Leopold Goepper joined the Union Village Shaker community near Lebanon, Ohio, in 1873, remaining there until his death in 1915. Attracted to the communal, celibate Shakerism as a way to live out his philosophical interests, he was committed to the application of what he called his ?studies in the esoteric.? This book provides a sense of one man?s daily efforts at improving himself spiritually as well as illuminating alternative spiritual views prominent in the second half of the19th century by creating context and describing this ?daily work, ? based on information from his diary, written between 1893 and 1896.