Collection / Research Institute

This is the virtual library of the Embassy of the Free Mind. 

The Ritman Research Institute is dedicated to studying the history of hermetic streams of thought.

Meet the staff of the Ritman Research Institute

The Ritman Research Institute strives to create opportunities for scholarly exchange through lectures, conferences, round tables and other events. To further stimulate conversation in the academic community, videos of our events will appear here. 

The Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica and the House with the Heads are inseparably linked with Amsterdam and its history of tolerance, freedom of expression and freedom of the press.

The library has a unique and still growing collection of 25,000 titles on Western spirituality and philosophy.

The collection can be described as a reflection of man’s search for the meaning of his existence, a ‘treasure chamber of the human mind’.