DER COMPASS DER WEISEN VON EINEM MITVERWANDTEN DER INNERN VERFASSUNG DER ÄCHTEN UND RECHTEN FREYMÄUREREY BESCHRIEBEN
Berlin: Friedrich Maurer, 1782. Second Edition. Octavo, [16], 429, [1]; VG; bound in brown library cloth, gilt titling to spine; ex-library, label removed from spine, pencil erased from recto of title page; 2 vignettes, folding frontispiece plate symbolic content, some tape repair to rear, wear and separation at folds; very mild foxing; faint orange underlining to three words on title page, scattered pencil to title page;
Scarce; AG consignment; shelved case 3.
1334227
Shelved Dupont Bookstore
Sold
NOTES
Rare and early freemasonry work by the German Adam Michael Birkholz. The First Masonic Grand Lodge was founded in England in 1717, spreading to the continent in the decades following. This history was first published in 1779, and republished in 1782.;
"Birkholz was a Rosicrucian writer...[Der Compass der Weisen]...is a well known work, though not trustworthy as to history... He wrote under the name of Adamah Booy" [Adolph Frederick Alexander Woodford];
"Birkholz maintained that he was one of the "members of the inner Constitution of the genuine and right Freemasonry," and, with this book, he intended "to present, clearly and faithfully, the history of this illustrious Order, from the beginning of its founding." [Florian Ebeling];
"The history of the Order was described in detail in the book The Compass of Wisemen, which was extremely popular in the masonic milieu" [Konstantin Burmistrov, Maria Endel];