The Hermetic Museum: Restored and Enlarged – Volume’s One and Two combined

Emerging like a phoenix from the ashes of Frankfurt in 1678 was an astounding literature oeuvre: The Hermetic Museum, revamped and enriched. Its Latin script promised to eclipse its enigmatic predecessor from 1625, though stripped of inherent rarity and worth. Its raison d’être was undeniable—a compact anthology of recent and less verbose alchemistic authors was its offering. See it as a subtle augmentation to the enormous, existing wellspring of hermetic knowledge, akin to the Theatrum Chemicum and the Herculean Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa of Mangetus. These textual titans primarily harnessed the intellectual crème de la crème from antiquity—works penned by the luminaries like Geber and the proficient scholars of the Arabian fold, the oeuvres ascribed to Hermes, the wisdom of Raymond Lully, Arnold de Villa Nova, Bernard Trevisan, and a host of others.