The Calendrier Magique was created in 1895 by Austin De Croze, with pages decorated and illustrated by Manuel Orazi. In addition to being a calendar for the year 1896, the booklet (which was printed in an edition of 777 copies) is also a fascinating bogus grimoire which did the internet rounds a few years ago when scans appeared on a sub-site hosted by Cornell University Library. While it was good to see the pages at all, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who would have preferred a closer look at the details, something which is now possible thanks to a recent upload at Gallica.
The Gallica copy is also downloadable as a PDF so there’s no need to replicate all the contents here. Something worth noting which did occur to me when I first saw Orazi’s drawings was the striking similarity of the letterform sigils and the doodle-like figure below to the later, more seriously-intended occult art of Austin Spare. Neither Orazi nor the Calendrier Magique receives a mention in Phil Baker’s biography of Spare but a copy of the calendar could have made its way to a London book shop where Spare might have seen it.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Typefaces of the occult revival
• Manuel Orazi’s Salomé
• La belle sans nom
These are fantastic images, thanks for posting. My first impression was that there was a similarity with Willy Pogany’s illustrations for the three Wagner volumes. And just searching for Orazi’s art I came across an image ‘Aventures merveilleuses de Huon de Bordeaux’ which is incredibly like these Pogany illustrations (or vice versa!)
Hi Geoff. Yes, there is some similarity although Pogany’s work in the Wagner books is less loose than here. I think the looseness was probably deliberate to give the whole thing the feeling of something handmade.
Thanks for the Orazi tip, I’d not seen anything from that book before.