Background
In August and September of 2016, I received a letter from an anonymous book collector who came across a text from the 18th century. Published in 1716, this book clearly has a flying saucer shaped craft depicted in it’s cover art.
Although I have been made well aware of many of the ancient and antique texts that have similar references, this one seemed new to me, and I was intrigued.
This was the original letter I received, to quote exactly:
I would prefer to remain anonymous but, that said, I can give you a little more information that makes this a riddle to be solved. Most of my skeptical friends dismissed this as a religious reference to the shield of God as quoted in Ps 84. But an associate who spoke Latin found a reference in the book that describes the sighting of a UFO in the classical saucer shape. I think this is important since there is a general dismissal of historical illustrations that are easily interpreted as some type of flying craft (Jung notwithstanding).
The issue is that the passage was shown to me many decades ago before the internet and I have no way or will to research this any further. I am an ex antiquarian collector/dealer specializing in books on occult and science. I guard my privacy very carefully so I cannot participate any further than this.
I am wondering if you could throw this out there and have some researcher dig into the volume and find the reference once again. I did see a scanned copy online with free access so I figured now was a good time to bring it up again.
After sharing some messages back and forth, I then received additional information on how this person became aware of the text:
It was after hurricane Hugo took a swipe at Charleston in the late eighties. I survived as did my shop but many were less fortunate. There were quite a few antiquarian book dealers and collectors whose collections took damage. I made a good bit of business restoring books and ephemera and often, when a book was damaged, the owner would lose interest in it. They were usually a Roast Beef collector -an old derisive term the Brits used when selling decorative bindings to wealthy patrons looking for interior decoration. They would buy roast beef (an old volume of obscure poetry) for the price of a steak. I traded many rare volumes with bad bindings for worthless decorative books -assuming the bindings were dressed up with a good dose of mink oil and wax.
Such was the case for the volume in question. The leather had been soaked and contaminated so it to be removed. The frontispiece itself still has water damage. When I opened the volume up, I almost lost my poker face. Fortunately, the owner thought it worthless even when new and gave it to me for fifteen dollars.
Read More – Book Published in 1716 Depicts UFO / Flying Craft on Cover Art.
Photograph submitted of the actual book discovered by the anonymous Black Vault user.
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