The book was an immediate commercial success, establishing Corelli as one of the most popular writers of the time, though like much of her subsequent work, it was negatively received by critics.

Her doctor is unable to help her and sends her off on a holiday where she meets a mystical character by the name of Raffello Cellini, an Italian painter who has rediscovered the secret of vivid, lightfast pigments.

Cellini directs her to take up residence in Paris under the tutelage of Heliobas, a Chaldean Christian and "electric physician" who performs miraculous feats including prophecy, telepathy and animal magnetism.

From this, the protagonist gleans that the arts practised by Heliobas enable the strengthening of a human organ similar to a voltaic pile, granting health and longevity as well as other powers.

Under the influence of a psychedelic draught, she meets her unnamed guardian angel, who whisks her through infinite solar systems faster than a shooting star while human spirits fly by like gossamer silk.

Bentley took an interest in the book after receiving highly divided reports from readers, including a very negative one from novelist Hall Caine—an act that began a lifelong feud between Caine and Corelli.

"[11] Her scripture, "The Electric Principle of Christianity", included in the novel, is presented as something factual and after the publication of the book generated a cult following, in which readers sought more information about her experience.

She explains in the introduction, in this cultivated age a wall of skepticism and cynicism is gradually being built up by intellectual thinkers of every nation against all that treats of the Supernatural and Unseen, I am aware that my narration of the events I have recently experienced will be read with incredulity.

At a time when the great empire of the Christian Religion is being assailed, or politely ignored by governments and public speakers and teachers, I realize to the fullest extent how daring is any attempt to prove, even by a plain history of strange occurrences happening to one's self, the actual existence of the Supernatural around us; and the absolute certainty of a future state of being, after the passage through that brief soul-torpor in which the body perishes, known to us as Death.