The Ritman Library

David Chaim Smith’s 2017 book Deep Principles of Kabbalistic Alchemy is unique in the literature of western esotericism. In my opinion, until this point, no text had directly addressed the root basis of all phenomenal appearance in such a way that the reader is introduced to the concept and how it functions in technically accurate […]

The Greatness of the Human Mind 8 October 2017 – Esther Ritman during the ‘Inner Peace Conference’ in ‘De Balie – Salon’ in Amsterdam ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’. This common phrase suggests that there’s a great inherent power in the immediacy of an image: it is able to convey complex ideas in a […]

Translation from an article in the Dutch Speakers Academy 2017 magazine. BIBLIOTHECA PHILOSOPHICA HERMETICA Books are constantly in dialogue with each other in the Embassy of the Free Mind The Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, The Ritman Library for short, was once described by the Dutch man of letters and political scientist Aad Nuis (†2007) as a house of […]

Divine Wisdom – Divine Nature Exhibition. New stop: Dornach, Switzerland! 5 – 30 May 2017 Now that the exhibition in the Országos Széchényi Könyvtár in Budapest has ended, our exhibition on the Message of the Rosicrucian Manifestoes in the visual language of the 17th century will travel to the Goetheanum in Switzerland! The opening of the […]

The Ritman Library Newsletter

THE RITMAN LIBRARY DOCUMENTARY

The Ritman Library - The Movie - Official Teaser

We are very proud to present to you… a documentary about our library! Sara Ferro and Chris Weil of Artoldo Pictures visited the library in the spring of 2016, not long before we moved out of the building on Bloemstraat. Their documentary offers a really unique view inside our previous location and the library there. The result is a 90-minutes long sequence of enchanting books, unique interviews, beautiful pearls of wisdom, side by side with a clear and concise history of western Esotericism by Dr. Marco Pasi, Associate Professor at the Chair of History of Hermetic philosophy and related currents at the University of Amsterdam. If you want to be immersed in a wealth of wisdom, history and previously unrecorded stories: you’ve just got to watch this movie!

READ MORE AND WATCH TRAILER

TRAVELLING EXHIBITION BUDAPEST SUCCESFULLY COMPLETED
20 FEBRUARY – 20 APRIL 2017
A PHOTO REPORT

It’s a wrap! Our travelling exhibition ‘Divine Wisdom – Divine Nature. The Message of the Rosicrucian Manifestoes in the Visual Language of the Seventeenth Century’ in Budapest has come to an end. We marked the opening of the exhibition with a conference entitled “A Hermetic Reformation. The silent language of Alchemy, Magic, Christian Kabbalah and Rosicrucians” on 18 February 2017 in the National Széchényi Library in Budapest. This conference was dedicated to the work of Prof. Dr. Balint KeserÅ±.

The photo reports of the opening of the exhibition on 17 February and the scholarly conference on 18 February have since been published on our Facebook page. You can view the photos here (no Facebook account required).

There were weekly guided tours of the exhibition, with at least 50 participants for each tour! We are grateful and humbly proud :-) The last guided tour took place on Wednesday 12 April with András Uzsoki focusing on the subject of Rosicrucianism and Alchemy. It was a very inspiring talk in which he provided a detailed explanation of the seven stages in the alchemical process with the help of Stephan Michelspacher’s illustration (psst: we are now also selling a Michelspacher hermetic notebook in our webshop!)

MORE INFORMATION ON THIS EXHIBITION

CHYMICAL WEDDING – SYMPOSIUM JÃ„RNA
SWEDEN, NOVEMBER 2016

A symposium entitled “New Time, New Consciousness – Chymical Wedding” took place in Järna, Sweden, last year on 25-27 November. The Symposium had been organised by the Lectorium Rosicrucianum Sweden and the Swedish Anthroposophical Society.

“Return, return (I say) into yourself, subject your body to your reasonable soul by diving into your inward treasure, and prostrate and submit…your mental and spiritual part to God; for in this way you will be made one spirit with him, on the condition that you will persevere in humility, and acknowledge from the bottom of your heart the grace bestowed on you by your Creator, by which means you will be glorified and exalted […] For this reason I urge you with all my heart to ascend from this world to God, that is, to turn into yourself, because to climb up to God is to enter into yourself, and not only inwardly to visit your precious Soul, but also to advance into its very centre, where you will view and behold your Creator […] And so I say, you will come to understand, that each man is your brother, and that your brother is part of yourself, and that all men are but one and the same thing in species, which is in effect the very unity … and essence of God Himself. This, however, is obscured from the sight of unworthy men by the material mantle of nature.”

Excerpt from A Nosce te ipsum: To the Malicious Detractor or, the Calumniators Vision – Robert Fludd

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RESTOCKED & NEW: HERMETIC NOTEBOOKS!

They are back again: our unique hermetic notebooks! They are softcover, easy to take with you and inviting you to write down (or even draw, on the blank pages!) anything that inspires you.

You can choose from 6 different designs: from left to right on the image below, you can choose between Heinrich Khunrath’s ‘Oratory and Laboratory’ from his Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae of 1609 – Stephan Michelspacher’s ‘The Mountain of the Adepts’ from his Cabala: Spiegel der Kunst und Natur, in Alchymia of 1615 – Daniel Mögling’s ‘House of the Holy Spirit’from a manuscript copy of his Speculum sophicum rhodo-stauroticum (after 1618) – the beautifully coloured image of Sophiafrom a manuscript of the “Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer” of c. 1760 – Robert Fludd’s ‘The Spiritual Brain’ from his De supernaturali, naturali, praenaturali … microcosmi historia of 1619 – Jacob Böhme’s ‘The true principles of all things’ from The Works (Law ed.), 1764-81.

Get your own copy or copies now in our webshop and let’s spread the #hermeticnotebooknow!

ORDER NOW

DIVINE WISDOM – DIVINE NATURE: GOETHEANUM

Divine Wisdom – Divine Nature Exhibition. Current stop: Dornach, Switzerland!
5 – 30 May 2017

Now that the exhibition in the Országos Széchényi Könyvtár in Budapest has ended, the next stop for our exhibition on the Message of the Rosicrucian Manifestoes in the visual language of the 17th century is the Goetheanum in Switzerland! The opening of the exhibition will be accompanied by a conference taking place on 5 – 7 May, which is organised by the Goetheanum and the Dutch Anthroposophical Society. A number of speakers (one of them our very own director Esther Ritman!) will gave presentations on the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz.

The exhibition Divine Wisdom – Divine Nature aims to introduce the audience to the wisdom contained in and conveyed by these ‘iconotexts’ made at the beginning of the seventeenth century. They are consummate artistic expressions of the conviction that to investigate the Book of Nature is a sacred act, and creation itself proof of Divine Wisdom.

Read more about the event and conference here.

READ MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

THE EMBASSY OF THE FREE MIND IN THE NEWS

The Embassy of the Free Mind: we were in the news!
Translation from an article in the Dutch Speakers Academy 2017 magazine.

‘Books are constantly in dialogue with each other in the Embassy of the Free Mind’

The Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, The Ritman Library for short, was once described by the Dutch man of letters and political scientist Aad Nuis (†2007) as a house of living books. The collection, which will become digitally accessible in the near future, consists of some 25,000 works, which together make up a treasure house of the human mind. After a thorough renovation, the library, publishing house and research centre will re-open to the public in the House with the Heads. In the Embassy of the Free Mind, all available knowledge is set to become accessible to all.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

EVENTS

EXHIBITION Divine Wisdom – Divine Nature
Goetheanum – Dornach, Switzerland
5 May – 30 May 2017

EXHIBITION All in All
Die Gedankenwelt des mystischen Philosophen Jacob BÃ¶hme
Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden
27 August – 19 November 2017

SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

Hermetic Music

David Bowie
Station to Station – 1976

Pearls of Wisdom

“Sometimes the self that must be overcome is represented as a beast within – an inward dragon – which must be killed. This is why mediaeval knights are often depicted with a beast beneath their feet.”

‘The Mystical Way and the Arthurian Quest’ (Llanerch, 1986) by Derek Bryce.

EASTER ALSO HERMETIC?

Last month millions of people around the world celebrated Easter – specifically the day the resurrection of Christ is commemorated. But can we also understand Easter in a hermetic sense?
This image of the resurrected Christ famously appeared in a marvellous woodcut in Rosarium Philosophorum (1550), where Christ is equated with the Philosophersâ€

Stone.

Many traditions and religions speak of a body of resurrection or an immortal body. In the Corpus Hermeticum, Hermes tells his disciple: â€˜I have both passed out of myself into an immortal body, and I am no longer what I formerly was, but I have been born in Mindâ€ (CH XIII, 3).

For Easter reading, we suggest â€œStages of Ascension in Hermetic Rebirthâ€ by Dan Markur:
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/printable/Merkurprintable.html

WEBSHOP

E-BOOK DIVINE WISDOM – DIVINE NATURE

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
ALCHEMY ON THE AMSTEL | ALCHEMIE AAN DE AMSTEL

VISIT THE WEBSHOP

The Ritman Library internship:
Aricia Ritman

Halfway through March our team was strengthened for one week by the radiant presence of Aricia Ritman, the daughter of Jozef Ritman, head of the Foundation for the Preservation of the House with the Heads Monument. She was asked to do an internship as part of her training and where better to appreciate your father’s work than at his workplace? While he was away travelling, she helped us with a variety of tasks. Here is a photo of Aricia helping our curator José Bouman in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam storage space, where our modern collection is temporarily housed. Aricia also wrote descriptions for our latest hermetic notebooks, explaining the cover images and their profound and symbolic meaning in clear and concise terms. The explanations will soon be published!

The notebooks are already available in our web shop.

Thank you Aricia for your contribution, it was great fun having you with us for a week!

VISIT OUR WEBSHOP

CONTACT US

Our future premises

The Ritman Library
P.O. Box 11126
1001 GC Amsterdam
The Netherlands

+31 20 625 8079
bph@ritmanlibrary.nl

It’s been a year since The Ritman Library left the old premises on Bloemstraat to prepare for the grand opening of the House with the Heads late in 2018. Time flies, but we were having fun in the meantime… Join us in looking at some of the highlights of the previous year!

SUPPORT THE EMBASSY OF THE FREE MIND
IN THE HOUSE WITH THE HEADS

The Embassy of the Free Mind in the House with the Heads is a platform for free and contrarian thought. The Embassy offers room for exhibitions, tours, presentations, debates and conferences. The Ritman Library, with its wealth of knowledge and its unique collection, will be the vibrant heart of the Embassy of the Free Mind. The collection of some 25,000 books tells the story of the Western spiritual and philosophical tradition and is, like the House of the Heads itself, inseparably connected to Amsterdam and its history of free and open thinking. freedom of speech and freedom of the press. As in the Golden Age, the House with the Heads will welcome the free spirits and independent thinkers of yesterday, today and tomorrow, from the Netherlands and abroad and be a home to artists and scientists, entrepreneurs and anyone seeking and offering inspiration and power of thought.
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EXPLORE – ENCOUNTER – ENTERPRISE Amsterdam is a city characterized by an amazing diversity, authenticity, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. A city with a heart big enough to embrace the whole world, a city that has been a figurehead and a haven of free thought. A city where prohibited books were printed, where free minds were given […]

From 9 – 18 June we organised a pop-up exhibition in the entrepôt building in the harbour of the city of Harlingen, in the north of the Netherlands. The exhibition was called “Hermetically Open” and showed unique images from books in The Ritman Library. Some of the images presented were almost 2 metres high! It was a true multimedia […]

On Tuesday 27 June, the cover and location of the story of Dan Brown’s upcoming novel called ‘Origin’ was revealed. The novel will be internationally released on 3 October 2017. The story will be themed under the following two questions: Where do we come from? Where are we going? Dutch newspaper ‘De Volkskrant’ writes in an article […]

ALL IN ALL The conceptual world of the mystic philosopher Jacob Böhme 26 August to 19 November 2017 We are proud to share that we are lending seventeen items, one of which is a very unique portrait of Jacob Böhme, to the exhibition on Jacob Böhme in the Schlosskapelle of the Residenzschloss in Dresden, Germany. One of the most important German thinkers, […]

Review: David Chaim Smith’s work on Kabbalah and Alchemy

‘The Spiritual Mind’– Lecture by Esther Ritman

Books are constantly in dialogue with each other in the Embassy of the Free Mind

Divine Wisdom – Divine Nature, Exhibition Goetheanum May 2017

The Ritman Library Newsletter

Explore – Encounter – Enterprise

Exhibition ‘Hermetically Open’ 9-18 June, Harlingen

Dutch newspaper ‘De Volkskrant’: Amsterdam not location of Robert Langdon’s new adventure

Exhibition ‘All in All’ on Jacob Böhme, Dresden – August-November 2017

Review: David Chaim Smith’s work on Kabbalah and Alchemy

‘The Spiritual Mind’– Lecture by Esther Ritman