Conclusion

Kircher’s three books which have been presented and commented concern his cosmological geocentric vision of the world from the interior of the Earth to the limits of the firmament, including also the nature of material, living beings and men from the point of view of science, philosophy, and theology. In the middle of the seventeenth century, Kircher finds himself positioned between the conservation of the principles of the traditional Aristotelian scholastic natural philosophy and the acceptance of the new proposals of the beginnings of modern science. Mundus subterraneus presents not only the underground world but also an overall picture of what he calls the “mysteries of the Geocosmos.” He addresses a great variety of subjects of the three realms of nature, inanimate matter, plants, and animals, as well as what man can achieve by his work. The book can be thought about as a great encyclopedia full of lights and shadows, some interesting insights, and also a lot of fantasy. Kircher dedicated Magnes sive de arte magnetica to the phenomenon of magnetism, which he considers in a very inclusive way, not only from the physical point of view, with the treatment of the properties of magnets and terrestrial magnetism but considering it also as a kind of cosmic and spiritual force. The book Iter exstaticum coeleste can be considered as a kind of summary of Kircher’s vision of the universe. Its text is in the form of a dream he had of a space journey from the Earth to beyond the stars, of three fictitious persons, Theodidactus representing himself who puts the questions in the dialogs, and two angels Cosmiel and Hydriel who carried him and gave answers to his questions. For a modern reader, it is interesting to follow the lights and shadows of Kircher’s vision of the Earth and the universe presented in these three books.