SABAZIUS, R. P. (pseud.).

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Envoûtement et contre-envoûtement. First edition of this practical guide to magic. Although published under the pseudonym of the Asian deity Sabazios and a fictitious imprint, the author was likely the journalist Jean Marquès-Rivière and the publisher the pharmacologist Alexandre Rouhier of Librairie Véga. This copy has the ownership stamp on the front free endpaper of the psychoanalyst and historian Michael Collée.A proponent of psychedelics, Rouhier (1875-1968) was central to the 1930s Parisian "group of scientifically-minded esotericists, who were searching not only in traditions like Kabbalah and Platonism but also in mathematics and the physical sciences for the links between mind and body, God and man, the Absolute and the manifest" (Godwin). His bookstore - funded by the American heiress, Mary Wallace Shillito - was central to this movement and was frequented by figures such as René Guénon, Jules Boucher, and Marquès-Rivière (1903-2000). The latter wrote numerous works on esotericsm, several of which were under the Vega imprint.WorldCat records only three institutional copies: the Spanish National Research Council, the Royal Library of Belgium, and the National Library of the Netherlands.

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