Catalog of Magic by brother Rudolph

July 12th

I have been chasing this book for a long while. It started when I saw mentions of this book in other books about folk mythology and demonology in early-medieval Poland. The title itself was interesting enough to pick my curiosity. And the book itself was only a few pages long, written in Latin in the XIII century by a monk named Rudolph and found in an old church by a ruined castle in southern Silesia in Poland. After its founding, it was kept in a local university and only translated into Polish with annotations in 1955. The book was published mainly as a curiosity of ethnographical lore in only a couple of hundred copies for scholarly use, but it quickly became a cult favorite. It has been out of print since then, and it is almost impossible to find a copy to buy. I have been searching auction websites and antic books websites for a copy but to no avail. It also was not digitized so there was no way of reading it online. I kept looking, but my chances were slim.

Until today, that is. An idea was following me for a while and today I decided to do something about it. And that something was to join a library. I haven’t been a member of any library in twenty-some years. With the ease of buying books — physical and digital — I could get any book I wanted in seconds for an e-book reader, or at most in several days for a real book. And since I need to read to stay sane, I kept buying more books than I will be able to read, especially since for one book I read, I buy two or three more for future reading. I had no need for libraries. But the moment I step into the main branch of the city library where I live, I felt that this is it. It was something I missed without even knowing I miss it. The sheer amount of books there in the main reading room, and the quietness of the scholarly silence were overwhelming. Registration took only a minute or so, and I could check books right away. And of course, the library had a copy of this book — not the original one from 1955, but as an addendum in some other book. My evening is sorted for a session of reading and all I can say is that libraries are amazing and truly wonderful institutions for anyone interested in reading and expanding their knowledge. I could do without being a library member for a long while, but I already know that I will use it more and more frequently, especially for obscure, particular interest books that are not readily available for sale. I will keep buying books anyway but the library will be my resource as well.