The writer is vividly alive to the tremendous difficulties that present themselves in the handling of such abstruse questions, and to all the dangers of the task. Insulting as it is to human nature to brand truth with the name of imposture, nevertheless we see this done daily and accept it. For every occult truth has to pass through such denial and its supporters through martyrdom, before it is finally accepted; though even then it remains but too often— A crown Golden in show, yet but a wreath of thorns. Truths that rest on Occult mysteries will have, for one reader who may appreciate them, a thousand who will brand them as impostures. This is only natural, and the only means to avoid it would be for an Occultist to pledge himself to the Pythagorean “vow of silence,” and renew it every five years. Otherwise, cultured society—two‐thirds of which think themselves in duty bound to believe that, since the first appearance of the first Adept, one half of mankind practised deception and fraud on the other half—cultured society will undeniably assert its hereditary and traditional right to stone the intruder. Those benevolent critics, who most readily promulgate the now famous axiom of Carlyle with regard to his countrymen, of being “mostly fools,” having taken preliminary care to include themselves safely in the only fortunate exceptions to this rule, will in this work gain strength and derive additional conviction of the sad fact, that the human race is simply composed of knaves and congenital idiots. But this matters very little. The vindication of the Occultists and their Archaic Science is working itself slowly but steadily into the very heart of society, hourly, daily, and yearly, in the shape of two monster branches, two stray off‐shoots of the trunk of Magic—Spiritualism and the Roman Church. Fact works its way very often through fiction. Like an immense boa‐constrictor, Error, in every shape, encircles mankind, trying to smother in her deadly coils every aspiration towards truth and light. But Error is powerful only on the surface, prevented as she is by Occult Nature from going any deeper; for the same Occult Nature encircles the whole globe, in every direction, leaving not even the darkest corner unvisited. And, whether by phenomenon or miracle, by spirit‐hook or bishop’s crook, Occultism must win the day, before the present era reaches “Shani’s (Saturn’s) triple septenary” of the Western Cycle in Europe, in other words—before the end of the twenty‐first century “A.D.”