Athanasius Kircher

(1602–1680) — Jesuit polymath, the last man who plausibly tried to know everything: Egyptologist, geologist, musicologist, builder of magic lanterns and speaking statues, describer of microbes, proposer of a universal language. Prodigiously learned and prodigiously wrong about several things at once.

In Oedipus Aegyptiacus (Rome, 1652–54) he printed the arrangement of sephirot and connecting paths now universally called the Kircher Tree — the one in which Malkuth receives three roads instead of one. It is a syncretist's reconciliation of Kabbalah with Egypt, Greece and the Church, and it is the chart the whole of Western occultism inherited.

⚠ It is also the chart this app opened on for its entire life, until 2026-07-25. Tehiru now boots on the Ari's wiring; Kircher's is one press away on the ⑃ toggle, labelled as what it is.