No fewer than eight of Dennis Wheatley's world-famous novels are concerned with Satanism and the occult, which as subjects of study have deeply interested him for many years. In this absorbing and lavishly illustrated book, Mr Wheatley sums up a lifetime's reading and advances his own trenchant views on the conflict of Good and Evil, or Light and Darkness. These elemental forces he presents as perpetually in conflict, first one predominating and then the other. In tracing the interaction of the two through history, the author documents the existence of "invisible influences". From mesmerism and hypnosis, faith healing and telepathy, he goes on to astrology, numerology, palmistry, alchemy, and the Cabala. Brief accounts are given of the religion and magic among the nations, from the Sumerians and Egyptians, the Greeks and the Incas, down to the present day. Restrained but telling descriptions portray such subjects as human sacrifices to the ancient gods of Evil, the mysteries of the p