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an old book sitting on top of a white surface next to a white backgroundan old book with a picture of a man and a dog on ita black and white drawing of a monument with columns and a plaque
ALDE

113 - MAIER (Michael). *Arcana arcanissima, hoc est Hieroglyphica …
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Estimate €3,000 - €4,000
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Description
MAIER (Michael). *Arcana arcanissima, hoc est Hieroglyphica ægyptio-græca*. No place, no date [London, Thomas Creede, 1614]. Small quarto, soft vellum with endpapers, smooth spine with title in ink, red edges (contemporary binding). A sought-after first edition, described by Caillet as ‘extremely rare’, of the author’s first major work. Michæl Maier (1569–1622), a renowned German alchemist, Rosicrucian, physician and philosopher, personal physician to Emperor Rudolf II from 1609 onwards, offers in this essay an alchemical interpretation of Egyptian and Greco-Roman mythology, viewing the deities and legends of antiquity as veiled allegories of the mysteries of the Great Work. This edition was published without a date; another edition, dated 1614, also exists. Neither edition specifies a place of publication. Duveen suggests the town of Oppenheim, where the *Atalanta fugiens* was published four years later, but bibliographers generally accept London as the place of publication, where Maier resided between 1612 and 1616. The volume opens with a beautiful title page engraved in intaglio within a frame of obelisks and depictions of ancient deities (Osiris, Typhon, Isis, Hercules, Dionysus, Ibis, Apis, Cynocephalus), followed by an engraved architectural dedication page, left blank by the publisher. A very fine copy in vellum with contemporary re-covering, of Spanish make. A few words have been redacted in the text, in brown ink, in accordance with Catholic censorship, as evidenced by the handwritten notes on an endpaper (Corregido conforme al Catalogo expurgatorio del año 1633) and on the title page (Opus permissus cum expurgat[ionibus]). A few foxing spots; quires Ll–Mm browned; frontispiece title page reattached; tear on one joint. Duveen, 380 – Ferguson, II, 66 – Bolton, I, 1002 – Caillet, no. 6987 – Brüning, 1095 – STC 17196.5.
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About the sale Antique books – Alchemy & the occult sciences
Auction location
Auction time 11/04/2026 at 2:00 PM
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ALDE
See original version (French)
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