The Invisible Influence

Black magic. Telepathy. The Universal Mind. Such wonders are real, insists spiritualist Alexander Cannon in this 1933 tome, all manifestations of the invisible influence all around us. Subtitled "a story of the mystic Orient with great truths which can never die," this florid and enthusiastic narrative, structured as a conversation between Cannon and a series of mystics, yogis, and other sages, offers anecdotes of crystal gazing, levitation, hypnotism, distant-touching, and other weird phenomena as evidence of this "invisible influence." A breathless document of the fascination with the occult that gripped the early years of the 20th century, these tales of the paranormal continue to beguile today. British physician and psychiatrist ALEXANDER CANNON (b. 1896) also wrote Sleeping Through Space, The Shadow of Destiny, Science of Hypnotism, and Powers That Be.