Evidence of Witches and Apparitions Discovered (330 Years Ago)

by Stephen J. Gertz

Welcome to Rare Book Nightmare Alley, the series that brings antiquarian bad dreams in print to light.

This week, we tear the curtain that separates the living, naked or otherwise, and the dead, the bitch from the witch, and the doofus from the demon.

Attention Ghost Whisperers, Ghost Busters, and Witch Patrol: evidence that your job is not simply glorified make-work, ungainful employment  for the highly credulous, and the answer to "Who Y'Gonna Call?" when reason fails and whoa-nelly! prevails, has now surfaced.

 

Actually, it surfaced 330 years ago. But who, aside from those on the Other Side, is counting? The devil, witches, warlocks, and miscellaneous demonic desperados are  kvetching for their share of our waking nightmares and official recognition for their malignant presence in our otherwise benign and placid lives.

What these twisted spirits need is a Rev. Jesse Jackson to raise their self-esteem: "I AM somebody!" They want proof of their reality firmly rooted in our mental flowerbed; if only one person doubts their existence the bloom is off the black rose. Supernatural beings are only as strong as the total number of  those who believe in them; doubt is the silver bullet, the clove of garlic, the wooden stake that casts them out of our dimension, and, no insult intended to the blind, out of sight, out of mind. For the devil that just won't do.

Jesse Jackson is, alas otherwise busy. So, look no further than Joseph Glanvil, who, in his Saducimus Triumphatus (1681), provides  hard evidence for easy belief in the supernatural beings we've all come to appreciate as the beloved villains of our dark imagination, the wacked-out members of the family that periodically emerge from the worm hole in our brain to hex and vex us.

The hard evidence - anecdotal, assessed with the  critical reasoning skills usually associated with developmentally disabled mollusks  -  is hardly worth considering. But, then, there'd be no joy in Mudville, mighty Casey striking out the bats in the belfry. This is natural philosophy's last gasp before Newton and the rationalists dominated the sciences. But not before Saducismus Triumphatus's  influence upon Cotton Mather led, eleven years after its publication, to the Salem witch trials of 1692-93.

In that respect, the book is seriously frightening, truly a rare book nightmare, its text an extended footnote to a dark chapter in early American history, and a chillingly scarce volume in first edition. 

Not much point in dwelling upon the text; the book's engravings do the talking. If, however, you actually hear them talk call Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist,

or Mademoiselle Zeena, carnival spiritualist.

Hard, reliable evidence for the existence of witches and the efficacy of witchcraft was actually discovered 276 years after Glanvil's Saducimus Thriumphatus, in 1957, by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, publicly presented, with an assist from Nelson Riddle, for the first time by the Chairman of the Board, who, unsurprisingly, has the last word on the subject:

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GLANVIL, Joseph. Saducimus Triumphatus: or,  Full Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions. In Two Parts: The First Treating of their Possibility. The Second their Real Existence. With a Letter of Dr. Henry More on the same Subject. And an Authentick, but wonderful story of certain Swedish Witches. Done into English by Dr. Horneck, Preacher at the Savoy. London: Printed for J. Collins...and S. Lownds, 1681.

First edition. Octavo. [5], 58; [8], 180, [9] , 310, [5], 311-328 [i.e. 348], [1] pp. Frontispiece. Woodcut illustrations.

ESTC R25463. Allibone, p. 676.

This is an extremely rare book in its first edition, with OCLC/KVK recording only two copies in library holdings worldwide, and ABPC reporting no copies at auction within the last thirty-six years.

6:54 AM CORRECTION: Well, this is embarrassing: an initial misspelling while searching auction and library records led me astray. The first edition is actually well represented in library holdings and there have been more than few copies at auction, though the majority of those were not in the best of condition. Please forgive the error.

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The Most Celebrated and Influential Book on the Occult

by Stephen J. Gertz

First (and only) English translation.

"In the last half of 1509 and the first months of 1510, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, known in his day as the Magician, gathered together all the Mystic lore he had obtained by the energy and ardour of youth and compiled it into [an early draft of] the elaborate system of Magic, in three books, known as Occult Philosophy…The only English translation appeared in London in 1651" (Willis F. Whitehead, Preface to 1971 reprint).

“Recent historical investigation…assigns Agrippa a central place in the history of ideas of the Middle Ages. He is seen as characterizing the main line of intellectual development from Nicholas of Cusa to Sebastian Franck. Modern opinion evaluates him on the basis of his Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Hermetic influences – primarily in the De occulta philosophia” (DSB).

“De occulta philosophia  is a defense of magic, by means of which men may come to knowledge of nature and God, and contains Agrippa’s idea of the universe with its three worlds or spheres [Elementary, Celestial, and Intellectual]’ (Britannica).

 

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535).

 

Agrippa’s influence “added impetus to Renaissance study of magic and injected his name into early Faust legends. In [De occulta philosophia] he explained the world in terms of cabalistic analyses of Hebrew letters and Pythagorean numerology and acclaimed magic as the best means to know God and nature” (New Britannica).

First appearing in Latin in 1533, the book was translated into English by John French in 1651.
 

"John French (c.1616–1657), physician, was born at Broughton, near Banbury, Oxfordshire... In an era in which conventional approaches to the study and practice of medicine were under considerable attack, French seems to have aligned himself firmly with the cause of reform. In particular, he was a keen advocate of the chemical methods pioneered by Paracelsus and Van Helmont, whose ideas, and those of their followers, he attempted to popularize in the 1650s through original works and translations. [He] was well respected by many, including Robert Boyle, for his expertise in the practical side of chemistry and mineralogy" (Oxford DNB).

 

French's translation of Agrippa was, and remains since its original publication,  a strong influence on the study of magic in the English-speaking world.

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AGRIPPA, Henry Cornelius. Three Books of Occult Philosophy, written by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim, Counseller to Charles the Fifth, emperor of Germany: and Judge of the Prerogative Court. Translated out of the Latin into the English Tongue by J. F. London: Printed by R.W. for Gregory Moule…, 1651.

First edition in English of Agrippa’s masterwork on the occult, originally published in Latin in 1533. Octavo. [2, blank], [1, blank], [1, frontispiece], [1, encomium], [1, blank], [24], 583, [1, blank], [12, Index] pp. Engraved frontispiece portrait, seven text woodcut illustrations, numerous occult symbols, and a folding table of alchemical symbology. Woodcut initials and headpieces.

Wing A789. Osler 1747. Lowndes 21. Graesse I, 45.
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Title page image courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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A Few "Unknown Unknowns" From India's Rare Book World

Thiruvananthapuram Padmanabha Swamy Temple Complex.

 Sreekumar (no other name provided), a resident of Vanchiyoor, a neighborhood in  the ancient  city of Thiruvananthapuram, the capitol of the Indian state of Kerala, has a rare book he'd like to sell.

It is a copy of The Book of Psalms translated into Malayalim, one of the languages of Southern India., spoken by six million people.  Printed in 1848 by the Church Mission Press in Kottayam (the first town in India to achieve 100% literacy, in 1989) for the Madras Auxiliary Bible Society, it is one of the old and rare books bequeathed to him by his father.

The Legislative Museum.

He tried to sell it on eBay. No takers. The market for copies of The Book of Psalms in Malayalim is, apparently, small to non-existent. In the West.

He has a few other old books. About five hundred. They are not cataloged. One, Vrikshayurvedam, prescribes methods to change the characteristics of a tree.

“I have heard that using the methods in the book, one can change the shape of a leaf or can get the desired colour of cotton from a cotton plant,” Sreekumar said.

 City View.

He took it to Indian scientist N. Gopalakrishnan, who informed him that this book was  rare and of value. And - word got around - a Japanese academician found out about it and requested a photocopy, which Sreekumar was kind to send to her.

Another Indian rarity in his collection is Kakshapudam, which is about black magic.

“It has almost all black magic methods," Sreekumar, age 51, said, "including Uchchadanam, both in Sanskrit and its translation. One can easily perform black magic using this. However, I never tried,” he quipped.

His father, an avid collector with, apparently, the means to collect, died when Sreekumar was six years old. Sreekumar, an avid reader, has been trying to care for the books ever since. Not too successfully.

“I try to keep them away from dirt and insects. Still, I lost many of them,” Sreekumar said. “Once, I saw an article by [local journalist] Malayinkeezhu Gopalakrishnan, which refers to a souvenir released during the shashtipoorthi [wedding ritual] of Sir C P Ramaswamy Iyer. It said there were only 100 copies of it. I had a faint memory of seeing one of its kind. When I checked, it was all damaged in moisture. It was disheartening."
 

The Royal Palace at Thiruvananthapuram.

Thiruvananthapuram's climate is deadly to books, and is in a perpetual state of identity crisis: Is it a tropical savannah or tropical monsoon climate? It can't decide so it doesn't bother with seasons.

The mean maximum temperature is 93 degrees F. That's the mean, not average. Half the time it's higher than that. The mean minimum is 69 degrees F. Humidity routinely hovers above 90%. Basically, it's Nature's schvitz bath, great for the skin, perhaps, and a natural way to rid the body of toxins. Poison, however, to paper. During summer, the entire state of Kerala is prone to gale force winds, storm surges, cyclone-related torrential downpours, occasional droughts, and rises in sea level. Batten down the bookshelves.

A building in one of the city's "Technoparks."

 A bit of background. Thiruvananthapuram is located on the southwestern coast of India and is ringed by low, lush green mountains. Gandhi referred to it as "The evergreen city of India." It has a rich cultural background, has libraries all over, is an academic hub, and center for IT R&D; it's one of India's Silicone Valley cities. Literacy is 89.36%. It is one of India's major media centers. It is the capitol if India's most literate and socially developed state. Its population is 779,000.

But no one seems to know much about these books and their market, as opposed to scholastic, value. And it is disconcerting to know that, despite twenty-five years of working with rare books, I have no idea what these books are, and have not been able to find a trace of them in the usual (and a few unusual) reference sources; I'd never even heard of them until yesterday.

The only saving grace is that, up until recently, the entire rare book trade in India and its rarities fell into  Donald Rumsfeld's black hole of intelligence, "unknown unknowns."

 "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting 
to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; 
there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; 
that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. 
But there are also unknown unknowns -- 
the ones we don't know we don't know."

Now, at least, its trade and a few of its rare books are "known unknowns."

Meanwhile, Sreekumar wants to sell his Book of Psalms in Malayalim. He'd like to use the proceeds to help with his copying shop and finance the preservation of his father's collection of rare books.

Padmanabhaswamy Temple Tower during the LakshaDeepam Festival.

Good luck to you sir. Perhaps you can sell it through Infibeam, India's answer to Amazon.com, which is soon introducing rare books to its mix.

More to the point, how do we find out more about these books and, at least, some of the other  rare "unknown unknowns"? Indian occult, Indian  botanical science, Indian in-translation Bible lit.  An intriguing start.

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Thanks to India Express.com for the lead.

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Invisible World Revealed at Clark Library

On Monday evening, May 24, from 5 to 7 pm, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library will hold a reception celebrating its current exhibition, The Invisible World Revealed: Selected Works of the Occult From the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library curated by Brynn Burke and Derek Christian Quezada.

The occult ranges widely in modern significance and meaning; it is not simply the mumbo-jumbo hocus-pocus of credulous thinking from a bygone era. Astrology, Alchemy, Magic, Mysticism, Ghosts, and Devils are all part of it  as the product of a unique set of historical, cultural, religious and aesthetic conditions that have and continue to change in their definition over time.

What unifies them is an ardent belief that just outside human perception lies an invisible world that exists, with its own secret laws that influence and even govern our everyday existence.

The exhibition, which runs through July 1, 2010, represents only a small portion of the occult works held at the Clark. Although the Library has no single collection dedicated to the occult, the items exhibited have been carefully selected from across the Library’s collections as a whole, with particular emphasis upon the occult in 17th and 18th centuries.    

While the occult is often dismissed as simply the product of misguided inquiry, it should be remembered that prominent thinkers in and practitioners of math and the sciences, i.e. Isaac Newton, also followed the occult as the distinctions between math, the sciences, chemistry, and alchemy were well-nigh non-existent, and their shared origin is not without significance; t's fair to say that the modern world emerged from that of the occult.

If nothing  else, these works demonstrate the transformation of methodology during the 17th century to a more rational, empirical, and testable model that retained the essential role of curiosity, joy, creativity and the imagination that remains crucial to the pursuit of knowledge. The attraction to mystery and the drive to solve it is a human fundamental.

Thus, the occult is not merely an artifact from a bygone era of thought. It represents the simple but powerful idea that there is always something hidden just beyond the veil of the ordinary.

The Clark Library is located at 2520 Cimarron St., Los Angeles, CA 90018.

The public is invited to this event but you must RSVP to Scott Jacobs.