The titular "Comte de Gabalis" ("Count of Cabala") is an esotericist who explains the mysteries of the world to the author.
The book was widely read in France and abroad, and is a source for many of the "marvelous beings" that populate later European literature.
[1] French readers include Charles Baudelaire[2] and Anatole France – it was the main source for his At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque (1892).
[3] In English literature, it influenced Alexander Pope, who borrowed from it to create the sylphs in The Rape of the Lock (1714), and in German, it is a likely source for Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's Undine.
[4] Many later authors have also taken it to be a serious source, including Edward Bulwer-Lytton and prominent occult writers Éliphas Lévi, Helena Blavatsky and M. P.