We have Da Vinci Code's Dan Brown to thank for this online archive of the world's largest occult library
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Say what you will about Dan Brown’s virtues as a novelist, but the Da Vinci Code author has now cemented himself as a true patron of the (forbidden) arts forevermore. By donating to Amsterdam’s Ritman Library, also known by the much cooler name of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetic, Brown has helped make possible the global boon that is an in-progress digital archive of more than 25,000 occult texts.
Spanning a range of subjects that includes “Hermetica, Alchemy, Mysticism, Rosicrucians, Gnosis and Western Esotericism, and Comparative Religion,” The Ritman Library’s exceptionally titled Hermetically Open Project is an ongoing effort to “share the contents of the library and its field of thought online and make it more accessible to all.”
There’s welcome scholarly benefits to this, first and foremost, but the Project also means that anyone with an internet connection can now browse a growing collection of excellent stuff like the following image of a man and woman with sun and moon for heads, riding a lion and griffin, charging each other in an illustration of 16th century thinking.
Or this 1615 illustration that shows how kabbalah was incorporated into alchemist’s practice and, for the layperson, includes a chimera that features a face with either a giant beard or a full mouth of molten vomit spewing out of it.
The descriptions provided alongside the Instagram uploads of these images—and the summaries of the histories and beliefs behind the various categories of the collection included on the site—do a good job of showing that the Project isn’t just digitally archiving The Ritman’s massive collection, but providing context, too.
Here are a few more examples:
According to Haute Macabre’s article on the Project, the Dan Brown donation that’s made this possible was his way of giving back to the library, which he’s visited while working on his own occult-flavored thrillers. So, next time you’re thinking about giggling over the quality of his writing or those songs he wrote back in the day…well, giggle anyway, but also remember to be thankful that he’s put some of his money to good use. And don’t forget to mention his name to whatever ethereal beings you encounter after poring over these texts for hours and entering into dimensions whose true nature are beyond the human mind’s ability to comprehend.
[via Boing Boing]
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13 Comments
The QAnons and Illuminati believers are going to pore over these and find definite proof that AOC is eating babies.
Being an occultist myself, this is like Christmas…I mean um…riding the hare to the sabbat.
Anytime Dan Brown is mentioned, this article needs to accompany it. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.html
Baby WHAT
Being a 33rd level Necromancer, i’ve stitched up my fair share of Chimerae. That’s molten vomit. Also: acid.
This effectively ruins every future occult-themed story/movie/TV episode that features the perennial shady, distant relative in the possession of an arcane book of magic who went missing under mysterious circumstances. It also sounds like the premise of one of those teen hacker themed movies of the nineties. Oh well, there’s always the Necronomicon to fall back on.
Now we can check in Tobin’s Spirit guide if Ghostbusters (1984) and Weird science (1985) share the same universe with Kelly LeBrock playing Gozer the Gozerian trying a more subdued, long term approach of world destruction.
…why did I never see this connection before… holy shit. If Pixar has a theory I might have to create a Theory of Gozer…
Or it sets up all new premises of people wanting to keep their obscure secret texts—WHICH REVEAL DEEP AND HIDDEN TRUTHS NO MAN SHOULD KNOW—from the masses, and/or teams from the digital occult library trying to find them. I mean there is no way some subset of the occult minded folk in the world do not see this event as heralding some sort of apocalypse.
And Robert Anton Wilson weeps in his grave.
That’ll teach us to make fun of, mock, lampoon, or deride renowned author, prosperous scribe, and pecunious scribbler Dan Brown.
mid-quality metal bands are gonna get so many good album covers out of this
Let’s try to figure out what this “molten vomit” means:1) the chimera consumes its food in such a way that it remains solid both in and beyond the stomach. When it ejects that food – or some other solid matter going from the stomach up to the mouth – it takes an alternative route to the usual eating process, featuring incredible heat which turns that solid matter into a liquid: hence, “molten vomit”. Hopefully this archive can also shed some light on the chimera’s bizarre physiology which makes this phenomenon possible.2) the author uses words that he doesn’t understand.