Description

FIRST EDITION.

COPY by Stanislas de GuaitaIt bears his Kabbalisticis ex-libris in pen on a label with a floral frame, a print showing Minerva carrying the head of the Gorgon and this autograph note on the inside back cover:

"Purchased 6F in 1883. This unusual collection is a rather confused compilation; the author is a sceptic with a hierophant's cloak; he is not lacking in wit. If the work were better composed, I would gladly attribute it to Collin de Planey, the author of the infernal dictionary, the inexhaustible compiler of magical curiosities. It is incredible how many books this C. de P. published on this subject, sometimes using his real name, sometimes using various pseudonyms, sometimes remaining anonymous, as in his Traité des Vampires (1820). One of his usual pseudonyms is this: Gabrielle de P+++ (Paban, his wife's maiden name)."

Five autograph reading notes, including two in the final section on prejudice:

- in the paragraph entitled Thunder and bells :

"We must be careful not to deny a priori that electricity, like magnetism, light, heat and sound, is a series of elementary vibrations. It is possible and even probable that the intense vibration caused by the ringing of the bells attracts lightning to the bell tower".

- after the title Precocious children and children of spirit, this note :

"When they have so much spirit, children live little".

An astonishing treatise whose full title could serve as a descriptive sheet:
A curious and picturesque history of sorcerers, soothsayers, magicians, astrologers, fortune-tellers, revenants, souls in pain, vampires, spectres, ghosts, apparitions, visions, gnomes, goblins, malignant spirits, cast spells, exorcisms, etc.
From antiquity to the present day.
By the Reverend Dominican Father Mathias de Giraldo, former exorcist of the Inquisition,
revised and enlarged by M. Fornani, Professor of Hermetic Philosophy in Milan.

Complete with macabre frontispiece and four folding plates.

RARE WORK, SUPERB PROVENANCE.