Our Origin & History
SSI has long and deep roots going back several decades through a number of organizations which culminate in this current institute and website. Looking furthest back we must credit Donald Ian Mack with the origination of the bookstore which SSI, in part, still represents today. Donald Mack was a market scholar and collector with one of the most extensive libraries of rare financial market books in the world. He originally founded the Library of Investment Study back in the 1970’s and opened the first bookstore devoted solely to books on the financial markets.
In the early 1980’s he met Dr. Jerome Baumring, to whom he gave access to his extensive library as a research archive for Baumring’s intensive study of the financial markets while attempting to reverse engineer W.D. Gann’s legendary trading systems. Dr. Baumring devoured the 5000 books in Mack’s collection, and after cracking Gann’s system, they developed a partnership which integrated Mack’s library and bookstore with a new educational program in advanced Gann analysis created by Dr. Baumring. They named their new venture The Investment Centre.
Between Mack’s and Baumring’s massive 20,000 volume combined financial libraries, a bookstore filled with the largest selection of old and new works on every branch and element of the financial markets, their reprint series of the rarest and most important works of the old masters, and Dr. Baumring’s educational program on Gann Analysis, The Investment Centre became one of the world’s premiere educational establishments and knowledge resources for materials on investing, trading and forecasting the financial markets. All of this occurred at a time well before there was any kind of education available on stock or commodity market analysis and trading at any university, and well before the advent of quantitative analysis and market theory which is beginning to be studied academically today.
Customers visited from around the world to build their investment libraries, and experts in many fields bought rare editions or one-of-a-kind manuscripts, such as R. N. Elliot’s original manuscript of Nature’s Law which Mack sold to Robert Prechter for $25,000. We still come across many people today who share fond memories of visiting the bookstore and spending hours perusing the stacks of rarities back in the old days, or professionals who credit it for setting them on their first path to a serious study of the financial markets.
In the late 1980’s Donald Mack moved to England where he continued his efforts to bring greater public exposure to these classic works through a series he developed with the London Financial Times called The Trader’s Masterclass Series. Donald edited and introduced this series of classics which were available through the late 1990’s, but which sold out and now command collector’s prices. With these works again long out of print, we continue to make available affordable reprints and digital versions of exact facsimiles of the original editions of these highly sought after works for new and younger researchers and analysts who have yet to benefit from this ageless wisdom.
In 1992, Dr. Baumring passed away and the Investment Centre Bookstore closed its doors once and for all, ending the era of old book stores and wonderful libraries as the world transitioned into the digital information age…
Our First Internet Presence
After Dr. Baumring’s untimely death, his widow wanted to assure that the essential research materials required for Baumring’s courses would remain available for his students, and that Dr. Baumring’s work would be preserved for future generations interested in the theories of W. D. Gann. She asked Dr. Baumring’s closest and youngest private student, William Bradstreet Stewart, to become custodian of Baumring’s work and library and to continue publishing his courses and the essential reprints and research materials required for Baumring’s advanced studies. Stewart agreed and continued to reprint both the core collection of critical source works personally selected by Baumring for his educational program as well as Baumring’s own course series, initially keeping them available only for the group of 100 students left behind by Baumring.
In 1995, as the Internet began taking form, Stewart thought it looked like an interesting medium to use as a central means of distributing this collection of research materials and Baumring’s Courses, potentially making them accessible to a larger public. He was surprised to discover a wide group of people from across the globe on this early Internet, who were deeply interested, not just in the financial elements of Baumring’s work, but also in the rare and historical scientific and esoteric treatises in the catalog.
Before long there were scientists interested in non-traditional theories, college professors, occultists, and engineers developing alternative technologies, along with financial analysts and traders, all desiring these rare books and seeking even more related materials. The catalog continued to grow to over 400 titles as Stewart reprinted an ongoing series of rare works from his own and Baumring’s extensive libraries, and the clientele continued to diversify as more people began exploring the Internet.
Since 2/3 of these works were not directly related to financial markets, but covered scientifically orientated and esoteric literature, Stewart chose a more neutral name representing the combination of these two fields, Sacred Science Institute, for the new web presence so as to not overly identify the catalog solely with financial market research.
Over the next 20 years, Stewart expanded the Sacred Science Institute library to more than 15,000 volumes and the catalog of publications to over 500 titles, continuously discovering and reprinting new rarities from historical fields of interest, as well as developing new authors, primarily in the fields of financial analysis and trading.
He also developed a program to translate rare and important historical works from foreign languages into English through the Sacred Science Translation Society which proceeded, with the cooperation of over 100 contributors, to translate and publish seven import works in the fields of harmonics, esoteric science and cosmology, gaining the recognition of the Los Angeles Times for these efforts.
As the catalog developed through the years, it became evident that there were two very different sets of clientele with fundamentally different and sometimes conflicting orientation, the financial analysts and the scientific and esoteric researchers. While many Gann based researchers were deeply engaged in esoteric studies, other mainstream financial analysts were put off by the esoteric material represented by the Sacred Science Institute.
Similarly, many scientific and esoteric scholars were put off by the strong orientation towards financial market analysis, a subject they considered to be an overly materialistic application of scientific and esoteric wisdom. It was therefore decided that it was due time for a split of these two segments of clientele, giving each its own website and institute representing its more specialized focus.
Creation of The Institute of Cosmological Economics
The Institute of Cosmological Economics was created in 2008 to take over the publication and representation of the financial segment of the Sacred Science catalog, publishing the works of the old masters, Dr. Baumring’s courses, and the line of new books and proprietary trading courses written by the group of modern authors specializing in advanced financial market analysis and trading. To visit the Institute of Cosmological Economics, see www.cosmoeconomics.com.
Sacred Science Institute would focus upon the publication of the scientific and esoteric works in the catalog, and develop and represent new authors specializing in more scientific and esoteric research. These two sister Institutes each now have their own websites and mailing lists where clients can subscribe to only the very specific categories information in which they are interested, without exposure to the cross-over categories outside of their field.
