In The Pronaos Of The Temple Of Wisdom Containing The History Of The True And The False Rosicrucians

Franz Hartmann (22 November 1838, Donauwörth - 7 August 1912, Kempten im Allgäu) was a German physician, theosophist, occultist, geomancer, astrologer, and author. His works include several books on esoteric studies and biographies of Jakob Böhme and Paracelsus. He translated the Bhagavad Gita into German and was the editor of the journal Lotusblüten. He was at one time a co-worker of Helena Blavatsky at Adyar. In 1896 he founded a German Theosophical Society. He also supported the Guido-von-List-Society (Guido-von-List-Gesellschaft). And according to Theodor Reuss he was also one of the original founders of the magical Order that would later be known as Ordo Templi Orientis, along with Reuss and Carl Kellner.

Hartmann authored In the Pronaos of the Temple of Wisdom, serving as what he hoped would be an introduction to hermetic philosophy. Hartmann explains in the preface, “Truly occult and Theosophical books ought to be prayers and poems; calculated to lift the heart and the mind of the reader up to the highest regions of thought, and aiding him to descend into the innermost sanctuary of his own being; so that he may become able to open the senses of his interior perception and grasp himself those divine ideals which are beyond the understanding of the semi-animal intellect; for spiritual truth cannot be brought down to that level; it requires, for its recognition, the rising up in the spirit to its own plane; neither can any man reveal to another the light, if the light does not reveal its presence to the investigator; all that a book can do is to aid the reader in opening his own eyes.”

This edition is specially formatted with a Table of Contents.