American Aurora: Environment and Apocalypse in the Life of Johannes Kelpius

Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism

by Timothy Grieve-Carlson

327 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 10, 2024

About the author

Timothy R. Grieve-Carlson, Ph.D. (Religious Studies, Rice University (Houston, Texas), 2022), is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Westminster College.

Reviews

[Ella · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m sure there’s excellent, rigorous ecomarxist-adjacent historical work out there. I have simply never encountered it. This book gets an extra star on account of being the only current scholarly monograph on Kelpius, a hole that desperately requires further filling, but it kind of sucks balls.

[Dennis Daly · Rating 5 out of 5]

The late 17th century in Europe was marked by environmental upheaval: with a "little ice age" causing crop failure resulting in famine, war, and social unrest as well as increased cosmic activity, many ordinary citizens were looking beyond orthodox religion for an explanation of the phenomena before them. The Protestant Pietist movement, which ensued from this chaos with its emphasis on personal spirituality over rigid church dogma, originated in Germany during this time. Timothy Grieve-Carlson's brilliant book on Joannes Kelpius focuses not only on the learned theologian from Transylvania who eventually settled in the Wissahickon Valley of modern day Philadelphia but also on the leading Pietists who influenced him, the Pietist and Quaker movements in the new colony of Pennsylvania, and Kelpius' legacy and influence on early modern U.S. literature.

I had the privilege to attend a lecture by Grieve-Carlson on Kelpius in November 2024 at the German Society of Pennsylvania and have since become fascinated by this obscure man living at the edge of the woods, about whom so much has been written since his death in 1708 and who to a certain extent has become a cult-like figure. Yet at the same time Kelpius remains an absolute unknown, even to a native Philadelphian such as myself (before attending the author's lecture). This book is well-researched and highly insightful. I recommend it for those interested in the theological movements during that time as well as those interested in early Pennsylvania/ Philadelphia history.

[Nick Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a compelling and interesting study of Hermetic Protestantism in 17th century America through the figure of Johannes Kelpius, the “philosopher of the forest.” Theologically trained in Europe, Kelpius combined the medieval Book of Nature with biblical scripture as sources of religious authority in a syncretic project which took stock of environmental phenomena as evidence of the divine, especially during a period of climactic upheaval, the “little ice age,” and in a context of perceived decline in the sacrality to be found in institutional Christianity. Grieve-Carlson traces the esoteric currents influencing the developments represented by Kelpius, from Paracelsus’ use of the microcosm-macrocosm analogy, the cosmotheism of Johan Arndt, and the mysticism of Jacob Bohme. Through the lay Hermetic Protestantism of Kelpius, Francis Pastorius, and others, Grieve-Carlson complicates the narrative of Protestant-Enlightenment disenchantment, with these figures continuing to operate under these “elite constructs.” We learn about Kelpius’ wilderness retreat community at Wissahickon, their ecstatic and paranormal experiences such as telepathy and the sighting of luminous orbs, environmental and astronomical observations, as well as their practices of spiritual alchemy. Kelpius continued to have a sizable influence on post-Enlightenment America well into the 19th century.