X-Nico

9 unusual facts about Athanasius Kircher


Burning glass

Roger Bacon (13th century), Giambattista della Porta and his friends (16th century), Athanasius Kircher and Gaspar Schott (17th century), and the Comte du Buffon in 1740 in Paris.

John Birchensha

This was at a time when other music theorists were codifying the rules of counterpoint, and writing about other rule-based and combinatorial systems to aid in the composition of music, such as the Arca Musarithmica of Athanasius Kircher.

Key of Solomon

The figure is a variant of the Sigillum Aemeth published by Athanasius Kircher in Oedipus Aegyptiacus

Magic lantern

And other sources give credit to the German priest Athanasius Kircher.

Musaeum Clausum

Browne's eldest son Edward visited the famous scholar Athanasius Kircher, founder of the Museo Kircherano at Rome in 1667, whose exhibits included an engine for attempting perpetual motion and a speaking head, which Kircher called his Oraculum Delphinium.

Organum Mathematicum

The Organum Mathematicum was an information device or teaching machine that was invented by the Jesuit polymath and scholar Athanasius Kircher in the middle of the 17th century.

Romanization of Chinese

It was used e.g. by Michał Boym and his two Chinese assistants in the first publication of the original and Romanized text of the Nestorian Stele, which appeared in China Illustrata (1667) — an encyclopedic-scope work compiled by Athanasius Kircher.

Teofil Ociepka

When he returned to Janów, he brought back with him the first works on occultism, including Athanasius Kircher's treatise on the Seventy Two Names of God.

Water cycle

Bartholomew of England held this view (1240 CE), as did Leonardo da Vinci (1500 CE) and Athanasius Kircher (1644 CE).


Hamlet's Mill

Consequently, de Santillana and Dechend prefer to rely on the work of "meticulous scholars such as Ideler, Lepsius, Chwolson, Boll and, to go farther back, of Athanasius Kircher and Petavius...".

Lignum nephriticum

In 1646, Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit scholar residing in Rome, published an account of his experiments on lignum nephriticum in his work Ars Magna Lucis et Umbræ.

Sebastian Knüpfer

He was praised for his command of classical sources concerning music, which he mastered from Meibom’s editions published in 1652; he studied the treatises of, among others, Guido of Arezzo, Boethius, Berno of Reichenau and Athanasius Kircher.


see also