Wonderfully weird medieval clip-art

Occult Images

by Agile Rabbit Editions

Pepin Press

2006, 272 pages, 6 x 6 x 1 plus CD-ROM

$25 Buy a copy on Amazon

This thick little book contains almost 300 arcane symbols, selected from Claude Paradin’s 1551 book Le Devises Heroiques (archive.org has a full scan of the 1614 edition). These baffling, spooky symbols of bleeding hands, self-pouring urns, leaking barrels, murderous skeletons, and blindfolded horses were used as marks of ownership by the aristocracy over 500 years ago. Mysterious and appealing, the images are open to interpretation by today’s viewer. Included with the book is a CD-ROM containing high-resolution files of all the images in the book, making it useful for T-shirt artists and graphic designers. — Mark Frauenfelder