L’Oedipus Aegyptiacus (“Edipo egiziano”) è la più importante opera scritta da Athanasius Kircher sull’egittologia.
I tre volumi di illustrazioni e diagrammi furono pubblicati a Roma nel periodo 1652–1654. Kircher affermò che le sue fonti per l’Oedipus Aegyptiacus erano l’astrologia caldeana, la cabala ebraica, la mitologia greca, la matematica pitagorica, l’alchimia araba e la filologia latina.
Questa versione del libro è stata resa più leggibile ottimizzando le fotografie originali.
Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680), a German Jesuit polymath, is often credited with first calling scholarly attention to Egyptian hieroglyphics, but not with any success at translating them. Kircher was no Champollion, and the Rosetta stone had not yet appeared. Tom IIA approaches the hieroglyphics indirectly, through classical sources and wild guesses. That said, the work is of lasting value. Students of John Dee will find the “Hieroglyphic Monad” discussed at length. The studies of various subjects in both Tom IIA and IIB are very important for Golden Dawn source research and “Western Qabalah” generally. Mathers took many ideas from part A, while Westcott cites and mistranslates a small portion of part B in his Sepher Yetzirah. Tom IIB collects Notariqon on important aspects of Kabbalah, provides the seminal variation of the Tree of Life diagram used by Western Occultists and delves at length into both Jewish and Islamic mystical studies. Some scholars attack Kircher’s material, not without cause, as being filled with error. Much of the error is easily correctible typos, and the issues of right or wrong about traditional Kabbalah are moote — in as much as the value of the work is in what it has done, both in terms of starting serious studies and in presenting key material not found elsewhere in European language sources. “Qabalah” or “Cabala” is not “Kabbalah” (traditional and religious Jewish mysticism of the late Middle Ages up to the modern times). The difference is utility and focus. The former approaches organize knowledge and mystical experience, while the latter are rightly considered an essential element in Jewish religious focus. Both are based in Literary Criticism.
