THE ORIENTATION OF DIRECTION OF TEMPLES

First edition, first printing. Contemporary dark blue pebble-textured cloth with gilt titles to the spine. Illustrated with black and white charts and line drawings. A very good copy, the binding firm with rubbing to the spine tips, a small nick to the head of the spine and light bubbling to the cloth on the upper board. With a bookplate of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, an independent society of Rosicrucian Freemasons founded by Robert Wentworth Little (1840-1878) in 1867, on the front pastedown, the pressmark has been crossed out and rewritten beneath the bookplate in pencil. There is offsetting to the endpapers and a partially removed, small label to the rear pastedown, the contents are otherwise clean throughout.

William Simpson (1823-1899) was a reportage artist and war correspondent who was employed by leading Victorian lithographers Day and Son and later the London Illustrated News to travel across the globe making sketches of war zones, areas of political tension and world events, such as the battlefields of the Crimean War, Tibetan Buddhist temples, the marriage of Alexander III and Princess Dagmar of Denmark, the opening of the Suez Canal and the marriage of Emperor Tung-Chin. Simpson was also a Freemason and one of the first members of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, founded in 1886. During his extensive travels Simpson fostered his esoteric interests by sketching and researching architectural and archaeological sites around the world, which provided him with material for this volume. Simpson presents a survey of the directional orientation of temples from Native American, Indian, Chinese, Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures, with a strong emphasis on the 'four quarters' and the 'four cardinal points' of north, south, east and west. He also examines the ritual use of the four quarters in a number of historical cultures as well as in contemporary Christian and Jewish practices, and how these relate to Masonic rituals. Ritual focus on the four quarters can be found right up to the modern day in practices such as Wicca and the various branches of Neopaganism, which, though bearing little overt resemblance to Masonry, were influenced by early 20th century ritualists such as Aleister Crowley and Gerald Gardner, who in turn were influenced by the work of Masonic scholars like Simpson. Although this volume reads "Masonic Reprints" on the spine, it is a first edition. Only two copies are currently held by institutions, the University of Cambridge Libraries and the Royal Asiatic Society.