This work is the author's testament; it is the most important, and the final, treatise by him on the occult sciences.

It is divided into three books:

This treatise needs neither introduction nor preface. The author's previous works are more than sufficient to serve as both preface and introduction.

Here is the last word on occultism and it is written as clearly as it has been possible for us to write it.

Ought this volume to be published? Can it be published? We have borne these questions in mind while writing it; but we believed that we should and could write it.

If real initiates are still to be found somewhere in the world, it is for them we have written it, and to them alone belongs the right to judge us.

ELIPHAS LEVI.
September 1868.