SOLD : Hieroglyphical Characters of all Nations and Typologie by Moreau de Dammartin 1839

S O L D 

Two original first editions by
Moreau de Dammartin

Paris 1839 & undated*
*but mentioned in Journal de l’Institut Historique 1837

These are unique and important early French  original occult works

Only one copy of each available
& these are the only copies available for sale worldwide

(World Catalogue lists only a few examples in major Libraries including one in the USA)

Both volumes are original and in French

The first volume is:

Typologie
Ou Description Pratique et Detailllee
Des Characteres Alphabetiques

(Typology or Description, Practice and Detail Alphabetical Characters)

Updated but mentioned in Journal de l’Institut Historique 1837

This is the authors only other known
complete published book

A lithographically printed large format work intended for artists and sculptors etc. and shows Dammartins lifelong preoccupation with alphabets and design.

Original dilapidated binding (boards, paper over cloth, original sewing onto linen tapes, printed lithographically throughout. 16pp essay with 66 plates.

***

The second volume is:

A rare and remarkable source for the
Tarot Major Arcana attributions in French

Moreau de Dammartin
Origine de la Forme Des Characteres Alphabetiques Des clefs Chinoises, des Hieroglyphs Egyptiens &c
Paris 1839

(Moreau de Dammartin Origin of the form of alphabetic characteristics, Chinese Keys, Egyptian Hierogliphs & c)

Paris 1839

Click images to enlarge

An important early French work on the Tarot Major Arcana attributions and ancient alphabets/star systems in the Occidental and Oriental systems.

This rare and almost unknown work influenced the great French occultist Eliphas Levi and is mentioned in his ‘Trancendental Magic’.

Full text with all 34 illustrative plates present, large format rebinding preserving original printed paper wrappers. Text and plates printed by lithography onto a fine paper, some foxing consistent with age. 88pp plus 34 large format plates.

Click image to enlarge

Importance of Moreau de Dammartins work:
The system of attributing Hebrew letters and star patterns to the Major Arcana of the Tarot that is generally used today derives in the main from the writings of Eliphas Levi, S.L.Macgregor Mathers Aleister Crowley and the Inner Order papers of the Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn etc.

The first real clue to the existence of such an initiated system of magic was given by Eliphas Levi in the middle of the 19th century.

Levis system was later worked out in skeletal form by the English Rosicrucian Frederick Holland, but few have seen his linear conceptual sketches. William Wynn Westcott later made another attempt at codifying the Major Arcana attributions and their origins in his ‘Tabula Bembina sive Mensa Isiaca’ an essay on the famous late classical Egyptophile bronze plate in Italy.

  Click image to enlarge
Much of this material was codified in the late 1890s from papers written or compiled by S.L.MacGregor Mathers whilst he resided in Paris. Mathers himself took his first clues from the two Tarot attributions originally revealed by Eliphas Levi nearly fourty years previously, namely the attributions of ‘The Devil’ card (the Hebrew letter Ayin and its associations) and ‘The Chariot’ card (the Hebrew letter Cheth and its associations), and expanded this into an entire system projected onto the Tree of Life and thence projected in three dimensions into the aura of the Adept
on a cosmic scale.
Levis assertion that his knowledge came from the line of hidden adepts, that is/was quite literally the initiated knowledge has remained difficult to quantify, however there is one clue he himself gives in a late chapter of his ‘Transcendental Magic’ where he refers to the system of attributing letters to the stars….

Click image to enlarge

 

Eliphas Levi mentions the curious and fascinating essay of Monsieur Moreau de Dammartin which was published privately in 1839, a work which in fact deals intricately in both its text and its 34 detailed diagrammatic plates with the allocation of Tarot major arcana to the constellations and with the allocation of Hebrew, Egyptian, Phonecian, Samaritan, etc etc  alphabets to those very Tarot!
Moreau de Dammartins work is both rare (only a handful of copies are known to exist) and quite remarkable both for its specialised knowledge and its early date (1839), coming just one year after Champollions celebrated translation of the Rosetta Stone and amassing in one essay the authors studies in ancient alphabets, Tarot, American Indian petroglyphs and the Chinese astronomical system.
A.E.Waite who translated Eliphas Levis ‘Transcendental Magic’ must have been aware of the essay of Dammartin but may never have located a copy, no doubt the energetic Mathers followed Levis clue and from Dammartins plates developed his own paper ‘The Projection of the Tree of Life into a Sphere’ for the 5◦ = 6▫ degree of Adeptus Minor.
 
Click image to enlarge
There is no doubt that Dammartins essay had a profound influence upon Eliphas Levi and from that original mind the ideas travelled further into the very structure of the Western Mystery Tradition.