Astrolearn astrology library progress report
– No. 8: 17th September 2015
On Tuesday this week, the delay to my receipt of the previously purchased eleven issues of the magazine “The Astrolite” edited by L. H. Weston in 1908 was finally resolved, after a tax officer replaced the erroneous 25% import VAT bill with one for the correct amount for printed materials, and I was consequently able to pick up the package without paying an extortionate tax bill that I didn’t rightfully owe.
It was only the previous day that I had a reply to my enquiry of a whole week before, informing me that the contents of my package had been classified as a “lamp” by the customs official who processed it. This was patently preposterous when the package was only about 1.5 cm thick – how could a lamp fit into such a small space? The seller had written “The Astrolite Issues 2-12” on the description of contents. Anyone would have thought that the word “issues” would have been understood as relating to a periodical publication, but the tax officer had apparently thought from the word Astrolite that the contents had to be a kind of lamp (indeed, an Internet check reveals that there is a brand of large decorative lamp called an Astrolite in existence, but not a miniature one), and so, despite its diminutive size, had duly classed it thus.
I have now catalogued the publication and integrated it via the Bibliography menu page, English-language journals section, into this website.
Another welcome development at the post office the same day was picking up a small book by Fakir Chandra Dutt called “Predictive Astrology”, published 1938. My copy is slightly awkwardly rebound, but the contents are all there and it’s the only one I can remember seeing for sale in eleven years of collecting older second-hand astrology books online.
My progress with cataloguing this past week has been interrupted by various other goings-on, but I have got another three shelves of those hardback academic books done, and any progress is still positive.
A copy of Stephen Heilen’s edition of Bonincontrius “De Rebus Naturalibus” (1999) should be in the post to me. One or two other books are late. A copy of “Estrellas y astrologos en la literatura medieval española” by Luis Miguel Vicente Garcia has arrived. Likewise an excellent British first edition of Zolar’s “The History of Astrology” (Foulsham, 1972), replacing a defective American book-club edition of the same title that lacked about 32 pages owing to an original binding error.
One of the academic editions I enquired about before has not yet been located by the bookseller, and for that reason, I remain hesitant to mention it. If it shows up and the purchase is confirmed, then I shall do.
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