As skeptics dismissed other-worldly phenomena as the stuff of legend, trickery or delusion, nineteenth-century 'occult science' set out to explain them scientifically. Here, C. W. Leadbeater maps out the scenery and inhabitants of the astral plane, accounting along the way for phenomena such as the journey of the soul after death, magic and sorcery, vampires and werewolves, pixies, gnomes and fairies, ghosts and shades, and communication with the departed in the seance room. A leading figure in the Theosophical movement after the death of Madame Blavatsky, Leadbeater was reincarnated in Stockport, Cheshire, after an unusually long spell of 2,300 years in the heaven-world. Ordained as an Anglican clergyman, he became a prolific author on theosophical topics. His theosophical studies took him to Ceylon and Australia, where he was the spiritual leader of the Manor commune in Sydney, which still exists today.

How does occultism regard vegetarianism? It regards it very favorably, and that for many reasons. These reasons may be divided into two classes: those which are ordinary and physical, and those which are occult or hidden. Let us see in detail why a vegetarian diet is emphatically the purest and the best.

Charles Webster Leadbeater is regarded as one of the most important of the twentieth century's writers on Theosophy. A competent seer and teacher, the series of lectures which comprise Volumes I and II were given to students in the early 1900s, during evening `talks' at the Theosophical Headquarters at Adyar in India.