Unexplained

An eye opener into a topic seldom discussed in public... DEATH. Yet it holds its impending presence over us from birth.

THE objects which Freemasonry was founded to subserve are honorable and laudable; nor is it intended in the following pages to disparage the institution or to undervalue its usefulness. It has, at various times and in several countries, incurred the ill-will of political parties and of religious bodies, in consequence of a belief, on their part, that the organization was not so purely benevolent and philanthropic as its members proclaimed it to be.

THIS volume the author has sought to lay before the reader a description of life and times lying beyond the light of history. This is indeed an extensive subject, and calls for some explanation, both as to the general design of the work and what steps have been taken to secure correct information.

Many years ago I heard of the existence of this manuscript from a celebrated occultist, since dead; and more recently my attention was again called to it by my personal friend, the well-known French author, lecturer, and poet, Jules Bois, whose attention has been for some time turned to occult subjects. My first-mentioned informant told me that it was known both to Bulwer Lytton and Eliphas Levi, that the former had based part of his description of the sage Rosicrucian Mejnour on that of Abra-Melin, while the account of the so-called observatory of Sir Philip Derval in the Strange Story was to an extent copied from and suggested by that of the magical oratory and terrace, given in the eleventh chapter of the second book of this present work.

Congratulations! You have in hand a work that contains the only novel by Richard S. Shaver that was never released to the public in any popular, mass market, publication. Mandark was serialized in Chester S. Geir's The Shaver Mystery Magazine and published in complete form in Raymond A. Palmer's THE HIDDEN WORLD, both of which were small press, limited circulation journals available only to die-hard fans of The Shaver Mystery.

All of the material in this 5th issue of THE HIDDEN WORLD is being published for the first time anywhere. More than twelve years ago Richard S. Shaver began the writing of a book which he called "The Elder World" in which he intended to tell the whole Shaver Mystery with all the fiction removed, and with all his own research and thinking on it in evidence of its authenticity.