March 2026

Dear Reader,

Welcome back to the Codex!

We have a short but ‘oh-so-sweet’ edition for you this month. Spring is rapidly approaching, the Equinox is right around the corner, on the 20th, which nicely coincides with the opening of our new exhibition, The House with the Heads: A Monument to Free Thinking. So, if you are in the Amsterdam environs anytime during Spring, please come by to pay us a visit, and enjoy a refreshing snack in our garden which will by that point be filling with beautiful tulips!

Sarah mentioned and I agreed that this month’s red thread might very well be ‘design’: magnificent woodcuts, early printed Hebrew letters, and exquisite book bindings, this edition of the Codex tailors to these aesthetics in three pieces.

The first act belongs to José, whose piece blew me away, and I am proud to lead with it. Among other wondrous things she discusses the deep mystical symbolism of letters: ‘after all, all wisdom and knowledge is revealed through them’. Kyra’s piece concerns the emergence of the Hebrew letter printing techniques in the circle of one of the most important figures, and how they too, often envisioned their printing of the Talmud and other texts as ‘holy work’. My piece gives some attention to a book I have wanted to dive into for quite some time, a splendid book of mystical poetry by A.E. Waite titled ‘Strange Houses of Sleep’, which is also beautifully bound – thanks to the great and powerful Sarah for the photos!

Enjoy!

In the midst of a world full of omen and sign,
    impell’d by the seeing gift,
On auspice and portent reflecting,
    in part I  conjecture their drift;
I catch faint words of the language which the world
    speaks far and wide,
And the soul withdrawn in the deeps of man from
    the birth of each man has cried.
I know that a sense is beyond the sense
    of the manifest Voice and Word,
That the tones in the chant which we strain to seize
    are the tones that are scarcely heard

- Arthur Edward Waite, A Book of Mystery and Vision, p. 1.

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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.