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The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz: The Ezekiel Foxcroft translation revised, and with two new essays by Michael Martin

The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, first published in the seventeenth century, has perplexed, amazed, and entertained generations of readers ever since. Often described as an alchemical romance, the book has also been recognized as a precursor to science fiction, as a satire, and as a storehouse of esoteric knowledge. In his agapeic commentary Michael Martin discloses a text that has been misunderstood from the beginning, a narrative that offers instead of hoped-for secrets something far more useful: physic for the soul.

“This fine edition makes widely accessible a text probably written by the highly influential German seventeenth-century Protestant theologian Johann Valentin Andreae. It is one of the most significant works of Christian esotericism, which is at the same time a satirical commentary on that very tradition. Its ambivalent and yet symbolically profound quest for the deepest sense of Christian truth, which can serve to heal violent Christian and human divisions, is entirely relevant for us today. Once more we can resonate with Andreae’s sense that this truth is necessarily most evident and yet most secret, most serious and yet most comic, most urgent and yet most dangerous.”—JOHN MILBANK, co-author of The Politics of Virtue

“Although several versions of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz are available, Michael Martin reframes his new edition in a way that answers what is perhaps the fundamental riddle of Rosicrucianism and the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. Namely, that the authors of these texts that revolutionized Western Esotericism in the early seventeenth century later confessed it was all just a ludibrium—a game. What they meant, as Martin explains, was not that it was all a ‘joke,’ but rather, was a most ‘serious game.’ In other words: this valuable edition opens new ways of thinking about language and esotericism.”—CHRISTOPHER BAMFORD, author of An Endless Trace: The Passionate Pursuit of Wisdom in the West

“Michael Martin’s edition of the 17th-century tale of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, with his insightful introduction and commentary, reveals that this poetic, metaphysical story wields a transformative power needed now. The intellectual hubris of our present civilization veils the true world with the life of death. The way out—breakdown as breakthrough—exemplified by the very language of the tale, undoes us, baffles us intellectually, while pure poetic Eros opens receptivity of soul and the equation of Life and Love.”—ROBERT SARDELLO, Director, The School of Spiritual Psychology