Categories:
Fine & Antiquarian, Magick & Occult

Solomon's Clavis by Ebenezer Sibley

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Full title: "Solomon's Clavis or Key to Unlock the Mysteries of Magic; From the Hebrew into French & From the French into English with Additions" by E. Sibley.

First Edition, Half-leather. Hardcover. Quarto. Bound in half sheepskin leather (leather spine and corners) over cloth boards with gilt titling to the spine and decoration to the front board. Embedded in the binding is a specially made vellum talisman.

Condition: Fine, unread copy.

The text is a facsimile of a ninenteenth century manuscript (see further below) printed in full colour throughout out, with numerous talismans and sigils. Textured endpapers. The edition was limited to a TOTAL of 144 copies, 48 of which were bound in full leather, 48 in half leather: with leather spine and corners (like this copy), and 48 in quarter leather: with a leather spine only.
Each copy is additionally differentiated by having one of 40 talismans, each of which is designed for a specific purpose and allied to one of six planetary spirits, embedded in the front cover. The talismans are printed on natural animal-skin vellum (some were also printed on “vegetable vellum”). This copy is bound in quarter leather, and carries the talisman "Solar Talisman for the Protection from Beasts and Fishes" on animal skin vellum.
"The Clavis or Key to the Magic of Solomon" is a fifteenth or sixteenth century Grimoire that gives instruction on the creation of magic tools and talismans, the performance of rituals etc. It exists in a variety of different manuscript and published editions. The text in this edition is taken from a French manuscript translated by the eighteenth century polymath Ebenezer Sibley. After Sibley's death, a number of manuscript copies of his translation were made by different copyists, including, in 1868, the rather elegant version by Robert Cross which this book reproduces in facsimile. The original manuscript then passed into the hands of Major F. G. Irwin, an enthusiastic hermeticist and member of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, The Society of Eight, the Fratres Lucis and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, whose bookplate is reproduced in facsimile at the start of the volume. There is an additional bookplate on the front pastedown that identifies the work as a S.E.E. publication, and details the talisman particular to the copy. In addition to the text of "the Clavis" the work also includes an 11 page preface by Sibly (or Sibley – both spellings occur), and additional short works that were appended to the original Sibley text: "The Mysterious Ring," "An experiment of the spirit Birto," "An experiment of the spirit Vassago," "An experiment of the spirit Agares," "Of the Spirit Bealphoras," and "The Wheel of Wisdom."