Grr . . .

One of the more ambitious projects of a few years back was an e-text of an English translation of the Geheime figuren der Rosenkreuzer, a famous German alchemical-Rosicrucian work of the late eighteenth century. While I have in fact prepared a re-set, with most of the figures coloured, of the George Engelke translation, first published in Chicago by the American Rosicrucian society AMORC, since this edition on examination turns out to be still in copyright, and in any case is now freely downloadable as black and white page images on AMORC's web site, I am no longer circulating the CP re-set. Instead, in the course of an insanely ambitious project of preparing etexts of works from the "General Reading" section of "Curriculum of A.'.A.'." in Crowley's Equinox, I prepared an e-text of Franz Hartmann's travesty of this volume, first issued in 1888 under the snappy title Cosmology or Universal Science, Cabala, Alchemy containing the Mysteries of the Universe regarding God, Nature, Man, the Macrocosm and Microcosm, Eternity and Time, explained according to the Religion of Christ by means of the Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, which omits two of the shorter alchemical texts, 11 of the 36 plates (this material correspondes to the "drittes und letstes Heft" in those copies of the original German which were bound in three rather than two parts), much text on the plates that are included, and the bulk of the text of the "Golden Treatise," instead adding a rambling 16-page introduction which says absolutely nothing about the work to which it is prefixed, a "glossary of occult terms" of doubtful use and a few misleading notes to the "Golden Age Restored" and the "Parabola" from the "Tractatus Aureus." 

Anyway, to get to the point. While I long ago ceased to be bothered by people mirroring CP titles across the Internet or sticking them in ebook torrents, turns out that last October someone using the name "First Class Publishing House LXXVIII Isle of Paths," operating out of a PO box in Norway, went rather further, took the Celephaïs Press re-set of Hartmann's Cosmology &c., removed the CP name and logo (while leaving in the whole of my editorial introduction), stuck on their own imprint, copyright notice and front and back covers and are now selling it for US$50 on amazon.com. Check out the "look inside" option and go to the first page after the front cover for fairly clear proof of what's been done. Oh, they also scaled it down to 6" x 9" from the original folio size, so you're gonna need a magnifying glass to read all the text on the plates. The publisher's website seems to indicate that they intend to issue other texts from the A.'.A.'. general reading list. I will be following with interest. . . P.S.: so far they've also done it to the Unspeakable Press (Leng) edition of Blavatsky's Voice of the Silence: compare the copy on scribd with these previews at lulu.com; note the ham-handed substitution of their own name in the imprint, while leaving in the reference to an "electronic edition." Also to vol. I of the CP edition of Forlong's Rivers of Life (changing the title on the main title page to "Streams of Life" for no clear reason). The latter will be clearly distinguishable from a facsimile of the first edition by the large number of sarcastic footnotes initialled "T.S." which accompany the main text.