Arca Arcanorum by Arthur Dee (Aula Lucis, 2024) Deluxe Arcanum Edition Limited to 77 Copies

Arthur Dee. Arca Arcanorum (The Secret of Secrets). Aula Lucis, 2024. Deluxe Arcanum edition. 176 pages. Bound in antique burgundy goatskin. Limited to 77 hand-numbered copies. Third volume in the Mysterium Hermeticum series.

Condition: New

Description from the publisher:

Third volume in the Mysterium Hermeticum series.

180 x 120 mm, 176 pp.

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.

arcanum edition

• Limited to 77 hand-numbered copies.
• Trim size 180 x 120 mm.
• 176 pages.
• Handbound in full antique burgundy goatskin.
• Raised bands and hand-tooling to the spine, with a royal blue leather title inlay.
• Front cover includes a blind debossed six-pointed star symbol with a gold Mercury glyph, housing a unique sun and moon design based on Arca Arcanorum’s original title page illustration, and executed in immaculately sculpted raised relief in gold.
• Including a Renaissance-period ornamental design blind debossed on both covers, and a rectangular gold frame, with four raised corner devices.
• Featuring seven colour illustrations.
• Text set in Neacademia.
• Printed in full colour on Munken Pure Rough 120 gsm paper.
• Endpapers marbled by Freya Scott at Paperwilds.
• Duotone head & tail band and burgundy silk ribbon.
• Presented with a bronze letterpress bookmark and a letterpress broadside featuring a colourful reproduction of the emblem from the Ripley Scroll, which was included in the 1634 MS edition of Arthur Dee’s Arca Arcanorum.

With new Introduction by
megan piorko

¶ The third volume in the Mysterium Hermeticum series, bearing the tantalising title “the Secret of Secrets,” is Aula Lucis’ most unique and momentous hermetic publication to date. For nearly four hundred years, Arca Arcanorum existed solely as a singular manuscript written in Arthur Dee’s own hand, testifying to his self-professed achievement of the Great Arcanum. To save it from prying eyes, it was bequeathed to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and subsequently entered the manuscript collection of the British Library as Sloane MS 1876. We are delighted to bring this all-important alchemical work into print for the very first time, with the assistance of Megan Piorko, a renowned scholar of 17th century textual culture and alchemical knowledge.

¶ Arthur Dee was born in 1579 as the eldest son of the famed Elizabethan magus, astrologer and polymath, John Dee, with whom he shared the same birthday. From a very young age he became his father’s alchemical progeny, and accompanied him on their famous six-year expedition across Europe, which included a sojourn at the alchemical court of Emperor Rudolf II of Prague. He frequently witnessed alchemical operations performed by John Dee and his collaborator, Edward Kelley, including metallic projection and transmutation, which Arthur attests to have witnessed for the first time at the tender age of 8. Later, Arthur Dee will go on to acquire a medical degree at the University of Basel and continue his studies in Oxford, subsequently establishing a successful carrier as a physician in England. In 1621 he was recommended by King James to Tsar Mikhail of Russia, and became the latter’s personal physician in Moscow for fourteen years. It was there that he composed his only two original texts: Fasciculus Chemicus and Arca Arcanorum. The former appeared in print in Latin in 1631, and was eventually translated into English in 1650 by the admiring Elias Ashmole, who considered Arthur Dee to be one of the greatest authorities in alchemical learning among Englishmen. It was this very same edition of Fasciculus Chemicus that also featured Ashmole’s first English translation of the Hermetic Arcanum of Jean d‘Espagnet, which appeared as Vol. 1 in the Mysterium Hermeticum series in December 2023. The two tracts were, in the words of Ashmole, “suited so punctually,” that he considered them to be excellent companions.

¶ Fasciculus Chemicus is essentially an expertly curated collection of alchemical tracts, with ten chapters corresponding to the successive order of operations in the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone. Each chapter ends in a “corollarium” written by Dee, and the entire text ends with further 21 “observanda” which provide a crucial key to the Work. Arca Arcanorum, compiled by Dee three years after the publication of Fasciculus Chemicus, is based on the latter, but brings to bear upon it the newfound light of Dee’s triumphal attainment of the Philosopher’s Stone. He includes four new canonical names, new additional material from pre-existing authors, and ten new “observanda”, among other changes, all of which must have been instrumental to Dee’s success in the consummation of the Great Work. In the Preface to Arca Arcanorum, he writes: “I have at last (by divine help) solved the riddles of knowledge. An example of this, in this climax of my life, with some select manuscripts I dedicate (under your auspices) to devotees of alchemy.” 

¶ As a further key to the alchemical processes outlined by Dee, the Appendix features the decrypted text of the alchemical cipher known as Hermeticae Philosophiae Medulla, found originally in a shared notebook which belonged to John and Arthur Dee. The cipher was finally decoded by Megan Piorko, Sarah Lang and Richard Bean in 2023. The full text of it, augmented with further details from the Scottish alchemist Patrick Ruthven’s 1612 laboratory notes, is included in this edition of Arca Arcanorum.