Arca Arcanorum (The Secret of Secrets)
Arca Arcanorum (The Secret of Secrets)
by Arthur Dee
Third volume in the Mysterium Hermeticum series. 180 x 120 mm, 176 pp. Bound in brown reconstituted leather, with silk ribbon and a letterpress bookmark. Including the decrypted alchemical cipher “Hermeticae Philosophiae Medulla”.
Arca Arcanorum was written in 1634 by the alchemist and royal physician Arthur Dee, the eldest son of the Elizabethan magus John Dee, to celebrate his triumphal consummation of the Great Work and the attainment of the Secret of Secrets. Only a single manuscript of this work exists, executed in Dee’s own handwriting and bequeathed upon his death to the Bodleian Library in Oxford. This is the first time this all-important alchemical treatise is brought to the press, having remained virtually unknown for almost 400 years.