The Secret Teachers of the Western World

""Gary Lachman makes ideas thrilling... Start reading and feel the world around you start to come to life.""--Ptolemy Tompkins, author of ""The Modern Book of the Dead"" and collaborator with Eben Alexander, M.D., on ""Proof of Heaven"" Gary Lachman spoils his readers -- after encountering his prose you will find no other writing on esoteric and occult subjects that displays such fluidity, vibrancy, and gentle but assertive purpose... Gary has become the voice for our generation that Colin Wilson was before him. --Mitch Horowitz, author of ""Occult America"" and ""One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life"" Gary Lachman has become an increasingly prolific engine of literate, well-written, and clear-headed books about esoteric history and occulture. --Erik Davis, author of ""TechGnosis"" Thinking outside the box, Lachman challenges many contemporary theories by reinserting a sense of the spiritual back into the discussion. --Leonard Shlain, author ""of Art & Physics ""and ""The Alphabet Versus the Goddess"" Gary Lachman presents the Western esoteric tradition as a richly detailed parade of characters, seething with political ambitions, follies, even infamy. He teaches by example that to understand their psychology and historical contexts is far more useful than moralizing or partisan reactions. --Joscelyn Godwin, Colgate University, author of ""The Theosophical Enlightenment"" The invisible Rosicrucian brothers of the seventeenth century, the Unknown Superiors of high-grade Freemasons, French utopian occultists, and Traditionalists of the twentieth century trace a continuous tradition of esoteric idealism applied to political thinking. Gary Lachman offers a panoramic spectacle of occultists and millenarian visionaries who seek to translate an absolute gnosis into a radical program of regeneration. --Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, professor of Western Esotericism, University of Exeter""