Starry Rubric. Seventeenth-Century English Astrology and Magic.
France: Hadean Press, 2012. First Edition. Hardcover. Octavo. 154pp. Original dark blue cloth with giit titling to spine. Bibliography. Two b/w illustrations. This copy INSCRIBED by the author to Clive [Harper] on a slip of paper tipped the front free endpaper. From the publisher: "Seventeenth-century England was a turbulent place to live. It was a century of civil wars, regicide, food riots and plague - a time of millenarian prophets and threatening witches, of radical sects and experiments in Commonwealth. It was also a revolutionary period. The lifting of printing press censorships created a veritable explosion of printed materials: from popular almanacs and calendars to handbooks of do-it yourself medicine, from vulgate Bibles to tomes of new, investigative natural philosophy and grimoires of occult science and ritual magic. In the midst of all this, the astrologer-magicians of seventeenth-century England drew their charts of the heavens, divining answers and prescribing magical medicines. In "The Starry Rubric", Alexander Cummins shows how astrology and magic offered analysis, interpretation, and solutions - locating humanity in a shifting web of interrelation with the stars and, indeed, the cosmos as a whole. Through analysis and example, Cummins demonstrates the ways in which astrology and magic were crucial to early modern perspectives on human life, time, and meaning." From the collection of bibliophile Clive Harper who is well- known as the bibliographer of Austin Osman Spare, for updating the Aleister Crowley bibliography in the 2011 Teitan Press collection of Gerald Yorke's writings, and as someone who has lent his expertise to numerous other publications. Appears unread - a lovely copy - near Fine in mylar-protected near Fine dust jacket. Item #70043
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