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The pre-publication sale of this book has been without known precedent in book history.
The subscription list for the first edition of 550 copies was entirely closed a year before
the manuscript was placed in the printer's hands. The second, or King Solomon, edition,
consisting of 550 copies, and the third, or Theosophical, edition, consisting of 200 copies,
were sold before the finished volume was received from the printer. For so ambitious a
production, this constitutes a unique achievement. The credit for this extraordinary sales
program belongs to Mrs. Maud F. Galigher, who had as her ideal not to sell the book in
the commercial sense of the word but to place it in the hands of those particularly
interested in the subject matter it contains. Valuable assistance in this respect was also
rendered by numerous friends who had attended my lectures and who without
compensation undertook and successfully accomplished the distribution of the book.

In conclusion, the author wishes to acknowledge gratefully his indebtedness to each one
of the hundreds of subscribers through whose advance payments the publication of this
folio was made possible. To undertake the enormous expense involved was entirely
beyond his individual means and those who invested in the volume had no assurance of
its production and no security other than their faith in the integrity of the writer.

I sincerely hope that each reader will profit from the perusal of this book, even as I have
profited from the writing of it. The years of labor and thought expended upon it have
meant much to me. The research work discovered to me many great truths; the writing of
it discovered to me the laws of order and patience; the printing of it discovered to me new
wonders of the arts and crafts; and the whole enterprise has discovered to me a multitude
of friends whom otherwise I might never have known. And so, in the words of John
Bunyan:

I penned
It down, until at last it came to be,
For length and breadth, the bigness which you see.

MANLY P. HALL.

Los Angeles, California

May 28,1928