Easton Press "The Hermetic Museum" Slipcased Leather-Bound Limited Edition, Translated by Arthur Edward Waite [Sealed]

Easton Press Deluxe Limited Edition of only 1,500 Slipcased Copies

Easton Press 2023 "The Hermetic Museum" Slipcased Leather-Bound Deluxe Limited Edition. Translated by Arthur Edward Waite. Two-volume edition. As New, sealed without any flaws. One of 1500 hand-numbered slipcased copies.

This is the facsimile reproduction of the famous 1893 English language translation by Arthur Edward Waite of history's greatest work of alchemy. These are the fascinating works of mysticism and magic that gave birth to the modern science of chemistry. Features all of the original illustrations.

The Hermetic Museum

The Hermetic Museum was published in Latin at Frankfort, in the year 1678, and, as its title implies, it was an enlarged form of an anterior work which, appearing in 1625, is more scarce, but, intrinsically, of less value. Its design was apparently to supply in a compact form a representative collection of the more brief and less ancient alchemical writers; in this respect, it may be regarded as a supplement to those large storehouses of Hermetic learning such as the Theatrum Chemicum, and that scarcely less colossal of Mangetus, the Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, which are largely concerned with the cream of the archaic literature, with the works of Geber and the adepts of the school of Arabia, with the writings attributed to Hermes, with those of Raymond Lully, Arnold de Villa Nova, Bernard Trevisan, and others. This edition contains both original volumes one and two.

Musaeum Hermeticum ("Hermetic library") is a compendium of alchemical texts first published in German, in Frankfurt, 1625 by Lucas Jennis. Additional material was added for the 1678 Latin edition, which in turn was reprinted in 1749.

Purpose

Its purpose was apparently to supply in a compact form a representative collection of relatively brief and less ancient alchemical writings; it could be regarded as a supplement to those large storehouses of Hermetic learning such as the Theatrum Chemicum, or Jean-Jacques Manget's Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa. It seemed to represent a distinctive school in Alchemy, less committed to the past and less obscure than the works of older and more traditional alchemical masters.

Arthur Edward Waite

Arthur Edward Waite (2 October 1857 – 19 May 1942) was a British poet and scholarly mystic who wrote extensively on the occult and Western esotericism. He was the co-creator of the Rider–Waite Tarot (also called the Rider–Waite–Smith or Waite–Smith deck). As his biographer R. A. Gilbert described him, "Waite's name has survived because he was the first to attempt a systematic study of the history of Western occultism—viewed as a spiritual tradition rather than as aspects of protoscience or as the pathology of religion."

He was a Freemason, as well as being a member of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

He spent most of his life in or near London, connected to various publishing houses and editing a magazine, The Unknown World.