Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854 1934), ordained an Anglican priest in 1879, developed interests in spiritualism and occultism (then highly fashionable), and by the mid-1880s was a leading figure in the recently-founded Theosophical Society. He travelled to India, North America and eventually Australia on the Society's business, his influence only temporarily dented by a furore in 1906 8 involving allegations of child abuse. Leadbeater believed he was clairvoyant, and his many writings include this book, first published in 1899 and reissued here in a fifth edition marking the Theosophical...