Colin Wilson

Colin Henry Wilson (born 26 June 1931) is a prolific English writer who first came to prominence as a philosopher and novelist. Wilson has since written widely on true crime, mysticism, the paranormal, and other topics. He prefers calling his philosophy new existentialism or phenomenological existentialism. Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England. Gollancz published the then 24-year-old Wilson's The Outsider in 1956; the work examines the role of the social "outsider" in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. The book became a best-seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain.

By the late 1960s Wilson had become increasingly interested in metaphysical and occult themes. In 1971, he published The Occult: A History, featuring interpretations on Aleister Crowley, George Gurdjieff, Helena Blavatsky, Kabbalah, primitive magic, Franz Mesmer, Grigori Rasputin, Daniel Dunglas Home, and Paracelsus (among others). He also wrote a markedly unsympathetic biography of Crowley, Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast, and has written biographies on other spiritual and psychological visionaries, including Gurdjieff, Carl Jung, Wilhelm Reich, Rudolf Steiner, and P. D. Ouspensky. wiki

An appeared in the London Daily Mail on Saturday, August 21, 2004 "Atlantis in the Mediterranean?"

Selected Nonfiction [1]

• The Outsider. 1956. The first book in the Outsider cycle by Wilson, intended to outline his concept of the New Existentialism (the idea which underlies all of his work), and probably still his most famous work. Probably also the best starting place. It has also been translated into Spanish, French, German, Italian, Finnish, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Chinese and Swedish. Philosophy.
• The Occult. 1971. After The Outsider, this may well be Wilson’s most acclaimed work. Presenting a history of occult practices, it is a classic of its type. Translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Danish, German, Japanese and Dutch. Occult.
• New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution. 1972. Wilson and Maslow were acquainted, thus Wilson has a particularly interesting take on his work. Translated into Spanish, Japanese, Dutch and Swedish. Psychology.
• Mysteries of the Mind. With Stuart Holroyd. 1978. A reprinting of Mysterious Powers, plus the Holroyd text. Occult.
• The Directory of Possibilities, edited by Colin Wilson and John Grant. 1981. A look at various strange phenomena by various authors, including Wilson. Occult.
• The Goblin Universe. With Ted Holiday. 1982. Occult.
• Marx Refuted: The Verdict of History. Edited by Ronald Duncan and Colin Wilson. 1987. A collection of essays on Marx by various notable authors, including Arthur Koestler, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, A. L. Rowse, Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher. Wilson himself contributes. Political science.
• Autobiographical Reflections. 1988. A short book summarising and updating his earlier Voyage to a Beginning. Autobiography.
• The Atlantis Blueprint. With Rand Flem-Ath. 2000. Occult/archaeology.
• The Angry Years: the rise and fall of the angry young men. 2007. Biography/criticism.
• Super Consciousness: the Quest for the Peak Experience. 2009. Psychology/philosophy.

Resources and articles

Related Sourcewatch

• New Dawn (magazine)
• Wrote foreword for Geoff Ward