A sense of reverence overcame me. The night was balmy, and bright
almost as day with resplendent starlight. The stars seemed to lean
out of heaven; they looked down on me like living eyes, full of a
strange immeasurable sympathy. I crossed the threshold, and stood
in the open plain, breathing with rapture and relief the pure warm
air of that delicious night. How restful, calm, and glorious was
the dark landscape, outlined in purple against the luminous sky!
And what a consciousness of vastness and immensity above and around me!
"Where am I?" I cried. The silver figure stood beside me, and lifted
its veil. It was Pallas Athena.

"Under the Stars of the East," she answered me, "the true eternal
Lights of the World."

After I was awake, a text in the Gospels was vividly brought to my
mind:--"There was no room for then in the Inn." What is this Inn,
I wondered, all the rooms of which are haunted, and in which the
Christ cannot be born? And this open country under the eastern
night,--is it not the same in which they were "abiding," to whom
that Birth was first angelically announced?

--Atcham, Nov. 5, 1885

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** The solution of the enigma was afterwards recognised in an
instruction, also imparted in sleep, in which it was said, "If
Occultism were all, and held the key of heaven, there would be no
need of Christ." (Ed.)