{"collection":"Esoteric & Occult","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/eso/cdg/index.htm","path":"eso/cdg/index.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/eso/cdg/index.htm","text":"The core of this book is an anonymous English translation of a\nFrench 'novel of ideas' originally published in 1670.\nThe Abb\u00e9 de Villars, the author, was a French clergyman\nborn in 1635 in Alet, near Toulouse in the south of France.\nHe came to Paris in 1667, where he wrote a number of books,\nmost of which other than this work which have been forgotten or lost.\nHe was assassinated in 1673 or (by some accounts) 1675 while on the road\nfrom Lyons to his native Languedoc.\nThe book describes an encounter with a mysterious Comte de Gabalis,\nwho is a master of the occult sciences.\nGabalis initiates de Villars into the secrets of the elemental beings:\nthe Sylphs of the Air, the Undines of the Water, the Gnomes of the Earth\nand the Salamanders of Fire.\nThe Abb\u00e9 is not sure whether the elementals are demons, while\nGabalis encourages him to symbolically (?) marry one of the elementals.\nOf course there is a lot more going on here than the dialog would indicate.\nThere are profuse classical and esoteric references.\nThis particular edition wraps the translation in a heavy cloak of\nparallel commentary, footnotes, endnotes and sub-footnotes.\nThe additional material will be of much interest by itself,\nas a miscellany of esoteric topics including a whole section of\nprophecies.\nAnd even though there are hints, neither the original text nor the commentary\never discloses exactly who the Comte de Gabalis is...\nProduction Notes.\nThe first portion of this edition, the 'Discourses' section, has commentary\non facing pages; these were turned into footnotes instead of trying to\nreproduce the page layout.\nFor a number of reasons, it was impossible to run a full\nspellcheck on this text, so there are undoubtedly\nmore OCR errors left in this text than usual.\nAs usual, I welcome any comments about typographical errors.","title":"Comte de Gabalis Index","type":"page"}