Arriton is an enigmatic work from the artist Ayis Lertas. To open Arriton is to encounter the remnants of a lost esoteric tradition, leaves from an untranslated manuscript, a chance find amongst the disordered bookstalls of a remote ancient city. The seeker is thence immersed into a world redolent of gnostic gems, magical alphabets, defixiones and the spells of the magical papyri, which unfolds following a logic all of its own and yet remains entirely alien. It is a Borgesian artefact which will intrigue, challenge and reward contemplation.

Arriton is a gnomic and sigilic tour de force comprising 92 leaves of dense calligraphic images, ideograms and magical charaktêres, mysterious forms that have been subjected to applied erosion by the cruel hands of time. They seem fragile, these ragged-edged torn survivals from the library of Babel; bound together they comprise a relic of a numinous sorcerous hinterland that was hitherto unknown.

There are books about magic, and there are magical books. Arriton belongs to that rarer second category. It speaks deeply to those who are willing to surrender to the abyssal silence and be absorbed in the power of sign and symbol.