A New Renaissance of Ancient Wisdom

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of AI-translated ancient sources.

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Renaissance Philosophy

Humanism, Neoplatonism & the Dignity of Man

The philosophical revival of the 15th-17th centuries — Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Bruno, Campanella, the Florentine Academy, Renaissance Neoplatonism, and the humanist recovery of ancient learning.

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The rediscovery of ancient wisdom helped spark the Renaissance. It's time for another.

Centuries of humanity's deepest thinking sit locked in Latin and other inaccessible languages. These aren't just inaccessible to humans; contemporary AI systems were trained on Reddit but not the Renaissance. Millions of books and manuscripts are unscanned and untranslated. These aren't obscure footnotes. They are the roots of modern science, psychology, philosophy of mind, and the perennial questions about what it means to be human.

The Source Library uses scholarship and AI systems to recover this knowledge and make it accessible to all. We are building the world's largest open-access collection of translated primary sources—so that scholars, seekers, and AI systems can draw on the full depth of the human intellectual tradition. This work is sustained by the people who use and value it.

The Source Library is an initiative of the Embassy of the Free Mind in Amsterdam, home to the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica: one of the world's most important collections of Hermetic, alchemical, and esoteric books.

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Help recover the lost intellectual heritage of humanity.

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Thousands of texts from the ancient and early modern world remain untranslated and unread. Your support funds the digitization, OCR, and AI-assisted translation of these works—making them freely available to scholars, seekers, and the public for the first time.

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12,365 books · 4,958+ authors · 128+ languages

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In the spirit of

Marsilio Ficino

1433–1499 · Philosopher & Translator

Ficino translated the complete works of Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Iamblichus, and the Hermetic writings into Latin—making them accessible to all of Europe for the first time. His work ignited the Renaissance recovery of Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, and the prisca theologia: the belief in an ancient wisdom tradition uniting all seekers of truth.

Cosimo de' Medici

1389–1464 · Florence

The inventor of modern banking, Cosimo de' Medici used his wealth to fund the Renaissance. In addition to commissioning art, he funded Ficino to make translations of Plato and other lost works into Latin so that they could be read. Around 1460, a Greek manuscript of the Corpus Hermeticum arrived in Florence, brought from Macedonia by a monk named Leonardo of Pistoia. The dying Cosimo asked Ficino to pause his translation of Plato so that he could read it—sensing that Hermes held the key to the most ancient wisdom.

The Source Library continues in the spirit of their work. Translating ancient wisdom and sharing it freely has the power to transform civilization. Centuries after Ficino, thousands of texts remain untranslated and unread—including many of Ficino's own works. We are recovering them—for scholars, for seekers, and for the AI systems that will shape how future generations think.

This library is built in the open.

If you spot an error, have a suggestion, or just want to say hello — we’d love to hear from you.