Christ, Plato, Hermes Trismegistus

A feast for the eyes – a feast for the mind: printed books from the ‘infancy’ of printing have long held a special attraction for book collectors, librarians and historians of the book.  They offer a fascinating insight into the world of books as it made its transition from manuscript to print. Even more fascinating to see how complex thought was transformed into print.

This lavishly illustrated two-volume catalogue by Margaret Lane Ford contains the descriptions of the almost 200 incunabula acquired by the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica Collection between 1978 and 1989. Each item is carefully described with attention to such details as bindings and provenances, but there is also marked emphasis on the texts themselves, which are placed within a wider intellectual context, whenever appropriate focusing also on the importance of the author, the content of the book and the particular characteristics of an edition. Each incunable item has at least one full-page reproduction, often in colour.

Keywords: history of early printing, Hermetism, mysticism, Platonism, philosophy.