The Celestial Ship of the North (2 Vols.) by [Occult] Straiton, E. Valentia - 1927

New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1927. First edition. Two volumes, 8vos, 253, 273pp. Illustrations, each volume with index. Publisher's black cloth stamped in gilt. Spines a bit dulled, some light edge wear and soiling to boards. Very good+.

Quite uncommon first edition set of this comprehensive and influential occult work from Emma Valentia Straiton (1858-1948).  We find scant information on the author other than she was the daughter of New York tobacco mogul, John Straiton of Straiton & Storm, and likely inherited land in the Averne neighborhood on Long Island, which John Straiton developed.  We identify sales records for a few parcels listing Emma Straiton as the seller.  We also know she was a founding director of Long Island's "League to Stay Young," under the leadership of Frances Theodore Parsons, author of Making the Body Think.  Straiton started being quoted in the horoscope sections of various newspapers in 1927, presumably upon publication of this book.

The original publication promo from Boni describes the work:

"...the result of 25 years of research and study, gives us for the first time a comprehensive history and interpretation of Origins, Symbology, and the Fixed Stars and what they have come to represent through the ages.  Out of the darkness of the past the author has brought to us the sources of many of our present day concepts, superstitions and religious beliefs.  She has found clues to the heavenly forces ever playing upon our world, and has shown that the relation between heaven and earth had been fundamentally the same in all ages."

Despite the lack of information on Straition, The Celestial Ship has been widely referenced and quoted by authors since its publication up to the present due to its broad range of esoteric subjects.   John Major Jenkins in his Galactic Alignment: The Transformation of Consciousness (Inner Traditions/Bear, 2002) cites this breadth as perhaps a weakness of the work:

"Valentia Straiton's The Celestial Ship of the North... is a seductive but frustratingly oblique ramble on occult topics, with many references to astronomy.  Sources are often lacking, and the presumption is that what is being shared is a body of esoteric knowledge operating behind the scenes of conventional science and religion."  

The set is scarce.  We identify perhaps 5 holdings of the A.C. Boni first edition in OCLC.  


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