"Curious sciences" was the polite name. What this book actually teaches, art by art, is a wide range of divinatory methods available to a German reader of 1737. The title page lays out the offer: from a person's face, hands, and birth-hour, from the course of sun, moon, and stars, likewise from the casting of points, from dreams, from names, and from appearing wonder-signs, one can draw up "a Prognosticon and Nativity of his coming luck and misfortune." Eight sciences, one volume, everything a curious mind might need.
The tour is worth taking slowly. Physiognomy opens it, working through the whole body from the proportion of the frame to the toes, with metoposcopy, the reading of the forehead's lines, folded in. Chiromancy follows with the mounts and lines of the hand, including one the Germans called the Milky Way. Astrology gets the largest share, a full natal manual with tables, the twelve houses, directions, revolutions, and transits. Then geomancy, "das Punctiren": a science, the book explains, whereby through certain points thrown down according to the art one may learn all things present, past, and to come, "as if by a lot." Oniromancy interprets dreams, with an alphabet of their meanings; onomancy finds fate hidden in names; teratoscopy reads wonder-signs, with a chapter on the strange forerunners of death; and the sympathies and antipathies close the volume, sorting out the loves and hatreds among the seven planets, men, beasts, trees, metals, and gems, down to the powers of amber. After 488 pages of this, the last page signs off: SOLI DEO GLORIA. To God alone the glory, says the fortune-telling book, and means it.
The engraved frontispiece maps the whole enterprise in eight panels, one per science: a face and a palm marked with planetary signs, a specimen nativity cast for a subject born the 1st of September 1677, a geomantic shield, a dreamer under his tree, and a name-divination worked out in a circle whose sum, printed in fine copperplate, is 666. The 31 plates carry the working diagrams: heads ruled with planetary lines, hands mapped mount by mount, the sole of a foot marked with the signs of the planets, and the geomantic plates, whole pages of nothing but dots, the raw material of the art, as abstract as anything printed in the eighteenth century.
The book is anonymous, attributed to Johann Georg Job, and was published by Christoph Gottlieb Nicolai of Frankfurt and Leipzig. The binding is a later one, half calf done in the style of the period, the spine gilt with floral tools and a red morocco label, the sides covered in swirled paste paper, the edges stained red. The title, frontispiece, and first plate have at some point been neatly mounted; otherwise the copy is clean throughout, without annotations of any kind.
Provenance: None recorded.
Anleitung zu denen Curiösen Wissenschafften. Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1737. The complete German handbook of the divinatory arts: physiognomy, palmistry, astrology, geomancy, dream-reading, name-divination, the reading of omens, and the sympathies and antipathies of all things. With the engraved frontispiece and 31 plates.
(JOB, Johann Georg, attributed). Anleitung zu denen Curiösen Wissenschafften, nehmlich der Physiognomia, Chiromantia, Astrologia, Geomantia, Oniromantia, Onomantia, Teratoscopia, Sympathia und Antipathia… Ein Prognosticon und Nativität von seinem bevorstehenden Glück und Unglück stellen könne. Frankfurt and Leipzig: Christoph Gottlieb Nicolai, 1737.
Physical Description: 8vo. Engraved frontispiece in eight compartments and 31 engraved plates, chiromantic, physiognomic, astrological, and geomantic; [9] preliminary leaves (title in red and black; Inhalt); 488 pp.; 5 leaves of Register; one opening blank and one final blank. Text ending p. 488 with SOLI DEO GLORIA and woodcut tailpiece.
Binding: Later half calf in the style of the period, spine gilt in compartments with floral tools, red morocco lettering-piece, sides in swirled paste paper, edges stained red. Tight and handsome.
Condition: Title, frontispiece, and first plate mounted; paper somewhat toned and occasionally spotted, as usual. Clean of annotations.
"Curious sciences" was the polite name. What this book actually teaches, art by art, is a wide range of divinatory methods available to a German reader of 1737. The title page lays out the offer: from a person's face, hands, and birth-hour, from the course of sun, moon, and stars, likewise from the casting of points, from dreams, from names, and from appearing wonder-signs, one can draw up "a Prognosticon and Nativity of his coming luck and misfortune." Eight sciences, one volume, everything a curious mind might need.
The tour is worth taking slowly. Physiognomy opens it, working through the whole body from the proportion of the frame to the toes, with metoposcopy, the reading of the forehead's lines, folded in. Chiromancy follows with the mounts and lines of the hand, including one the Germans called the Milky Way. Astrology gets the largest share, a full natal manual with tables, the twelve houses, directions, revolutions, and transits. Then geomancy, "das Punctiren": a science, the book explains, whereby through certain points thrown down according to the art one may learn all things present, past, and to come, "as if by a lot." Oniromancy interprets dreams, with an alphabet of their meanings; onomancy finds fate hidden in names; teratoscopy reads wonder-signs, with a chapter on the strange forerunners of death; and the sympathies and antipathies close the volume, sorting out the loves and hatreds among the seven planets, men, beasts, trees, metals, and gems, down to the powers of amber. After 488 pages of this, the last page signs off: SOLI DEO GLORIA. To God alone the glory, says the fortune-telling book, and means it.
The engraved frontispiece maps the whole enterprise in eight panels, one per science: a face and a palm marked with planetary signs, a specimen nativity cast for a subject born the 1st of September 1677, a geomantic shield, a dreamer under his tree, and a name-divination worked out in a circle whose sum, printed in fine copperplate, is 666. The 31 plates carry the working diagrams: heads ruled with planetary lines, hands mapped mount by mount, the sole of a foot marked with the signs of the planets, and the geomantic plates, whole pages of nothing but dots, the raw material of the art, as abstract as anything printed in the eighteenth century.
The book is anonymous, attributed to Johann Georg Job, and was published by Christoph Gottlieb Nicolai of Frankfurt and Leipzig. The binding is a later one, half calf done in the style of the period, the spine gilt with floral tools and a red morocco label, the sides covered in swirled paste paper, the edges stained red. The title, frontispiece, and first plate have at some point been neatly mounted; otherwise the copy is clean throughout, without annotations of any kind.
Provenance: None recorded.
Anleitung zu denen Curiösen Wissenschafften. Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1737. The complete German handbook of the divinatory arts: physiognomy, palmistry, astrology, geomancy, dream-reading, name-divination, the reading of omens, and the sympathies and antipathies of all things. With the engraved frontispiece and 31 plates.
(JOB, Johann Georg, attributed). Anleitung zu denen Curiösen Wissenschafften, nehmlich der Physiognomia, Chiromantia, Astrologia, Geomantia, Oniromantia, Onomantia, Teratoscopia, Sympathia und Antipathia… Ein Prognosticon und Nativität von seinem bevorstehenden Glück und Unglück stellen könne. Frankfurt and Leipzig: Christoph Gottlieb Nicolai, 1737.
Physical Description: 8vo. Engraved frontispiece in eight compartments and 31 engraved plates, chiromantic, physiognomic, astrological, and geomantic; [9] preliminary leaves (title in red and black; Inhalt); 488 pp.; 5 leaves of Register; one opening blank and one final blank. Text ending p. 488 with SOLI DEO GLORIA and woodcut tailpiece.
Binding: Later half calf in the style of the period, spine gilt in compartments with floral tools, red morocco lettering-piece, sides in swirled paste paper, edges stained red. Tight and handsome.
Condition: Title, frontispiece, and first plate mounted; paper somewhat toned and occasionally spotted, as usual. Clean of annotations.
Image 1 of 21
Image 2 of 21
Image 3 of 21
Image 4 of 21
Image 5 of 21
Image 6 of 21
Image 7 of 21
Image 8 of 21
Image 9 of 21
Image 10 of 21
Image 11 of 21
Image 12 of 21
Image 13 of 21
Image 14 of 21
Image 15 of 21
Image 16 of 21
Image 17 of 21
Image 18 of 21
Image 19 of 21
Image 20 of 21
Image 21 of 21