The Reading-Room

ZHOUYI

Anonymous tradition · English by James Legge · received Zhouyi core · Classical Chinese beside James Legge’s 1882 English

The sixty-four hexagrams in received King Wen order: each judgment and line statement in Classical Chinese beside James Legge’s credited 1882 English. The later Ten Wings commentaries are not part of this reading edition.

Sixty-four figures, each with a judgment and six line statements: change is read through positions and their movement.

The historical texts are public domain. The 2003 sacred-texts.com Legge transcription permits non-commercial use with attribution retained. Chinese from Project Gutenberg #25501, spot-checked against Wikisource; reader design © the author, given freely.

Read the preface →

DAO DE JING

Traditionally attributed to Laozi · English by James Legge · received Wang Bi text · Classical Chinese beside James Legge’s 1891 English

Eighty-one chapters of the received Dao De Jing: the Wang Bi textual line in Classical Chinese beside James Legge’s credited 1891 English. Wang Bi’s commentary is kept out of the reading text.

The Dao is named and immediately placed beyond any name that could contain it; the eighty-one chapters return to action, restraint, and the way things unfold.

Ancient Chinese work and Legge’s 1891 translation are public domain in the United States. Chinese transcription from a fixed Chinese Wikisource Wang Bi revision, with its CC BY-SA 4.0 site terms credited; English from Project Gutenberg #216.

Read the preface →

ELEMENTA

Euclid — this edition by John Casey · composed c. 300 BC · this edition John Casey, Dublin University Press, 1885 · the first six books

The oldest engine still running. From five postulates and a handful of common notions, the whole of plane space is deduced — proposition by proposition, each leaning only on what came before. The taproot of every figure in this Scriptorium: the golden ratio is defined here (Book VI), the incommensurables tamed (Book V), and Book I closes on Pythagoras. Set from John Casey’s richly annotated 1885 edition.

Euclid’s: from five postulates, the whole of plane space — the order is deduced, not asserted. The first engine.

Casey’s 1885 edition (Cornell University Library scan, Project Gutenberg #21076) long out of copyright. Reader design and modern apparatus © the author, given freely.

Read the preface →

ARS MAGNA

Ramon Llull · composed c. 1305 · Lavinheta edition, Lyon: Marechal for Vincent, 1517

Llull’s combinatorial engine — the rotating figures, the alphabet of dignities, the art that would generate every true proposition. A full interactive English edition set against the 1517 leaves.

Llull’s wager: turn the figure and every true proposition falls out — the order is generated, not invented.

Work and printing long out of copyright. Translation and design © the author, given freely.

Read the preface →

CONCLVSIONES NONGENTAE

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola · Rome, Eucharius Silber, 1486 · the editio princeps

Pico’s syncretist wager — nine hundred theses gathering the Latin, Arab, Hebrew, Greek, Chaldean, Hermetic, Orphic and Kabbalist traditions into one concord, ending in the famed magical and Christian-Kabbalah conclusions. Every line transcribed fresh from the image-only incunable with a literal English translation and a gloss per block.

Pico’s: nine hundred theses, every tradition into one concord — the order is shared, beneath the schools.

Public-domain 1486 text. Facsimile: Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart, Inc.fol.12999, urn:nbn:de:bsz:24-digibib-bsz3483502523; scholarly reuse follows the library’s digitisation terms. ARMISTICE transcription, translation and design are given freely.

Read the preface →

MENSVRA

Albrecht Dürer — this edition by Alfred Peltzer · Nuremberg, 1525 · this edition Alfred Peltzer, Munich, 1908

The first geometry printed in German for the working artist — Dürer’s four books of compass-and-straightedge construction. The conic sections and spirals, the regular polygons and the tilings that lock the plane, the Roman and blackletter alphabets built stroke by stroke, the five Platonic solids unfolded into the flat nets he invented here, and the famous machines for seizing perspective. Set from Alfred Peltzer’s 1908 modern-German edition of the 1525 original.

Dürer’s: beauty is not given but constructed — compass and straightedge, and the order is reachable by any patient hand.

Dürer’s 1525 original and Peltzer’s 1908 edition (Google-digitized) long out of copyright. Reader design and modern apparatus © the author, given freely.

Read the preface →

MYSTERIVM COSMOGRAPHICVM

Johannes Kepler · Tübingen, Georg Gruppenbach, 1596 · the editio princeps

Kepler’s first book — the six planetary orbs spaced by the five nested Platonic solids, the Creator geometrizing. The full 1596 volume: the XXIII chapters with the keystone polyhedral plate, plus Rheticus’s Narratio Prima (the first printed account of heliocentrism) and Mästlin’s appendix. Set from the genuine 1596 Latin original — never a modern translation.

Kepler’s: the planets spaced by the five solids — the order is geometric (and he was wrong, beautifully; the gesture outlived the result).

The genuine 1596 Gruppenbach first edition (e-rara / ETH-Zürich, Public Domain Mark 1.0). Transcription, translation, and design © the author, given freely.

Read the preface →

AMPHITHEATRVM

Heinrich Khunrath · Hanau, 1609 · the posthumous expanded edition with the nine great copperplates

The theosophic amphitheatre — Christiano-Kabbalistic, Divino-Magical, Physico-Chemical, a Three-in-One. The nine legendary double-page copperplate engravings (the Oratory–Laboratory, the Filius Macrocosmi, the Citadel of Pallas), independently transcribed and translated from a plate-complete copy, beside the Ladder of Seven Grades.

Khunrath’s: Ora et Labora — the order is enacted; prayer and hearth are one ascent.

Plate-complete 1609 Hanau exemplar (Science History Institute) and the Internet Archive 1609 Latin, both Public Domain Mark 1.0. Independent transcription, translation, and design by the Scriptorium; earlier English plate translations by Patricia Tahil are acknowledged in the preface.

Read the preface →

ATALANTA FUGIENS

Michael Maier · first published Oppenheim, 1617 · supplied e-text witness dated 1618

The crown jewel of the alchemical emblem book — fifty plates fusing engraving, Latin epigram, and three-voice fugue. The reader pairs translated epigrams and historical English discourses with the engravings; the fugues are credited but absent.

Maier’s: one work, three simultaneous voices — the order is polyphonic, read in registers at once.

Historical work and engravings are public domain. ARMISTICE epigram translations and interface remain CC0 1.0. The unchanged English discourses from Furnace and Fugue (Nummedal and Bilak, 2020; © Brown University) retain CC BY-NC-ND 4.0; their source and transcription credits accompany every discourse.

Read the preface →

THESAURUS

attributed to Nicolas Flamel (pseudo-Flamel) · French, late manuscript · Science Museum Group MS/0383

Forty-seven hand-illuminated leaves of the pseudo-Flamel corpus — the buried treasure, the serpent, the rungs of the ladder — translated leaf by leaf beside the Science Museum’s digitisation.

Pseudo-Flamel’s: the treasure was never far off — the order is already underfoot, in the matter in hand.

Digitisation © Science Museum Group, London, released CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. This translation is a derivative work and inherits the same licence.

Read the preface →