Here's a hefty tome that promises the COMPLETE guide to the occult, from Zolar ... of course! It's a mite more impressive than previous guides we've looked at, with Zolar offering a crash course in everything from crystal gazing to the Kabbalah. The handy table of contents gives the full rundown of what to expect.
As a neophyte to these occult practices, I'm practically bowled over by the density of text. Fortunately some quick googling reveals part of Zolar's secret - plagiarism! Over at the blog Learning Curve on the Ecliptic, commenter Stella had this to say:
As a teenager, I had Bruce King's (aka Zolar's) "The Encyclopedia of Ancient and Forbidden Knowledge" - one of those catch-all books with chapters on astrology, numerology, Tarot, etc.
Being young, I was very impressed with it. A friend and I even referred to it as "The Book", lol.
In later years, however, more books became available via the net. I can see now, for instance, that Zolar's crystal gazing chapter was cobbled together from bits of "A Course of Advanced Lessons in Clairvoyance and Occult Powers" by the wonderful C. Alexander (under the pseudonym "Swami Panchadasi", lol) John Melville's "Crystal Gazing and the Wonders of Clairvoyance". Entire passages are lifted almost word-for-word from both books.
It's possible that King was under pressure from the publisher to write an "occult encyclopedia", and his astrology writings may be his own, since that was his area of expertise. But I wouldn't be surprised to see them someplace else, in older books.
Stella has her own blog on card reading and fortune telling called Fate Keeps on Happening, which I recommend for her strong, eclectic perspective. You never know what you might miss if not for someone else's experience! I'll continue to dive into Zolar's encyclopedia and post excerpts as relevant in future. In the mean time, don't take any wooden nickels or xeroxed horoscopes!
Available to read and download at archive dot org.
Popular Library, 1970
Thanks for the shoutout! There's more source material here. If Zolar had cited sources and not copied various texts word for word, his book would have been scholarly indeed. All that research only to create something disreputable...even as much as I loathe plagiarism, I can't hate this book. It would be like hating a carnival midway.
ReplyDeletehttps://archive.org/details/howtoreadthecrys26622gut
Thanks for the comment and the link! Feels like doing archeology digging thru these old texts. I understand the sympathetic feeling towards Zolar's book, it's like you can't be too mad at it even though he's a scoundrel.
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