Joost R. Ritman

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Founder & Visionary

At sixteen, Joost R. Ritman experienced what he would later describe as a sudden and deep realisation: that everything is one. It was a moment that never left him.

Ritman was an Amsterdam businessman by trade, but his true vocation has been the search for the hidden, often forgotten currents in Western spirituality. Guided by the principle of ad fontes, back to the source, he spent his life tracking down the earliest, most authentic editions of works from the Christian-Hermetic tradition: Hermetica, Alchemy, Mysticism, Rosicrucian thought, and Western Esotericism. Many of these books and manuscripts survived only by chance, passed from hand to hand across the centuries, their authors persecuted, their ideas suppressed. Ritman gave them a home, and in doing so, gave them a future.

From the beginning, his intention was never simply to collect. It was to connect: to make these sources available to researchers, seekers, and curious minds of all walks of life, and in doing so, opening up a dialogue between past and present. The library he founded has always been, in his own words, a living institute, hermetically open to all.

The timeline below traces the key moments of that life's work. His vision for what it means, and what it must become, is expressed in his Founder's Letter.

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Timeline: The Legacy of Joost Ritman Founder's Letter & Vision

The Legacy of Joost R. Ritman

1941

Birth in Amsterdam

Joost R. Ritman is born in Amsterdam, the city that would remain central to his cultural and philanthropic commitments.

1957

It Started with a Gift

Every library begins with one book. When Ritman's mother gave him a 17th-century copy of Jacob Böhme'sAurora as a birthday gift, the foundation of his collection began. The German mystic Böhme would remain one of the deepest and most lasting sources of inspiration in Ritman's life, and the first of thousands of books to find their way into his hands.

1984

From Private Collection to Public Library

Wishing to share this rich heritage with the world, Joost Ritman transforms his private collection into a public library, the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, on the Bloemstraat in the center of Amsterdam.

His vision is to bring together manuscripts and printed works from the Hermetic tradition under one roof, demonstrating their interrelationship and contemporary relevance.

1985

Scholarship Finds a Home

A year after opening the library, Ritman founds the Ritman Research Institute, committed to scholarly study of hermetic, spiritual, and related traditions. Researchers from across the world begin to find their way to the Bloemstraat.

1995

Laurens Jansz. Coster Prize

Ritman receives a literary award for outstanding contributions to the world of the book in the Netherlands.

2002

National Recognition

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences honours Ritman with its Silver Medal and appoints him a Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion, in recognition of his services as a patron of Dutch science and culture.

2007

The House with the Heads is Acquired

Ritman purchases the monument the House with the Heads, located in the heart of Amsterdam, built in 1622. Once home to Nicolaas Sohier and later Louis de Geer, both a mercator sapiens (i.e., businessmen with a love of art, culture, and wisdom), the monument is to become the new home of the collection.

2015

A Donation for Humanity

Ritman donates both the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica Collection and the House with the Heads to Stichting het Wereldhart, ensuring that the legacy of the library is preserved and protected for future generations.

2017

Embassy of the Free Mind Opens its Doors

Ritman is awarded the Frans Banninck Cocq Medal upon the official opening of the collection and monument to the public.

By establishing the Embassy of the Free Mind, Ritman becomes himself a modern mercator sapiens (i.e., a businessman with a love of art, culture, and wisdom). Many titles that were on the shelves here in the 17th century are to be found in the library today, available and accessible to everyone.

Founder's Letter & Vision

In his Founder's Letter dated November 19, 2011, incorporated into the articles of association of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica Foundation, Joost R. Ritman describes how he envisioned the future of his life's work.

The ‘birth’ of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica coincided with a sudden and deep experience I had at the age of sixteen that everything is one. In a single moment I realised that there is a profound connection between origin and creation, between ‘God – Cosmos – Man’, or in the words of Hermes Trismegistus: ‘He who contemplates himself with his mind, knows himself and knows the All: the All is in man.’

Throughout the ages men have experienced and testified to this inner coherence between the visible world and its origin. The earliest testimonies of man’s spiritual experiences were transmitted orally, from mouth to ear. The first written records, in characters, symbols and alphabets, date from some 3,000 years BC.

As the founder of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, it has been my life’s work over the past sixty years to build a unique collection of manuscripts and printed books in the field of Christian-Hermetic Gnosis, an area within the spiritual life of Europe where philosophy and religion meet. The collection comprises five major collecting areas: Hermetica, Alchemy, Mysticism, Rosicrucians and Gnosis & Western Esotericism. As a collector, my guideline has always been: ad fontes, ‘to the source(s)’, to search for the sources following the principles of originality – the earliest editions – authenticity and unicity.
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The collection may be described as a mirror of man’s search for the meaning of existence, as a ‘treasure house of the human spirit’. The inner perception of man has always been autonomous, both within the major religions and within the community, but its free expression was invariably in danger of being suppressed and marginalized: people have been persecuted and their books have been destroyed. The Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica is in a special sense a library of rare books, which has obtained its unique character, unparalleled in the world, due to its strong thematic coherence and the fullness of the area it covers.

It has always been my goal to connect this treasure house with society and make the texts – the sources – available to a wide audience. From the moment the library opened its doors, it was not only a collection of historically important books, but primarily a livinginstitute, and ‘hermetically open to all.

The ‘Source’ has to flow, and the information released by the currents of wisdom must be allowed to form an information field which is accessible to all and can offer a context and a frame of reference in this ever changing era. For me personally this means to share insight, knowledge and practice, according to the ancient triad of ‘religion, arts and sciences’, therefore to connect with contemporary spiritual currents, the world of science and society, so that every individual seeking for the source may be able to recognize himself in this source and apply it to his life, thereby performing the true ‘art of life’.

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The library as a living institute will remain focussed, firstly on keeping and preserving its collection of a body of thought which is vulnerable and exposed, secondly on expanding the collection when necessary, thirdly on making accessible the sources and fourthly on establishing connections, the latter by entering into alliances with libraries, universities, educational institutions and museums, and by directly engaging each individual in dialogue using modern means of communication.

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The Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica is rooted in the city of Amsterdam for a reason. The ‘freedom of the word’, the testimony of the human spirit, was first given wings in this city in the celebrated Golden Age, with its freedom of religion, its freedom of expression, and its freedom of printing. It is my heartfelt wish that this library will remain permanently anchored in Amsterdam.

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- Joost Ritman