In this incomparable and profusely illustrated book, Peter Tompkins explores the entire history of man's association with obelisks; the many early and current theories about them and their magical and physical properties; the adventures encountered in engineering and moving 300-ton monoliths; their association with sexual rites and the hermetic wisdom of ancient Egypt; and their suspected influence on and connection with many secret societies and historic figures - Freemasons, Knights Templar, Rosicrucians, IIluminati, Ficino, Pico, Dee, Bruno, Kircher, Cagliostro, Saint Germain, and Crowley. Did the ancient Egyptians symbolize in their obelisks the answer to the secret of life and to life hereafter? These are the questions provokingly examined in this enthralling book. This book has been the culmination of a lifetime of research into the wisdom of the ancients. In pursuing the story of the obelisks, the author encountered the murky worlds of witchcraft, voodoo, demonology, and the darkest recesses of the human mind. In the end he discovered that the ancient Egyptians used the obelisk as a symbol for manifest divinity, and magic as the means for communing with it.