The Divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus. Translated from the Arabic. HERMES TRESMEGISTUS.

First edition, one of 200 copies for subscribers, of this core theosophical text. It reprints the Corpus Hermeticum, an ancient work attributed to a syncretic Greek-Egyptian deity and translated into English in 1650 by the religious controversialist Dr John Everard. This copy is from the library of the American esotericist and physician Elmira Y. Howard. The Divine Pymander was published at the request of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, a theosophic order to which the English occultist John Hargrave Jennings (bap. 1815, d. 1890) belonged. Jennings was best known for his 1870 tract The Rosicrucians, their Rites and Mysteries and his involvement in tantrism. Dr John Everard (1584?-1640) preached critically against Catholicism and bishops, and promoted God's power as greater than the king's. Everard was imprisoned seven times, allegedly leading James I to comment "who is this Dr Ever-out you come so oft about? his name shall be Dr Never-out". Both title pages are inscribed by Howard (1841-1921), the first "Elmira Y. Howard Cin[cinatti] Sept 22nd 1884" and the second signed and dated 1884. She has also signed page 43. Howard was widowed during the American Civil War and subsequently studied at the New York Medical College for Women, graduating in 1869 to become the first female physician in Cincinnati. "She was heartily welcomed and endorsed by the medical fraternity, and her efforts were soon appreciated" (Willard & Livermore, p. 395). Howard, who had an extensive library on the paranormal, was a member of an important and prolific group of esotericists in Cincinnati that included Silas Randall, Dr J. D. Buck, and James Ralston Skinner. Frances E. Willard & Mary A. Livermore, eds, A Woman of the Century, 1893. Quarto (218 x 174 mm). Lithographic frontispiece, with tissue guard, additional title page in red and black reproducing the 1650 original, head- and tailpieces. Original white boards, spine lettered in black, covers ruled in red, red roundel to front cover, fore edge uncut, binder's ticket to rear pastedown. Binding a little soiled, extremities rubbed, abrasion to front cover, endpapers slightly foxed, frontispiece toned, contents otherwise clean: a very good copy.