SCIENCE DES ESPRITS – Eliphas Levi, 1st 1865, MAGICK KABBALA OCCULT SPIRITUALISM
Title:Â LA SCIENCE DES ESPRITS: REVELATION DU DOGME SECRES DES KABBALISTES; ESPIRT OCCULTE DES EVANGILES; APPRECIATION DES DOCTRINES ET DES PHENOMENES SPIRITES [TRANSLATED: The Science of Spirits: Revelation of the Secret Dogma of the Kabbalists; Occult Spirit of the Gospels; Appreciation of Doctrines and Spiritualist Phenomena]
Author:Â Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant)
Publisher:Â Germer Balliere
City: Paris
Year: 1865Â
Binding Style:Â Hardcover (Rebound)
Pagination:Â 507
Illustrated:Â No
Book Details + Condition: Very rare first edition from 1865 of Eliphas Levi’s (Alphonse Louis Constant) LA SCIENCE DES ESPRITS: REVELATION DU DOGME SECRES DES KABBALISTES; ESPIRT OCCULTE DES EVANGILES; APPRECIATION DES DOCTRINES ET DES PHENOMENES SPIRITES. Translated as: The Science of Spirits: Revelation of the Secret Dogma of the Kabbalists; Occult Spirit of the Gospels; Appreciation of Doctrines and Spiritualist Phenomena. Written in the original French language, and beautifully rebound in black cloth with gilt lettering and trim on spine. Stamped-in plate of The High Council Library, London. In very good condition: tight binding; light shelfwear to boards and spine ends; periodic light foxing; text is clean and unmarked. Please see below for more information on this scarce work, as well as our other first edition from Levi currently for sale, LA CLEF DES GRANDS MYSTERES (1861).
From “The Mysteries of Magic: A Digest of the Writings of Eliphas Levi” written by Arthur Edward Waite (1886): La Science des Esprits [is] a defence of the symbolical spirit of the Christian gospel against the spirits of table-rapping, for, as Madame Gebhard tells us, “Eliphas Levi had a horror of Spiritualism, and used to say that mediums and spiritualists were like children playing with lighted matches near a barrel of powder, which any moment might explode and destroy them.”… The physical and moral deterioration accompanying the indiscriminate use of mediumistic gifts was, however, in itself a justification for the author’s denunciations, and La Science des Esprit will take rang among the most interesting of his productions. It was followed by a silence of ten years, and in 1875 the gifted spirit of Alphonse Louis Constant passed to the next stage of its eternal progress.
