Description
The Immaterial Book of St. Cyprian presents a collection of 31 newly translated Portuguese legends about The Book of St. Cyprian. This collection at once interrogates what is meant by tradition, and experience with the book itself. The book as object comes under scrutiny and the entire effect of the legends generates a sense of what it means to have lived with and worked with the book in Portugal, as the compiler and translator Leitão puts it, ‘framing the experience of The Book of St. Cyprian as a concept beyond the circumstantial words written in it’. This text features facing language translations from the Portuguese into English.
José Leitão is a Portuguese St. Cyprian devotee. He holds a PhD in experimental physics and has recently finished a second Master’s degree in religious studies in the University of Amsterdam. His current research focuses on understudied Portuguese esoteric or heterodox ideas and folk magico-religious practices, as well as their current manifestations in South America and other regions of the former Portuguese Empire. Within that vein, he has produced the first English translation of one of the traditional Portuguese grimoires attributed to St. Cyprian, published in 2014 by Hadean Press under the title The Book of St. Cyprian: The Sorcerer’s Treasure.
