Long considered by occultists one of the underground classics of 20th century occultism, the book was out of print for many years and fetched increasingly high prices in the antiquarian market before it was reprinted in paperback by Red Wheel/Weiser in 2007.
[1] Bertiaux had long been associated with Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua, an initiatic gnostic-magical order supposedly founded in 1921 in Haiti by the gnostic patriarch and Voudon high priest Lucien-Francois Jean-Maine.
There, a synthesis was purportedly developed between European gnostic-hermetic currents, being the heritage of the ancient western initiatic tradition, and Haitian metaphysics.
La Couleuvre Noire (The Black Snake) is an independent order founded in 1922, closely cooperating with the O.T.O.A.
Today, Courtney Willis (Tau Ogdoade-Orfeo VIII) is the Hierophant and the Sovereign Grand Master Absolute (SGMA) of the L.C.N.
For a period, Michael Bertiaux was also a secretary of the Theosophical Society until moving to Chicago in 1966, where he trained and qualified as a social worker, a job he remained in for just under forty years.
[4] Bertiaux's life and occult system are examined in Kenneth Grant's books, Cults of the Shadow (1975),[5] Nightside of Eden (1977),[6] Outside the Circles of Time (1980),[7] and Hecate's Fountain (1993).