Famous esoteric work of the 1930s describing the workings of the Oracle of Astral Force, the secret divinatory system of the group known as The Polaires and giving clues to their origin, way of working and sources of inspiration. Includes first issue of the Polaire Bulletin (the manifesto of the Polaires) and historical preface by Colum Hayward

In 1929 there burst onto the esoteric scene in Paris a group that had been waiting for a decade to manifest publicly, the Polaires. Furnished with a mathematical oracle that gave them direct communication with the Masters in the Himalayas and a six-pointed Star symbol that offered a direction of true spiritual development, they attracted journalists, poets and intellectuals into their group and sought to resurrect a long-lost Rosicrucian brotherhood. Among those who came were the gentle Maurice Magre, novelist and poet and the founder of the Traditionalist movement in mythology and anthropology, Rene Guenon - who split from them as fast as he came, rejecting Theosophy and Spiritualism too. Magre wrote a book called The Return of the Magi, still popular today, and was a close friend of Otto Rahn, German author of The Crusade against the Grail and one of the most controversial figures in the 1930s because of his flirtation with the shadowy ideals of Heinrich Himmler. In the divided, ideas-mad world of prewar Europe the charge of the Polaires was to combat egotism, help humanity overcome the mad fear of death, and to stand for truth in a world of charlatanism. Among their other quests, they became fascinated with the thirteenth-century Cathar movement and they also explored English Spiritualism, having been told by the Oracle to make contact with the discarnate soul of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This led them to the English medium Grace Cooke, who was shortly to found (under direction of her Guide, White Eagle) the White Eagle Lodge. The outcome of their meeting with Mrs Cooke was a series of extraordinary messages about the afterlife still in print today as Arthur Conan Doyle's Book of the Beyond. The work with Spiritualism, and an outwardly unsuccessful quest for Albigensian treasure in the Pyrenees, split the Polaires and the foundation of the Polaire Brotherhood was damaged by the confrontation and the loss, in the process, of the use of the Oracle. The founder of the Polaires, known only as Mario Fille, kept himself hidden throughout but the public face was Zam Bhotiva, born Cesare Accomani. Fille was the person to whom knowledge of the working of the Oracle had been granted and it was not to be divulged to any other living soul without the instruction of the Masters. Asia Mysteriosa was Zam Bhotiva's attempt to explain the working of the Oracle while still preserving its secret. Published in Paris in 1929, it is now translated into English for the first time alongside the first issue of the monthly Polaire Bulletin, which explains the mission of the Polaires and was used as their manifesto. This, too, has never been translated in full and of the ten thousand copies said to have circulated, is now immensely scarce. The present publication of Asia Mysteriosa in English thus brings before a new public a fascinating and neglected piece of the intellectual scene of the 1930s. It will be a welcome contribution to the studies of historians, cryptographers, Cabbalists and all who seek esoteric truth.