Athanasius Kircher, Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (The Great Art of Light and Shadow), 1646. Photo courtesy of the Louisville Esoteric Society.

On my first ever visit to Los Angeles, for the Association of Recorded Sound Collections conference in 2011, I carved out some time for the Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT).

When I polled friends and acquaintances about what to do in L.A., this was the one thing that consistently floated to the top. I was staying in a downtown hotel, carless, and the MJT was 9 miles to the west, so I caught the 33 bus at Venice and Figueroa and made my way to Culver City.

It’s a good strategy to know as little as possible about the MJT before you go. That was my experience, that first time 6 years ago. It’s actually a lot of fun to have your sense of reality challenged in that way, wondering what exactly it is that you’re looking at. Are these exhibits based on real events? Is the museum an elaborate joke? An art installation? Right after I bought my ticket and went into the exhibit area, a couple came in, glanced around briefly, and went back out to the lobby. “What actually is this place?” I heard them ask the guy at the desk. “We suggest you look around and decide for yourself,” he replied.

Bell wheel/bell wheel in motion, Museum of Jurassic Technology.

With this in mind I walked into a room dedicated to Athanasius Kircher. The dimly lit space contained about 10 glass cases, each devoted to something that seemed vaguely scientific, vaguely mystical: A Magnetic Oracle; A Botanical Clock; Propagation Horns. At regular intervals an eerily pleasant tinkling filled the room, produced by clusters of bells attached to a large, slowly turning wheel hanging from the ceiling. For a while I just stood in the near darkness, listening, before taking a closer look at the cases. Athanasius Kircher, I learned, was a 17th century Jesuit priest, scholar, inventor, writer and scientist interested in a variety of things, including languages, magnetism, geology, egyptology, acoustics, religion, and pretty much any other phenomenon he encountered in the world. He was also interested in the connections, both tangible and mystical, physical and metaphysical, between all of these things. Each exhibit case focused on an idea, theory, or invention taken from one of Kircher’s many books, written between 1634 and 1680. Accompanied by the sounds of the bell wheel, built from one of Kircher’s own drawings, I learned about his study of Egyptian burial practices, metempsychosis (transmigration of the soul) and reincarnation; the ephemeral, heliotropic timepieces he created using sunflowers, and his trip into the crater of the volcano Vesuvius. This particular adventure led to the book Mundus Subturraneus: a discussion of gravity, the moon, the sun, eclipses, ocean currents, hydraulics, saline analyses, fossils, remains of giants, subterranean beasts and demons, poisons, metallurgy, astrological medicine, and fireworks, among other subjects. Kircher also wrote extensively about and experimented with magnetism, which he theorized was the guiding force behind everything from friendship and love, to chemical reactions and planetary action.

Given the enigmatic nature of the MJT and my own tendency towards cynicism, I really wasn’t sure what to think about Athanasius Kircher after that first visit to the museum. I half expected to find that his entire existence was made up, his thoughts and writings a creation of the same creativity and ingenuity that conceived of the MJT. Some online research quickly proved me wrong, however, and when I found a few of his books in the stacks of the research library where I worked, I could hold the proof in my hands. The Museum of Jurassic Technology, in a way, provided me with a very Renaissance-era moment, in that the unknown, to me, seemed unreal. 

Copies of Kircher’s books can be found in many major research libraries. Those in UCLA’s Special Collections were donated or bought as part of the Elmer Belt Library, a collection of books and materials concerning Leonardo da Vinci and the Italian Renaissance. Kircher was born almost a century after da Vinci’s death, but both were considered polymaths: persons with intellectual and artistic knowledge and talents in a wide variety of areas. Though Kircher is perhaps a bit edgier, his interests and writings more esoteric and weird compared to da Vinci’s grand achievements. Among UCLA’s Kircher volumes is a copy of Musurgia universalis (Universal Music-Making), Kircher’s exhaustive compendium of musical knowledge. In it, he discusses the science of echos and amplification and the history of instrumentation, but also speculates on how the music of angelic choirs might sound. He describes music as the “ape of light” and analogous to human emotion. This, to me, is what makes Kircher so compelling: the desire to analyze and explain, yet allow for the fantastical and wondrous.

Athanasius Kircher's bell wheel, from UCLA's copy of Musurgia Universalis (Rome, 1650); UCLA Library Special Collections

Though he was discredited and ignored as a serious scholar for centuries, there’s been renewed interest in Kircher in the last 15 or so years, resulting in a variety of research projects and articles focused on his unusual body of work. Those interested in learning about Kircher can read any number pieces about him, including this one from Chronicle of Higher Education:  Athanasius Kircher, Dude of Wonders. And much of Kircher’s correspondence survives in the archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he once taught, and is available digitally through Stanford University’s Athanasius Kircher Correspondence Project. But perhaps the best way to immerse yourself in Kircher’s perspective and aesthetic is here in L.A., in Culver City, accompanied by the sound of the bell wheel in the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

Kelly Kress is an archivist at UCLA Library Special Collections. She previously worked at Chicago's Newberry Library and the Southern Folklife Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill.