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more hardly can we find, of some others
 

above, inside front cover (detail; 90ºcw; levels 30 1.00 255)
below, unopened plates (detail; inverted; levels 20 1.00 240)
M. I(Jacques). Gaffarel (1601-81 *). Curiosités inouyes, sur la scultpure talismanique des Persans. Horoscope des Patriaches. Et Lecture des Estoilles. (Unheard-of Curiosities concerning Talismanical Sculpture of the Persians, the Horoscope of the Patriarchs, and the Reading of the Stars) (1637)
University of Lausanne copy, digitized February 27, 2008

More hardly can we find the Hebrew letters in the heavens, made out of the greater and lesser Stars, which put together do make up words...

ex Thomas Brown (1605-82 *) — referring to Gaffarel — in Pseudodoxia Epidemica * or, Enquiries into very many received tenents, and commonly presumed truths. Third Edition, “with some Marginall Observations, and a Table Alphabeticall at the end” (London 1658); Book 6, "Enquiries into vulgar and common errors," Chapter 14, "Of some others" : 286

The skin cover of the book, a kind of land/skyscape. Wayward reading leads to Sarah Kay, her "Legible skins: Animals and the ethics of medieval reading," postmedieval : a journal of medieval cultural studies (2011) 2 : 13–32
 

30 January 2016
tags: alphabet; celestial alphabet; error; legibles; reading; skin; sies; sky; spatulamancy; stars; Jacques Gaffarel, Curiosités inouyes (1637); Sarah Kay