The contemporary magical tradition derives its earliest influences from the heresies and undercurrents of early Western religion: Gnosticism; Mithraism; the Qabalah and the Egyptian-Hellnistic Mystery teachings. All have been regarded as abberations by the Christian church because they assert that potentially man has within himself the capacity for his own spiritual rebirth. Here Drury explores the approches to magic and then dives into what he calls

'the path of the chameleon,' focusing on the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Graeco-Roman Shamans and the journeys to the Underworld, the Chaldean Oracles, the Qabalah and the Tree of Life, the ritual degrees of Neophyte, Zelator, Theoricus and Adept, and more.