The Worship of the Serpent. Traced throughout the World, Attesting the Temptation and Fall of Man by the Instrumentality of a Serpent Tempter.
London: J. G. & F. Rivington, 1833. Second edition, Enlarged. Hardcover, Octavo, xvi + 476 pp, Contemporary (?) dark grey publishers cloth with original printed paper title-label to spine. B&w illustrations and fold-outs. An early study of Ophiolatreia, or serpent-worship, by John Bathurst Deane (1797-1887), a Reverend gentleman whose cogitations on the Biblical tale of the snake who convinced Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, leading her to convince Adam to do the same, caused him to begin this wide-ranging study of the roles of the snake in religious custom, as recorded in folklore and legend, as well as travellers' accounts and the works of antiquity. It includes impressive foldout charts of the temples at Avebury and Carnac which the author saw (in common with most other things) as testament to snake-worship. The work was first published by J. Hatchard and son in 1830 in a tiny edition (copies of which are almost never seen) and then greatly expanded into this present edition and published in 1833. A little fading and general shelfwear to cloth, corners of boards lightly bumped. Endpapers a little darkened, some light creasing to page edges, occassional darkened patches or other very minor indications of the book's age. But nonetheless an authentic, sound, bright VG+ copy of a work seldom seen in this condition. Item #70319
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