Search Results: Occult from W. C. Baker Rare Books & Ephemera

Amsterdam: Daniel van den Dalen, 1691-1693. Four books and one pamphlet in two volumes. Quarto. [4],[4],[16],138,[2];[8],262,[2];11; [8],32,188,[2];[6],277,[3] pp., including portrait frontipiece and facing description leaf in first volume and in-text illustration of the Oldenburg Horn on p. 141 of fourth book. Contemporary parchment, manuscript spine titles. Autograph signature of the author on half-title verso of first book, title-page verso of second book, and following the introductions of third and fourth books. Matching contemporary ownership inscriptions of C. V. D. Hell on title pages of first and third books; early ownership inscription of "[?]. [?]. v. d. Bosch" on front free endpaper of both volumes; 1961 gift inscription on front free title page of first volume; occasional contemporary underlining and marginalia throughout; booksellers' pencil notations in front and rear endpapers of both volumes. Boards bowed, parchment moderately soiled and, in first volume, turn-ins separating from… Read More

Barcelona: Tipográfia de Espasa Hermamos [sic] y Salvat, 1879. Hardcover. Fair. 931 pp. Half title. In Spanish. Contemporary tree calf, spine gilt, gilt red leather label, marbled endpapers. Binding scuffed, extremities worn. Significant dampstain in lower-outer front board and text block (mostly in margins), causing light loss to corner of binding and front endpapers and chipping to first several leaves. Fair to good. After the first edition of 1878. "Satanism, that is, The throne of Satan fought from the throne of the Holy Spirit. Refutation of the errors of the Spiritist school": an anti-Spiritist polemic by the Spanish priest and Carlist politician, Vicente de Manterola y Pérez (1833-1891). Spiritism was an early offshoot of Spiritualism, codified in the mid-19th century by the French educator Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail (1804-1869), under the name Allan Kardec.

[New York]: Gotham Book Mart, 1995. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine. Edward Gorey. Booklet and cards in original two-piece box. Booklet: 4 3/4 inches, [32] pp., including portrait frontispiece; stiff pictorial wrappers, stapled. Cards: 4 3/4 inches, [20] loose laminated cards with individual pictorial rectos and uniform patterned versos. Box: 5 inches, pictorial lid, paper over card. Numbered and signed by the artist on the colophon. Fine. First edition of Edward Gorey's pack of twenty divination cards and its accompanying interpretive booklet, numbered 676 of 750 numbered and 26 lettered copies (the latter copies not published for sale). Its creator, Madame Groeda Weyrd ("a nom de guerre merely; her true one is known to few this side of the grave"), was a clairvoyante of Finnish and Egyptian extraction who made her home in the Staten Island portion of Tierra del Fuego; she was long a persona non grata "to many of the rich and famous because of her fearless predictions of disaster." Toledano A113b.

Paris: Le centre de documentation anti-maçonnique et anti-marxiste, 1935. 7,[2],8-91 pp., including double-page chart, plus [2] pp. of publisher's advertisements. In French. Original printed wrappers. Newspaper clipping from August 29, 1940, on "Les responsabilités de la Maçonnerie" laid in.Wrappers moderately worn, front wrapper creased at upper-outer corner, contents toned, occasional contemporary pencil marks. Very good. A far-right, anti-Masonic, anti-Semitic screed listing scores of pro-masonic organizations and hundreds of contemporary "agents of freemasonry" in contemporary French politics and media by name. An illuminating double-page chart, "Pouvoir Occulte Judeo-Maçonnique," maps the collaboration between the Freemasons, Socialists, Communists, and bankers from their international organizations to their representation in the French Senate. The author, Henri Coston (1910-2001), enjoyed a long career of writing anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic tracts before, during, and after his enthusiastic… Read More

Paris: Librairie Maç, V. Gloton, 1930. 18.5 cm. 430,[2] pp. In French. Publisher's printed wrappers. Wrappers lightly worn at edges and lightly scuffed, leaves toned. Very good. Anti-Fascist work by the Italian journalist and anarcho-syndicalist Maria Rygier (1885-1953), examining the history of Freemasonry in Italy and the rise of Fascism in the context of anti-Masonic persecution. In 1914, committed to Italian interventionism in World War I, Rygier briefly worked as an editor at Mussolini's IL POPOLO D'ITALIA newspaper but was jailed the same year for syndicalist activism. By 1926, Rygier was openly opposing Mussolini and Fascism and fled to France, where she remained until the end of World War II. The preface of the book is written by noted French pacifist Lucien Le Foyer (1872-1952), who at the time of its publication was serving as the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of France.

[ca. 1994]. Image 8 x 10 inches, sheet 10 1/4 x 12 inches. Pen and ink on paper. Signed with "EG" monogram. Traces of pencil guide lines in margins, artist's corrections in white tempera. Pencil measurement inscription in lower margin. Light stains in margins (largest 3/8 x 1/4 inches), most visible in lower margin; tiny stains (not exceeding 1/12 inch) in lower portion portion of image. Very good to near fine. Between 1992 and 1997, the PBS-affiliated SIGNALS gift catalog issued ten limited-edition lithographic prints from art commissioned from Edward Gorey. The present drawing, made for LITHOGRAPH No. 4 (first published in 1994), later traveled in ELEGANT ENIGMAS, the first international exhibition of Gorey's works, curated by Karen Wilkin. It appears as the final image in the exhibition's catalogue and the as the sole image on the rear panel of its dust jacket. Eventually entitled "Gazebo," the drawing presents a 19th-century séance taking place outdoors in winter. Objects float around the… Read More