"For us, who have the inner knowledge, inherited or won, it remains to restore the true rites of Attis, Adonis, Osins, of Set, Serapis, Mithras, and Abel"
.These words of Aleister Crowley inspired me as a youth, and, imagining myself as one of those to whom they were addressed, I soon discovered that for some reason I have not been able to fathom it was the god Set that I was being called upon to honour.
I accordingly took it upon myself to penetrate the Mysteries of this, the most ancient of deities, and to trace the history of his rites from an indefinite antiquity to the present day.
When I wrote The Magical Revival, twenty years ago, I had no notion that the book would form the first of a series of trilogies that I would still be engaged upon in the nineties. Nor did I expect it to interest any but the serious occultist.
But the numerous letters which I received after its publication, and the often profound comments expressed in them, caused me to plan the series subsequently known as the Typhonian Trilogies.
Toward the close of the eighties I was approached by Skoob Esoterica, who sought to re- issue under the title of Hidden Lore the Carfax Monographs which I had produced in the early sixties in collaboration with Steffi Grant.
This project led not only to the task of publishing the next of the remaining volumes of the trilogies, under the careful editing of Christopher Johnson and Caroline Wise, but also to the reprinting of the earlier titles. So, here again is The Magical Revival.
