The World is Bound With Secret Knots The Life and Works of Athanasius Kircher

Idol of 'Fombum'
from
China Monumentis... Illustrata (Amsterdam 1667)

Kircher, situated at the center of Western culture, found himself in a unique position to gather information from the widespread network of Jesuit missionaries, and to synthesize it in a unifying conceptual framework. One of the most successful of such cullings is China Monumentis… Illustrata, a work compiled largely from the notes and correspondence of Jesuit missionaries to India, China, and Japan, including such noted Society scholars as Johann Adam Schall von Bell and Matteo Ricci. This large and exhaustive work was one of Kircher's most popular, expounding on Chinese geography, history, culture, and language, including the first published Western vocabularies of Sanskrit and Chinese, becoming a standard text in translation until the nineteenth century. Kircher had applied and been vigorously rejected twice for missionary positions in the far east, and was convinced that the roots of these other civilizations lay in the culture of his beloved ancient Egypt. In Part III of China, Kircher describes the idolatrous religions of the East and traces them back to Egypt and Greece. Kircher describes the 'Fombum', apparently a garbled translation of Buddha (also more familiarly referred to as the 'Amida') as explaining 'the hidden virtues and perfections, which is symbolized by the clothing covering him'. Kircher identifies the Xodoxii (Zen) sect as having superior spiritual insight and quotes from the 1565 Portuguese letters of Jesuit missionary Ludwig Froes, "They say that Fombum has always existed and that he will have no end. He was created for himself alone. His being fills the earth and sky and he occupies everything physical to show his immensity in the infinity of his essence. They assure us that he doesn't work hard to govern his creatures. Without difficulty he contains them in his own being. They say that he had no quality or color which can be seen by people. Finally, this Fombum has a thousand rare perfections and is the source of every good thing."

A Magnetic Oracle
from
Magnes, sive de Arte Magnetica (Rome 1641)

Magnes, Kircher's second and most significant book on magnetic phenomena, consists of three sections- the first describing the nature and properties of magnets, the second on practical applications including navigation and mechanical curiosities, and finally a philosophical discussion on how magnetism and analogous forces conspire to define all of nature. It is the second section, containing charts and tables compiled by Kircher from reports solicited from Jesuit scholars throughout the world that generated intense interest in the book. Detailing a wealth of data on variations in magnetic readings across longitude, latitude, and time, its success resulted in its being reprinted twice within the next few years. At the same time, Magnes generated considerable controversy in the nascent international scientific community for its dismissal of key concepts from predecessors such as Johann Kepler and William Gilbert. In one instance, Kepler, expanding on Gilbert's speculation, described the sun as a huge magnet, whose rotation on its axis caused the earth and planets (themselves smaller magnets) to move around it in orbits. Kircher disproved this by experimenting with actual magnets, and observing that rotation of a large central magnet actually caused a sympathetic axial rotation in its otherwise stationary satellites. On the basis of this phenomenon, Kircher devised a device for 'magnetic hydromancy' in which small wax figures, embedded with magnets and suspended in water-filled globes, could be made to spell out specific messages or forecasts from symbols and letters printed on the surface of their vessels. Controlled by a hand-cranked rotating central magnet, this mechanically simulated divination device, bearing the Hermetic motto 'Nature Rejoices in Nature', epitomizes Kircher's unique blend of skepticism towards paranormal activities and delight in the underlying mysteries of seemingly mundane reality.

Propagation Horns
from
Phonurgia nova (Kempten 1673)

When rival polymath Sir Samuel Morland, FRS (1625-95), published a paper in the January 1672 issue of Philosophical transactions in which he laid spurious claim to the invention of the speaking-trumpet, Kircher was moved to set the record straight in Phonurgia nova, the first published book devoted entirely to acoustics. Kircher detailed his use of the 'tuba stentorophonica' to summon his congregation to St. Eustace's shrine at Mentorella for many years prior to Morland's claim, and annotated his account with testimonials from James Alban Gibbs, Gaspar Schott, and others. In addition, Kircher had written extensively on amplifying megaphones almost a quarter century earlier in Musurgia Universalis. Having routed this pretender, Kircher proceeds to reiterate and elaborate his findings from Musurgia, discussing the science of echoes and amplification, and presenting designs for many ingenious sound inventions, including talking statues, an aeolian tuba, eavesdropping devices, and a myriad of horns and megaphones. Kircher believed a helical form was most efficacious for amplification, and speaking- trumpets like the ones reproduced here would often reach immense proportions, towering over the height of a man.

A Botanical Clock
from
Magnes, sive de arte Magnetica (Rome, 1641)

To illustrate his belief in the magnetic relationship between the sun and the vegetable kingdom, Kircher designed this heliotropic sunflower clock by attaching a sunflower to a cork and floating it in a reservoir of water. As the blossom rotated to face the sun, a pointer through its center indicated the time on the inner side of a suspended ring. Kircher claimed that it didn't work well because enclosing it in a glass case would block the sun's attractive force, and that it was 'therefore susceptible to inaccuracies due to the wind'. Further, "when the sunlight was weak, and itself was as if withered and worn out, it ran slow, seeking rest." Descartes misread Magnes, interpreting Kircher's descriptions as referring to one of his earlier speculations attributing heliotropic timekeeping properties to a sunflower seed floating in a marked cup. Although Kircher was, in fact, describing experiments with other heliotropic plant matter, Descartes seized on his own misinterpretation to launch a vituperative attack on Kircher's scientific abilities, referring to the gentle Jesuit as 'possessed of an aberrant imagination' and 'more quacksalver than savant'. Descartes' authority in the developing scientific community was such that Kircher's reputation was to suffer irreparable damage as a result. Even Kircher's longtime supporter Peiresc became suspicious. Nevertheless, Kircher regularly maintained a version of his sunflower clock in his museum, modifying it occasionally and demonstrating its accurate functioning on more than one occasion. From Magnes, "Added to this is the fact that a clock of this sort can barely last one month, even though cared for with the greatest effort; thus nothing is perfect in every aspect."

The World is Bound with Secret Knots
frontispiece from Magneticum Naturae Regnum (Rome 1667)

Alongside Egyptology, Kircher's most abiding scholarly interest was the study of magnetism. Impressed by William Gilbert's De Magnete (1600), Kircher began his researches while enjoying the patronage of the Elector- Archbishop of Mainz at his court in Aschaffenburg. Kircher's first book, Ars Magnesia (Wurzburg 1631) compiled the results from his experiments with historical anecdotes and an argument for for magnetism as a ratification of the authority of God, kings, and the priesthood. This latter philosophical premise indicates the breadth of influence Kircher would eventually attribute to magnetic forces. In his third and final book on the subject, Magneticum Naturae Regnum, Kircher summarized and reasserted his findings, attributing phenomena as mundane as tastes and preferences, or as cosmic as gravitation, to the forces of magnetism. Ultimately, Kircher saw magnetic attraction and repulsion as the lingua franca of all creation, governing friendship, love, sympathy, hatred, chemical reactions, planetary action, heliotropic and selenitropic plants, medicinal plants and stones, the wind, hydraulics, the tides, musical harmony; even the nature of God himself, whom Kircher deemed 'the Central Magnet of the Universe'. As Science verges on a workable unified field theory, Kircher's intuitive philosophical understanding of the interdependency of all things seems less and less naive. In the words of Valentine Worth: 'All of nature in its awful vastness and incomprehensible complexity is in the end interrelated - worlds within worlds within worlds: the seen and the unseen - the physical and the immaterial are all connected - each exerting influence on the next - bound, as it were, by chains of analogy - magnetic chains. Every decision, every action mirrors, ripples, reflects and echoes throughout the whole of creation. The world is indeed bound with secret knots.'

Esta información sobre uno de los más influyentes en el desarrollo de la fotografía, entre otras muchas cosas, viene desde the Museum of Jurassic Technology.