The Buddhist Praying-Wheel. A Collection of Material Bearing Upon the Symbolism of the Wheel and Circular Movements in Custom and Religious Ritual.

FULLER, J. F. C. (his copy); SIMPSON, William.

Edité par London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd, 1896

A propos de cet article

First edition, with Fuller's ownership signature dated June 1901, several years before he first met Crowley and wrote The Star in the West, as well as his wide-ranging pencilled marginalia. In 1901, he was serving in South Africa in the Second Boer War and evidently using his downtime to explore occult questions of mysticism and symbolism. Fuller's signature is on the front free endpaper verso. In the margins, he remarks on topics such as the use of Ra as a surrogate for the sun throughout Africa (p. 37), referencing Charles Allen's 1897 The Evolution of the Idea of God. On page 238, beside a description of circular symbolism, he makes sketches of an Egyptian disc-and-crescent headdress and of Mercury's sceptre ("a lunar crescent on a solar disc"). Opposite page 285, containing his note on the blood symbolism of eggs dyed red, he has tipped in a newspaper clipping of a "curious ceremony in Warwickshire", and in the endnotes he offers a lengthy comment on the presence of bread and cheese in old baptism rituals as surrogates for the sacrifice of children. Concerning the sacrifice of cocks to the sun god in Slav religion, Fuller observes that "the Gauls were ardent sun worshippers. The cock still remains an emblem on French gold. A golden disc with a cock crowing in it might = the sun with as totem the cock on it." William Simpson (1823-1899) was a Glaswegian watercolour painter and a journalist. During the Crimean War, "he became a pioneering war artist: dispatched by the printsellers Colnaghi & Son, he recorded the naval battles in the Baltic Sea and then went on to Balaklava in November 1854 to make accurate sketches on the spot. Day & Son sent Simpson to India on a roving commission, to make studies for a large-scale illustrated book. Over three years he visited much of the subcontinent, including Tibet and its Buddhist temples, the Himalayas, Kashmir, and Ceylon. When he returned to England in 1862, he had travelled 22,570 miles" (ODNB). During his travels, Simpson assembled a large quantity of notes concerning Buddhist practices and wrote this monograph in response to the snobbery of contemporaries, many of whom saw the praying wheel as "a strange freak of superstition" and "quite exceptional as a form of ritualism" (introduction). This copy is in the secondary binding, with the wheel in blind on the front cover. In the primary binding, it is blocked in gilt. Octavo. Tissue-guarded half-tone frontispiece after a sketch by author; illustrations in text. Original purple cloth, spine lettered in gilt, ornamental praying wheel motif in blind on front board, boards ruled in blind, edges untrimmed. 1969 Amsterdam ownership signature and later ink stamp of Edward Lambert Margetts (1920-2004), psychiatrist and historian of medicine at the University of British Columbia, with his pencilled notes internally. Spine sunned, extremities bumped: very good.

N° de réf. du vendeur 182299

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: The Buddhist Praying-Wheel. A Collection of Material Bearing Upon the Symbolism of the Wheel and Circular Movements in Custom and Religious Ritual.
• Éditeur: London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd, 1896
• Édition: Edition originale