Khunrath

Some Paracelsian alchemists, especially Heinrich Khun rath (ca. 1560-1605) and Stefan Michelspacher (active ca. 1615-23), were objects of persecution on the part of hoth Lutheran and Catholic authorities. Khunrath was an alchemist from Saxony, the heartland of the Reformation, but his theological stance was characteristic of the second generation of Protestants who felt that Luther s work had been left incomplete and that another religious reform was essential. In Khunrath s ideas this would take the form of a Lutheranism that could accommodate an autonomous personal piety. To express their Lutheran piety intellectually the alchemists employed the terms of Paracelsian theosophy, while they found an emotive outlet in the mystical experience of the power and grace of the Holy Spirit. They felt themselves to be inspired (literally breathed ) by the Spirit, a force that they identified with alchemical pneuma. Khunrath called himself an enthusiast, hlled with the presence of the divine. 

For a detailed analysis of Khunrath s position Urszula Szulakowska, The Alchemy of light (Leiden BriU, 2000), 79-152. 

The concept of a Cosmic Man, the All, the soul of both the universe and humanity, was a significant factor in the theosophy of Paracelsus (1493-1541). The first visual depiction of this Being in the form of Christ-Anthropos, the Son of Man, appeared in Khunrath s alchemical treatise in 1595 (fig. 3). It was developed into the image of the Macrocosmic Man by Robert Fludd who was a prolihc encyclopaedist of Hermetic, medical and mechanical knowledge. In his Philosophia Sacra (1626), Fludd recalled texts in the Hermetic corpus (ca. second century AD) which recounted how Man ( Anthropos ), the divine Son of God, had created the world by uniting with Nature ( Physis ). ... 

Obrist, Les Debuts de I lmagerie Alchimique (1982), 55-65, 248-49. Khunrath, Amphiteatrum Sapientim Aeternae (1609), 198. 

Khunrath, Amphiteatrum Sapientiae Aeternae (1609), 100. Szulakowska, Alehemy of Light (2000), 120, 122. 

Johannes Arndt, Judicium uber die vier Figuren des Grossen Amphiteatrum Henrici Khunraths in Heinrich Khunrath, De Igne Magorum Philosophorumque secreto... 

The role of the Ruach-Elohim is explained throughout the text, for example in Khunrath, Amphiteatrum Sapientiae Aetemae (Hanau n. pr, 1609), 187 ff ( Eagoge ) Khunrath, Amphiteatrum Sapientiae Aetemae (1609), 193. 

Khunrath s engraving of Christ-Anthropos, the Archetype of the universe (fig. 3), initiated many of the elements later found in Fludd s prolific illustrations of the Macrocosmic Man. These included the use of the male nude, kabbalistic inscriptions, geographical compass-points, the diagrammatic structure of the Macrocosm and the motif of the dove of the Holy Spirit. The apocalyptic context of these images and their role in the Protestant Reformation of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries will be considered in the following chapter. 

An important source for Khunrath s concept of the alchemical mass had been Reuchlin s De Arte Kabbalistica in which he had referred to Abraham s sacrifice of Isaac on the mountains of Moriah (Genesis 22).26 event had been interpreted by medieval Catholic inter-... 

The ecstatic tenor of Khunrath s rhetoric is itself perhaps modelled on the spiritus rhetoricus of Erasmus early hermeneutics in which he had explored the spiritual sense of a text as being a force of divine grace that could spontaneously transform the reader. It was the personal experience of the sense of scripture that Erasmus had favoured in the Enchiridion Hence, also the outcries of Hallelujah and Lob Herr that punctuate, or conclude, Khunrath s writings. 

McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (1987), 164. Heinrich Khunrath, Amphiteatrum Sapientiae Aetemae (Hanau, 1609), 19-60. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (1987), 136, 155. 

There is a copy of the Hamburg Amphiteatrum (1595) in the Department of Special Collections at the library of the University of Wisconsin. It may be viewed on-line at http //www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/SpecialCoUections/khunrath/hermdis.html. 

See the discussion of Khunrath s theosophy in Szulakowska, The Alchemy of Light (2000), 79-137. Christ, the Ruah-Elohim, became the Paracelsian azoth. See Heinrich Khunrath, Vom Hylealischen das ist pri-matmalischen oder algerminen naturlichen Chaos (Magdeburg J. Schmeidt for Johann Francken, 1616), 75, 86-88. Christ is also identified with the Paracelsian Salt, the prime matter of creation. 

Christ in Glory, Heinrich Khunrath, Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aetenae (Hamburg, 1595 Hanau, 1609). With the permission of the British Library, London. 

Khunrath, Heinrich. The "Confessio" of Heinrich Khunrath a paraphrased translation by J.B. Craven [with a short introduction by Adam McLean], Hermetic J, no. 13 (Autumn 1981) 13-20. 

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