The Key of Solomon the King. (Clavicula Salomonis). Now first translated and edited from ancient mss. in the British Museum.

This is a rare book from the Berkelouw Rare Books Department.

Lond: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1909. Sm. 4to. Orig. qtr. morocco over matching bevelled buckram boards. Gilt spine (slightly worn). T.e.g., other edges uncut. (x, 126pp.). With frontisp., and 14 full-page plates. Previous owner's annotations on some pages. 1st English edition. Rare. Includes 4pp. foolscap of manuscript notes and charts for Magic Squares, circa 1909, loosely inserted. NOTE: S. Liddell Mathers was a founder and early leader of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. An occult scholar, he based his edition of the ""Key of Solomon"" on 7 manuscripts that were housed at the time in the British Museum. Although the original ""Key of Solomon"" was attributed to King Solomon himself, the manuscripts translated here are more likely to have been written in the 16th or 17th century. A limited first edition of 500 copies was published in 1889. The size of the second print run is unknown, but was presumably small, as this edition is as rare as the first.