"Do not ask me such deep questions just now, for I cannot see clearly, and it hurts me to look. The atmosphere is thick with the blood shed for the season's festivities. The Astral Belt is everywhere dense with blood. My Genius says that if we were in some country where the conditions of life are purer, we could live in constant communication with the spiritual world. For the earth here whirls round as in a cloud of blood like red fire. He says distinctly and emphatically that the salvation of the world is impossible while people nourish themselves on blood. The whole globe is like one vast charnel-house. The magnetism is intercepted. The blood strengthens the bonds between the Astrals and the Earth.... This time, which ought to be the best for spiritual communion, is the worst, on account of the horrid mode of living. Pray wake me up: I cannot bear looking; for I see the blood and hear the cries of the poor slaughtered creatures." Here her distress was so extreme that she wept bitterly, and some days passed before she fully recovered her composure. Our first acquaintance with any literature kindred to our special work took place toward the close of our sojourn in Paris[64]. It was due to the arrival of the friend in whose favour the exception had been made in respect of the reading of our Mysteries, and who was the possessor of an excellent library, which she placed at our disposal, of precisely the books it had now become necessary for us to read. This was Marie, Countess of Caithness and Duchesse de Pomár, who had for many years been a spiritualist of zeal so ardent that--as I now came to learn--she had been wont to make my conversion to that faith a matter of special prayer, long before I had been able to contemplate such an event as within the range of probability. Of wide culture, open mind, and large sympathies, she had an enthusiastic and intelligent appreciation of our work, and her arrival on the scene proved so timely as to point to superior direction. We were now able to begin to make acquaintance with many of the seers, mystics, and occultists of past ages, from the Neoplatonists, Hermetists, Rosicrucians, and other orders of initiates, to Boehme, Swedenborg and "Eliphas Levi," and to see what the various spiritualistic schools of the present day had to say for themselves.