Centuries of Meditations by Thomas Traherne

Centuries of Meditations, Thomas Traherne. P. J. & A. E. Dobell, London. Bertram Dobell, editor. First issued, June 1908. Second issue, December 1908. Reprinted, April 1927. Very good cloth cover with good interior. Cover has mild wear with bright gilt design and lettering. Foxing (spots) at bottom edges and deckled fore edges. Pages are tanned with foxing on a few initial pages and final pages. About ten pages with pencil marks and a few pages with stains.

Thomas Traherne was a 17th-century British clergyman and poet who was considered to be a mystic. His manuscript was discovered at the end of the 19th century and eventually ended up in the hands of Bertram Dobell, who edited the work and published it in 1907. “Centuries” doesn’t refer to years but rather sections with 100 “meditations.” The last section has only ten, so the author either died or couldn’t continue his writing due to illness or some other reason.

Paramahansa Yogananda quotes Traherne in a footnote in the last chapter of Autobiography of a Yogi with the asterisk following these words in the text: “[Man’s] superconscious state is a freedom from the delusion that ‘existence’ depends on body and breath.*” Traherne’s quote begins with “You never will enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars…” (First Century: 29-30). Mystic, indeed! Coincidentally, a former owner penciled some marks at this passage, one of the few made.