But as the manuscript itself counsels, “Meddling in this art never goes unpunished. ![]() Now with the new publication from Fulgur Limited, anyone can investigate its phantasmagoric contents. It was acquired by the Wellcome Library in 1928 from an antiquarian bookseller named V. Little is known about the creation of Touch Me Not. Tilton acknowledges that given “the prominence of the manuscript’s passage on entheogens, the suspicion naturally arises that the artist was psychedelically inspired.” Still he points out that the illustrations “incorporate standard motifs from the medieval and Reformation representation of the diabolical realms.” The text mentions psychoactive nightshades like hemlock and mandrake, as well as the only recently discovered use of the root or rhizome of the common reed ( Phragmites australis) as a European source of the psychedelic dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Those entheogens - psychoactive substances - may have had some influence on the grotesque imagery (such as the boar-faced monster with a lion’s tail wearing a shell as armor and red spectacles on its nose, or a drum-playing demon with butterfly wings). ![]() “If it can indeed be considered a grimoire in the Höllenzwang tradition, then it is also a work of supernatural horror composed in the form of a Höllenzwang grimoire, and its decidedly Gothic aesthetic confirms a date of composition in the dying years of the eighteenth century.” ![]() “Although it has undoubtedly inspired readers down through the years to experiment with the archaic techniques it describes, A Most Rare Compendium is not a practical Höllenzwang manuscript of the sort one might pore over with farmers in the local tavern or furtively transport to a lonely vineyard hut, flowerpot and entheogens in hand,” Tilton writes. The full Latin title of Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae. Tilton contrasts Touch Me Not to the Höllenzwang books that compiled directive magic. 18th century demonology book showing various demon figures, as well as magic and. Pages from Touch Me Not (courtesy FULGUR LIMITED) But what were these people digging for in the first place? As Tilton explains in an introduction, “magical treasure-hunting was a ‘fashionable crime’ running at epidemic levels in eighteenth-century Austria.” And for such hunting, you had to take the treasures from guardian spirits. occult personalities, psychic science, magic, demonology, spiritism and mysticism by Lewis Spence. In a following illustration, two would-be magicians are startled from their own exhumation by a rooster-headed demon that is urinating on their lantern, and grasping one hapless human by the hair for a likely dismembering. Find the perfect Compendium of demonology stock photo. One of the 35 watercolor and ink illustrations depicts a man carrying out necromantic arts, with a hanged and quite dead corpse nearby, totally protected from a demon by his magic circle and grimoire while a ritually nude man digs in the earth beside him. A selection of pages from an eighteenth-century demonology book comprised of more than thirty exquisite watercolours showing various demon figures, as well as magic and cabbalistic signs. The original book is owned by the Wellcome Library in London, which has digitally scanned the book to make it readily available free of charge.Touch Me Not (courtesy FULGUR LIMITED)” width=”360″ height=”463″ srcset=”×463.jpg 360w, 582w” sizes=”(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px”>Ĭover of Touch Me Not (courtesy FULGUR LIMITED) The book discussed some of the demonic ranking of Hell, listing kings, dukes and subjects, whilst the symbolic work refers to the elements and, at least to some extent, astrology. One can only imagine it was something of a vanity piece or something the author created in order to make money when sold. However, neither the text nor the imagery are in keeping with the time it was written – many years after witchcraft was supposedly rife around Europe just before the Declaration of Independence in America as well as being at the brink of the Industrial Revolution. Bearing the ominous warning “NOLI ME TANGERE” (“Do Not Touch”), another clever touch to instil a feeling of ageless dread, the strangely-hued pages are also bordered with drawings of skeletons and mystic runes, sigils and symbols, all of which paves the way nicely for the 31 outlandish paintings, which are a combination of Greek and Roman mythology and Bosch-esque excess.
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