Secret Philosophies: A Book of Lost Worlds

A compendium of secret societies and their lost ideas, Secret Philosophies is a strikingly original passage through the hidden dimensions of thought. The book traverses buried archives and forgotten movements that have been lost to time, exploring their philosophies of rumour and conspiracy through a revolving collection of ancient, medieval, and futuristic sects in both the East and West.Taking a new approach to the production of knowledge, Jason Mohaghegh unfolds a labyrinth of texts from vanished libraries, underground circles, and the authors of enigmatic codes and ciphers.Each chapter features its own object of fascination, a looking glass into the rarest traditions of secrecy in both writing and imagination: from the oldest Babylonian tablet of apocalyptic warnings to a medieval prophet's last words in a cave of delirium; from books of sleep to books of plague; from exiled tongues to forbidden alphabets; from intelligence agencies to occult networks, obscure astronomical schools,