Divine, regardless of the personal tragedies she withstood - a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

My piece concerns ‘The Unknown World’, a late 19th century printed journal curated by the great Arthur Edward Waite which featured articles investigating esoteric traditions – the first one in history in fact! A great example illustrating that the Codex stands in its own tradition…

Enjoy!

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.