Читать книгу The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Complete A–Z for the Entire Magical World - Judika Illes - Страница 79

These are the books you can’t read. You certainly might want to; they were packed with metaphysical, magical, and spiritual wisdom, but you can’t because they don’t exist anymore. Now, books, even in the best of times, are fragile and perishable things. Paper burns, gets ripped or wet. Bindings break. Sometimes books that are too loved just fall apart eventually. However, that was not the fate that befell these books. These books were deliberately and systematically destroyed because someone with the authority to do so didn’t want you or anyone else to read them.

The New Testament indicates the existence and suppression of magical texts. According to Acts 19:18-20 Paul encouraged his Ephesian converts to burn their vast collections of magical books. How vast were these collections? Their worth was estimated at fifty thousand pieces of silver at that time. And In 1501, a papal bull authorized the burning of heretical and profane books.

It’s impossible to describe most of what was destroyed because nothing remains to tell, not even knowledge of existence. The following works and collections, however, are among the most prominent members of this library of the lost.