Despite the advice against it, writing The Occult turned out to be very advantageous to Wilson both critically and financially. For it was, by and large, received favourably by the critics, sold very well on both sides of the Atlantic and has been translated into many different languages. Cyril Connolly and Philip Toynbee, who were instrumental in turning The Outsider into a bestseller in 1956, but had subsequently changed their minds and then ignored his work for fifteen years, relaxed their embargo and came out in support of him again. Indeed, Connolly went on to write:
I am very impressed by this book, not only by its erudition but by the marshalling of it, and above all by the good-natured, unaffected charm of the author whose reasoning is never too far-fetched, who is never carried away by preposterous theories. Mr Wilson’s mental processes are akin to Aldous Huxley.
