Although Gichtel is a famous writer by his own right, he is mainly remembered as a disciple and the publisher of Jacob Boehme.

After being banished from Bavaria, and having barely escaped to capital punishment for criticizing the excesses of the Lutheran Clergy, he settled in Amsterdam, where he wrote his Magnum Opus Theosophia Practica in which he describes the discovery of the chakras independently, by the clairvoyant observation of the components of a human being. C.W. Leadbeater, two centuries later, borrowed from him much of his research material.

Gichtel remains, even today, the specialist on the topic of feminine energies in the divine and natural worlds, and in the human being. His encounter with Sophia inspired him a larger and more balanced view of the created universe.

Author of a large number of letters (about 8000 pages), his correspondence was never properly analyzed, so he is remaining the "forgotten" Theosophist of Amsterdam.