September 2025

“Consider your origin. You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.”

“They had their faces twisted toward their haunches and found it necessary to walk backward, because they could not see ahead of them. ...And since he wanted so to see ahead, he looks behind and walks a backward path.”

― Canto 26 & Canto 20, from Dante, The Inferno, from the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, translated by S. Fowler Wright, (Fowler Wright Ltd, 1928).

Bouguereau’s painting ‘Dante and Virgil in Hell ’ features the Roman poet Virgil (70-19 BC) guiding Dante through hell while an alchemist and fraudster wrestle naked in the foreground; an arresting image. A winged demon floats nearby while damned souls suffer in torment all around them. If we look closely, Virgil is covering his mouth, whispering to Dante who looks pensively upon the violent scene unfolding next to them. Dante’s eyes are fixed on the combat, Virgil’s looks straight ahead, anticipating the arduous, dangerous journey still to come.

Beloved Codex Hermeticus readers, it is once again time to go ad fontes, i.e., ‘to the sources’ of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica; to mine the prima materia within the ancient tomes patiently waiting along our shelves - and I am happy to write that this month’s edition shall not disappoint. Like Dante, we have a journey ahead of us! Occult symbols, forbidden knowledge, secret printing, magical rituals! Steel your spirits and heed no caution – let’s dive in.

We kick off the September 2025 issue with a piece by José, who made a discovery concerning the origins of a certain ‘Rosicrucian secret seal’. The Rosicrucian thread is continued by Paul, who wrote about the Dutch translation of one of the Rosicrucian manifestos and how he was able to identify who published it! I wrote about one of my favorite manuscripts in our collection, an enigmatic 18th century ‘Magical Manual of Doctor Faustus’. Kyra’s contribution concerns one of our rare 16th-century folio editions of the Zohar - one of the foundational mystical Jewish texts from the Kabbalah section of our collection. Charlotte has written about ‘Mathesis’, which was one of the most expansive astrological handbooks from the 4th century, currently – like so many other works containing ‘forbidden knowledge’, is currently housed in the Vatican archives. Okay, enough from the editor - 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.