Published in 1956, when I was still twenty-four, it amazed me by becoming a bestseller and making me famous. After seven years of drifting from job to job, I started to write a non-fiction book called The Outsider, about people who felt themselves to be misfits in society, focusing on such figures as Van Gogh, Nietzsche and Lawrence of Arabia.

It was not a subject in which I took a deep interest, for I had started out in life intending to become a scientist, and had only abandoned the idea because I decided when I was sixteen that I would prefer to become a writer instead. When my American agent asked me if I would like to write a book called The Occult, I accepted, because I needed the money. It was towards the end of the ’60s, when a book called The Morning of the Magicians (Le Matin des Magiciens) had become a world bestseller, and other publishers hastened to cash in. In the new Introduction to this book’s predecessor, The Occult, I have described how I became interested in the subject almost by pure chance.

At the heart of his work is a fascinating discussion of the Great Secret of the alchemists, which he sees as the key to the mystery of the ladder of selves. Wilson presents detailed studies of hauntings, possession and demonic hypnosis, as well as magic, the Kabbalah, and astrology. This experience inspired him to apply this insight to all paranormal phenomena, from precognition to Uri Geller's spoon bending. Through a personal mystical experience, Wilson discovered that human beings consist of a ladder-or hierarchy-of selves, whose upper members may be called upon at will for personal transformation and deep knowledge. The result is “an extraordinary tour de force” of scholarship ( New Science). In The Mysteries, Wilson continues his the investigation into magic, the paranormal, and the supernatural through extensive research as well as his own extraordinary first-hand experiences. The acclaimed author of The Occult presents a groundbreaking theory of unexplained phenomena from ghosts and magic to the power of the unconscious.Ī renowned expert on the subject of occultism, Colin Wilson’s sequel to his masterwork, The Occult, is “a major work” in its own right.

Man Without a Shadow by Colin Wilson