Jewish immigrant Dr David Hailperin was a rabbi, doctor, fortune-teller, gold-digger, and mystic.
He arrived in Melbourne from Europe in 1855, and brought with him an impressive and rare library of Rabbinical and Kabbalistic books - dating back to the 1500s.
Among his treasured collection there was a tattered old manuscript containing handwritten Hebrew black magic spells, such as how to make men impotent, women fall in love with men, and stop your lover being unfaithful.
The spells, which have since been translated into English, called for items including wood from a man's coffin, sweat from a woman's underarms, the heart of a hen torn apart alive and hairs of an old, white female mule.
Labelled a charlatan, strange, lonely and colourful man, he owned around a hundred books and manuscripts, which are now housed in the Rare Books Collection of the State Library of Victoria.
Items such as the ones owned by Dr Hailperin are being sought for a new project led by historians from Monash University's Faculty of Arts.
With COVID-19 putting a halt to overseas field trips for these manuscripts, a team of researchers from the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies is asking Victorians to look into their own public and private collections to see if they own manuscripts, or hand-written texts, dating to before the 1600s, when print technology became more widely available.
Researchers would like to document them, analyse them and potentially record them in a database as a future public resource.
Importantly, they do not need to leave their current location or owners.
Monash adjunct researcher Dr Merav Carmeli translated parts of Dr Hailperin's manuscript from Hebrew into English and said it was a fascinating process.
"While translating, I was thinking about how extraordinary it is to encounter this Jewish treasure right here in Melbourne," Dr Carmeli said.
"The incredible events of Hailperin's years in Melbourne should be told as a part of the history of the Jewish community of Melbourne but also as an integral part of the history of Melbourne in general.
"Dr Hailperin was a notable character, an outcast known for his love of mystic literature, black magic and of course, his books. Most of them were early rare editions of different genres of classical Jewish works and you can see he wrote his name on all of them."
Professor Guy Geltner, who is leading the project, said: "Given researchers like me can no longer count on traveling abroad to libraries and archives, many of us have been wondering what's in our own backyards, with some indications that veritable treasure troves are to be found among different communities making up the rich matrix of Melbourne's - and Victoria's - population.
"We wish to reach out to diverse communities, organisations and individuals who may be in possession of liturgical, literary, personal or other texts, and
