Rare Ethiopic Apocrypha OCCULT Saint Cyprian Prayers René Basset
$ 0.53
Description
Rare Ethiopic Apocrypha OCCULT Saint Cyprian Prayers René Basset. Individual fascicles from this series are considerably scarcer than the more commonly encountered compiled sets and are infrequently seen in the trade. BASSET, René. Les Apocryphes Éthiopiens. VI. Les Prières de S. Cyprien et de Théophile. Paris: Bibliothèque de la Haute Science / Éditions “Rhéa,” n.d. [ca. 1910s-1920s]. Slim 8vo. 52 pp. Original printed wrappers preserved and bound into later library buckram-backed boards. Chicago Theological Seminary, Hammond Library bookplate and shelf label. Light toning, institutional marks, wrappers somewhat darkened, but a sound and attractive copy of an elusive occult and apocryphal printing. A genuinely uncommon installment from René Basset’s important series of translations of Ethiopic apocryphal and magical texts, here devoted to the prayers attributed to Saint Cyprian and Theophilus, figures central to the history of Christian magic, demonology, and ritual traditions. The work contains French translations of Ethiopic religious and magical texts associated with the legendary Saint Cyprian of Antioch, long revered in occult and folk-magical traditions throughout Europe, Latin America, and Ethiopia. René Basset, one of the great Orientalist scholars of his generation and Director of the École Supérieure des Lettres d’Alger, played a major role in introducing Ethiopic apocryphal literature to European scholarship. The present volume was issued by the esoteric-oriented “Bibliothèque de la Haute Science,” a publisher now especially sought after by collectors of occultism, comparative religion, and fringe theological literature. Individual fascicles from this series are considerably scarcer than the more commonly encountered compiled sets and are infrequently seen in the trade. An especially appealing institutional survival from the Hammond Library of the Chicago Theological Seminary, purchased with the Philo Carpenter Library Fund, preserving the atmosphere of an early twentieth-century theological research collection deeply engaged with non-canonical Christianity, apocrypha, and comparative mysticism.
