Title: GRIMOIRES: A HISTORY OF MAGIC BOOKS
Author: Owen Davies
Publisher: Oxford University Press
City: OxfordYear: 2009 (First Edition)Binding Style: Hardcover
Pagination: 368Illustrated: Yes
Book Details + Condition: First edition, 2009. In overall excellent condition; binding is solid and tight, no interior markings, and dust jacket remains unclipped, with the original price still present. Protected with a mylar plastic cover. The first ever history of magic books - or grimoires - from the ancient Middle East through to the modern day, from harmless charms and remedies to sinister pacts with the Devil. No books have been more feared than grimoires, and no
books have been more valued and revered. In Grimoires: A History of Magic
Books, Owen Davies illuminates the many fascinating forms these recondite books
have taken and exactly what these books held. At their most benign, these
repositories of forbidden knowledge revealed how to make powerful talismans and
protective amulets, and provided charms and conjurations for healing illness,
finding love, and warding off evil. But other books promised the power to
control innocent victims, even to call up the devil. Davies traces the history
of this remarkably resilient and adaptable genre, from the ancient Middle East
to modern America, offering a new perspective on the fundamental developments
of western civilization over the past two thousand years. Grimoires shows the
influence magic and magical writing has had on the cultures of the world,
richly demonstrating the role they have played in the spread of Christianity,
the growth of literacy, and the influence of western traditions from colonial
times to the present.
