Emilio Fabregat

La Ultima Palabra de la Magia y del Ocultismo [The Last Word on Magic and Occultism] [Biblioteca Ciencias Ocultas]

Mexico, D.F. [Mexico City]: Editorial Bolivar, 1947. Very Good -. Item #48420

Mexico, D.F. [Mexico City]: Editorial Bolivar, 1947. Octavo (21.3cm); illustrated paper wraps; [2]-456pp+7 index; illustrations throughout. Spanish language. Many pages unopened. Covers edgeworn with a few shallow tears and some general foxing and smudging. Pages uniformly toned, with some showing shallow chips and tears in margins, with a few tears from hasty opening crossing but not losing text. Binding sound and pages unmarked.

Flagship title in the Biblioteca Ciencias Ocultas series, which were published by a handful of houses in Mexico, Argentina, and elsewhere in South America. This edition issued by Editorial Bolivar in Mexico City in a run of 5000 copies on June 2, 1947. The cover promises a farrago of topics -- "The Magic of Sleight of Hand and Illusionism, Sleight of Hand, Card Magic, Parlor Tricks, Stage Magic, Magic, Occultism, Telepathy, Fakirism, Magic and Love, Thought Transmission, Mentalism, Sexual Magnetism, Fascination, Secrets for Winning Love, Love and Hate Spells, Lines and Their Planetary Influences, Signs Indicating the Future..." -- with an equally eclectic illustration of a very proud skeleton showing off the severed head he caught in a spider's web to a ghost, a ghost child, and a bat-winged whistling monkey creature in front of a sphinx.

While the series was apparently rather popular in South America, we only find a few title hits in OCLC with an edition issued as late as 1999 -- two copies possibly matching this edition -- and only one endorsement, albeit a rousing one, of its content... In his book The Highest Altar: Unveiling the Mystery of Human Sacrifice, Patrick Tierney describes a meeting with Maximo Coa, an Aymara yatiri (shaman) in Peru: "While dismissing other ‘brujitos [little sorcerers]’ for running around with cheap, deceptive tricks, he said ‘But not me’...pulling two old books, wrapped in brown paper, out of his bundle. One of them was The Great Book of San Cipriano; the other I'd never seen before. It was entitled La ultima palabra de la magia y del ocultismo… ‘Whatever I see in the book, I do. Nothing else has any value.'"

Price: $750.00