Rebinding Dee's Five Books Of Magic

Although, as discussed previously there are several editions of True and Faithful Relation in print there are only 2 editions of the earlier material, the material that predates T&FR.
For those of you who are familiar with the diaries of John Dee you'll know what I'm talking about, but those who don't are probably thinking "Eh...?"

Let me quickly explain...
The Elizabethan, scientist, mathematician and all round brain box John Dee experimented with magic in an attempt to communicate with angels. The diaries of these communications were studiously kept by Dee in a series of note books. Following Dee's death some of the material ended up in the hands of Meric Casaubon who published them in 1659, essentially to 'show up' Dee as a fool and charlatan, However what Casaubon did was ensure that we would all be able to see what Dee was actually doing and Judge for ourselves the validity of his efforts.

The collected diaries and records that Casaubon had were put together and published under the title' A True and Faithful Relation of what Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits' This rather lengthy title is usually shortened to True and Faithful Relation, or just T&FR.

The Original 1659 publication does popup for sale from time to time, however its price is normally around the £4000 mark! a bit expensive. (these's currently and edition on sale via ABEbooks for £4373.19 - why 19p?? )
Thankfully facsimiles of the original also exist, but most are also out of print and have prices ranging from £150+ for the Magickal Childe reprint to £500+ for the Antonine Full leather binding.
The God awful Kissinger publications have printed a softback and hardback copy too, unfortunately they chose to reduce the size of the text making it virtually unreadable in places. (There's also an edition by Apocryphile Press however their print is even smaller than Kessinger)

As I indicated in my previous post we can now purchased Stephen Skinners excellent  Dr. John Dee's Spiritual Diaries which essentially T&FR reset in a modern and highly readable typeface.
However T&FR/'JD's Spiritual Diaries' represent only a partial record of Dee's activities. The earlier efforts are missing. This is particularity a problem as the earlier diaries describe how Dee's set up is supposed to work.  Meric Causabon did not have access to the earlier material, but I don't suppose he really cared. These diaries had become separated from the T&FR published material. and did not appear in print until Adam Maclean published them in mid 1980's (please view Adam's site in my links section)

Unfortunately Adam's print runs are severely limited, mainly because he hand binds the books himself, and only 250 copies were produced. consequently they now sell for £200+ at least. Adam's hand bound books are fantastic and certainly look the part. bound in leather and gold embossed (I have a couple myself) but damn hard to get a hold of!

Thankfully, in more recent times Joseph Peterson has also published an edition of Dee's earlier diaries or 'The 5 Books of Magic' as are they are collectively known. However, this effort is, to me, spoiled by the fact that the Peterson book is only available as a paper back. A real shame.

Which brings me to my next project. Namely to rebinding of a copy of The 5 Books.

This seems particularly poignant as it would make a great companion volume beside Skinner's modern reset of T&FR (Like the new Skinner edition both Mclean's and Peterson's '5 Books' are set in modern fonts)

Stage one of the project was to remove the paper/soft back cover and size up the book block of it's new cover. The image below show the progress so far

The work begins...

...And that's all I've done so far. The next step is to decide which piece of leather I'm going to use. and whether is going to be a full leather or quarter leather binding, and which colour (although I'm leaning toward black to match the spine of the skinner book.

When I'm at the next stage, covering the cover, I'll upload some more images

*Apologies to anyone who's read the above in its 'first draft' form, there were quite a few errors (grammar, spelling and missing words)
That's what happens when you start a new blog entry at 2am!*

Dr. John Dee's Spiritual Diaries

While I've had a copy of the facsimile of the Meric Casaubon's 'True and Faithful Relation' for years (several different copies in fact - Antinone, Magickal Childe and the god awful Kissenger press) and I've always wanted to type it up into modern English, or at least a more readable version. There is a version on line at Archive.org, but the text and epub versions are largely unreadable.
Joseph Peterson's 'Twilight Grotto' site has some of it, but not much, so I was going to have a go myself, however, I soon realised this was going to be a monumental task and basically gave up.

So, I was really pleased to read that Stephen Skinner had had exactly the same idea! And, unlike me, he didn't give up. You can find the full details of the book here - Skinner - Spirit Diaries
As soon I read about it I had to order and went 'all in' and ordered the leather bound edition (not cheap!)

Not cheap indeed, but certainly worth it.
The book itself is huge measuring 35cms by 23cms by 5cms. making the second largest book I own (only Jung's 'Red Book' is bigger) and not exactly the sort of thing you can read on a train. Unfortunately this also makes it too big to fit on my book shelves, so I'm trying to find a home for it...

Anyway here's some images of the book itself.

Here's a side on view

 Note that it does look like Skinner's original release in the 1970's

And here's an of image of the all important text.

Same layout as original but in clear modern English

A closer look at the text

  Mightily impressive! and being able to easily read the text is fantastic, well worth the money.

Coming soon! - Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum

"The Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum is a major collection of English alchemical texts which encapsulate the arcana of the Magnum Opus in poetic form. Originally gathered from several rare medieval manuscripts by Elias Ashmole, the text represents the largest collection of verse treating of the production of the Philosopher’s Stone to be brought together in one volume.' 

- text borrowed from Ouroboros Press website. 

I ordered my copy back in December and am certainly looking forward to it's arrival!
The free 'Aurae Catena Homeri, - The Golden Chain of Homer', a reprint of the letterpress printed broadside arrived this week so I hope this means the actual book will be here soon too.

Ouroboros Press should be congratulated for their hard work in reproducing the important text as they've not just produced a facsimile of the text, they're modernized the text making it easier to read, and have made correction to the text as noted by the errata sheets at the end of the book.

The image below is taken from Ouroboros Press' website. Once my copy has arrived I'll post up a few more images

What's it all about

Welcome to the Ars Esoterica site.

Starting as a blog now but will hopefully grow into something bigger later.
I have always been fascinated by the occult, not as some 'dark practitioner of magic' (at least not any more) I explore the occult from a psychological and philosophical perspective, and plan to write about it here.

I also collect grimoires and books on the occult and will post here about them from time to time.
Lastly I also bind my own books. Printing out old texts and binding them up. I'll add photos of them, both as 'work in progress' and completed editions.

That's all for now.