Colin Wilson and faculty X -- Discovering Swedenborg -- Jan Potocki and the Saragossa manuscript -- Éliphas Lévi: the professor of transcendental magic -- The alchemy of August Strindberg -- The inimitable Madame B. -- Rudolf Steiner: the dweller on the threshold -- Manly Palmer Hall: the secret teacher -- Dion Fortune: psychic warrior -- Aleister Crowley: the beast himself -- Julius Evola: Mussolini's mystic -- Jung and the occult -- Ouspensky in London -- Jean Gebser: leaping into the unknown -- Owen Barfield and the evolution of consciousness -- The strange death of James Webb.