Colin Wilson's 'Occult Trilogy': A Guide for Students

Also by Colin Stanley:

Novels

First Novel
(2000)
Novel 2
(2005)
Poetry

Sense-less: complete nonsense poetry
(2003)
with illustrations by Maggie Guillon and Yvonne Harrison
Non-fiction

The ‘Aylesford Review,’ 1955-1968: an index
(1984)
Colin Wilson, a Celebration: essays and recollections
(1988)
The Work of Colin Wilson: an annotated bibliography and guide
(1989)
‘The Nature of Freedom’ and other essays
(1990)
The Work of Colin Wilson: an annotated bibliography and guide—Supplement to 1995
(2000)
Colin Wilson, the first fifty years: an existential bibliography 1956-2005
(2006)
Colin Wilson’s ‘Outsider Cycle’: a guide for students
(2009)
The Colin Wilson Bibliography, 1956-2010
(2011)
Around the Outsider: essays presented to Colin Wilson on the occasion of his 80
^th
birthday
(2011)

First published by Axis Mundi Books, 2013
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Text copyright: Colin Stanley 2012

ISBN: 978 1 84694 706 3

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CONTENTS

Preface

Notes

Book 1:
The Occult

Book 2:
Mysteries: an Investigation into the Occult, the Paranormal, and the Supernatural

Book 3:
Beyond the Occult

Colin Wilson on the occult: a checklist

Index

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Colin Wilson for permission to quote from his books.
The author also acknowledges helpful suggestions from George Poulos on the subject of split brain research in the chapter on
Beyond the Occult
.

Preface

Colin Wilson’s ‘Occult Trilogy’ is the collective label applied to his three major works on the occult which were published between the years 1971 and 1988:

•  
The Occult
(1971)

•  
Mysteries: an Investigation into the Occult, the Paranormal and the Supernatural
(1978)

•  
Beyond the Occult
(1988)

The three books amount to a monumental 1600 pages and spawned many other lesser works on the subject (all of which are listed in the checklist at the end of this book).

In the opening chapter of
The Occult
Wilson recounts that as a twenty-year-old, living in rented accommodation in London with his wife and young child, working in various dead-end factory jobs, he read all the books on magic and mysticism that he could find in libraries not just as an escape from his lot but “…because they confirmed my intuition of another order of reality,
an intenser and more powerful form of consciousness
than the kind I seemed to share” (46*).
By the time he came to write
The Occult
, in the late 1960s, he had accumulated a library of “…five hundred or so volumes on magic and the supernatural” (40) but did not consider the occult to be “…one of my major interests, like philosophy or science, or even music” (40).
However, all this preliminary reading obviously stood him in good stead when the book was commissioned and he duly set about researching the subject more systematically.
As a result he began to become convinced that “…the basic claims of ‘occultism’ are true.”
(41):

“In the past few centuries, science has made us aware that the
universe is stranger and more interesting than our ancestors realised.
It is an amusing thought that it may turn out stranger and more interesting than even the scientists are willing to admit.”
(41)

As I pointed out in the Preface to my guide to Colin Wilson’s ‘Outsider Cycle’ (
Colin Wilson’s
Outsider Cycle:
a guide for students
.
Nottingham: Paupers’ Press, 2009) his style of writing renders the books eminently readable (even when dealing with the most challenging of subjects), so much so that attempts at elucidation can often have the opposite effect.
For that reason I have tried to quote him as often as practicable with the minimum of comment from myself.

All three books have recently been reprinted by Watkins Publishing, with new Introductions by Wilson.

Colin Stanley

Nottingham, UK

May 2012

*All page references are from the Mayflower Books Ltd paperback edition of
The Occult
.
St Albans: Mayflower Books Ltd., 1973 (1976 reprint).

Notes

In
Bibliographical Details
, citations under
Secondary Sources and Reviews
to Around, Bendau, Bergstrom, Campion, Celebration, Dossor, and Weigel, refer to the following critical monographs on Wilson’s work:

•  
Around:
Around the Outsider: essays presented to Colin Wilson on the occasion of his 80
^th
birthday
edited by Colin Stanley.
Winchester: O-Books, 2011.

•  
Bendau:
Colin Wilson: The Outsider and Beyond
by Clifford P.
Bendau.
San Bernardino, CA: The Borgo Press, 1979.

•  
Bergstrom:
An Odyssey to Freedom: Four Themes in Colin Wilson’s Novels
by K.
Gunnar Bergström.
[Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia, no.
47] Uppsala, Sweden: University of Uppsala, 1983.

•  
Campion:
The World of Colin Wilson
by Sidney Campion.
London: Frederick Müller, 1962.

•  
Celebration:
Colin Wilson, a Celebration: Essays and Recollections
edited by Colin Stanley.
London: Cecil Woolf, 1988.

•  
Dossor:
Colin Wilson: the Man and his Mind
by Howard F.
Dossor.
Shaftesbury, Dorset: Element Books, 1990.

•  
Weigel:
Colin Wilson
by John A.
Weigel [Twayne English Author Series, no.
181].
Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975.

References are also made to various
Colin Wilson Studies
, edited by Colin Stanley (Nottingham: Paupers’ Press):

•  Moorhouse/Newman:
C.W. Study #1
.
Colin Wilson, two essays: ‘The English Existentialist’ and ‘Spiders and Outsiders’
by John Moorhouse and Paul Newman.
1989.

•  Stanley:
C.W. Study #2
.
‘The Nature of Freedom’ and other essays
by Colin Stanley.
1990.

•  Trowell:
C.W. Study #3
.
Colin Wilson, the positive Approach: a response to a critic
by Michael Trowell.
1990.

•  Smalldon:
C.W. Study #4
.
Human Nature Stained: Colin Wilson and the existential study of modern murder
by Jeffrey Smalldon.
1991.

•  Dalgleish:
C.W. Study #5
.
The Guerilla Philosopher: Colin Wilson and Existentialism
by Tim Dalgleish.
1993.

•  Lachman:
C.W. Study #6
.
Two Essays on Colin Wilson: ‘World Rejection and Criminal Romantics’ and ‘From Outsider to Post-Tragic Man’
by Gary Lachman.
1994.

•  Shand/Lachman:
C.W. Study #8
.
‘Colin Wilson as Philosopher’ and ‘Faculty X, Consciousness and the Transcendence of Time’
by John Shand and Gary Lachman.
1996.

•  Dossor:
C.W. Study #9
.
The Philosophy of Colin Wilson: three perspectives
by Howard F.
Dossor.
1996.

•  Robertson:
C.W. Study #11
.
Wilson as Mystic
by Vaughan Robertson.
2001.

•  Campion (2):
C.W. Study #19
.
The Sound Barrier
by Sidney Campion.
2011.

nd
= date not known.

nk
= page numbers not known.

All bibliographical details extracted from:
The Colin Wilson Bibliography, 1956-2010
by Colin Stanley [Colin Wilson Studies #17].
Nottingham: Paupers’ Press, 2011.

Book 1:
The Occult