*~~~~ -—;-. —.. —------
____________  -~~;             -A —-,  -
THE SUMRLN   OEWTHNTEMLYWY
"If ~ ~   ~    ~    _ I a etldyu  fe~tl ti  adyebliv  ot  owsal  e cieei Itilyu fhevny hn  I Tetemal
of ~ ~   ~   ~   -!da ye =So, cc rcordeden theNew Tetame




A
STELLAR KEY
TO
THE SUMMER LAND.
BY
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS,
AUTHOR OF "NATURE'S DIVINE REVELATIONS," L" IIARMONIA," "ARABULA,"
AND OTHER VOLUMES ON THE " BARMONIAL PHILOSOPHY."
PART I.
ILLUSTRATED WITH DIAGRAMS AND. ENGRAVINGS OF CELESTIAL
SCENERY.
THIRD THO US._D.
BOSTON:
WILLIAM      WVHITE     &  COMPANY,
158 WASHINGTON STREET.
NEW YORI:
BANNER OF LIGHT BRANCH OFFICE, 544 BROADWAY.
1868.




Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1867, by
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
District of New Jersey.
M<cCREA & MILLER, STrEISOTYERS,
15 Vandewater Street.




||N SXPLANATORY  0ORD.
THIS VOLUME IS DESIGNED TO
FURNISH  SCIENTIFIC AND  )HILOSOPHICAL EVIDENCES OF THE JXISTENCE OF AN JNHABITABLE SPHERE
OFP JZONE AMONG THE )SUNS AND
LANETS OF SPACE. THESE EVIDENCES ARE INDISPENSABLE, BEING
ADAPTED TO ALL WHO SEEK A SOLID,
RATIONAL, PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATION ON WHICH TO REST THEIRF
HOPES OF A SUBSTANTIAL EXISTENCE
AFTERFk DEATH.
New York,
tecember l5th, i867,








CONTENTS        OF PART I.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Or THE NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL UNIVERSES                   5
CHAPTER II.
IMMORTAL MIND LOOKING INTO THE HEAVENS  e                11
CHAPTER III.
DEFINITION OF SUBJECTS UNDER CONSIDERATION   O     o    16
CHAPTER IV.
THE POSSIBILITY OF THE SPIRITUAL ZONE.         18
CHAPTER V.
THE ZONE IS POSSIBLE IN THE VERY NATURE OF THINGS.     23
CHAPTER VI.
THE SPIRITUAL ZONE VIEWED AS A PROBABILITY              81
CHAPTER VIL
EVIDENCES OF ZONE-FORMATIONS IN THE HEAVENS,,          37
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SCIENTIFIC CERTAINTY OF THE SPIRITUAL ZONE.        45
CHAPTER IX.
A VIEW OF THE WORKING FORCES OF THE UNIVERSE            60
CHAPTER X.
PRINCIPLES OF TEE FORMATION OF THE SUMMER LAND           64




viii                   CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XI.
PAGB
DEMONSTRATIONS OF THE HARMONIES OF THE UNIVERSE    o  77
CHAPTER XII.
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SUMMER LAND.         101
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LOCATION OF THE SUMMER LAND.. 131
CHAPTER XIV.
A PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW OF THE SUMMER LAND            o 148
CHAPTER XV.
THE SPIRITUAL ZONE AMONG THE STARS.       *         158
CHAPTER XVI.
TRAVELINGt AND SOCIETY IN THE SUMMER LAND. 163
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SUMMER LAND AS SEEN BY CLAIRVOYANCE              184
CHAPTER XVIII.
SYNOPSIS OF THE IDEAS PRESENTED.    o      O       149




A STELLAR KEY.
CHAPTER I.
OF THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSES.
THE discovery and announcement of that wonderful
and interminable relationship between the material
universe and the spiritual universe-a relationship
founded in the immutable laws of existence, by which
things visible are bound by the ties of fertile sympathy
to realms of causation invisible-could not but astonish
and delight the boldest poetic imagination, and excite
the opposition and ridicule of those skeptics who rely
for what they term "positive knowledge," upon the
industry and testimony of their five bodily senses.
The discovery of the law of Gravitation, notwithstanding its far-stretching penetrations into the profoundest secrets and fixed operations of the great
Positive Mind, was not a thousandth part as important
and world-lifting as was the disclosure of an inhabitable
and a really inhabited belt of solid spiritualized matter
in the heavens, adapted to the new bodies, and new
senses, and new necessities, of men, and women, and
children, who are born on this planet, and who unfairl




6                 A STELLA  KEY.
ingly withdraw from  it through the process called
" Death."
Like thankful children, bending in reverential gratitude beneath the unutterable glory of the Central Sun
-the throne, so to speak, of the all-loving Mother and
omniscient Father of All-we approach the repositories
of ideas and essences, and ask for such facts and such
illustrations as can be seen and admitted by philosophers and skeptics of the most materialistic habits of
thought.  We seek for data in the recognized fields
of positive knowledge, for scientific facts and recent discoveries in matter, which shall serve as stepping-stones
for the millions, whereby they can, intellectually and
rationally, gain a clear vision of spheres celestial and
heavenly.
The world-cheering discovery of the shining belt, to.which I have alluded, has arrived by degrees; coming
through the hazy glimmerings of man's intuitions from
remotest ages; stealing with beneficent mysteriousness
through the hopes of mankind; seen like the light of a
distant taper shining through openings in thinnest
clouds; felt in the reasonings and wonderful generalizations'of astronomers; beheld by the entranced poet and
by the inspired artist as a permanent reality beyond the
starry confines; contemplated by analogical reasoners
as a capacious Existence-adapted to, and yearned for
by the immortal mnind-a world swimming somewhere
in space, where star or planet never rolled; demonstrated to the senses of spiritualists by " sounds," not
uncertain, like e voices of distant waters heard through
a landscape unrknown, but cistinc and positive, telling
of a home for you and for me in the solemn abysses of




THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE.            7
qp)ace; and, lastly, looked upon by tile bright eyes
of independent clairvoyants, who liave discerned its
constitution, read its sublime mysteries, disclosed the
grandeur of the planetary Inechanism, described the
illustrious beings who repose there in contemplation,
and the thronging hosts, also, who, with human affections and infinitely diversified attractions, people that
substantial and eternal sphere, not built with hands, in
the bosom of the heavens.
The relationship and sympatny between tile orbs and
spheres of immensity —between this world of humanity
and that better world of humanity arisen-are recognized naturally and inevitably by man's intuitions and
reason. It comes like a gleam of glory sent into finite
minds from the Central Sun; and he is unreverential
to truth, not to say wicked and dogmatic, who turns
away from it with contempt. 4'" Man is immortal, " is
the world's affirmation. "'Is it otherwise possible in
the government of the Universe?" asks a writer.
"Shall the material thing, inorganic, inert, impercipient, move on in this wondrous perpetuity; and
shall the soul which discerns its order and tracks its
career, and detects its laws and speculates on its c6nstitution, be swept away as nothing before it?  Shall
unconscious matter last, while the mind, to which alone
its functions are subservient, which interprets its mysteries and reads them in the signature of God, vanish
like the passing wind? Shall the knowledge and the
thoughts of men be handed down in endless genealogy,
teaching and inspiring the soul of other times; and
shall the conscious creature which called them into
being be blotted ignominiously from creation 2 Impos



8                 A STELLAER  EYo
sible!  It cannot be but that they, through the
medium of whose thought we now gaze at the skies,
witness elsewhere the excellence of their past toils, the
triumphs of their studious meditations.  Surely the
Heavens which they deciphered, they behold with eyes
undimmed by age, and minds yet yearning, but in a
spirit of profounder adoration, to press forward toward
vaster disclosures of the infinitude of God!"
Looking far into the ages past, and making the laborious march of man's history with regard to his acquisition of positive knowledge, I find accurate conceptions,
more or less mixed with the reflections of superstition
and the colorings of fancy, of the realities pertaining to a higher sphere of human existence.     At
first it was natural for the individual mind to be narrow in its conceptions, because its views were mainly
derived from outward observations of the skies. But
now, at an era when the human race is no longer in its
infancy, the individual's reason can take in purer sentiments and larger conceptions, derived from discoveries
of those unchangeable laws and principles which sustain
and regulate the stupendous combinations of infinite
harmonies. The Intuition of past generations, like the
totality of the Reason of those now living, gives out
no conflicting testimony on the physical possibility of
an inhabitable sphere or zone of spiritualized matter in
space, called recently the Summer Land.
It is no dream, remember, but a demonstration consummated at the lower end of HIerschel's telescope,
that scattered through tihe measureless expanse of blue
ether, but in the very perfection of order and harmony,
are groups of stars and systems of suns, occupying il




THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE.            9
the heavens positions which are, to the unarmed eye,
covered and filled with only boundless fields of nebule. Scientific astronomy, by its marvelous discoveries,
has thus expanded men's minds with respect to the firmamental magnitudes and planetary splendors of the
material universe.  The cosmogonies of illimitable
space are fast coming into popular education. It is
now conceded, even by anthropomorphists and other
unprogressive religionists, that instead of the earth
being at the centeir of God's universe, and instead of
the doings and omissions of its denizens being the chief
concern and perpetual misery of the entire Trinity, our
sun and its planets belong to the Milky Way not only,
but that the Milky Way itself is merely one community of suns and planets of an infinitude of similar systems and communities that float and sing the songs of
h armony, in the celestial atmosphere of the univercoelum! "Where are we, after all," asks an astronomer,' but in the center of a sphere, whose circumference is
35,000 times as far from us as Sirius, and beyond whose
circuit boundless infinity stretches unfathomed as ever.
In our first conceptions, the distance of the earth from
the sun is a quantity almost infinite. Compare it with
the intervals between the fixed stars, and it becomes no
quantity at all, but only an infinitesimal. Now, when
the spaces between the stars are contrasted with the
gulfs of dark space separating firmaments, they absolutely vanish below us.  Can the whole firmamental
creation, in its turn, be only a corner of some mightier
schemre-a mere nebula itsvlf? Probably Coleridge is
not in error:-' It is not impossible that to some infinitely superior Being the whole universe may be as one
1*




10               A STELLAR KEY.
plain-the distance between planet and planet being
only as the pores in a grain of sand, and the spaces
between system and system no greater than the intervals between one grain and the grain adjacent!"
The stupendous character of the truths thus far
unfolded by astronomy must act beneficially upon the
human mind. But it is my impression that the resolution of the nebula of immensity into millions of suns,
with their attendant minor systems of inhabitable planets and uninhabitable satellites, asteroids, and comets, is,
notwithstanding its amazing, and engrossing, and overwhelming vastness and sublime beauty, nothing more
than a look within the vestibule of the Eternal Temple!
The measureless systems of stars and suns, which roll
and swim and eddy and waltz about in their harmonial
circles, shine upon landscapes more beautiful, and into
eyes more divine than ours!




LOOKING INTO THE HEAYENS.         11
CHAPTER II.
IMMORTAL MIND LOOKING INTO THE HEAVENS.
IN accordance with the imperious law of attractiona law which is as palpably felt and manifested in mind
as in matter-the thinking powers energetically force
their way through space, and find a stand-point from
which they can contemplate the sublimity and reality
of tranis-mundane lands of human existence. The
starry heavens awaken and invite the inmost, intensest
love of immortality. The deep-seeing philosophical
faculties of man's Reason will not, because they cannot, stop with the limitations of the five senses. The
principles of nature flow into the intuitions of the reverential, free, untrammeled student. They teach him
to think industriously, and to march onward and
upward; and if he be conscientious, a devout lover of
what is exactly true and exactly just, Nature will keep
him within the legitimate sphere of logical reasoning.
The Scottish philosopher, who found true appreciation after he had entered the societies of arisen humanity in the starry heavens, Dr. Dick, when considering
the possibility of a higher world of human life, says:
" But there are certain general and admitted principles
on which we may reason, and there are certain phe
nomena and indications of design exhibited in the structure of the universe, from  1':,b certain,ror...1 --
clusions may be deduced l:.




12               A STELLAR1 KEY.
do not intend to proceed, nor to indulge in vain conjecture."
From the magnitude and harmonious arrangements
of the stellar universe, the philosopher derived conclusions, that, on the planets in space, which circle around
their parent suns, other persons like ourselves really
could and do exist. His enlarging thoughts and figures
are: "If this earth, which ranks among the smaller
globes of our system, contains such an immense number
of living bodies (30,000,000,000,000), what must be the
number of sentient and intellectual existences in all the
worlds to which we have alluded! We are assured, on
certain data, that 2,019,100,000,000 worlds may exist
within the bounds of the visible universe; and, although
no more beings should exist in each world, at an average, than on our globe, there would be the following
number of living inhabitants in these worlds, 60,573,000,000,000,00,000,000,,000; that is, sixty quadrillions,
five hundred and seventy-three thousand trillions, a
number which transcends human conception."
"We would now ask, in the name of all that is
sacred," continues this philosopher, "whether such
magnificent manifestations of Deity ought to be considered as irrelevant in the business of religion, and
whether they ought to be thrown completely into the
shade, in the discussions which take place on religious
topics, in the assemblies of the saints. If religion consists in the intellectual apprehension of the perfections
of truth, and in the moral effects produced by such an
apprehension, shall we rest contented with a less glorious idea of God than his works are calculated to afford?
hosed to insinuate that the




LOOKING INTO THE HEAVENS.          13
views above stated are above the level of ordinary comprehensions, and founded too much on scientific considerations, to be stated in detail to a common audience.
To any insinuations of this kind it may be replied, that
such illustrations as those to which we have referred
are more easily comprehended than many of those abstract discussions to which they are frequently accustomed; since they are definite and tangible, being
derived from those objects which strike the senses and
imagination."
The far-stretching powers of the human mind appear
grandly in the contemplations of this mountain philosopher.  How energetically did his thinking faculties
grasp the fundamental idea of an open intercourse between the inhabitants of the two worlds! " Whether
we may ever enjoy an intimate correspondence with
beings belonging to other worlds, is a question which.
will frequently obtrude itself on a contemplative mind.
It is evident that, in our common state, all direct intercourse with other worlds is impossible. The law of
gravitation, which unites all the worlds in the universe
in one grand system, separates man from his kindred
spirits in other planets, and interposes an impassable
barrier to his excursions to distant regions, and to his
correspondence with other orders of intellectual beings.
But in the present state he is only in the infancy of his
being;- he is destined to a future and eternal state of
existence, where the range of his faculties and his connections with other beings will be indefinitely expanded. 6 A wide and boundless prospect lies before him,'
and during the revolution of interminable duration, he
will, doubtless, be brought into contact and correspond



14               A STELLAR KEY.
ence with numerous orders of kindred beings, with
whom he may be permitted to associate on terms of
equality and of enduring friendship. But should the
laws of the physical system, and the immense distances
which intervene between the several worlds, prevent
such associations as I have now supposed, there may be
another economy, superior to the physical, which may
consist with the most extensive and intimate intercourse
of all rational and virtuous beings.  There may be a
spiritual economy established in the universe, of which
the physical structure of creation is the basis, or platform, or the introductory scene in which rational beings
are trained and prepared for being members of the
higher order of this celestial or intellectual economy.
It appears highly probable that the first introduction
of every rational creature into existence is on the scene
of a physical economy."
Thus, naturally and philosophically, the free reason
of man works at something approximating to the celestial truth of an inhabitable belt, the Summer Land, so
gloriously demonstrated in this more favored age and
receptive country. In one place this philosopher exclaims: " Oh, could we wing our way with the swiftness
of a seraph, from sun to sun, and from world to world,
until we had surveyed all the systems visible to the
naked eye, which are only as a mere speck in the map
of the universe-could we, at the same time, contemplate the glorious landscapes and scenes of grandeur
they exhibit-could we also mingle with the pure and
exalted intelligences which people those resplendent
abodes, and behold their humble and ardent adorations
oftheir Almighty Maker, their benignand condescending




LOOKING INTO THE HEAVENS.         15
deportment toward one another — each esteeming another better than himself'-and all united in the bonds
of the purest affection, without one haughty or discordant feeling-what indignation and astonishment would
seize us on our return to this obscure corner of creation."
Thus, dimly, but energetically and assuredly, a profound belief in the wondrous system of the relationship
and sympathy between the terrestrial and celestial
spheres of existence, burns its way deeply into the
thinking powers of men's minds. A mighty and mysterious unity of plan is revealed, with boundless diversities and orderly perturbations, all moving onward together through the ever-deepening depths of infinitude,
teaching the human mind reverentially to look up,
contemplate, and unfold in wisdom and love.
But inasmuch as it is not the object of these chapters
to recount the evidences of immortality; the reader is
referred, for a full investigation of man's efforts to
satisfy his mind on the subject of a future life, to the
Great Harmonia, Yol. V., Part III., wherein both the
inferential and the positive evidences are revealed to
the thinking faculties.




16               A BTELLAR KEY.
CHAPTER III.
DEFINITION OF SUBJECTS UNDER CONSIDERATION.
To every intelligent, rational, existence-loving mind,
the question naturally and plainly occurs: " Is there a
substantial world for human beings to live in after
death."
Hope and faith give light and peace to minds of fine
sentiments and intuitive sensibilities. But to the hardheaded and sensuous positive thinker, the light of
"hope" is valued as only an ignis fatuus, and tile
peace of 6 faith " as the delusive dream of weak and
idle minds. Beautiful as is faith, and comforting as is
hope, to those to whom these internal evidences of
immortality are sufficient, they have no weight with
those who look upon the universe as a mechanism
developed by no intelligence outside of the inherent
principles of life and motion. It is to meet the needs of
this class, especially, that the evidences will be unfolded
and weighed under several distinct heads:FIRST. The Possibility of Summer Land in the
heavens;
SECOND. Its Probability in the structure of the Universe;
THIRD. Its Certainty, as demonstrated by the arrangement and order of the Stars;
FoURTHI Its Formation, in the shape of a stratified
belt of matter;




DEFINTION OF SUBJECTS.            17
FIFTH. Its Constitutiorn of materials drawn from the
inhabited planets;
SIXTH. Its Location among the systems and constellations in the sky.
Under the impression that, with the positive philosophers of our day, all clairvoyant testimony would be
invalid, I am constrained, in order to prosecute the
design of this work, to proceed wholly from an inductive stand-point. There is an inherent force in truth,
however, which carries it straight and triumphantly
into man's understanding, if it is so fortunate as to be
presented free from the cumbrous and imposing superstitions and embarrassing atheistic logic of the times.
The august and harmonious temple of the universe, if
entered by man witlh a reverential love of truth in his
heart, is sure, though slowly, to open mansion after
mansion, and glory after glory, to the welcomed visitor.
All minds sincerely desirous of true knowledge, can
seek and find it in those harvest-fields of the celestial
realm, which stretch away, and are lost to the imagination, but not to the logical reason, beyond suns and stars
in the boundless blue. And it is to aid such minds in
their faithful searchings, that these chapters are now
written and submitted.




1S~ A STELLAR KEYt,
CHAPTER IV.
THE POSSIBILITY OF THE SPIRITUAL ZONE.
IN this chapter it is proposed to approach the subject
from the outermost rim of the wheel of inductive reasoning. The subject under investigation is embodied
in the following affirmation: THERE IS AN INHABITABLE
ZONE, OR A CIRCULAR BELT OF REFINED AND STRATIFIED
MATTER IN THE HEAVENS WHICH RECENTLY IAS BEEN
DENOMINATED " THE SUMMER ILAND."
The possibility of the existence of this material belt
in the Stellar Universe is to be considered, in this part
of our work, as though there was no such a power as
C' clairvoyance," and no such manifestations as "6 spiritual."  All evidences, therefore, however irresistible
and sacred to those who believe in these realities, are,
in this stage of our inquiry, to be "ruled out," as not
valid to the positivists and inductive reasoners who, we
are now supposing, compose the honorable assembly of
rigid investigators before us.
The name of "l Man " was, I, think, derived firom
certain Greek roots which signify "to spring up,9 " to
look up," or to grow and rise upward. Therefore many
ages ago the Greeks, inspired by the genius of truth,
made the discovery that man is organized for progression, which is the," real" meaning of the word " Man."
Accordingly, if men would be true men, they must, in
the language of Kepler, " think the thoughts of God




THE SPIRITUAL ZONE.             19
after hinm." Such thinking, which is the grandest attainment of education, the most divine and ennobling consummation of deep and methodical reasoning, is possible
only to those who think and reason in harmony with
the facts of Science and the>fixed principles of Nature.
Superficial high-mindedness, or the positiveness of
ignorance and the pride of knowledge, seal the soul to
the influx of God's Spirit and Wisdom. A heart that
can love truth, as fast as the honest reason discerns it,
and a conscience that will firmly and steadily steer life's
barque in harmony with such feeling and such conviction, are vast riches to their possessor. The overarching
heavens come very near, in their gracious light and
serene beauty, to the mind and heart that is attuned to
their unchangeable ways.   Brightness, penetration,
celerity, calmness, and comprehensiveness are some of
the characteristics of the Stellar Universe.  To think
the thoughts of God after him," would be, in astronomy, thinking in accordance with the interior forces
and the harmonious manifestations thereof in the visible
universe. Dull minds sleep behind dull senses; but
star-eyed persons possess minds shining full of heavenly
splendors.
But it is not possible, for manifold causes of a purely
extrinsic character, that all minds should come in immlediate rapport with the fundamental or primitive founts
of knowledge. Hence, in the words of a modern scholar:
" We must try to get the best of Greece and of Rome,
by rapid study of the genius of the languages, and. by
grasping the wealth of the literatures; and what we
have no time to get by minute study of the originals,
we must seek by lectures of erudite scholars and by




20               A STELLAR KEY.
reading. In our want of time to seek knowledge in
all the old fields, it is a consolation to know that the
treasures of the ancient languages float down the stream
of time, and are lodged in the new literatures. Goethe
and Lessing, in Germany, were almost as much Greeks
as if they had lived with Pericles at Athens. Next to
having read all of Cicero, is to read Forsyth's Life of
Cicero; or all of Epictetus, is to be familiar with Higginson's translation; or all of Antoninus, is to know
Long's paraphrase... A great change has come;
the world has moved forward; the nations have come
closer together; modern languages have become necessary to the intelligent citizen for travel, trade, and
acquaintance with the world's affairs and thoughts.
" And then, how wonderful the rise and progress of
science in these.last fifty years. Astronomy stood
almost alone as a science in the last century. Chemistry was breaking out of its chrysalis, the old Alchemy,
and crude thoughts of cosmogony, and of the plants and
animals, made a chaos of knowledge, void and formless.
And now think for one moment of all these sciences
that have presented such various and interesting fields
of inquiry and thought; each one so vastly enlarging
and enriching our life, and each opening a new pathway to the mysterious agencies of God's creation and
providence."
We ask the world's thinkers and scholars to step out
of the old into the " new pathway " that leads to the
" mysterious agencies of God's creation and providence."
But science can know nothing of " the mysterious
agencies of God."  WThat it knows, it knows; all the
rest is speculation. But by speculations and calcula



THE SPIRITUAL ZONE.              21
tions based upon what science knows, a world of knowledge has been acquired in astronomy, in chemistry, in
geology, &c. Why, upon the same principles of inductive reasoning and inferential conjecture, may not
greater results be obtained in higher departments of the
universe? Astronomers, chemists, geologists, ethlnologists, and other physicists, have obtained some of their
best results by following perturbations, slight effects,
hints, and signs, and the world does not denounce these
scientists as dreamers and visionaries in the airy realms
of hypotheses; on the contrary, they are justly regarded
and gratefully remembered as well-disciplined mathematicians, as accurate thinkers, as men of profoundest
erudition, and as benefactors of mankind.
The possibity of the existence of the stratified Zone
in the heavens, may be considered with reference to the
structures and locations of the different solar systems
in space. Of course a thing is often esteemed as possible, which is neither certain nor even probable; in
fact, logically, both the improbability and the uncertainty of a matter is implied in its " possibility."  It is
possible that every person on earth may, within one
year, believe in the existence of the stratified Zone;
but it is not remotely probable, and falls infinitely short
of a certainty. When a thing or an event does not
contradict the known laws of the possible, then men
say, " it may be so," or, " it may exist," or, " it may
happen;" but, in so saying, the inprobabilities and the
tnmcertcainties are understood as implied by the primary
admission. There is a possibility that a shower of
falling meteors may occur at ten o'clock this night, or
that a great earthquake will sink the entire western




22                A STELLAB KEY.
continent day after to-morrow; but there is no certainty
of it, and, judging from the usual course of nature,
there is not even " the most distant probability" that
any such earthquake will ever happen on this planet. On
the other hand, it is logical to say, positively, that some
things and events are absolutely " impossible."  Probabilities and certainties are-in such decisions and positive declarations of the self-evident consciousness-left
entirely out of the mind. For example, because Mount
Everest, of the Himalaya range, is twenty-nine thousand
feet high, it is not possible for every other mountain in
the world to report an equal elevation. Nor is it possible for mountains to exist without valleys between
them, or that seas and oceans can exist without depressions in the earth's surface lower than the arable and
populated lands. It is not possible for two halves to
be less or more than the whole. It is not possible that
twice five should be either nine or eleven.
And so men reason about some things and events
that are intrinsically and self-evidently impossible, and
concerning other things and events that are intrinsically
and self-evidently possible, while probabilities and certainties are infinitely more remote from the admissions
of the logical intellect.




THE ZONE IS POSSIBTLE           23
CHAPTER V.
THE ZONE 13 POSSIBLE IN THE VERY NATUTEE OF THINGS,
LOOKING into the sky, and carefully examining the
form of the planets in the stellar sphere, you remark,
first of all, that tie shapee of sun and moon and stars is
round. Therefore, the heavenly bodies are properly
called " globes," while the word " planet " signifies to
stray, to wander, or " the traveler."
The Chaldeans, as well as other Oriental nations,
were profound students of the stars. They observed,
naturally enough, just as you do, unaided by telescopes,
and without using astro-mathematics, the existence of
bright spherical bodies, which, because they have never
been known to alter their grand and imposing configurations and relative positions, are called "fixed
stars." These stars, according to the ancients, were
unalterably fixed in the firmament, or firm-built vault,
which, they thought, revolved upon its axis, an inmeasurable hollow sphere rolling diurnally around the
earth, which was by them supposed to be an immovable
fiat and boundless stretch of land and water.
The sphere of the fixed stars-each the throne of some
unintelligible and lawless deity or demon-by revolving
around the motionless earth, produced the effects of rising
and setting among all the heavenly bodies. It is not
strange that the sun was by the ancients supposed to be
the effulgent seat of the master-god, whose almighty fiat




24                     A STELLAR KEYo
THE GREAT CENTRAL SUN.
SUN   0) T~Ii   I'TaItOR    U     ELOVSE.
WISDOM
4/i /i<T';
SUN   OF THI-E INTERIOR     UN[VERSE.
The great original, ever-existing, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent productive power —the Soul of all existences-is throned in a
central sphere, the circumference of which is the boundless universe,
and around which solar, sidereal, and steilar systems revolve, in silent,
majestic sublimity and harmony!  This power is what mankind call
Deity, whose attributes are love and wisdom, corresponding  with the
principles of male and female, positive and negative, sustaining and
creative,




THE ZONE IS POSSIBLE.            25
caused all the marvelous movements among the heavenly bodies, unfolded the spangling panorama of the
skies, emitted thunder and lightning, wheeled the blazing
comet, sent meteoric or shooting stars, and filled the solitudes of immensity with fearful catastrophes; neither is
it strange that the human race, in its infancy, should
have, out of appearance of the heavenly bodies, slowly
elaborated a mythological theology, an astrological system of identifying the birth, life, fortunes, and misfortunes of individuals with the wills and good or evil
conjunctions of conflicting divinities, supposed to inhabit
the different stars in the revolving sphere.
The progression of astronomical science has demonstrated many truths, and exposed many errors, accumulated and held sacred by the ancients. The roundness
of the solar bodies has been settled by science. But
the rotating spheres or circles of fixed stars, and the
imposing illusion that the heavens are in the shape of a
vault, have been perfectly removed by the hand of
astronomical discovery. The Ptolemaic system, which
admitted the notion of an indefinite number'of starry
rings or rotating circles, has not been wholly set aside,
except in so far as the complete celestial mechanism is
concerned; for do we not read in modern astronomy
of the jpaths of the comets, of the orbits of the planets,
and of the track of the sun, and all the stellar family
from west to east, toward some more interior center or
system in the solemn depths of infinitudes? Ptolemy and
Hipparchus of Alexandria, during the reigns of Adrian
and Antonine at Rome, made astronomy a considerable
degree more scientific and reliable; although the groupings and calculations of the planets were based upon the
2




i26               A STELLAR KEY.
cumbersome machinery of diversal circles, in which the
sun, moon, and stars were supposed to be fixed, like so
many bright bodies fastened firmly to a multitude of narrow wheels of immense diameter. This supposition, however, was accepted and urged more by those less talented
men who succeeded Ptolemy, and who, without learning, advocated and degraded his more perfect system.
What you are now asked to observe, is, first, the
spherical form or roundness of the heavenly bodies;
and, second, the circular orbit, or wheel-lice path, in
which they all uniformly revolve. The appearance of
the sun to the natural eye is that of an immense globe
of fire! It is by astronomers said to contain more than
seven hundred times as much matter as all the planets
in our system; some, by careful computation, declare
that the sun is one million and four hundred thousand
times greater in magnitude than the earth. And yet this
earth is so very large, so vast in extent, that ethnologists
and antiquarians are still searching for races and relics
in regions not explored by civilized man.
The sun is round, remember, and that it is rolling in
a vast circular path through the dizzy abysses of space;
so also do all the planets move and roll in the same direc.
tion, from west to east, around the all-controlling sun;
and, what is still more remarkable, in all this sublime
scene of starry harmony and supernal splendor, is, that
all the planets perform their diurnal and annual revolutions on nearly the same plane.
Whilst the essential claracteristics of all planetary
motions, like the form and shape of the planets themselves, are circularity and roundness, it should be borne
in mind that the cometary and meteoric bodies, which




THE ZONE IS POSSIBLE.                      27
THE SUN OF OUR SYSTEM.
The radiant atmosphere of our Sun pervades the whole family of
stars, moons, asteroids, comets, meteoric belts, and, like& a fountain,
feeds all the streams of cosmical matter belonging to our solar system.
Science speculatively teaches that the body of the sun was once as
larg'e as the orbit of the outermost planet.




28                A STELLAR KEY.
are nothing but the bodies of cosmical space, do not
strictly obey the established order and dignity of their
elders and progenitors. These youngsters in the family
of stars wander up and down, here and there, in and
out, now up-stairs and now below in the basement of the
temple —apparently acknowledging no allegiance to any
of the unchangeable ways of the steady-going citizens
of the skies-but run wild in all quarters of the heavens;
moving in parabolas in eccentrically extended ellipses;
sometimes darting along in the direction of the sun and
planets; and at other times twisting in their orbits with
a retrograde motion, but generally at right angles with
the plane of the earth's orbit, and never out of harmony
with the whole. It is, undoubtedly, a sufficient apology
for the conduct of these baby-bodies of space, these
free-going offspring of suns and planets, to remember
that they are yet young. They conduct themselves
naturally, beautifully, and consistently, when their
juvenility is duly considered.
Some venerable and illustrious stars, like comets and
the smaller bodies, are irregular in their motions; yet
all in perfect harmony with the stellar " music of the
spheres."  These irregular motions are often backward,
forming a sort of epicycloidal curve, or in the line of the
star's orbit. But no one star or comet turns or twists
so frequently as the cut represents, which only illustrates the loops that occur; but these loopings and
slight retrograde motions are merely breathing spells in
the lungs of the great system.




THE ZONE IS POSSIBLE.           29
But it is in the heart and sphere of the sun, in the
life of the fixed stars, and in the interior constitution
of the whole stupendous stellar universe, that we are to
look for the inner causes and perfect principles of all
planetary organizations.
What are those causes and principles? What is that
fundamental law which is manifested so plainly in the
shape and revolution of these heavenly bodies?  Suppose that the sun, which contains more than seven hundred times as much matter as all the planets put
together, should be rolled out into a broad band, like
a wide ribbon drawn from  the spool, what do you
imagine would be the natural tendency of the matter?
The first tendency would be to obey its centripetal
motion, its own self-chemical attractions, and return
instantly to its original globular form and condition;
whilst the second tendency would be, to flow out like
an interminable river through infinitude, in obedience
to its centrifigal motion, and in accordance with the
circular revolution it has made, together with all thi
planets, for an eternity of ages.
The sun's matter, thus drawn out into an unbroken
elastic luminous fluid, of the consistence of molten lead
or iron, would form a zone of resplendent and vivifying
beauty surrounding the whole heavens, totally invisible
to the unaided eye, and almost too attenuated for detection by the most powerful telescope, and yet in that
rotating solar belt there would be one million and four
hundred thousand times more matter than is contained
in the earth's constitution!
If this river of inter-cohesive sun-matter should in
time be reduced in temperature, by passing through the




80                A STELLAR KEY.
resisting interstellar atmosphere, one of two events would
transpire; either the surface of the belt would become
solid like the earth's surface, or the power of cohesion
would be lost, and the zone broken into countless separate masses of nebulous matter, forming a boundless
field of luminous meteors, or cometoids, and filling the
whole solar system with material for periodical storms
of chaotic cosmical vapors-falling within the earth's
atmosphere and the intervals between the planets like
a rain of fire-mist and of burning stars. Scientifically
speaking, the former event is not supposable, because
the solar matter is too gross, and drops too low in the
scale of gravitation, to maintain a continuous stratified
surface; and hence, following the volcanic law, the disruption and formation of sporadic masses, meteorites,
and cometary bodies in space, would be the legitimate
and scientific event.
But now-as to the possibility! It is not going beyond the sphere of facts, obtained by telescopic observation, to suppose the organization of a zone in the
heavens.  We have seen the working of the principle
of globe-building, and that all planetary bodies, either
spheroidal or perfectly round, move through the
heavens in circular paths.  There can be no violation
of this law in higher conditions and finer organizations
of matter. Hence, is it not possible in the nature of
things that a Zone of stratified substance, luminous and
inter-cohesive and circular, may exist.   If you can see
the Zone, as a possibility in the organization of the
universe, then you are prepared to take another step in
this investigation.




VIEWED AS A PROBABILITY.          31
CHAPTER VI.
THE SPIRITUAL ZONE VIEWED AS A PROBABILITYe
ANY THING that is probable comes nearer to human
credence.  A possibility is exceedingly remote and
obscure; whilst a probability is at hand-something
within the mind's reach. The question of the probability of a Summer Land Zone in the heavens can be
considered with more logical success, I think, after we
have enlarged our thoughts and enriched our conceptions, by contemplating the wondrous symmetry and
arraying magnitude of our solar system.
Prof. Nichol, of the University of Glasgow, borrowed
from Sir John Herschel, a thought-enlarging illustration to this effect: Conceive the sun represented by a
globe two feet in diameter; at eighty-two feet distance
put down a grain of mustard-seed, and you have the
size and place of the planet MERCOURY, that bright
silvery point which is generally enveloped in the solar
rays; at the distance of one hundred and forty-two feet
lay down a pea, and it will be the similitude of VENUS,
our dazzling evening and morning star. Two hundred
and fifteen feet from the central globe, place another
pea, only imperceptibly larger-that is Mlan's WORLD(once the center of the Universe!)-the theater of our
terrestrial destinies - the birthplace of most of our'
thoughts! MARS is smaller still-a good pin's headl
being his proper representative, at the distance of three




OUTLINE        VIEW    OF   OUR    SOLAR     SYSTEM,
The expression         / Island Universei   was suggested by
the immense distance of the fixed stars from our Sun and
plpace. See a dliagl^ram on alnoL~otlhe. page.
space. See a diag'ram on another page.




VIEWED AS A PROBABILITY.          33
hundred and twenty-seven feet: the small planets seem
as the least possible grains of sand, about five hundred
feet from the sun; JUPITER as a middle-sized orange,
distant about a quarter of a mile; SATURN with his ring
a lesser orange, at the remoteness of two-fifths of amile;
and the far URANUS dwindles into a cherry, moving in
a circle thlree-quarters of a mile in radius. Such is the
system of which our puny earth was once accounted the
chief constituent,-a system whose real or absolute
dimensions are stupendous, as may be gathered from the
size of the SUN himself-the glorious globe around
which these orbs obediently circle; which has a diameter
nearly four times larger than the immense interval
which separates the MooN from the EARTH.  Compare
this mighty diameter, or the space of nine hundred
thousand miles, with the assumed diameter of two feet;
and the proportion will tell by how many times the
supposititious orbit of Uranus should be enlarged! The
dimensions of the system surpass all effort to conceive
or embody them; and yet a wider knowledge of the
Universe shows that they belong only to our first or
smallest order of INFINITIES.
Prof: Kirkwood, of the Washington and Jefferson
College, speaking of our solar system, says: " NEPTUNE
is the most remote known member of the system; its
distance being nearly three thousand millions of miles.
It is somewhat larger than Uranus; has certainly one
satellite, and probably several more.  Its period is
about one hundred and sixty-five years. A cannonball flying at the rate of five hundred miles per hour
would not reach the orbit of Neptune from the sun in
less than six hundred and eighty years. It is proper to
2*




38-               A STELLAR KEY.
remark, however, that all representations of the solar
system by maps and planetariums must give an exceedingly erroneous view either of the magnitudes or distances of its various members. If the earth, for instance,
be denoted by a ball half an inch in diameter, the
diameter of the sun, according to the same scale (sixteen thousand miles to the inch), will be between four
and five feet; that of the earth's orbit, about one thousand feet; while that of Neptune's orbit will be nearly
six miles. To give an accurate representation of the
solar system at a single view is therefore plainly impracticable."'
The vast family of planets rotate harmoniously on
their own axes, each in the performance of its own individual functions and duties, and they also all revolve
as harmoniously around the sun, thus causing the
regular succession of days and nights on each planet,
and the regular coming and going of the four beautiful
and indispensable seasons. But how " various are the
absolute durations of these important periods in the
different bodies!"  The most brilliant imagination can
scarcely embrace the wonderful differences here suggested.  "H ow, for instance," asks an astronomer,
"can that contrast be pictured, which subsists between
the two extreme bodies of our system, URANUS and
MERCURY -the one hurrying through its restless cycle
of seasons in three months, and the other spending on
the same relative change eighty-four terrestrial years?
A tree in  iercury-if such there be-would gatlier
around its pith or axis three hundred and thirty-six of
those well-known circular layers, in a time during
which the sluggish vegetation of Uranus would only




VIEWED AS A PROBABILITY.         35
have deposited one; and a full and burning lifetime,
made up of rapid sparkling joys and acute sorrows,
would, in so close neighborhood of the Sun, be compressed within a space hardly adequate on earth to lead
youth to its meridian-while at that outer confine a
slow pulse and drowsy blood might sustain for centuries
a slumbering and emotionless existence! The question
is further complicated if we refer to the rapid succession of day and night in the remote planets; perhaps
modifying, by the activity it excites, tle comparative
torpidity due to the length of the year.  We can form
no notion of the physiological consequences due to a
recurrence of day and night within the brief period of
nine or ten hours."
In another place the same author says: " We know
that long progress is essential to our planet's destiny;
and surely it is not alone amid the planetary schemenot alone does it undergo the apparently necessary fate
of all beings subject to the empire of time and space.
Granting that every planet has a life of its own-an
interior and self-comprehended principle, by which it is
led through mighty developments, the question recurs,
whether there is unity or connection among these principles-whether the orbs proceed and pass into new
forms, according to similar or related laws-whether,
in short, the system has one central governing principle, a common life running through the whole,
explaining its contrarieties, warming and animatino'
them all, as man's life circulates with his blood?  To
a question so bold, we cannot here give an answer.
Other objects must first be surveyed, especially the seatl
of the power, which, if it exists, is necessarily tl.e SuN.




36               A STELLAR KEY.
"But is LIFEin all these planets? Through all possible schemes, through all conditions of a globe's evolving
organization, is what we call LIFE an inseparable or
essential concomitant? Life, visible or invisible-i. e.,
the sentient and intelligent principle-nay, even, progressive life, a growing and evolving Reason-is doubtless an essential element of the universe; perhaps the
very highest development of any imaginable energy;
such Life may be diffused without limit, may assume
forms and be connected with bodies or centers, of which
man has obtained hitherto only the most confined idea;
but to the fulfilling and realizing of this aim, is it
necessary that small, sentient, self-contained organisms
-worshiping, with few dissents, their peculiar IDOLS
of the tribe, den, forum and theater-shall move over
the surface of each planet  Beautiful the carpeting
which covers vast portions of the earth, a carpeting on
which sorrow often treads, but chiefly joy-now bounding in youth, now placid in manhood, and meditative in
age-but that is not universal! I reflect on historyon the fact that such life seems among the incidents,
the befalling things of our globe's mysterious destiny;
and my mind recurs to solitudes-to its still existing
deserts, which even the patient camel does not enter
without a shudder; to valleys with giant sides, where
the unsightly Cretin, and the frequent glare of idiocy,
speak of formations inhospitable to man. Sovereign
Blanc! Neither is tlhy bare forehead, which not even
a lichen has ever stained, an outcast from the great
scheme of things-uncomprehended, unwarmed by the
world's indwelling Soul!"




EVIDENCES OF ZONE-FORMATIONS.          37
CHAPTER VII.
EVIDENCES OF ZONE-FORMATIONS IN THE HEAVENS.
IN this department of the subject we are impressionally admonished to take the testimony of astronomers,
and of known scientists in other regions of inquiry; so
that the physical or sensuous side of our " spiritual"
question may be amply represented, and all the external
evidences adduced, for the gratification and benefit of
inductive reasoners in general. In future chapters the
deductive or more spiritual evidences and philosophical
arguments will appear; so that, from an innumerable
multitude of facts suggested and principles explained,
the certainty of the celestial Zone may be established;
or, at least, be deemed by the truly scientific a question
worthy of the strictest and most patient investigation.
The illustrious Shelley, in one of his comprehensive
celestial visions, saw beyond the sweep of Lord Rosse's
immense telescope 
" Earth's distant orb appears
The smallest orb that twinkles in the heavens;
Whilst round the chariot's way
Innumerable systems rolled,
And countless spheres diffused
An ever-varying glory."
The probability of the Summer Land Zone, as a
material reality in the Structure and sublime Economy




38                A STELLAR KEY.
of the heavens, will dawn first upon that mind which
rationally understands the causative principles within
the belt-building manifestations of cosmical matter.
On this ring-forming tendency of all atoms in space,
let us take the testimony of astronomers.
And first let us hear from  an astronomical investigator, whose mathematical paper on the Nebular
Hypotheses, appeared in the "American Journal of
Science and Arts" (Vol. XXXVIII. Nov., 1861), and
which has been pronounced as adding something
" new" by several eminent astronomers. The entire
treatise should be consecutively read, in justice to the
arrgument and its author, but for the present purpose a
few extracts will suffice.
The Original CoGndition of -iatter.-Geology has
revealed the fact that it took immense ages of time to
form the earth, and fit it for the habitation of man.
The same science also points somewhat definitely to a
time when the earth was in a highly heated condition. Mathematical science, applied to the problem of,
the earth's conformation, teaches us that the earth has
that form —the asperities of its surface not considered
-which it ought to have if it were in a fluid state
when it assumed its present form.  These facts-to
which we might add the condition of Saturn's ringsseem to'teach that the earth, and in short the whole
Solar System, were once in an aeIiform  state.  An
additional argument in favor of this view, is derived
firom the physical constitution of Comets.
lTe Operations of IIeat.-Philosophers, in their
investigations, have arrived at this general conclusion
respecting the operation of heat, namely, that mechan



EVIDENCES OF ZONE-FORMATIONS.       39ical action develops it, and the greater the action the
greater the heat; and that as soon as heat becomes
sensible, it tends to change the condition of bodies.
This, then, reduces the cause of the primitive gaseous
state of the stellar and planetary worlds to mechanical
action. As the mechanical action becomes less and less,
the operations of heat become less and less potent.
Lotions of different Bodies.-Around the different
centers, matter would accumulate and condense, and
these nuclei, so formed, would revolve around their
common center of gravity. As soon as a rotary motion
had commenced, centrifugal forces would begin to act;
and as the process of cooling continued, the attraction
of gravitation would have a greater control (fori the
tendency of heat is to expand all bodies, and thus to
operate against the attraction of cohesion, and also of
gravitation in the case which we are considering), and
thus the mass would be condensed, and the rotatory
motion thereby increased. Each nucleus would itself
be in a condition very similar to that which at first
existed in the original great fluid mass.
Origin of the Spherical Zone.-A fluid mass which
does not rotate on an axis must ultimately become
spherical in form, whatever be the law of attraction.
But if it have a rotatory motion, it can never become
a sphere, although it may approximate to one in form.
A fluid body which rotates on an axis will be swelled
out at the equator; that is, the particles of matter will
be thrown from the axis of rotation, and there will
consequently be a depression about the poles.
In the case of a homogeneous spheroid there are,
with a slow rotation, two forms of equilibriumn one of




40               A STELLAR KEY.
which is an oblate spheroid of small ellipticity, and the
other is an oblate spheroid of great ellipticity.
Plane of the Zone-Formations.-The primitive solar
spheroid could have only approximated to a symmetrical
form, and to a symmetrical disposition of its materials,
especially in the outer parts. If it were so constituted,
it is difficult to see how it could separate into rings of
much width; but the materials being somewhat heterogeneously distributed, a ring of considerable width
might be thrown off, or rather abandoned.
The invariable plane of the solar system must be the
invariable plane of the primitive solar spheroid, and
that must have coincided approximately with the plane
of the equator.  The first planetary ring abandoned
would have.an inclination to the plane of the equator
nearly the same as that of the principal plane; and
thus the outermost planet of the solar system should
move in an orbit whose inclination is nearly the same
as that of the principal plane of the solar system. By
making as exact a determination as possible, M. Lespiault has found the inclination of the invariable plane
to be 1~ 41'. The inclination of the orbit of Neptune is
1~ 46" 59", the correspondence of these two numbers is
rather remarkable.
The Existence and location of Zones.-Prof. Peirce,
of Harvard University, in his investigation of the problem of the stability of the motions of Saturn's rings,
arrived at the remarkable conclusion that the dynamical equilibrium of the rings is preserved by the sustaining effect of satellites in the very act of perturbation.
He then makes the remark, that the only place in the
Solar System, among the primary planets, where we




EVIDENCES OF ZONE-FORMATIONS.        41
could, from the above conclusions, expect a permanent
ring, is just within the powerful masses of Jupiter and
Saturn.
A Zone Existing for Irnnzmerbble Ages.-Basing
our reasoning on the preceding results, we are led to
the conclusion that under certain conditions-such as
probably exist within the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn
in the Solar System-the abandoned fluid ring may
preserve its form for immense ages, and thus have time
to cool down somewhat and approximate to the condition of an incompressible fluid.... Under certain
conditions-such as Prof. Peirce has found to exist in
the System of Saturn —a ring, or rings, might remain
entire.
Revolutions of the Cosmical Ether.-If there exists
a cosmical ether (as is at present generally admitted), in
order that it may remain -spread throughout universal
space, it is only necessary for it to possess an elasticity
so great that the action of luminous bodies is sufficient to
produce a mechanical action in it that will enable it to
maintain its temperature and fluid condition under all
circumstances. This cosmical ether being material in
its nature, it would necessarily partake of the motion
of those bodies with which it remains in contact for
imnense ages of time.    In the Solar System, the
motion of tie ether around the sun would be in the
general direction of all the planets.
ilarnmzony and cCorressondence throughout the Uhiverse.-Mr. Nasmyth, in the " Annual of Scientific
Discovery," for 1857, says: Every well-trained philosophical judgment is accustomed to observe illustrations
of the most sublime phenomena of creation in the Inost




42                A STELLAR KEY.
minute and familiar operations of the Creator's laws,
one of the most characteristic features of which consists
in the absolute and wonderful integrity maintained in
their action, whatsoever be.the range as to magnitude or
distance of the objects on which they operate.  For
instance, the minute particles of dew which whiten the
grass-blade in early morn, are, in all probability,
mlolded into spheres by the identical law which gives
to the mighty sun its globular form.  It is remarkable
of physical laws, that we see them  operating on every
kind of scale as to magnitude, with the same regularity
and perseverance... Two eddies in a streamn fall
into a mutual revolution at the distance of a couple of
inches, through the same cause that makes a pair of
suns link in mutual revolution at the distance of millions of miles. There is, we might say, a sublime simplicity in this indifference of the grand regulations to
the vastness or the minuteness of the field of their
operations.  We thus may learn, from    the minuter
operations of nature, of those grand revolutions which
we have reason to conclude have taken place in past
ages of duration.
Saturn's Belts an Illustration.-The rings of Saturn
offer a living example of the primitive secondary rings.
They open to us, in a measure, the nature and constitution of the primitive rings, both the primary and
secondary.*
Prof. iirkwood, in his Treatise on Meteoric Astronomy, says that the most probable opinion, based on the
* These extracts from Prof. Trowbridge indicate the information and
speculations extant among scientific men on the formation and existence
of zones, or rings of cosmical matter.




EVIDENCES OF ZONE-FORMATIONS.        43
rescarches of astronomers, is, that Saturn's rings "consist of streams or clouds of meteoric asteroids.  The
zodiacal light, and the zone of small planets between
Mars and Jupiter, appear to constitute analogous
primary rings. In the latter, however, a large proportion of the primitive matter seems to have collected in
distinct, segregated masses."
The same author, speaking of the asteroidal ring
between Mars and Jupiter (which no man's unaided
physical eyes can see), says: " The mean distances of
the minor planets between Mars and Jupiter valy from
2.20 to 3.49.  The breadth of the zone is therefore
20,000,000 miles greater than the distance of the earth
fiom the sun; greater even than the entire interval
between the orbits of Mercury and Mars. Moreover,
the perihelion distance of some members of the group
exceeds the aphelion distance of others. by a quantity
equal to the whole interval between the orbits of Mars
and the earth."'
Although the reader may never have investigated
either of the points developed by the astronomers; yet
now, since they testify to the existence of immense
zones of matter, and that these zones not only continue
unbroken for countless ages, but revolve like the planets,
each on its own gravitational center or mathematical
axis, are you not prepared to admit both the possibility
and the p)robability of a mnore interior reality?  This
scientific external testimony naturally lays a foundation
in the logical judgment for confidence in the existence
of an inner universe of far exceeding beauty and glory.
Althongh at present neither intellectually nor telescopically seen, but being not less within the domain of




44                A STELLAR KEY.,
the rational faculties, yet the honest mind, it seems to
me, cannot but give due weight to facts and principles
of a more interior nature, of which these planetary
formations and revolutions are merely the physical
manifestations.




THE SCIENTIFIO OCERTAINTY.         4
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SCIENTIFIC CERTAINTY OF THE SPIRITUAL ZONE.
IT has been asserted that Spiritualists, as a class, do
not read carefully and investigate thoroughly; that
they are superficial, shallow-minded, and credulous,
believing great things upon little evidence, &c.; but it
yet remains to be determined who are the real embodiments of superficiality, shallowness, and feeble-minded
credulity.
In considering the certainty of the Summer Land, as
a stratified and inhabitable Zone in the bosom of the
Stellar Universe, it becomes necessary to change the
stand-point of the positive philosopher.  He has stood
without the temple, contemplating the phenomenal
display of dynamic forces and spiritual agencies, which
become visible to the eyes of reason when the philosopher explores the inner departments of the Divine
Administration.  In these illustrious days of enlarged
and independent research, when even the great Newtonian doctrine of gravitation or central attraction has
been well-nigh eclipsed by the discovery of opposite
powers, or magnetic and electrical polarities within and
throughout all matter,-it becomes the true philosopher
to turn from the superficial and phenomenal realm of display, to turn fiomi visible facts to the examination of the
causes and principles behind them, and then to ponder
well the far-reaching and fruitful lessons they leSiti



46                A STELLAR KEY.
mately impart.   Truly has it been remarked that,
isolated, every thing is a mystery. All that we know
depends on the connection of things one with another;
and it is only by contemplating creation as a whole that
we can attain true conceptions of its parts. This is
indeed the highest exercise of the intellect, and that
which more than aught else tends to develop and
expand it. Even the dreamy eyes of Tennyson recognized the truth, that
"Through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the sun."
The mental condition of brightness, of calmness, of
impartiality, which is alone adapted to the pursuit and
discovery of truth, was forcibly put by Prof. Wilkinson, of London, Eng., in the introduction to one of his
admirable books:" Incredulity of a fact, I take it, is that widespread
weakness of the human mind, which is observed in
men who have perfected their opinions, and have no
room for learning any thing more. A new fact to them
is just one above the number that is convenient or
necessary for them, and had they the power of creating,
or of preventing creation, the inconvenient fact should
not have existed.  Indeed, if admitted into their completed system,'the little stranger' would destroy it
altogether, by acting as a chemical solvent of the
fabric!
"But this is not the mode of the searcher after truth;
and in determining the important question which it is
intended to submit for consideration, I would rather
forget much that I have been taught, or find it all




THE SCIENTIFIC CERTAINTY.        47
unsound, than I would reject one single circumstance
which I know and recognize as a truth. In all the questions that can by possibility be mooted, whether philosophical or otherwise, that theory is alone admissible
which will explain all the attendant phenomena and
observed facts, and which is, moreover, consistent with
the nature of man, and the world of matter and of
mind with which he is connected.
"How true it is, that'there are more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy,'
and yet how seldom is this great truth remembered at
the right time! Although natural facts, being based,
as they are, upon, and the products of Divine laws,
never change, how long it is before they are recognized
and adapted into our little self-formed systems; and
with what throes and agonies have their acknowledgments invariably been attended! How much easier to
say,'Impossible!' and to reject the fact, than to have
to reconstruct a new theory which shall embrace it, and
in which it can find its home! Disbelieve, therefore,
after inquiry, if you see cause, but do not begin with
disbelief:"
What we now ask is, that you be as truly philosophical as you have been sensuously scientific, and
thus honestly examine interior causes, and weigh
dynamic principles, just as you have observed effects,
and reasoned from one set of appearances to another set
of appearances. The profoundly philosophic Swedenborg, whose inductive reasonings shine'effulgently
even through the mazes of his multitudinous spiritual
experiences, in his Arcana Celestia, 5084, says: " It
is a fallacy of sense merely natural, that there are




48                A STELLAR KEY.
simple substances, which are monads and atoms, for
whatever is within the external sensual, this the natural
man believes, that it is such a thing or nothing. It is a
fallacy of sense merely natural, that all things are of
nature and from nature, and that indeed in purer or
interior nature there is something which is not apprehended; but if it be said, that within or above nature
there is the spiritual and celestial, this is rejected, and it
is believed that unless it be natural, it is nothing. It is
a fallacy of sense, that the body alone lives, and that its
life perishes when it dies; the sensual does not at all
apprehend that the internal man is in single things of
the external, and that the internal man is within nature
in the spiritual world: hence neither does he believe,
because he does not apprehend, that he shall live after
death, unless he be again clothed with a body. Hence
there is a fallacy of sense, that man can no more live
after death than the beasts, by reason that these also
have a life in many respects similar to the life of man,
only that man is a more perfect animal. The sensual
does not apprehend, that is, the man who thinks and
concludes from the sensual, that man is above the
beasts and has a superior life in this, because he can
think, not only concerning the causes of things, but
also concerning the Divine, and by faith and love be
conjoined with the Divine, and also receive influx
thence, and appropriate it to himself, so that in man,
because there is given a reciprocal, there is given reception, which is nowise the case with the beasts.  It is a
fallacy thence, that the living principle itself with man,
which is called the soul, is only something ethereal, or
flamy, which is dissipated when man dies; and that it




THE SCIENTIFIC CERTAINTY.          49
resides either in the heart, or in the brain, or in some
part thereof, and that hence it rules the body as a
machine; that the internal man is in single things of
the external, that the eye does not see from itself but
from that internal man, nor the ear hear from itself but
from that, the sensual man does not apprehend."
3




60                A STELLAR KEY
CHAPTER IX.
A VIEW OF THE WORKING FORCES OF THE UNIVERSE.
ASTRONOMY began with solid Crystalline Spheres;
then the theory of Epicycles was adopted; after which
Descartes introduced the Vortices; then the discovery
of Gravitation arrived through Newton; and now, within all and above all, the world is enriched with Polarization, by which chemical, electrical, magnetic, and
even mechanical forces, are wedded by beautiful reciprocations and most intimate relationships; and thus
the whole subject of the working forces of the universe
becomes more than ever attractive and fruitful.
There are two most important discoveries in science:
First, the universal persistency and indestructibility of
Force; and second, the interpolarity and universal
convertibility of Force. The first, in modern scientific
phraseology, is termed " the conservation of force," and
the last " the correlation of force "-teaching the divine
lesson that all forces, as well as all forms in the Universe,
are immortal sisters and brothers.
From these splendid discoveries, the illustrations of
which need not be given here, we obtain the stellar key
to the Summer Land. Force is as substantial, as real,
as material, as matter itself; nay, more, the materialism
of matter melts away and utterly disappears in the
spiritualism of intelligent principles! Dr. Joule, of
England, has demonstrated the mechanical equivalence




FORCES OF THE'UNIVERSE.          51
of heat, which, hitherto in science, has been considered
material, but is now seen to be only another form of
force.  Nature's Divine Revelations, published long
before these discoveries, teach the materiality of
"Fire," " Heat," " Light," "Electricity," "Magnetis,"' "Motion," " Life," " Sensation," " Intelligence,"
and, highest of all, " Spirit."  And for teaching such
"materialism," the whole religious and literary world
was provoked to opposition and ridicule. But, according to progressive law, Prof. Faraday demonstrates the
material immateriality, so to speak, of electricity, and
shows the intimate relationships and equivalence of
electrical and chemical forces; and very soon after it
was found by Dr. Joule that " a pound weight falling
through 772 feet, or 772 pounds falling through 1 foot,
and then arrested, produce sufficient heat to raise one
pound of water 1 degree of Fahrenheit."' Thus a
mechanical force is demonstrated as coming from what
has been regarded as pure immateriality. And chemical and magnetic experiments, equally unquestionable,
have established the spirituo-materiality of those elements which have been solong termed " imponderables."
The next step must be into the realm whence forces
emanate; into the very sacred presence of Intelligence,
Will, Thoughts, Ideas, SPIRIT!  And these, too, will
have their equivalence and conversion into electrical
force, into chemical force, into magnetic force, and into
mechanical or lowest force; for SPIRIT IS SUBSTANCE;
and every thing is rooted and grounded in Spirit; and
so those extreme idealists, who have sentimentally and
dogmatically abolished from the Summer Land all
materiality, will be convinced that i' something" could




52               A STELLAR KEY.
not have proceeded from " nothing;" which discovery,
doubtless, will greatly relieve them from many painful
thoughts of possible annihilation.
Viewing the outlying and interior universes, with
these new discoveries for spectacles, do you not apprehend a new scale of conservative and correlative forces?
How does the following scale look? Begin at the
bottom, with No. 1, and rise progressively, as a tree
grows from its roots upward; and then, having reached
the topmost point of observation, let us pause and
meditate:
9. DEITTY.                The lowest point
8. IDEAS.              of departure, No. 1,
which is the plane
7. PRINCIPLES.         of the " Solids," is
the point where the
6. LA   VTS.           highest  substances
5 1ESSENCES.           and slowest motions
are most demon4. ETHERS.              surated; whilst the
3 VrAPpORS.            highest point attain~oa V ~ A u      aable, No. 7, is where
2. FLUIDS.             the lowest substance
is most exalted, and
1. SOLIDS.             in the highest possible state of motion and energy. No. 7 is the positive
pole, and No. 1 the negative pole, of a perfect universe.




FORCES OF THE UNIVEPRSI.           53
e     e./  The philosophy of science, as
m   * /I modernly stated, is, practically,
t hat " matter, viewed separately
~ /c ifrom force, is nothing."     In other
words, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical effects, &., are
only different modes of motion or
action of the same force. Different
/         ~motions are said to be nothing
~/  ~    but different expressions of force;
transferred, in degrees of greater
or less intensity, from one point to
another point in space.  It is by
one popular scientific authority
11    urged  that  " electricity, magf'     netism, and chemical affinity are'.: O correlates, and change readily into
X2 p-  each other without loss of quantity
of the original Force.    These
\  ^~^-~_ forces,'" he says, " or rather this
force, since all are convertible, is
the source of the delusion we are
under with respect to matter,
when we say we see and feel it.
For what do we see? Light, which
is force, photographs a minute inverted image on the bottom of the
eye-on the retina, which acting
on the brain produces consciousd    \   I ness of an object. All that is
\ known to us is the mental concepQ * \R tion —the reality of which our, * *   conception is composed, is Force.




54                A STELLAR KEY.
It is evident there is no matter here. But surely we
feel matter if we do not see it! The sense of Feeling
is mere repulsion-resistance to motion. "When we
speak of matter as subtle, or as solid, liquid, or aeriform,
we simply mean that it presents more or less resistance
to motion.  When the question arises,' says J. S. Mill,
whether something which affects our senses in a peculiar way, as for instance whether Heat or Light, or
Electricity, is or is not matter, what seems always to
be meant is, does it offer any, however trifling, resistance to motions If it were shown that it did, this
would at once terminate all doubt.'
But when we speak of either matter or force we
speak only of the external cause of our sensations and
ideas, and these tell us nothing of the real nature or
essence of either; why not then continue to use the
term matter, as heretofore? We answer, because the
more general term force may include, and does really
include, both what has hitherto been called Matter and
Spirit also. We are told that'Force viewed separately
from matter is nothing.' I think it more correct to say
that matter viewed separately from force is nothing,
because we know that force passes into or changes into
mind, as heat into light, and we thus include both sides
of creation-Matter and Spirit. Force, in its different
modes of action as Light, Heat, Electricity, Galvanism,
Chemical Affinity, Attraction and Repulsion, is sufficient to produce half the phenomena around us. Life
and Mind, which are correlates of Force, or other modes
of its action, are sufficient to produce the other half.
There is but One simple, primordial, absolute Force,
with varying relations and conditions. The modes of




FORCES OF THE UNIVERSE.          55
Force or Effects now in existence are neither more nor
less than such as have previously existed, changed only
in form. They have not merely acted upon each other,
according to the common supposition with respect to
matter, BUT HAVE CHANGED INTO EACH OTHER. This will
be found to be a very important distinction. Each
change is a new creation of something which in that
form or mode has never existed before-a new life, and
as it passes into another form or mode, a new death —'nothing repeats itself, because nothing can be placed
again in the same condition: the past is irrevocable.'
And may we not add, irrecoverable."
But while these philosophers are on the broad road
that leadeth to aforcible annihilation of " Solids," they
will discover, all of a sudden, in the straight and narrow way, that the universe is essentially dual; and that
the manifestations of force are only different forms or
modes of a persistent and indestructible materiality, or
the varying changes of an eternal substance, which is
negatively, MATTER, and, positively, MIND-the two
forms or conditions of the one unitary central Reality.
The universal doubleness or duality of things is a
demonstration of what is immutably true of the Central Whole.
The conservation and correlation of Forces, as the
results in philosophic science are now denominated,
require the admission that No. 7 and No. 1 in the scale,
together with all the numbers between, are nothing but
different forms or modes of a principle called " Force."
Whereas, in accordance with our light on this subject,
No. 7 comprehends and includes No. 1, as well as all
the ascending numbers; but it is not possible that




56                A STELLAR KEY.
either should become the other, except in degree, and
through the unceasing processes of spiral progression.
Expressed in
//Jy 1'I^ (.GD   pure Spirit.
GOD.
MOTIIER FATHER       IDE AS.    Manifested in
Love Wisdom                    pure Reason.
an d  and        -
~'WVisdom. Love.
Wisdom.  ove.              ( Declared in. -— L a ~rv r T   PRINCIPLES. form of uniVWILL       A                 versal Power.
~ IDEAS.
Demonstrated
LAWS.     in the form of
Force.
PRINCIPLES.
ESSEN cES. { Brought out in
LAN'WS.SENS.                  Magnetism.
Come in the
ESSENCES.             ETHERS.   shape of Electricity.
ETHERS.
~ETHSERS. ~ ~  VAPORS.   Appear in At-.   mospheres.
VAPORS.
The  universal
PLUIDS.    expression  is
FLUIDS.                         ater
~~SOLI~SOLIDS.          Manifested i
SOLIDS.                       the Earth.
Perhaps it would appear plainer if the scale were
expressed as follows:



FORCES OP TEI        UNIVERSE.                   57
The most perfect
SPIRIT-GOD;         *? conception contains both Mother and Father.
J.~a~   I             ( Both  Love and
CAUSES.                   R EEASON-IEAS;                Wisdom, contain 
o~                         1           all  impersonal
principles of' God.
POWER-PRINCIPL;       expressions  of
POWER- LGod's universal
Ideas.
The special mnethFORCE-LAW-S;                   ods of action of
Ideas and Principles.
The vitalic ntter-.      MAGNETISM-EssiENoE r           ances of Ideas,
EFFECTS.                                            7   Principles,  and
Laws.
The universal medium   for  the
~ELEC~TRICIT-ET      i  manifestation of
ELECTRICITY —ETHEBrS;, ImaIdeas, Principles,
j Laws, and Essences.
rThe purifyino laboratory through
which flow the
ATMOSPHERE-VAPORs;             effects of Ideas,
Principles, Laws,
Essences,  and
Ethers.
C The viaduct for
the transmission,~                                     of the slowing
ULTIMATES.      i        WATER-FLUIDS;                  motions of every
substance   and
force in the universe.
The lowest condi
I tion of Substance
and the slowest
utterance of
EARTH-SOLIDS;                  Ideas, Principles,
Laws, Essences,
Ethers,'Vapors,
and Fluids.
It may not be deemed inappropriate to present still
another scale and statement. The subject may possibly
be   brought yet closer to, the common              understanding.
3$




58                 A STELLAR KEY.
We will give the genesis of the world-building descension of the Divine Substance, thus:9. GOD. 
3. Vapors.          2. Fluids.
8. Ideas.
o
7. Principles.       4. Ethers.
6. Lawgs.         5. Essences.         1. Solids.
The plane of Solids is reached by the continuous
degrees of descending action of the primordial positive
Powers. Although these degrees appear dissimilar and
discreted, or separated by impassable barriers of wholly
dissimilar parts of the causative  Energy; yet the
acknowledged sovereign law of convertibility or correlation of forces and substances, must convince the
rational intelligence that "discrete degrees," in the
absolute sense, are impossible in a universe constructed
upon an infinite number of inseparable affinities.
In the amazing magnitude of our subject, so opulent
of variety and so fruitful in thought, the mind is constantly liable to lose the links of the argument.  The
vagueness of the hints about resolving all matter into




FORCES OF THE UNIVERSE.          59
force, is, of itself, sufficient to perplex and fatigue the
non-scientific understanding. But calmness of brain
will keep the thinking faculties in receptive condition.
Of God, Spinoza says: 1' He is the Universal Being,
of which all things are the manifestations." HIegel also
defines God as the' Being," or, perhaps, in philosophic
language, as the'Central Causation."  Huxley says
that " every form is force become visible; a form of
rest is a balance of forces; a form undergoing change is
the predominance of one over others." In a more reverential temper Prof. Tyndall says: " We know no more
of the origin of force than of the origin of matter;
where matter is, force is, for we only know matter
through its forces." In his very scholarly work on
Heat, he grandly put the whole question thus:" The discoveries and generalizations of modern
science constitute a poem more sublime than has ever
yet been addressed to the imagination. The natural
philosopher of to-day may dwell amid conceptions which
beggar those of Milton. So great and grand are they,
that in the contemplation of them a certain force of
character is requisite to preserve us from bewilderment.
Look at the integrated energies of our world-the stored
power of our coal-fields, or winds and rivers, our fleets,
armies, and guns. What are they? They are all generated by a portion of the sun's energy, which does not
amount to one thousand three hundred millionth part
of the whole. This is the entire fraction of the sun's
force intercepted by the Earth, and we convert but a
small fraction of this fraction into mechanical energy.
Multiplying all our powers by millions of millions, we
do not reach the sun's expenditure. And still, notwith



60                A STELL A  KEY.
standing this enormous drain, in the lapse of human
history we are unable to detect a diminution of his store.
Measured by our largest terrestrial standards, such a
reservoir of power is infinite; but it is our privilege to
rise above these standards, and to regard the sun himself as a speck in infinite extension, a mere drop in the
universal sea. We analyze the space in which he is
immersed, and which is the vehicle of his power. We
pass to other systems and other suns, each pouring forth
energy like our own, but still without infringements of
the law, which reveals immutability in the midst of
change, which recognizes incessant transference, conversion, but neither final gain nor loss. This law generalizes the aphorism of Solomon, that there is nothing new
under the sun, by teaching us to detect everywhere,
under its infinite variety of appearances, the sacme primeval force. To nature nothing can be added; from
nature nothing can be taken away; the sum of her
energies is constant, and the utmost man can do in
the pursuit of physical truth, or in the application of
physical knowledge, is to shift the constituents of the
never-varying total. The law of conservation rigidly
excludes both creation and annihilation. Waves may
change to ripples, and ripples to waves-magnitude may
be substituted for number, and number for magnitudeasteroids may aggregate to suns, suns may resolve themselves into fiorae and faune and fiorse and faunce melt
into air-the flux of power is eternally the same, it rolls
in music through the ages, and all terrestrial energythe manifestations of life as well as the display of phenomena-are but modulations."
The application and weight of all this scientific testi



FORCES OF THE UNIVERSE.            61
mony will be seen and felt when we come to a sum up
the evidence."  A few more points must be first made
clear to reason. According to our scale the materialist
might say: " Mind, in its slowest and lowest condition,
is matter; and the reverse, matter, in its loftiest form
of motion and highest condition, is mind." But this is
not our meaning; nor is it true, in any logical sense.
Our philosophy is, that the universe is a two-fold unity
-two eternal manifestations of two substances, which,
at heart, are One, but eternally twain in the realms of
Cause and Effect. In the absence of better words,
these two Substances we term Matter and Mind-interchangeable, convertible, essentially identical, eternally
harmlonious, wedded by the polarities of positive and
negative forces.
Recalling our scale of nine steps in the ascending and
descending processes of Mind and Matter, you will
perceive that " Essence " is the connecting' link"
between the Positive and the Negative hemispheres,
thus:POSITIVE.     PASSIVE.       NEGATIVE.
1.  2.    8.    4.    5.     6.    7.   8.   9.
GOD, IDEAS, PRINOIPLES, LAWS, ESSENCES, ETHERS, VAPORS, FLUIDS, SOLIDS.
The region of " Essences" is the region of' magnetisms."  This, then, is the true "link" in the chain,
which unites the positive side or 6 mind"' to the "negative" side or' matter;"5 but, in a finer analysis, it
will be found more correct to term  matter and mind
" Spirit," with two forms of manifestation; thus reliev



62                A STELLAR KEY.
ing  " matter" of the epithet of " grossness," and
reclaiming a mind" from its long exilement in the awful
solitudes of unapproachable immateriality.
Let us recapitulate, and thus ascertain the information obtained:
1. The rotzndity of all bodies in space;
2. The circularity of the motions of all bodies;
3. The existence of zones in the planetary organization;
4. The harmony of relationship between the exterior
and interior universes;
5. The polarity of all forms and forces in nature;
6. The descent of Spirit to Earth, and the ascent of
Earth to Spirit.
7. The eternity and the unity of both hemispheres of
the univerccelum.
Now, in order to ascertain the possibility, the probability, and the certainty of the Summer Land Zone, we
must logically follow Nature's pathway from the region
of causes to the region of effects. Her unalterable code is
plainly and universally indicated, namely, -forms
visible are effects which flow from correspondcing causes
invisible. A man's body, for example, is the effect of
an interior organizing, vivifying, sustaining, spiritual
individuality. It elaborated his brain, his heart, his
organs, his senses, and indeed all parts of his physical
temple; although each part may have been modified,
and generally is modified and twisted more or less by
parental instrumentalities and circumstantial influences
both before and after birth.
Now apply this principle )to the organization of the
vast Stellar Universe. What gave to matter the uni



FORCES OF THE UNIVERSE.           63
versal tendency to form globes?-to roll out into inmense zones?-to stratify and continue for innumerable
ages as revolving belts?-to move in circular paths
through the solitudes of immensity? There is but one
answer: The spiritual universe is composed of globes,
of zones, and of belts, which move harmoniously in
wavy circles of causation through the vaster, deeper,
higher, more interior heavens of unimaginable infinitude.  Men look through telescopes, and discern
nothing but the outermost materialized garments of
hidden corresponding spiritualized spheres of light,
warmth, beauty, fertility, peace, progression, and happiness. There is just as much certainty that the Summer
Land exists as that your mind exists; for it exists and
your mind exists upon the one eternal law of cause and
effect. Your body is a demonstration of an interior
antecedent corresponding formative individuality; so
the solar system exists, a demonstration of an interior
antecedent corresponding formative spiritual universe.




064                B`A STELLAR KEY,
CHAPTER X.
THE PRINCIPLES OF THE FORMATION OF THE SUMMER
LAND.
THE order of the universe is as perfect as its varieties
are innumerable. The principles engaged in forming
worlds are incessantly engaged in decomposing them.
In no other way can perpetual youth be bestowed upon
the finer bodies and spheres of space. Atoms sufficiently refined to ascend above the mineral compound,
enter into the forms of vegetable life. Vegetation, in
its turn, delegates its finest atoms to enter and build up
the animal kingdom.  The most refined animal atoms
enter into and support human bodies. And the most
refined particles of human bodies, which are not
required to construct and support the " garment of
immortality," ascend to form the solids, fluids, and ethers
of that effulgent Zone to which all human beings are
incessantly hastening. Thus the eternal youthfulness,
the healthful and beautiful juvenility, of the spiritual
universe are established and immutably maintained.
And now behold the philosophical, the geometrical, the
musical, the harmonial grandeur and gloriousness of
the beautiful WHOLE:



FORMATION OF THE SUMMER LAND.                            65
GOD.
MOTHER.             FATHER,
SPIRIT 
Pos.  {LOVE & WISDOMI —WILL-WISDOM & LOVi.
MVAT'TERP ( The Fountainl Here atoms receive. -
NMAITT    the omnipotent centrifugal impulsion................
eg-  to go forth.
MATTE R { to go forth.          a.i~. ~.~...........
SPIRIT                             The Highest Summer Land in the Spiritual Universe.
Pos.     MIn this belt all matter is a boundless    -... 
MATTER     rotating ocean of Fire, Heat, Litht, 
Neg.    Electricity, and Magnetism, containing* 
all Forces.                          ~..
SPIoRITs                        A Celestial Inhabited Sphere " Nearer, my God, to Thee.'
The unimaginable ocean of chemical  ~*~~.          o o..
MATTER J substance has cut new channels inl 
Neg.    space; yet all revolving like cohesive... 
( seas of Fire and Force.. 
SPIRTO.                                         A M Iore Interior Suoimer Land.
In this belt of cosmical matter the f.*0* 0 * *     -* 0 *0 * *- ** * 
MAT.T.TR  /vast masses of solar atoms are suf-...
Neg.    ficiently cool to separate, to obey the 
law  of cohesion, and to organize.* *%*.?    0* 0.*'  *  o *'
lsuns.                              I     O o o 
SPIRIT {                                               A Higher Summer Land.
f This is a broad zone of inter-co-   0000000 000000         00 
MATTFR I hesive cometary and meteoric nuclei,. **0 -       * * *   -* *
MATeT.  containing no stratified orbs. It is per-  o o o o  o o o o o o o oo o o
eg.   fectly illustrated by the present con-.  *. 
Idition of Saturn's rings. 
SPIRIT 5
PoS.   (                               The Summer Land, which all enter at death.
f This represents the gorgeous Galaxy f r  o     o o   o  oo
visible in the heavens spanning froml  **..-'' * *''. 
MATTER     northeast to southwest, called "The    ooo o0         c^   o o
Ne".   T Milky Way." Some of its suns are':* * b      o ~   O  *   6~o tO
g  distant more than 19,2S0,000,000,000,ln*,,
aniles. Our sun and planets belong to  * rtl   --     -. 
this belt.         -.      * *,  c'   o' o.'o. o0




66                A STELLAR KEY.
The Spiritual Spheres have been recently termed
Summer Lands, and there are, counting man's earthly
existence the first sphere of spirit life, in all six spheres
in the ascending flight toward Deity, who fills the
Seventh Sphere, and is infinitely greater than millions
of such univercolums as man can conceive.
Observe this universal and unerring law of the Supernal Administration: The Central Positive Power repels
the physical, and at the same moment attracts the
spiritual; therefore the circulation of matter is from
the center outward, whilst spirit travels from the outside toward the center. These two reciprocal processes,
or opposite currents, are incessantly flowing.  The
inconceivable oceans of world-building materials expand
and swell, and pour outwardly from the eternally flowing and inexhaustible Fountain at the center; at the
same time the innumerable multitudes of individualized
spiritual and angelic men, women, and children, from
fil[    ~off all the human-bearing planets in space,
AN~   Ad~ are progressively and irresistibly marching
~%   IB  inwardly toward the great positive attractive.11X^,'Center, and constantly approaching nearer
and nearer the eternal sun-sphere of Father
and Mother!
The formation of the different Summer
~SPW^RE Lands can be seen in the principles which
unrolled like an infinite scroll the suns and
stars of the serene firmament.  Whence
comes the power, asks Prof. Tyndall, on
~:_2~:  the part of the molecules, to compel the
solar energy to take determinate forms? Water may be
raised from the sea-level to a high elevation, and then




FORMATION OF THE JSUMMER LAND.       67
permitted to descend. In descending it may be made
to assume various forms-to fall in cascades, to spirt in
fountains, to boil in eddies, or to flow tranquilly along a
uniform bed. It may, moreover, be caused to set complex machinery in motion, to turn millstones, throw
shuttles, work saws and hammers, and drive piles. But
every form of power here indicated would be derived
from the original power expended in raising the water to
the height from which it fell. There is no energy ge9nerated by the machinery; the work performed by the
water in descending is merely the parceling out and
distribution of the work expended in raising it. In
precisely this sense is all the energy of plants and
animals the parceling out and distribution of a power
originally exerted by the sun.  In the case of the
water, the source of the power consists in the forcible
separation of a quantity of the liquid from the lowest
level of the earth's surface, and its elevation to a higher
position, the power thus expended being returned by
the water in its descent.
In the case of vital phenomena, tile source of power
consists in the forcible separation of the atoms of chemical compounds by the sun-of the carbon and hydrogen,
for example, of the carbonic acid and water diffused
throughout the atmosphere, from the oxygen with which
they are combined. This separation is effected in the
leaves of plants by solar energy. The constituents of
the carbonic acid and water are there torn asunder in
spite of their mutual attraction, the carbon and hydrogen are stored up in the wood, and the oxygen is set
free in the air. When the wood is burned the oxygen
recombines with the carbon, and the heat then given




68                A STELLAR KEY.
out is of the precise amount drawn from the sun to
effect the previous "reduction" of the carbonic acid.
The reunion of the carbon with the oxygen is similar
to the reunion of our falling water with the earth from
which it had been separated. We name the one action
" gravity " and the other " chemical affinity; " but these
different names must not mislead us regarding the
qualitative identity of the two forces.  They are both
attraction, and, to the intellect, the falling of carbon
atoms against oxygen atoms is not more difficult of conception than the falling of water to the earth.
It is generally supposed that our earth once belonged
to the sun, from which it was detached in a molten
condition. Hence arises the question, "Did that incandescent world contain latent within itself the elements
of life i" Or, supposing a plan'et carved from our present
sun, and set spinning around him at the distance of our
earth, would one of the consequences of its refrigeration
be tie development of organic forms? Structural forces
certainly lie latent in the molten mass, whether or not
those forces reach to the extent of forming a plant or an
animal. All the marvels of crystalline force, all those
wonderful branching frost-ferns which cover our window-panes on a winter morning-the exquisite molecular architecture which is now known to belong to the
ice of our frozen lakes-all this constructiveness' lies
latent in an amorphous drop of water, and comes into
play when the water is sufficiently cooled.  And who
will set limits to the possible play of molecular forces in
the cooling of a planet?
Thus the teaching of science is, that the world-constructing forces are " latent in the mass,1' and that the




FORMATION OF THE SUMM ER LAND.        69
formation of a dew-drop is not less wonderful than the
formation of an inhabitable world.  The formation of
spiritualized material belts is a proceeding in the universe as natural and rational as the formation of the
primordial rings out of which all the planets, satellites,
and lesser bodies were subsequently developed.
But will not the Spiritual Zones be broken up and
distributed through space by counter attractions? The
spiritual belts cannot be drawn asunder by an exterior
and superior attraction; for they are, as we shall hereafter show. constituted of ultimate or final particles,
which entertain only very remote affinities for the particles and constituents of other bodies in space.
But the question may arise, " Why is not the Summer
Land round, like a globe, rather than in the shape of a
vast Zone or stratified belt?"
Geometry gives the true answer to this question.
This exact and deathless science brings to light the
jlyares, or the forms and shapes, possible to and revealed
by material bodies. By geometrical principles, all the
varieties and possibilities of figures in crystalline and
other bodies can be fully comprehended and determined.
The fundamental law of Nature, in every department
of her organization, seems to be this: The beginning
and the ending-the Alpha and the Omega-are in
perfect and complete correspondence. The two extremes meet, facing one another, and thus they embrace;
each seeing his own perfect image and perfect likeness in
the other! The representation and correspondence-the
exactness of similitude in outline and in all the details
-are marvelous in their mathematical and geometrical




70               A STELLAR KEY.
perfections. Thus, in very truth, " extremes meet "primate and ultimate-acorn buried in the ground re
appearing in acorn on the topmost bough of the oak —s
truth exemplified in every growth-circle of vegetable,
animal, and human life; and in the repetitions of
national history no less than in the incessant recurrence
of public crises, and in the periodicities of individual
experience.
Apply this law to the primordial structure of the stellar
universe. ~What was the first figure, what the primary
form, in which matter appeared?  Was it originally
globular? That is, Were the first world-building forms
round, like immense balls, or were they spheroidal
belts of cosmical matter? Let us take testimony of
Prof: Kirkwood. He adopts the nebular hypothesis
as the most rational explanation of things, and so declares that the " sun was an exceedingly diffused, rotating nebula, of spherical or spheroidal form, extending
beyond the orbit of the most distant planet; the planets
as yet having no separate existence. This immense
sphere of vapor, in consequence of the radiation of heat
and the continual action of gravity, became gradually
more dense, which condensation was necessarily attended
by an increased angular velocity of rotation. At length
a point was thus reached where the centrifugal force of
the equatorial parts was equal to the central attraction.
The condensation of the interior meanwhile continuing,
the equatorial zone was detached, but necessarily continued to revolve around the central mass with the
same velocity that it had at the epoch of its separation.
If perfectly un'iform  throughout its entire circrnffi
ference, it would continue its motion in an unbroken




FORMATION OF THE SUMMER LAND.          71
rizng, li/e that of Saturn; if not, it would probably
collect into several masses, having orbits nearly identical. These masses should assume a spheroidal form,
with a rotary motion in the direction of that of their
revolution, because their inferior particles have a less
real velocity than the superior; they have therefore
constituted so many planets'in a state of vapor. But
if one of them was sufficiently powerful to unite successively by its attraction all the others about its center,
the ring of vapors would be changed into one spheroidal
mass, circulating about the sun, with a motion of rotation in the same direction with that of revolution."
S
THE PRIMAL FORM.
The testimony of popular astronomical science therefore is:'he primary figure was spheroidal. The oval
form, consequently, is the beginning form of matter-its
genesis and its exodus also. The original oval or ellipsis is not elongated, remember, is not drawn out, but,
instead, is shortened, so as to produce an almost
geometrically perfect circle, yet always inclined to
the elliptic. The globe-form, which is the perfectly
round or sphere-form, is not possible in a body which
constantly and rapidly revolves in one direction. The
earth, consequently, is bulged at the equator and correspondingly flattened at the poles. So of all the
planets, satellites, and minor bodies of space. The law




72                A STELLAR'KEY.
of infallible geometry is.: The climactric form  of
matter is s spher'oidal.  The broad belt of the Summer
Land is the highest form of spiritualized atoms-the
ultimate and divinest figure-the final shape of all
perfectly attenuated and exalted cosmical matter.
Take, for a further illustration, the scale of sounds in
the exact science of music. Between the first or lowest
note and the eighth or highest note, we find all the
possible intermediate sounds. But the eighth note and
the first note are essentially the same; or, in other
words, the last sound is a perfect reiteration or reproduction of the first sound; and it is also the basis of another and a higher, but exactly similar scale, adapted to
the measurement of higher sounds; and so onward and
upward, progressively, like the steps in a flight of stairs,
until you attain to as high a sound as can be developed
by the human voice. This harmonial law of progressive reproduction-the first becoming last, and the last
first-will answer the question concerning the zoneshape of the Summer Land.
Unsearchable and incomprehensible as this law of
correspondence may appear at first sight, yet nothing
can be more easily read when your senses, intelligence,
and wisdom unite for work, and seriously devote them —
selves to the examination.  By no other law can man
perfectly acquire knowledge of those harmonial ties by
which all and each of the pieces and parts of the universe are fastened together.  Poets, in moments of
intuitive exaltation, feel more than the common intelligei ce can grasp:"Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part
Of me and of my soul, as I of them?




FORIMATION OF THE SUMMIER LAND.      73
Is not the love of these deep in my heart
With a pure passion?"
In music, which we have taken for an illustration,
how exactly mathematical in all its parts, from which
flow innumerable spiritualizing qualities, effects, and
enchantments. All art-music is suggested by, derived
from, and unerringly governed by nature-the source
of all melody and harmony. The term "discord" in
music does not mean confusion and antagonism. Discord, accord, and modulation form the august trinity.
The accord of contrasted sounds-the mathematical
combination and the unitary development of individual
discordant notes-unfolds perfect harmony!
External music reaches the spirit-ear through the waveundulations of the invisible ether of space. A sound
is increased in proportion to the number of vibrations
per second; thus, " the lowest note of a 7-octave piano
is made by 32 vibrations per second, the highest by
7.680, while each intermediate note has its fixed number."  The pitch of a note is ascertained, and the number of its vibrations per second determined by its position on the five parallel lines termed " the staff." And
it is another beautiful miracle (surprise?) in music, that
the deepest natural note, which can only be reached by
man's voice, is E, below the line of the second staff,
and the highest natural note, which can only be sounded
by a woman's voice, is designated E, above the first
staff. There is in this beautiful adaptation a progression
of voices just three mzasculines and three feminines;
man represents and develops the "base," the " baritone," and the "tenor," whilst woman unfolds the
three higher refinements, a greater number of sound
4




74                A STELLAR KEY.
waves per second, in the " contralto " and " soprano,"
the highest notes of which only woman's voice can
reach. Byron speaks of"' The soul and source of music, which makes known
Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm
Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,
Blending all things with beauty;'twould disarm
The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm."
It is a wonderful demonstration   of the inherent
genius of man's mind, that in a concert of music a good
ear can attend to the different parts of the music separately, or to all at once!  " In the latter case," says the
metaphysician, Sir William  Hamilton, " the mind is
constantly varying its attention from one part to the
other; the rapidity of its operations giving no perceptible interval of time."  What are the facts in this
example? In a musical concert we have a multitude
of different instruments and voices, emitting at once an
infinity of different sounds.  These all reach tile ear at
the same indivisible moment in which they perish, and,
consequently, if heard  at all-much more if their
mutual relation or harmony be perceived-they must
be all heard simultaneously. This is evident. For if
the mind can attend to each minimum of sound only
successively, it consequently requires a minimum  of
time in which it is exclusively occupied with each minimum of sound.    Now in this minimum of time there
coexist with it, and with it perish, many minima of
sound which, ex hypothtesi, are not perceived, are not
heard, as not attended to. In a concert, therefore, on
this doctrine, a small number of sounds only could be




FORMATION OF THE SUMMER LAND.          75
perceived, and above this petty maximum all sounds
would be to the ear as zero. But what is the fact?
No concert, however numerous its instruments, has yet
been found to have reached, far less to have surpassed,
the capacity of the mind and its organ. How perfectly
true it is that-'Nature sounds the music of the spirit;
Sweetly to her worshiper she sings,
All the glow, the grace she doth inherit,
Round her trusting child she fondly flings."
According to the reproductive law, a broad, effulgent, rotating belt or zone is the first figre or form
revealed in the geometrical music scale of world-building in the Stellar Universe; so also is it the highest and
last igure or form of which matter, in its most exalted
condition of ethereal and essential refinement, is capable
of assuming; and thus, consequently and logically, we
actually find organized and revolving all the ascending succession of Spheres in the constitution of the univerccolum!
And what is most remarkable and memorable is,
that the seven ascending scales of Spiritual Zones, with
their intervals of suns and planets, were discerned and
described by the author, just as they were seen before
he lived, and as they have been frequently perceived
and pictured by others since his first account was published. And each seer was separate from and independent of the other not only, but the positive existence and
identical structure of the Spheres were discovered and
described by each without any external knowledge or
hint of the sublime geometrical law; which law, you




76               A STELLAR KEY.
now perceive, is at once an infallible explanation and
an incontrovertible demonstration, that the physical
universe is spheroiclal in shape, that it is composed of
a progressive series of successively ascending circles
of suns and planets, and that it is nothing but the
covering, the material garment, the organized body of
that more interior and spiritual universe which was
6 not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."




HARMONIES OF THE UNIVERSE.         7
CHAPTER Xl.
DEMONSTRATIONS OF THE HARMONIES O' THE UNIVERSE.
TIHE Harmonial Philosophy of the universe would
receive vast aid from the demonstrations of mathematical and geometrical science, but this is not the place to
introduce such elaborate calculations and convincing
measurements as are impatient to take the stand as
positive witnesses. We hope that minds gifted with
mathematical and geometrical knowledge will feel
moved to enter upon this enchanting inquiry.
Science gives definite conceptions of the order and
wisdom of the universe. Pythagoras, Plato, Euclid,
Apollonius, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Kepler, Newtonall great men in the science of Geometry, and therefore
all were great believers in the order and unchangeable
goodness of the infinite system.
Most minds, however, find satisfaction in analogical
reasoning, in contrasts, in correspondential and symbolical-forms of thought, and in this manner perceive
the glory and application of great principles.  For
such, more intuitive idealists, who do not like the rigid
exactness of geometrical " fuxions," " conic sections,"
" differential calculus," &c., I am impressed to adopt
and present a variety of scales which are not less truthful than mathematics, while they are far more effective
with the great mass of minds.




'78                   A STELLAR KEY.
NEGATIVE.                   POSITIVE.
IDEAS.
NEGATIVE.                         POSITIVE.
PRINCIPLES.
NEGATIVE.                               POSITIVE.
LAWS.
NEGATIVEo                                  POSITIVE.
ESSENCES.
NEGATIVE.                                        POSITIVE.
ETHERS, VAPORS, FLUIDS, SOLIDS.
MEQATITV.                                           POSITIVE.




HARMONIES OF THE UNIVERSE.          79
The four primal forms of motion and matter are
expressed at the foundation in Ethers, Vapors, Fluids,
Solids. The modern discovery of science, that polarity
is inseparable from the various conditions of matter,
serves our purpose from every, possible point of observation. The simplicity of the last scale will seem more
profound from a more elaborate presentation. The two
columns of " Positives " and " Negatives " may assist
your mind to a still clearer conception of Nature's
infinite interlacings of harmony.
The term " Earth," in our scales, is employed in the
general sense, and not with reference merely to the
planet on which we live. Earth is earth, as much on
Juno as on Venus; earth is earth, as much on Vesta
and the Moon as on Neptune, and the term is applicable
to all the more remote bodies in our solar community.
The word, therefore, is used to signify that state of
matter, anywhere in the universe, which is known as
the coldest in temperature and the lowest in the degree
of atomic motion. Truly has it been said, that the hollow ball on which we live contains within itself the
elements of its own destruction.  Within the outer
crust-the cool temperature of which supports animal
and vegetable life, and solidifies the stone, coal and
metallic ores so important, to our well-being-there
exists a mass of fluid igneous matter. Some of this
matter occasionally escapes through the mouth of a
volcano, or makes its presence felt by an earthquake;
but neither the earthquake nor the volcano is necessary
to prove that fire exists in the earth. At the depth of
2,480 yards, water boils; lead melts at the depth of
3,400 yards. There is red heat at the depth of seven




80                          A STELLAR KEY.
POSITIVE.            NEGATIVE.
EXPLANATION. O..
The    fountain  Source of
all Laws, Forces, Principies, Ideas, is universally     GOD.               SPIRIT.
called ned
CH        The universality of motion,
0          heat, light, life, sensation.
g       order, beauty,intelligenlce,  IDEAS.             REASON.
love, will, wisdom, re]   veal 
r_   1  \The uniformity and universality of these laws of     R    CIP
/   cause and effect unfold PRINCIPLES.               POWER.,':         the higher revelations of
FH1         mind, called g:
The first manifestation of
Mind is Motion; the effect of Force; and the        LAWS.               FORCE,
modes of the actions of
grD.    this Motion are termed Q:
i3.      Ether-atoms are atorns in
0..q   o 3   the highest possible de*d     J  gree of motion, consti-'5         tnting an infinitely rare   ESSENCES.-         MAGNETISM.
m.        mIedium, chemical, dy-'~ "bDt: #  namic, elastic, and  ally.g | ~ {   pervading, called'
pR ~ W   The vapor-atoms ascend one
degree higher in the scale
and expand throughout
all space with an    in-     ETHERS.          ELECTRICITY.
crease of motion, and are
termed ia
The fluid-atoms receive an
increase motion with an'g         rincrease of temperature,    VAPORS            AT
cohesion is overcome, and   VAPORS.           ATMOSPHERE.
they expand into the cona      p   dition known as G
H &-    The solidity and cohesion
TD,1       of the same atoms disappear when       they  are,       -visited by a given quan-    FLUIDS.              WATER., t         tity of motion; heat is
HE-         developed, and those become Gn
Atoms, when slowest in
motion   and  coldest in
temperature, drop into a     SOLIDS.              EARTH.
compact body, for which
the general term is Gf




HARMONIES OF THE UNIVERSE.                  81
miles, and if we adopt the temperature as calculated by
AMorveau's corrected scale of Wedgeworth's pyrometer,
we find that the earth is fluid at the depth of one
hundred miles.
Beautiful heavenly harmony is displayed in all the
realms of being.      Luminous fountains flow        full of
eternal ideas, rolling the universe in harmonious
splendors.    The templed      perfections of God      shine
throughout the mountains of' Truth.
Great souls are filled with love,
Great brows are calm;
Serene within their might, they soar above
The whirlwind and the storm.
In words the Godly man is muteIn deeds he livesWouldst know the tree? examine well the fruit I
The flower? the ocent it gives I
Great thoughtS are still as stars,
Great thoughts are high;
They grasp the soul where'neath the prison bars
It languidly doth lie.
They bring it forth on wings
Sublime and grand I
Where in the night of deeply-hidden things
It joyfully doth expand.
Like sentinels they stand,
And softly keep
Their silent watches, where a ruthless band
Of lurking errors creep.
Like pearls of starry light
That burn and glow,
They pierce the shadowy vail, and o'er the night
Their mystic splendors throw.
A~2




82                    A STELLAR KEY.
Great truths I ah, yes, more grand,
More light and high,
Than hopes that thrill the wires throughout the land I
Than stars that gem the sky!
Great truths I ah, yes, more fair,
Sublime and deep,
Than burning thoughts that tremble on the air 
Than the mysteries of sleep!
From nature's Soul they spring
To joy and light,
And on imagination's quivering wing
They take their onward flight.
In beauty's garb they rise,
All fresh as morn,
And on their pinions, spread for sunlit skies,
Our souls are gladly borne.
With myriad wrongs they wage
An endless war;
And shed their luster o'er each passing age,
Like Morning's golden star.
Great truths I they come from God I
In heaven have birth;
They spring to life from each prophetic word
That thrills the earth I
The correspondence between Mind and Matter, and
the beautiful progressions in the scale of colors, with
their many and diversified polarizations, is as perfect and
self-evident as any sum     in mathematics.       Commence
at the bottom    of the scale, "Red," and ascend to the
climax in that color, " White," which is the garment of
omniscient Jehovah, and the emblem among human
angels of purity, fidelity, and truth.       Light," in this




HARMONIES OF THE UNIVERSE.                    83
U LICT. 
WHITE.
8. Negative.                    Positive.
VIOLET.
7. Negative.                       Positive.
INDIGO.
6. Negative.                           Positive.
BLUE.
5. Negative.                              Positive.
GREEN.
4. Negative.                                Positive.
YELLOW.
3. Negative.                                    Positive.
ORANGE.
2. Negative.                                        Positive.
RED.
1. Negative.                                            Positive.




84                  A STELLAXR   EY.
musical scale of colors, occupies the throne of God in
the other scale, and in each you find the 3-6-9 points
in geometrical ratio, or the 3 times 3, by which the
whole system is demonstrated to be correlated parts of
one harmonious manifestation of infinite wisdom      and
love.
Who can with indifference behold all this sublime
harmony?    The child of Nature is overwhelmed with
wonder and happiness.     Th~ spirit of God enters your
understanding, ascends the throne of your reason, and
declares the whole gospel of philosophical truth. Look
at the scale of colors from another point of observation,
by which we learn of the wondrous activities of the
principles of Light.
Wace lengths          Number of unOYALE OF THE SEVEN    in 10 mnil- Nlmber of un- dulations per
COLORS.        lionths of an dulations per  second in
inch.      inch.      Billions.
1. RED................     266       37.640       458
2. ORANGE..............   240        41.610       506
3. YELLOW...............  227       44.000       535
4. GREEN................   211       47.460       577
5. BLUE. o..............   196       51.110       622
6. INDIGO...............  185       54.070       658
7. VIOLET................  167       59.750       727
In the previous scale it was found that " Essences,"'
which are eliminated and revealed in the forms of force
called " magnetism," is the micdde principle-tlle link




HARMONIES OF.TrIIE UNIVERSE.            85
connecting the sphere of Mind with        the sphere of
Matter.
Positive.          Passive.         Negative.
White. Violet. Indigo.    Green.     Yellow. Orange. Red.
(7.)   (6.)   (5.)        (4.)        (3.)' (2.)  (1.)
The same law of correspondence appears in the natural classification and polarization of colors; showing
that " Green " is the connecting link between the three
majors and the three minors.     Iemember that, in all
the scales we introduce, the first is the lowest and most
inferior; and our true meaning is never seen unless the
ascent is intellectually made from   the bottom, up; or
from the figure 6 1,"7 to the highest in the scale, just as
you naturally walk up a flight of stairs, or as a tree
grows upward from its germ-genesis in the soil below.
It is not generally known that Sweden borg anticipated Goethe's Theory of Colors.*       In the Arcana,
~ 1042, he writes: "In order to the existence of color,
there  must needs be some       substance   darkish  and
brightish, or black and white, on which, when the rays
of light from the sun fall, according to the various
temperature of the dark and bright, or black and white,
from the modification of the influent rays of light, there
exist colors, some of which take more or less from    the
darkish and black, some more or less from the brightish
and white, and lence arises their diversity."
* Persons have objected to, and treated as simple and childish, the
introduction of colors in the form of badges and emblems, in the " Children's Progressive Lyceum," on the supposition that there is no interior
educational significance in colors. Let such minds ask God why colors
exist I




86               A STELLAR KEY.
The positive "white," and the negative, "black,?
was apprehended by Swedenborg as the natural basis,
in the intervals of which, as between the first and eighth
note in music, all the varieties and tints of colors appear. In like manner, and upon the same principle of
unerring correspondence, we affirm that in the interval
between "Earth," negctive, and " Spirit," positive, all
the diversified wonders of Matter and Mind are unfolded.
An expositor of Swedenborg's philosophy of the phenomenal universe-which seem to exist without and to
press up against our bodily senses-thus, as a kind
of synopsis, states the grand idealism of his revered
master:" What we call Nature, meaning by that term the
universe of existence, mineral, vegetable, and animal,
which seems to us infinite in point of space and eternal
in point of time, is yet in itself, or absolutely, void both
of infinity and eternity; the former appearance being
only a sensible product and correspondence of a relation
which the universal heart of man is under to the Divine
Love, and the latter, a product and correspondence of
the relation which the universe of the human mind is
under to the Divine Wisdom. Thus Nature is not in the
least what it sensibly purports to be, namely, absolute
and independent; but, on the contrary, is at every
moment, both in whole and in part, a pure phenomenon
or effect of spiritual causes as deep, as contrasted, and
yet as united, as God's infinite love and man's unfathomable want. In short, Swedenborg describes Nature as
a perpetual outcome or product in the sphere of sense
of an inward supersensuous marriage which is forever




HIAnMONIES OF THlE uNIVERSE.       87
growing and forever adjusting itself between Creator
and creature, between God's infinite and essential
bounty and our infinite and essential necessity."
In this statement we regret that Swedenborg, or
rather his intelligent pupil, employs the term "Nature"
as synonymous with Earth or fMatter. If this beautiful
and indispensable word was used in the sense of that
which expresses the eternal order and perfect beauty of
the infinite Father and Mother, and in its place " Matter" be written, then we could most perfectly accept
the philosophy as unquestionably true, because, in its
essential points, it is exactly what we have been urging
throughout these pages.
The positive and negative manifestations of color can
be more clearly explained by a scale of what are called
"complementary colors."   These contrasts are the
results of careful observation, analysis, and experimentation.
The sublime harmonies of the universe appear more
and more as we extend our researches into the penetralium of causative principles. For example, man's five
senses are organized progressively-each finer and
higher than the other-corresponding with mathematical exactness to the five ascending degrees of
matter.
Solid matter must be raised by expansion to the fluid
condition before his tongue can taste it; solid matter
must become vcapor before his nose can smnell it; solid
matter must become ether before his ears can hear it;
solid matter must become " essence " before his eyes can
see it; but solid matter and man's body can meet, and
sensation is elicited by resistance. The eyes do not see




88                A STELLAR KEY.
the ethereal waves of sound; the ears do not perceive
the gmagnetic undulations of light; the olfactory nerves
do not realize the ul7id condition of solids; neither does
the tongue taste the vapors (the atmosphere and odors)
which so readily record their presence upon the sense
of smell.
COMPLEMENTARY PARTS OR DIVISIONS OF LIGHT.
POSITIVE.     NEGATIVE.
WHITE.          BLACK.
Violet.      Yellow-Green..-^ *Indigo.         Orange-Yellow.
Blue.        Orange-Red.
I _._- _-_____
Intermediate.    Green.      Reddish-Violet.
or transitional. 
Yellow.       Indigo-Blue.
_            Orange.       Azure-Blue.
Es  I
Red.        Bluish-Green.
The essences and ethers and vapors and fluids of
matter report themselves each to the appropriate sense.




HARMONiIES OF THE UNIVERSE.                89
In Matter as in Mind, we behold the unutterable harmonies of unerring Ideas, Principles, and Laws.        The
remarkable adjustments and adaptations of matter in
its five conditions to man's five senses, must be obvious
to every reflecting mind.      Indeed, without such progressive ascensions and reciprocating polarizations of
matter, man's reason and spirit could never arrive at
any definite consciousness that there is a phenomenal
world lying about him.      The following scale of correspondences may bring these beautiful adaptations clearly
into your understanding:FIVE SENSES..  FIVE FuNCTIONI. ]Fiv CAUSES.  FiVE CONDITIONS.
5. Eyes........... Seeing......... Essences........ Magnetism.
4. Ears..........Hearing......Ethers.........Electricity.
3. Nose...........Smelling........Vapors........Atmosphere.
2. Tongue.........Tasting.........Fluids..........Water.
1. Body.......... Feeling.........Solids.........Earth.
There is a yet more comprehensive generalization.
See how beautifully harmonious! Thus absolute Spirit
is God; in    man, the miniature effect of the infinite
cause comes out in Existence and Individuality.          In
the infinite, Ideas are the conscious principles of pure
Reason; in man, the finite effects ultimated and blossomed out, are Intuition and Intelligence.       The fountain of causation, as it harmoniously flows outward and
downward into human rivers of individualized life, may
be tabulated thus:DIVINITY.                            IIUMANITY.
FATHER.      MOTHER.                  MAN.         WOMAN.
GOD     4s pre  SPIRIT  ultimnated in  EXISTENCE and INDIVIDUALITY.
IDEAS   are divine REASON  maniafested as INTELLECT and INTUITION.
PRINCIPLES are 3pure POWVE known as motions CENTsIFUGAL and CENTRIPETAL,
FoRCES  becomze  LAWs   expressed as  WILL  and PRODUCTION.




90               A STELLAR KEY.
The principles of universal relationships. reward
richly all who study and comprehend them. Unless you
do study them, you will not be convinced that the Spiritual Zone rests scientifically and philosophically upon the
natural and indestructible order of the universe. You
vnzust study, or, at least, you ought to study, think, and
reason, until you come to perceive and comprehend
these grand progressive truths, namely: That the Solid
world was once Fluid; that fluid was once Vapor; that
vapor was once Ether; that ether was once Essence;
that essence is the highest material connecting link for
the operation of positive spiritual Laws; that these
natural inherent laws constitute a negative medium for
the manifestation of invisible celestial positive Force;
that this force is the negative side of a yet more positive expression called Power; that this last potential
demonstration is animated by interior intelligence and
more positive energies termed Principles; that these immutable principles of the universe are external methods
of positive, and still more interior, Ideas; that ideas are
the self-thinking, inter-intelligent, purely-spiritual attributes and properties of the Divine Positive Mind.
And you should study and contemplate these grand
truths until you perceive, as by the awakening and
opening of your interior senses, that, from the innumerable multitude of stars down " to the lulled lake and
mountain coast," all is concentered in a life of interlaced affinities and reciprocated relationships, "where
not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, but hath a part of
being."  Yes, you should think upon these inexhaustible glories until deep thoughts make you "silent,"
until you grow "breathless" with the immensity of




HARMONIES OF THE UNIVERSE.        91
high and holy feeling; yea, until in your open soul; all
heaven and earth are still,'" while the life of your spirit
blends its everlasting destiny with the eternally rolling
splendors and indestructible unities of Truth.
But you must not " dream."    For cold, exact
Science, like the moon of truth-of which Philosophy
is both sun and stars-walks over the earth and across
the skies, heartlessly; but he is armed with cleancutting instruments of analysis and observation; and
so it will not avail you to turn away from Science because its ways. are fatiguing, and idly bask your reason
in the more congenial sunshine of generalization, below
the silent spheres.
"Under the influence of passion," says Prof. Hamilton, the metaphysician, "men seek honor, but not
truth. They do not cultivate what is most valuable in
reality, but what is most valuable in opinion.  They
disdain, perhaps, what can be easily accomplished, and
apply themselves to the obscure and recondite; but as
the vulgar and easy is the foundation on which the rare
and arduous is built, they fail even in attaining the
object of their ambition, and remain with only a farrago
of confused and ill-assorted notions.  In all its phases,
self-love is an enemy to philosophical progress; and the
history of philosophy is filled with the illusions of
which it has been the source.  On the one side it has
led men to close their eyes against the most evident
truths which were not in harmony with their adopted
opinions. It is said there was not a physician in
Europe, above the age of forty, who would admit
Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood.
On the other hand, it is finely observed by Bacon, that




92                A STELLAR KEY.'the eye of the human intellect is not dry, but receives
a suffusion from the will and the affections,' so that it
may almost be said to engender any science it pleases.
Let men throw off their old prejudices, and come with
hearts willing to receive knowledge, and understandings
open to conviction.  Unless'ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.' Such
is true religion; such, also, is true philosophy. Philosophy requires an emancipation from   the yoke of
foreign authority, a renunciation of all blind adhesion
to the opinions of our age and country, and a purification of the intellect from all assumptive beliefs. Unless
we can cast off the prejudices of the man, and become
as children, docile and unperverted, we need never hope
to enter the temple of philosophy.  It is the neglect
of this primary condition which has mainly occasioned
men to wander from the unity of truth, and caused the
endless variety of religious and philosophical sects.'"
The unity of truth, the correlation of inherent ideas,
the harmonious correspondence and fixed relationships
of things, constitute the central charm of all intellectual
effort and research.  It is both consoling and exalting
to know, for example, that the MATTER of the living
organizations of the universe is identical (that is, the
same in essence as that) with which the inorganic
forms of the world are constituted. This truth brings all
things together. And it is indispensable to our philosophy of'the Summer Land. It shows that the forces in
your organs are the same as the forces-gravitational,
chemical, mechanical, electrical, spiritual. With Prof.
Huxley, you logically come to the broad conclusion that
" not only as to living matter itself, but as to the forces




HARMONIES OF THE UNIVERSE.          93
that matter exerts, there is a close relationship between
the organic and the inorganic world-the difference between them arising from the diverse combination and
disposition of identical forces, and not from  any
primary diversity, as far as we can see.9
In examining the relations subsisting between manl's
senses, we find that the universe may be conceived as
" a polygon of a thousand or a hundred thousand sides,
or facets —and each of these sides or facets may be conceived as representing one special mode of existence.
Now, of these thousand sides or modes all may be
equally essential, but three or four only may be turnted
toward us, or be analogous to our organs. One side or
facet of the universe, as holding a relation to the organ
of sight, is the mode of luminous or visible existence;
another, as proportional to the organ of hearing, is the
mode of sonorous or audible existence; and so on. But
if every eye to see, if every ear to hear, were annihilated,
the modes of existence to which these organs now stand
in relation —that which could be seen, that which could
be heard-would still remain; and if the intelligences,
reduced to the three senses of touch, smell, and taste,
were then to assert the impossibility of any modes of
being except those to which these three senses were
analogous, the procedure would not be more unwarranted, than if we now ventured to deny the possible
reality of other modes of material existence than those
to the perception of which our five senses are accommodated."
In this volume we must fortify our positions, relative
to the substantiality of the Summer Land, by laying a
broad foundation in the principles and facts of science.




94                A STELLAR KEY.
Hence my impressions carry me directly into the concurrent testimony of living philosophers and scientific
men. If I were to present exclusively my own interior
perceptions, and leave unnoticed all the important corroborations of positive science, the world would discard
the whole as mere "speculation."
Ience now I refer you to a physiological authority:' All things which are in the brain of man are arranged
into series, and, as it were, into fascicles; and into
series within series, thus into fascicles. That such an
arrangement has place, is evident fiom the arrangement of all things in the body, where fibers appear
arranged into fascicles, and little glands into collections
of glands, and this in the body throughout; still more
perfectly in the purer parts which are not discernible
by the naked eye; this fasciculation is principally presented to view in the brain, in the two substances
there, one of which is called cortical, and the other
medullary; the case is not unlike in the purer principles,
and at length in the most pure, where the forms which
receive them are the very forms of life; that forms or
substances are recipients of life, may be manifest from
the singular things which appear in the living; also
that recipient forms or substances are arranged in a
manner the most suitable for influx of life; without the
reception of life in substances, which are forms, there
would not be given any living thing in the natural
world, nor in the spiritual world; series of the mostpure stamina, like fascicles, are what constitute those
forms,. o.  As the External acts or is acted
upon, so the Internals also act or are acted upon, for
there is a perpetual conftsciculation of the whole. For




HARMONIES OF THE UNIVERSE.         95
example, take in the body some common covering, as
the pleura, which is the common covering of the breast,
or of the heart and lungs, and examine it with an anatomical eye, or, if you have not made this your particular study, consult anatomists, and they will tell you
that this common covering, by various circumvolutions,
and afterward by exsertions or derivations from itself,
finer and finer, enters into the inmost substance of the
lungs, even to the smallest bronchial ramifications, and
into the follicles themselves, which are the beginnings
of the lungs: Not to mention its progression afterward
by the trachea to the larynx toward the tongue; from
which it is evident that there is a perpetual connection
of the Outmost with the Inmost, wherefore as the Outmost acts or is acted upon, so also the Interiors from
the Inmost or Intimates act or are acted upon."
Physiologists, as a class, are not seers of the spiritual
within the natural. They observe organs, study functions,
trace the nerve-connections throughout the economy,
but seldom go deeper. But those who do probe below
the apparent, who explore the interior mansions of the
temple, find exactly what is embodied in the foregoing
testimony. As the chemist finds elements within elements, as meteorologists find atmospheres within atmospheres, as geologists find strata within strata, as
botanists find leaf within leaf and flower within flower,
so physiologists find organs within organs, and indescribably finer determinations of vital power within the
familiar forces of the human body.  There is, too,
everywhere manifested a law from the infinite magazine
of principles, called the " centripetal force," whereby
every thing is cohesively and affectionately clasped to




96                A STELLAR KEY.
the central Heart. And every thing would forever play
and roll around the all-loving centripetal affections of
the spiritual universe, were it not for the inherent principle of Justice, the mother of all distributions and the
father of all equilibriums, whereby every thing is taken
in the giant arms of omnipotent "centrifugal force,"
and is by that masculine force sent abroad through the
illimitable immensities, and commanded   to "take
plenty of out-door exercise, eat all they can honestly
get, rest when weary, and earn their own living." And
so tle laws and the essences go fromr the warm home of
centripetal attraction, become acquainted, and conjugate together, so that, like Adam and Eve, they may
multiply and replenish the universe.  On this middle
ground, in the meeting and mating and prolification of
laws and essences, we behold the marriage of Mind with
Matter, and can, if we will, trace out the generations
which proceed from them-in the diversified forms and
forces of the world without.
"Laws 9 are the most de8cendecl  modification of tle
central 3Mind; whilst "essences" are the most ascenced
form and condition of Matter; and thteir marriage is
followed by the instantaneous vivification of substance
and the universal manifestation of forces, principles,
and ideas. But this marriage ceremony is occurring
every moment; it eternally exists, as much behind as
future; and yet, owing to the limitations of thought,
man must " begin " his reasonings and " end" with
conclusions-the process being true and strictly logical,
also, so far as it refers scientifically to one, cycle of
development in the universal whole.
By the marriage of Laws with Essences, we obtain,




HARMONIES OF THE UNIVERSE.          97
on the one side, all the successive condescensions and
condensations of [Matter, and, on the other side, all the
evolutions and manifestations of Mind. Conditions of
MIatter, once called " imponderable substances," float
out of existence, leaving behind only vibrations or
agitations'  of the one unchangeable reality termed
Matter.  The translator of Reicthenbach's Odic-Mag
netic Zetters, concerning his experiments in Odic-forces,
has not failed to observe how perfectly that earnest
philosopher's radiant demonstrations coincide with
the deductions of inductive science. I-e iecognizes
the conceded maxim that there is no more nor no less
matter now than there was fifty thousand years ago;
there is no more and no less force.   " Wave your
land," says Grove;' the motion has apparently
ceased, but it is taken up by the air, from the air by
the walls of the room, and so by direct and re-acting
waves continually communicated, but never destroyed.
Let us suppose that two balls rolling toward each
other strike; the motion appears to be lost, but it
changes to heat and electricity; to heat if the balls be
homogeneous, and electricity if heterogeneous. If the
balls be greased so that they will glance from each other,
they will lose little motion and create little heat, precisely
in proportion to the loss of one force is the development
of others. And the motion or friction of the electrical
machine develops electricity, electricity produces magnetism, light, heat, and motion, and influences chemical
affility, as is seen in the composition and decomposition
of compound substances. Heat produces motion, and
our thermometers are constructed to measure heat by
the expansion or motion which it causes in certain subq




98                A STELLAR KEY.
stances. Heat also develops electricity. An evidence
of this may be obtained by heating bars of bismuth
and antimony, the ends of which are in contact. Unite
the other ends by an iron wire, and an electric current
will pass over it and heat the wire. The relationship
of light to heat is very near, and they closely resemble
each other in their phenomena. Both are radiated in
direct lines, reflected, refracted, doubly refracted, and
polarized. Heat also influences chemical affinity.
Light influences chemical action, which latter develops electricity, and that, magnetism, heat, and motion.
A coil of wire, attached to a daguerreotype plate,
becomes electric when the plate is exposed to the light.
Pieces of cloth, of different colors, sink with different
speed into snow, showing that the light,- when absorbed
by black cloths, changres into heat, and therefore tliese
cloths sink more rapidly into the snow.
"As electricity, moving round an iron bar, develops
magnetism, so revolving mnagnets develop electricity,
and we have magneto-electricity as well as electromagnetism.   Since electricity  causes  light, heatmotion, and chemical affinity, magnetism may be considered to cause them.  Magnets directly cause and
resist motion; and whieever iron is magnetized or
demagnetized, heat is developed.
"Chemism, the power which causes chemical action,
by means of chemical affinity, causes motion, electricity, heat, and light. All these effects are seen in the
chemical process of burning; one of our strongest
sources of electricity is in chemical action; and in the
Voltaic-pile and Galvanic battery, the amount of electricity evolved is in exact proportion to the amount




tXRMONIES OF THE UNIVERSE.        99
of chemical action; in the same way as the heat and
electricity caused by friction are in exact proportion to
the amount of the friction and to the loss of mechanical
furce.  It is believed that the vital forces are also connected with the physical forces of inanimate nature.
All the substances found in the animal are also found
in the mineral kingdom. And light and heat are
necessary conditions to animation."




C)
L
___ —  --              A                 --  -   -        ___     ______ — -- — =-~~-=
~~ —--—' —~- -I ----------
THE SUMMTER LAND ZONE WITHIN THlE M-ITLKY WAY,
ITf ~i h've told you of cii rthly tbihsn~and yebelieve not how shall ye belicveif Itell you of h(evenly thiiwgs?-Te-etiemonzy
of Mary's Son, as ecorded em tne, A'ew [Lcefameod




THE CONSTITUTION OF THE BSUMMER LAND.    101
CHAPTER     XII.
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SUMMER-LAND.
THus far we have cautiously walked in the factlighted path of inductive science. We are, nevertheless, in search of that attractive Spiritual Zone-which
blends, astronomically and mathematically, the finite
with the infinite-to which the human heart and the cultured mind instinctively aspire. We are intellectually
searching for that higher Land which, accepting the
testimony of seers, rolls embosomed in the Stellar Universe. In looking through the boundless blue for our
eternal home, we behold, as by necessity, the holy orbs
and sun-built constellation of the ethereal realm.
"Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven,
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires-'tis to be forgiven;
*     *    *     For ye are
A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star."
Chemistry has many living exponents, and they all
agree that the sixty-four or eighty-two "simple elements," by entering into different atomic arrangements,
and by combining in different proportions, originate all
the known " compounds " and organizations in nature.
It is according to my perceptions, however, that
chemists, when better informed, will resign their now




102               A STELLAR KEY.
popular theory of " Simples."  The number and names
of the "primates " are increased each succeeding year
by the discovery of several new elements. An element, in the chemical schools, is understood to be that
which cannot be further analyzed or changed in its
nature.  Gold, for example, can be vaporized so finely
as to become invisible; but whenIdetected, accumulated,
and assayed, each grain of it is exactly and perfectly
what it was at first.  There is no intrinsic difference
between the finest grain and the largest mass, and thus
gold is called an " element."
But the mnagnificent simplicities of Nature, like the
central unities of Truth, when they are detected and
correctly assayed, will put an everlasting extinguisher
upon all these false " lights " in the temple of chemical
science. It will be found that the solids of the world
came from ethers and essences. The atmospheres contain in solution all the world. (In this work I do not
use the terms' fluids " and " vapors " in any ordinary
limited sense.) It is certain to a demonstration that
essences are the magnetical condition of matter. The
different electricities exist in the sphere below, among
the "vapors;" as the atmospheres, and the so-called
gases, exist in the " fluids " of earth and space. It is
necessary to understand this, before your judgment can
take in the conception of a stratified spiritual Zone,
because the celestial existence is constituted of the
ultimate atoms of visible matter. And it is, therefore,
of the highest moment, scientifically considered, that the
essence-origin of palpable solid matter be perfectly comprehended. For if it be clearly seen that the earth was
once impalpable ether or essence, and if the established




THI E CO-;STITUTION OF THIE SUMIER I LAN D.  103
world-forming laws and processes of space be remembered, as we have carefully explained them  in earlier chapters, then it will be logically easy to understand the formation and constitution of the Summer
Land.
The ethereal condition, or, rather, the essence-origin
of visible matter, therefore, is the question first to be
considered. On this point, then, we must take testimony accumulated by the world's chemical researches.
An English writer, full of positivism and skepticism,
jfrst asks a question and then answers, thus:" What is man? (and this term equally applies chemically to the whole organic world.) Man is a condensation
of gases and vapors, every one of which are floating
round us in the atmosphere. Out of his total weight
of 154 lbs., we have in the man-oxygen, 111 lbs., and
he is inhaling it every instant; hydrogen, 15 lbs., a gas
we burn; carbon, a gas, when combined with oxygen;
nitrogen, part of the air we breathe; phosphorus, which
is all around us in every plant and animal, which we
eat at every meal; calcium, liquid in water; sodium,
liquid with chlorine; and other metals in very small
quantities, all susceptible of liquidity. MSan is not conscious of it, any more than he is conscious that when he
is eating roast-beef, he is eating nitrogen, phosphorus,
calcium, sulphur, potassium, and iron; few even are
conscious that, in taking salt, they are eating chlorine.
Man is continually giving out these vapors, which are
in fact a part of himself; he is conscious only of one
thing, and that is, that if they escape a little too fast,
he feels cold.  The quantity of these vapors is immense. The runaway negro leaves his track distin



104               A STELLrAR KEY.
guithable by the blood-hound for 100 miles-we scarcely
perceive it, but if a dog has lost his master, he knows
if his master has been in any room he goes into; such
is the absolutely distinctive difference of the emanations
from each individual. These emanations are as positively
material, as the individual himself is material —as material as, if you scent a large room with one drop of otto
of roses, every particle by which you perceive the scent
is as material as the whole drop itself was. Iow these
emanations correspond exactly with Baron Ieichenbach's description, in hios con     of Odyle, p. 210,
namely:A peculiar force, distinct from all known forces, is
different from magnetism.
Bodies possessing it do not assume any p:.rticular
direction from the earth's magnetism.
In aninals, at least in man, the whole left side is in
odylic opposition to the right. The force appears concentrated on poles in the extremities; the hands and
fingers, in both feet, stronger in the hands than in the
feet.
The odylic force is conducted to distances yet unascertained by all solid and liquid bodies; not only
metals, but glass, resin, silk, water, dry wood, paper,
cotton cloth, woolen cloth, &c.
Bodies may be charged with odyle, or odyle may
be transferred from one body to another. In stricter
language, a body in which free odyle is developed can
excite in another body a similar odylic state.
This charging, or transference, is effected by contact.




THE CO'')NSTiKU-T'ION OF THE SUMMERE LAND. [ 10
The charging requires a certain time, and is not
accomplished under several minutes.
-The odylic light of amorphous bodies is a kind of
feeble external and internal glow, som6what similar to
phosphorescence. This glow is surrounded by a delicate
luminous vail, in the form of a fine downy flame.
Human beings are thus luminous over nearly the
whole surface, bat especially the hands, over the palm
of the hand, the points of the fingers, the eyes, certain
parts of the head, the pit of the stomach, the toes, &c.
Filaming emanations stream forth from all the points
of the fingers, of relatively great intensity, and in the
lin:e of the length of the fingers.
All these flames may be moved by currents of air;
and where they meet with solid bodies, they bend round
them, just as ordinary flame does. The odylic flame
has therefore an obviously material (ponderable?) character.
In the animal economy, night, sleep, and hunger
depress and diminish the odylic influence.  Taking
food, daylight, and the active waking state, increase
and intensify it. In sleep the seat of odylic activity is
transferred to other parts of tlle nervous system.
A photographic picture is the electric effect of light
-the action of electricity on metals. But man is a
compound of the very materials used in photography,
only in solution. You have sodium, a white metal;
calcium, a white metal; iodine, chlorine, and particularly phosphorus, and you have a continued internal
spring of electricity. It is curious also that any excess
or diminution of phosphorus in the brain affects the
sense and imagination.,




106                A STELLAR KEEY.
" In a work I have before me," says this a Ithor, "it
is stated that the analysis of the brain of man and
animals gives the following proportions of phosphorus:In animals of the lower order.....................  1  per cent.
In  imbeciles  (men)...............................  1 
In men of sound intellectual powers............... 2 to 2t  "
In men where a degree of eccentricity prevailed....  3  "
Complete  insanity............................... 4  to 4I 
Phosphorus is a substance in a great measure composed
of light.  I wish you first to reflect on the intimate
connection of the light with thought, so that the state
of' the intellectual faculties seems to be regulated by it;
and next, that these varying quantities are only the
result of the different power of the absorbents of different individuals.
"' In Mons. Boinet's work on Iodotherapia, we find that
Mons. Chaton states that thle absence of iodine in the
air, in certain countries, is the cause of the degradation
of the human species.    Further-the researches and
observations of Miessrs. Boussingault, Gange, Cantu,
and a number of scientific men, prove that in those
geographical, geological, and chemical situations where
iodine is deficient, cretinism or imbecility abounds.
This points strongly to iodine as having properties related to intellect-and salt, in which the metal sodium
is but the vehicle for chlorine, what would the world
be without it? The most noticeable facts in the case
are-the large quantity of phosphorus in every human
body-1llb.; the fact that we imbibe phosphorus in
each bit of animal and vegetable food we eat; that the
lower the animal kingdom is in intellect or instinct, the




THE CONSTITUTION OF TtIE SUMMER LAND.  107
less phosphorus their bodies contain; and that the
odylic emanations and intelligent manifestations are
generally and most probably always accompanied by
phosphorus; and that chlorine, which we are always
eating in salt; being a sister element to iodine, is fill
as likely as iodine to have a part in the development of
intellect."'
The materialism of this testimony does no injury to
the purpose in view, namely, to adduce scientific facts
to establish the essence-origin of matter. Innumerable
atomic emanations arise and continually ascend from the
bodies of persons composing the human family; not less
than 800,000,000 tons per annum; atoms that float out
into space in the rivers of ether, and enter into the
constitution of the Summer Land. This process has
been long known to seers. But the world's people
want " facts" of the schools for the foundation of their
faith in the future. "Life, in its proper, generic sense,"
says Grindon, in his volume on the Varieties and Phenomena of Life, is the name of the sustaining principle by which every thing out of the Creator subsists,
whether worlds, metals, minerals, trees, animals, mankind, angels, or devils, together with all thought and
feeling. Nothing is absolutely lifeless, though many
things are relatively so; and it is simply a conventional
restriction of the term, which makes life signify no more
than the vital energy of an organized material body.
" Has not this inorganic nature sympathies and antipathies in those mysterious elective affinities of the
molecules of matter which chemistry investigates? Has
it not the powerful attractions of bodies to each other,
which govern the motions of the stars scattered in the




103              A STELLAR KEY.
immensity of space, and keep them in an admirable
harmony? Do we not see, and always with a secret
astonishment, the magnetic needle agitated at the approach of a particle of iron, and leaping under the fire
of the Northern Light? Place any material body whatever by the side of another, do they not immediately
enter into relations of interchange, of molecular attraction, of electricity, of magnetism? In the inorganic
part of matter, as in the organic, all is acting, all is
promoting change, all is itself undergoing transformation. And thus, though this life of the globe, this
plhysiology of our planet, is not the life of the tree or
the bird, is it not also a life? Assuredly it is. We
cannot refuse so to call those lively actions and reactions,
that perpetual play of the forces of matter, of which we
are every day the witnesses.' Thus, that the soul is no'will-o'-th'-wisp in the
swamps of the cerebrum,' but an internal man, a body
within a body;' a life,' as Areteus says of the womb,'within a life;' in the material body as God is in the
universe, everywhere and nowhere; everywhere for the
enlightened intellect, nowhere for the physical view;
no more in the brain than in the toes, but the spiritual
double' of the entire fabric. All the organs of the
material body have soul in them, and serve the soul,
each one according to its capacity; yet is the soul
itself independent of them all, because made of another
substance...
"Spiritual substances are none the less real because
out of the reach of chemistry or edgetools, or because
they are inappreciable by the organs of sense. Indeed
it is only the grosser expressions of matter which can




THE CONSTITUTION OF THEI SUMMER LAND.    109
be so treated, and which the senses can apprehend.
Heat and electricity are as truly material as flint and
granite, yet man can neither cut, nor weigh, nor measure
them; while the most familiar and abundant expression
of all, the air which we breathe, can neither be seen
nor felt till put in motion. As for invisibility, which
to the vulgar is proof of non-existence, no warning is so
incessantly addressed to us, from every department of
creation, as not to commit the mistake of disbelieving,
simply because we cannot see. Eaclh class of substances
is real in relation to the world it belongs to; material
substances in the material world; spiritual substances
in the spiritual world; and each kind has to be judged
of according to its place of abode."
The testimony of science is stronger and stronger in
favor of the essence-origin of all forms and conditions of
matter; and how much more satisfactory to the externalist, to the sensuous thinker, that this testimony
proceeds from recognized literary and scientific authority.  The venerable philosopher, Dr. Ashburner, of
England, gives most important evidence that matter can
be " dissolved 99 and' attenuated 9 beyond the influence
of " attraction."  The unparticled atomic constitution
of the Summer Land, therefore, is an acknowledged
possibility. That philosopher and scientist says:'"It
is idle to discuss the various characteristics of the forms
of the objects surrounding us. Those who have the
necessary faculties are quite aware that all the objects
in nature are resolvable into certain forms known as
solid, liquid, and gaseous or aeriform. We have, on a
previous occasion, illustrated a portion of our present
subject by selecting the lightest substance known as




110               A STELLAR KEY.
material, hydrogen gas, in order to express our meaning
of infinitely attenuated matter, when a repulsive force
operates to keep its particles asunder so as to prevent
its combining with any other form   of matter. The
force of repulsion, then, obliges hydrogen to remain in
a state of negative polarity; for unless its particles can
be approximated, it cannot alter its state or its conditions. Nor can any matter without the intervention
of force, for all matter is known to be inert or passive.
If man be operating on matter, in any course of experiments, it would be idle to say that he was not exerting
his will to fashion those experiments. It has been
shewn that the will of man is a force, attractive or repulsive, according to circumstances. [See his Essays
in the fourth volume of the Zoist.]  Man can cause
matter to be dissolved. It can be dissolved as a salt in
water, which is itself a form of matter, capable of expansion and attenuation in the form of vapor or gas.
But in order to effect this change in water, the introduction of a repulsive force is necessary.  Under
all circumstances, matter is subject to force. Cannot
force dissolve matter?  What do we mean by electrometallurgy? Does not, in this case, electricity dissolve
metal?  In the formation of vapor in the atmosphere,
does not force dissolve water? Is not all attenuation
of matter more or less a solution in force?
"This idea, expanded, takes us on to that of infinite
space. We can suppose all matter to be so far attenated as to form universal etAer; to be dissolved by force
in infinite space; resolved into such minute particles,
as to be no longer subject to attraction."
In this place it is of the first importance to read a




TIlE CONSTITUTION OF THE SUMMER LAND.  11
communication that appeared in the London (England)
Jpiri'tctl Jfagazine concerning the essences and ethers
and emanations which science has discovered as belonging to and proceeding from physical bodies. The
correspondent, after alluding appreciatively to the letters
of Mr. Ruskin, says:-' It is to one of his physical illustrations that we wish
to draw our readerls attention. It is one of the demonstrations of spiritual clairvoyance that each of us is
surrounded by a spiritual sphere or emanation; which
is sometimes even seen in colors, or in light, and is
more often absolutely felt, even through our dulled and
deadened sensibilities. Nothing, indeed, is more likely
to be true, or can be more profusely illustrated by our
experience, than the impression by thoughts or by premonitions on meeting persons of our acquaintance, or
in many of the circumstances of our daily lives, and
intercourse with one another; but, like most that is
spiritual, and appertaining to the soul and its faculties,
it is received with ridicule or neglect. We look forward,
however, to a future day when it will be a key-stone in
the arch of spiritual knowledge.
"' The discovery of the spectrum analysis, which now
plays so important a part in physical science, and is
being prosecuted in so many quarters of physics, is now
helping us, by demonstrating similar spheres and emanations in natural substances. This also has long ago
been described and insisted on by Spiritualists, but
their testimony has been disregarded. A very interesting description is given of the recent discoveries or
rather re-discoveries on the physical plane, made through
a friend of Mr. Ruskin, and which he thus narrates:



l12               A STELLAR KEY.
"'Yesterday afternoon I called on Mr. IT. C. Sorby,
to see some of the results of an inquiry he has been
following all last year, into the nature of the coloring
matter of leaves and flowers. You most probably have
heard (at all events, may with little trouble hear) of the
marvelous power which chemical analysis has received
in recent discoveries respecting the laws of light. Myfriend showed me the rainbow of the rose, and the rainbow of the violet, and the rainbow of the hyacinth, and
tle rainbow of forest leaves being born, and the rainbow of forest leaves dying. And, last, he showed me
the rainbow of blood. It was but the three-hundrledth
part of a grain, dissolved in a drop of water; and it
cast its measured bars, forever recognizable now to
human sight, on the chord of the seven colors. And no
drop of that red rain can now be shed, so small as that
the stain of it cannot be known, and the voice of it
heard out of the ground.'
" Shall there be," he inluires, "' a rainbow or sphere
around the rose, or around a drop of blood, and no
emanation firom the soul, with all its God-given powers,
and its undying loves, and heavenward aspirations 
The natural is but the analogue of the spiritual; and
poetry is true, though science, till now, has failed to
see it."
The reader will, possibly, find that the deepest truths
are vailed in obscurity. Many of our plainest principles
foirml  a kind of mysteriwum, maf/gntum-immensely incomprehensible-arising in part, perhaps wholly, from
the inadequacy of language to convey clear pictures
and images of Ideas to the mind. Indeed, it must forever remain difficult to impart to the mind of another a
perfectly crystalline conception and knowledge of things
spiritual. The faithful, truthful logical thinker knows




THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SUMMER LAND.     113
that the visible world is but a vail, a material garment,
transparent to the spirit's eyes, hiding from physical
vision the formative powers which are eternal. The
material constitution and substantialness of the Summer
Land become a "matter of fact 9 to that mind which
is structurally endowed and unfolded by culture to discern the harmonious essences that perpetually build up
the temple of the universe, and which can
-   "look through natural forms,
And fed the throbbing arteries of LAW
In every pulse of Nature and of Man."
Thus far, in this section of our subject, I have led the
reader through the fields of " scientific facts."'  And to
this method, for a time longer, I am  constrained to
adhere; because the materialized millions of America
demand, even from me, the plain evidences of intellectual
and passionless science.
Before us now, therefore, is the labor of establishing
in your mind two grand truths: namely, first, that the
so-called' solid " matter of the universe is continually
risivng to its ultimate condition (which is the reproduction of its prinitive condition), but in a far higher circle
of refinement, called "' essences;" and, second, that from
the human organization, especially, these " essences"
are continually emanating and sweeping off into space,
being the hghtest emanations of refined matter from any
globe, because the human body is the highest organism,
and is pre-eminently one of "God's mills 9 for preparing atoms to enter into the formation of the velvety
soils in the successive Summer Lands of immensity.
The first ti me I clairvoyantly saw  the "second




114              A STELLAR KEY.
sphere " —i. e. the nearest Summer Land, lining this part
of the stellar universe-it seemed only as a small section of a continuous white zone among the stars. The
little diagram gives a hint of its first appearance in
space.
Let the reader imagine my amazement and delight, succeeded by an unutterable awe, arising fiom the unpreparedness of my intellect for such a disclosure. Although
I have since seen a million times more vast and wonderful things, concerning the spiritual and celestial universes, yet the mere recalling of that first impression
and perception, which occurred almost a quarter of a
century ago, thrills my mind through and through.
The universe is ablaze every moment with these myriadgated spheres of beauty and glory. The infinite-master
Powers of the Univerccelum, and the plastic Essences
and animated Ethers of the highest regions of Matter,
and the grand white Light of the innermost empyrean,
are all beautifully and philosophically disclosed to that
mind which is intelligently and worthily open to the
perception and comprehension of God's choicest truths.
The vast panorama of the Universe, in its epical
grandeur and lyrical harmonies, should be pictured
as true and pure as frost-flowers upon your reason.
The intellect of that man who beholds these lofty
truths is supremely blest.  Henceforth he should hold
his



THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SUMMER LAND.       110
"- gift in reverence. And he should mold his life
In beauty's perfect fashion, holding on
Columbus-like through floods of thought unknown,
Till tropic archipelagoes of song,
Till virgin continents of stately verse,
And undiscovered worlds of harmony
Repay the bold adventure."
Such a philosopher, standing armed to the teeth with
the facts of positive science, would be constrained to
testify that when " we look on a beautiful landscape, we
see mountains, trees, rivers, real and substantial as
regards the material universe; nevertheless, only as
images, forms originally existing, in a world which we
do not see, and from which they are derived.. forms
which are as real as the material-yea, infinitely more
so, since the material is local and temporary, whereas
the spiritual is unlimited and imperishable.  Nothing
exists except by reason of the spiritual world; whatever
pertains to the material is purely and simply effect.'"
According to my most careful examinations of the
physical structure of the Summer Land, the fertile
soils, and the lovely groves and vines and flowers which
infinitely diversify the landscape, are constituted of
cparticles that were once in Atunman bodies!  But the
world-rearing principles, by which those particles were
attracted from the human emanations of all the inhabited planets in the solar belt called the Milky Way, are
from the spiritual universe. These human emanations,
like the lights and flames of crystals and magnets, flow
forth unceasingly, in millions of tons daily, into the
soils of the celestial lands.
Perhaps it may fortify your judgment to read Reichenbach's testimony. His experiments with " sensitives,"




116               A STELLAR KEY.
as he terms the neurological mediums of Germany,
demonstrate that "' every flower, fruit, and tree emits
into nature the best portion of its being-its essence."
But who has seen the aromal essence of a flower?
Who has beheld the essential form thus given off into
the universe'*
According to the Teutonic philosopher, the odic light
is more beautiful from the horseshoe magnet, set upright, with both poles pointing toward the heavens.'I. have,"' he writes in one of his letters, " a nineleaved horseshoe magnet, with a power of raising a
hundred pounds; and all sensitive persons can see a
fine liglt streaming out of each pole-that is, two lights
side by side, which do not attract, nor influence, nor
extinguish each other-as do the magnetic forces of
opposing poles-but steadily stream up high, side by
side, and form a light-column, as lare asas a man, and
composed of innumerable light-sparkles in constant motion-the column being described as impressively beautiful by all who have seen it. It rises perpendicularly to
the ceiling, and there casts a light upon a space about
twelve feet in diameter. If the magnet is kept long in
this position before the sensitive person, the whole ceiling becomes gradually visible. Such a magnet upon a
table throws a light upon it, so that every thing on its
surface can be seen for a.yard in each direction from the
magnet. A hand interposed between the flame and the
table casts a perceptible shadow.  If you hold a piece
of board, a pane of window-glass, a plate of tin, or any
* These emanations have been seen by many clairvoyants. For the
author's perception of them, read a chapter in " The Seer " (Harmonia,
vol. IIL); also see a chapter in' The Magic Staff."




THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SUiMER LAND.    117
similar body horizontally into the flame, the latter will
bend under it and rise up at the sides, just as the flame
of a fire would under the same circumstances. If a
draft of air blow upon the magnet, or if it be moved,
the flame bends to one side, as the flame of a candle
would. The light can be collected in a focus by a
burning-glass, like the rays of ordinary light.  The
phenomenon is thus shown to be a material one, and
has many qualities in common with ordinary flame. If
two of these odic flames be made to cross each other,
there is no perceptible attraction or repulsion, but they
mutually pierce each other, and pursue their respective
courses undisturbed. If one be stronger than the other
-if its sparkles of light have a stronger headway-it
divides the weaker flame, which splits, passes over the
sides of the stronger one, and meets on the other side,
just as it does if a stick be held in it. And as sensitive
persons saw the crystals penetrated by a fine glow, so
also they see the steel magnet translucent with a
white light; and   electro-magnets have the same
appearance."
That all the universe of matter is pervaded by an
invisible essence, is to be the grandest discovery of
chemical science.  Cornelius Agrippa, in his great
works on Occult Philosophy, recognized the existence
of this sympathetic and antipathetic essence between
and throughout all things.  This essence is not a mere
motion of matter in a high state of attenuation; it is,
in fact, a substantial form of matter itself; and we find
that the Summer Land derived its constitution from the
atoms composing this inter-stellar and inter-planetary
etherealized ocean of materials.




118               A STELLAR KlIY.
Now the laws that govern nature go on, as I have
many times urged, with a steady and unchangeable
progression.  They are not at any time retarded or
accelerated. Nothing can prevent the natural results
of these laws.  They are established by one great
positive power and mind; and equaled and balanced
by a negative or ultimate equilibrium.  HIence their
continued and united forces, by the influence of which
all things are actuated, governed, and developed,
pass on in a steady progression. Every particle of
matter possesses the same power which governs the
whole of the universe, and in each particle you see a
representation and evidence of those divine laws.
Thus, in the stone you may see the properties of the
soil; in the soil, the properties of the plant; in the
plant, the properties of an animal; in the animal you
see man —and in Man you cannot see, but you can feel
the immortal principle.
The testimony of years ago is as fresh and momentous
now as then. I am equally desirous of enforcing that
great spiritual and eternal truth which it is necessary
for man to know and appreciate before he can comprehend the idea of the Summer Land; and that is, that all
manifest substances, jormns, compositions-indeed, that
ALL THINGS VISIBLE are expressions of an interior productive cause, which is the spiritutal essence; that the Mineral
Kinlgdom is an expression of Niotion, the Vegetable an
expression of Life, the Animal an expression of Sensation, and that Man is an expression of Intelligence; that
the planets in our solar system are a perfect expression
of the Sun, from which they sprang; that the various
combined bodies and planetary systems in the Universe




THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SUIMMERi LAND.  119
are a perfect expression of the Great Sun of the UTnivercoelum; that the Great Sun is the perfect expression of
the SPIRITUAL SUN within it; and that the Spiritual
Sun is a perfect expression of the Divine Mind, Love,
or Essence. The Spiritual Sun is thus the Center and
Cause of all material things. It is a diverging or radiating Sphere or Atmosphere of the Great Eternal Cause.
It is an aromca —a garment and a perfect radiation of
the more interior Essence, the Divine, Creative Soul.
Some conception of the Stellar Universe (i. e., the
universe of suns and planets) may be obtained from a
synoptical sketch of astronomic discoveries.  Prof.
Meigs reports M. Arago's lecture to this effect:-a e
count in the Northern IIemisphere 4,400 stars visible
to the naked eye. And for the purpose of counting we
proceed in this way: through a narrow slit, corresponding with the meridian of the place of observation,
we look attentively and note the stars gradually as
they appear. The following approximate calculation
will give an inferior limit to the number of stars visible
with the powerful instruments of which we have the
use.
Observation has demonstrated that the number of
the stars of the second magnitude is triple that of
those of the first magnitude; that those of the third
magnitude is triple that of those of the second magnitude. In a word, that in general to obtain the number
of stars of any given magnitude, we must multiply by
three the number of stars of a preceding magnitude.
Let us, then, admit this law to the 14th magnitudeto stars which the most powerful instruments render
visible; as the number of stars of the first magnitude is




120               A STELLAR KEY.
eighteen, then the number of stars visible by the naked
eye and with telescopes as far as the 14th magnitude
will be about twenty-nine millions.; and if to these
twenty-nine millions we add those of the 13th and 14th
magnitudes, &c., we obtain the number of forty-three
millions of stars.
Herschel, in that part of the heavens occupied by the
knee of Orion, in a band of fifteen degrees long by two
degrees wide, has distinctly counted fifty thousand
stars. And as the band is only the three hundred and
seventy-sixth part of the celestial vault, the entire surface of the heavens must contain 98,755,000 visible with
the telescope.  And as we must remark, in a great
many regions of the heavens the stars are much closer
together, and that with our telescopes we only reach the
least distant celestial spaces and the stars least remote,
we must recognize the fact that the fiist estimate of
their numbers is infinitely far from the truth; and that,
admitting one visible star in each square minute, we
must have a number of distinct stars amounting to one
hundred and forty-eight millions five hundred and
seven thousand two hundred stars, and yet remain
much below the truth. There are then one hundred
and forty-eight millions of stars, and our sun is one of
them only. The mass of our earth is but the three
hundred and fifty-five millionth part of that one sun;
and we are but an atom in relation to our earth. The
place we occupy is then infinitely small, and we more
tlan infinitely little.
COMPARATIVE INTENSITIES OF THE LIGHT OF STARS OF
DIFFERENT MAGNITUDES.-There is in science a great
and much to be regretted blank; photometry, or the




THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SUMMER LAND.    121
art of measuring the various intensities of light, is still
in its infancy; we have hardly taken the first step.
The division of the stars by the order of their magnitilde was made by the astronomers of antiquity in an
arbitrary manner and without any pretension to exactness, and this vagueness is continued in our modern
charts. Those which are accredited now' present a
total table of eighteen stars of the first magnitude for
the two hemispheres. Why eighteen, and not nineteen
or twenty?
The stars of the first magnitude are far from having
all the same intensity.  The sixth order composed
among the ancients the last visible to the naked eye;
and in our day those of the seventh magnitude constitute the demarcation between the stars visible to the
naked eye and the telescopic stars.
We may affirm that there are certainly stars in the
firmament whose distance from the earth is 344 and
even 900 times greater than that of the stars visible to
the naked eye. See what conclusion this leads us to!
It is admitted that light, with the velocity of 77,000
leagues a second, takes three years to reach us from the
nearest star.  And there are stars three hundred and
forty-four and even nine hundred times more remote.
Then there are stars whose light does not reach us until
after two thousand seven hundred years-an infinity in
distance as it is in numbers.
STARS OF VARIABLE INTENSITY OF LIGIT. —Eratosthenes, in the year 275 before Christ, says of the stars in
the constellation of the Scorpion: " They are preceded by
the most beautiful of all the northern gems.9  At this
time this is less brilliant than the southern, and, above
6




122              A STELLAR KEY.
all, than Arcturus. Then there have been changes
since the time of Eratosthenes.
When Newton pronounced the sublime words, universal attraction, there was an outcry at its novelty; it
was a neologism; it had occult qualities, &c. Now the
words fill the world, of which they are its greatest
reality.
DIAMETERS OF THE STARS.-Great diversity of opinion
exists on this point. If we should take for their discs
such as they appear to the naked eye, certain stars
would be nine thousand millions of leagues in diameter
-equal to twenty-seven thousand times greater diameter than the sun-and the most moderate calculations
would be one thousand seven hundred millions. Herschel's last calculation was that Arct.rus had a diameter of nearly four millions of leagues (twelve millions of
miles). If the apparent diameter of two seconds and a
half, assigned by Herschel to the Goat, was real, the
mass of that star must be more than fourteen million
times greater than that of otr sun. But there is no
certainty in this, nor any thing to question that our sun
is a star.
The sublime idea that the Creator hath made all
with number, weight, and measure, is followed by
Plato, who called it the geometry of the heavens.
Halley, the friend of Newton, believed that all the
stars were of the same magnitude-that of our sunand that difference of distance only caused the apparent
difference of size.
NUMBER OF STAnS.-The number visible by means of
a telescope of twenty feet focal distance may be more
than five hundred millions.




THE CONSTITUTION OF THE BUMMER LAND.  123
DISTANCE OF THE STARS OF SOME ~NEBULE.-We have
supposed that the nebulae of which we form part is not
tile largest of the three thousand nebulae known to
astronomers. Is it not very natural? Is it not as a
million to one that it is so? When, therefore, on this
hypothesis, and the facts stated by Herschel, that there
are, at a medium, in the direction of our nebule, five
hundred stars, that many nebulae subtend an angle of
ten minutes, and the very natural hypothesis that the
distance between two consecutive stars among the five
hundred is the distance of the earth from the nearest
star, we must arrive at the conclusion that there are
planets so distant from us that light, moving at the
velocity of more than seventy-seven thousand leagues
in a second of time, would take more than a million of
years to reach us! These few words are enough to
prove, as it seems to me, that we must admit our
imaginations overwhelmed at the infinite number and
distances in question.
The existence and essential constitution of the
Summer Land must cease to excite skepticism in that
intellect which contemplates the glory, the stupendous
immensity, and the musical harmony of the stellar
system. It is a grand demonstration and affirmation
of science that light travels about 213,000 miles in a
second! From the moon it takes five quarters of a
second to come to us; from the sun, eight minutes;
from Uranus, more than five hours; from the nearest
fixed stars, three years; from a star of the seventh
magnitude, 180 years; from one of the twelfth magnitude, 4,000 years; and from those yet more distant orbs,
seen only through the best telescopes-Lord Rosse's, for




121              A STELLAR KEY.
instance-the light requires many tens of thousands of
years to reach our planet.
Consequently, when we look at any of these bodies
we do not see it as it is at present, but as it was at some
former time more or less remote. We see the moon as
it was some five quarters of a second ago; Jupiter, as it
was fifty-two minutes ago; the nearest of the fixed stars,
as it was three years ago; one of the twelfth magnitude,
as it was 4,000 years ago; and so on.
New stars may have existed for thousands of years,
comparatively near the confines of our solar system,
which have not yet become visible to us; and others
which still shine in our firmament may have passed out
of existence before the time fixed for Noah's flood.
These facts and conclusions are acknowledged and
acted upon by astronomers.  They are true, independently of any theory of optics; since it matters not
whether light is a body that actually travels, or a mere
electrical phenomenon or a " motion " of force, as some
would have it.  It is sufficient to know that it takes a
complete second before a luminous body, 213,000 miles
distant, becomes visible to us, and a proportionably
longer interval in case of bodies farther on.
It is strange, however, that no one has hitherto
thought of reversing thi- problem; fbr it follows as a
matter of course from what has been said already, that
an observer in the moon, looking toward the earth,
does not see it as it is at the moment of observation, but
as it was five quarters of a second before. An observer
from the sun sees it as it was eight minutes before.
From Uranus, the time between the reality and the perception by the eye is more than two hours. From the




THE CONSTITUTIONT OF THE SUMITIER LAND.  125
nearest fixed stars, the interval is three years. " An inhabitant of a star of the twelfth magnitude, if we
imagine him with unlimited power of vision, contemplating the earth, sees it -as it was 4,000 years ago;
when Memphis was founded, and patriarch Abraham
wandered upon its surface. Possibly, in some star still
farther removed from us, an observer, equally gifted,
would at this very moment have obtained a view of
the earth 6,000 years ago, the creation of mankind, and
further back to the primeval chaos; and so on to the
remotest bounds of the habitable universe."
The following cut illustrates the appearance of the
Summer Land in relation to the southern branch of
the Milky Way:Thus astronomical science verges on the spiritual
universe-yea, almost walks into " the house not made
with hands "-whenever it goes abroad through the
upper spheres searching for truth. Reasoning with the
senses, to the unknown from what is visible, science is
compelled substantially to say: " That the planets are
inhabited by living animals, we have as positive evidence
as we have that quadrupeds or even insects inhabit the
yet unexplored islands of this earth; but whether they
are inhabited by men or similar immortal beings is at
present beyond the reach of human research.  It is




126              A STELLAR KEY.
ascertained that these orbs, like our own, roll in regu.
lated periods round the sun; that they have nights and
days, successions of seasons; that they are provided with
atmosphere supporting clouds and agitated by winds,
and that thus, also, their climates and seasons are modified by evaporation, and that showers refresh their
surfaces.
" For we know that wherever the existence of
c iouds is made manifest, there water must exist; there
evaporation must go on; there electricity, with its
train of phenomena, must reign; there rains must fall;
there hail and snow descend.
"Notwithstanding the dense atmosphere and thick
elouds with which Venus and Mercury are constantly
enveloped, the telescope has exhibited to us great
irregularities on their surfaces, and thus proved the existence of mountains and valleys.  But it is upon the
planet Mars, which- approaches nearest to the earth,
that the greatest advances have been made in this department of inquiry.  Under favorable circumstances
its disc is seen to be mapped out by varied outline, some
portions being less reflective than land.
"Baer and Maedler, two Prussian astronomers, have
devoted many years' labor to the examination of Mars;
and the result has put us in possession of a map of the
geography of that planet almost as exact and well-defined as that which we possess of our own. In fact, the
geographical outlines of land and water have been made
apparent upon it.  But a still more extraordinary fact
in relation to this planet remains to be considered.
Among the shaded markings which have been noted by
the telescope upon its disc, a remarkable region of




THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SUMMER LAND.        127
brilliant white light, standing out in boldest relief, has
been observed    surrounding  the visible pole.    This
highly illuminated spot is to be seen most plainly when
it emerges from the long night of the winter season;
but when it has passed slowly beneath the heat of the
solar beams it is found to have gradually contracted its
dimensions; and at last, before it has plunged into light
on the opposite side, to have entirely disappeared. But
the opposite pole, then coming into similar relations, is
found to be furnished with a like luminous spot, which
in its turn dissolves as it becomes heated by the summer
sun.
"Now these facts prove to us incontestably, that the
very geographical regions of Mars are fac-similes of our
own. In its long polar winters, the snows accumulate
in the desolation of its high northern and southern latitudes, until they become visible to us in consequence of
their reflective properties; and these are slowly melted
as the sun's rays gather power in the advancing season,
until they cease to be appreciable to terrestrial eyes."
And yet over all, and through all, as much in the unnumbered littlenesses of the microscopic seas as in the
boundlessness of the telescopic immensities, is the sweet
consciousness of our never-ending life-the enshrined
glory of our immortality.   How impressively the poet
Dana has set this feeling to the music of utterances:"0 listen, manl
A voice within us speaks that startling word,'Man thou shalt never die I' Celestial voices
Hymn it unto our souls; according harps
By angel fingers touched, when the mild stars
Of morning sang together, sound forth still
The song of our great immortality.




128                  A STELLAR KEY.
Thick clustering orbs, and this our fair domain,
The tall dark mountains and the deep-toned seas,
Join in this solemn universal song.
0 listen, ye, our spirits I drink it in
From all this air I'Tis in the gentle moonlight;'Tis floating midst Day's setting glories; Night,
Wrapt in her sable robe, with silent step,
Comes to our bed, and breathes it in our ears.
Night and the Dawn, bright Day and thoughtful EveAll time, all bounds, the limitless expanse,
As one vast mystic instrument, are touched
By an unseen living hand, and conscious chords
Quiver with joy in this great jubilee.
---- The dying hear it, and as sounds of earth
Grow dull and distant, wake their passing souls
To mingle in this heavenly harmony."
My present perceptions and       understanding of the
atom-essence constitution of the Summer Land, and of
humanity's delicate spiritual relationships thereto, revive
beautiful memories of impressions imparted years ago.
Arid while observing the powerful movements of all
things contained in the terrestrial and celestial spheres,
there cannot but be a conception of Divine Wisdom
legitimately accompanying the former conclusion. The
innumerable centers of the stellar system; the many
suns, with their accompanying orbs, planets, alid satellites; the perfect precision of the general movements
of all these bodies; their regular and connected adjustment and unity; the distributive harmony and equilibrium of forces and motions which they.constantly display-are all manifestations of grandeur, beauty, and
order unspeakable.      The regular inclination of orbits
and axes, and the definite distances of globes from each
other; their constant sameness of motion and the uni



THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SUtMMER LAND.  129
form direction which all take; the apparent sympathy
and reciprocation of the spheres and atmospheres of the
innumerable and apparently independent bodies; the
nnited and constant action which each of these manifests
all conspire to force upon the mind the irresistible
impression that the great and united movements of the
Universe are all being performed according to a most
inconceivably perfect adjustment of mathematical and
mechanical laws, and that all things are guided, in the
very motions of their inherent life and activity, by the
essence of Omnipotent Wisdom!    Their formation
and procreation; their particles and constituent parts
manifest, in their order and arrangement, the perfection
of pure Wisdom and Intelligence-while their numerical
extent, and diverse modes of development, infinitely
transcend the highest powers of human calculation and
demonstration.  No process of analogical reasoning or
of mathematical calculation has reached that point of
perfection by which may be demonstrated and calculated the exact distances at which these spheres revolve,
the immensity of space which they occupy, and the
harmony of the whole!
All things are divine, both in the material and spiritual Universe; and all become celestial.  So every
created spirit is in'vited by the progressive law of the
Father to its home; and when it enters, and becomes
sensible of the loveliness and purity thereof, it glorifies
the Father, not in prayer, but by thought and deed forever and ever. Each one, then, is an undying child of
the Eternal One, who is the Father of all; and no one
is so low but that it is the highest of some still lower,
and no one is so high but that it is the lowest of some
6*




130              A STELLAR KEY.
yet undeveloped.  One spirit cannot say unto another,
" I need thee not;" for each one is the sustainer of
another, and the mutual dependence constitutes the
harmony and wisdom of all things.




THE LOCATION OF THE SUMMER LAND.     131
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LOCATION OF THE SUMMER LAND.
UNDER this head a world of sublime realities press
for immediate expression. For twenty years the clairvoyant perception and interior contemplation of the
objective existence of the celestial world have been a
source of unutterable joy. But I am admonished now,
as I have been from the beginning of this Key, to supply, as far as possible, the testimony of different thinkers, seers, and speculators; so that, in the succeeding
chapters of Part II. of this work, some clear and definite information may be both sought and imparted.
The author's views, many of them, have already been
published, but not with that scientific preciseness which
may hereafter be demanded by close reasoners and the
public generally. Now to the testimony.
In this place, and first of all, we introduce the
evidence of a little boy, who, on his dying bed, and
with his last breath, beheld and briefly described the
Summer Land:    The little child was dying.  His
weary limbs were racked with pain no more. The
flush was fading from his thin cheeks, and the fever
that for many days had been drying up his blood, was
now cooling rapidly under the touch of the icy hand
that was upon him.
There were sounds of bitter but suppressed grief in
that dim chamber, for the dying little one was very




VIEW   OF LAKE "MORNIA," IN THE SUMMER LAND.
The Egyptian Brotherhood is situated along the shores of the Silvery Sea; over which shine innumerable stars, the greatest and brightest of which is " Gluptariou." —MORNING LECTURES, p. 364. et seq.




THE LOCATION OF THE SUMIER LAND.    133
dear to many hearts. They knew that he was departing, and the thought was hard to bear; but they tried
to command their feelings, that they might not disturb
the last moments of their darling.
The father and mother, and the kind physician, stood
beside dear Eddy's bed, and watched his heavy breathing. HIe had been silent for some time, and appeared
to sleep. They thought it might be thus that he would
pass away, but suddenly his mild blue eyes opened wide
and clear, and a beautiful smile broke over his features.
He looked upward and forward at first, and then, turning his eyes upon his mother's face, said, in a sweet
voice:
" Mother, what is the name of that beautiful country
that I see away beyond the mountains-the high mountains 29'"I can see nothing, my child," said the mother;
" there are no mountains in sight of our home."
" Look there, dear mother," said the child, pointing
upward; "yonder are the mountains. Can you not
see them now?" he asked, in tones of the greatest
astonishment, as his mother shook her head.
" They are so near me now-so large and high, and
behind them the country looks so beautiful, and the
people are so happy-there are no sick children there.
Papa, can you not see behind the mountains? Tell me
the name of that land!"
The parents glanced at each other, and with united
voice, replied:' The Land you see is heaven, is it not, my child?"
" Yes, it is heaven. I thought that must be its name.
Oh, let me go-but how shall I cross those mountains 




134              A STELLAR KEY.
Father, will you not carry me, for they call me from the
other side, and I must go."
There was not a dry eye in that chamber, and upon
every heart fell a solemn awe, as if the curtain which
concealed its mysteries was about to be withdrawn.
" My son," said the father, "will you stay with us a
little while longer? You shall cross the mountains
soon, but in stronger arms than mine. Wait, stay with
your mother a little longer; see how she weeps at the
thought of losing you!"
"Oh, mother! oh, father! do not cry, but come with
me, and cross the mountains-oh, come!" and thus he
entreated, with a strength and earnestness which
astonished all.
The chamber was filled with wondering and awestricken friends. At length he turned to his mother,
with a face beaming with rapturous delight, and,
stretching out his little arms to her for one last
embrace, he cried: " Good-by, mother, I am going;
but don't you be afraid-the strong man/ has come to
carry me over the rrozntains i"
This impressive testimony is based upon the frequently demonstrated fact that the spiritual existence is
revealed, with all its higher and most beautiful forms
of beauty, to the refined and exalted sensibilities of old
and young at the solemn moment of death. This
proves also, that the divine law of growth and of spiritperception is as operative in the least as in the greatest
mi.nds. Mind has been called " immaterial " but it is
as much material as any thing else. All things are really
the same thing. Matter and soul, though said to be
so different, actually consist of the same principle,




THE LOCATION OF THE SUMMER LAND.      135
though in different degrees of development. Soul is a
more attenuated form of matter; this accounts for the
imperceptibility of the soul by the physical eye.  The
eye can only discern things in the same sphere with
itself, and those below. Itence the physical eye can
only see physical things; while the spiritual eye
can behold both spiritual and physical things. The
physical eye is imperfect —the spiritual, perfect.
The spiritual body is composed of matter which is
refined and sublimated by the law of spiritual attraction.
In  his reasonable and admirable volume- the
" Arcana of Nature "-Hudson Tuttle affirms, with
the force and assurance of an independent seer, that the
realm of spirit-existence is as real, as tangible, and as
consistent with human nature and natural laws, as is
the globe on which we at present reside.' The second
sphere," he affirms, "is a daguerreotype of earth. The
refined matter which ascends is prone to assume the
forms from which it was liberated on earth.   The
scenery is identical, but more beautiful and ethereal.
Trees, fruits and flowers, are not individualized; that
is, their emanations do not ascend to the spheres in an
identified form, but their particles are more prone to
assume such forms than any other. Thus the particles
which exist in any particular flower in the spirit-world,.have never existed iri that plane before, but have
ascended from a countless number of the same kind.
The description of the splendid scenery we reserve for
a future chapter. One thing only remains for us to
elucidate. We speak of dwellings-of artificial things
-as existing in the spirit-world. Are they created by




136                A STELLAR KEY.
our simply desiring them      So, many spirits have
falsely taught. It is true, our desires create them; but
we employ means, just as man does, to accomplish our
wishes. We are not miniature gods, capable of creating
a palace by a wish. The marvelous powers of Aladdin's
lamp are denied us. This is true of the lowest and the
highest spirits, and in this respect none are superior to
man.9"
There are, in the testimony of seers and spirits, the
imperfections and discrepancies that are natural to the
human mind in all degrees and spheres of progressive
life. The fixed laws of truth, as appreciated by the
philosophical reason, eventually explain and settle all
doubts. Read all sides, prove all things, and hold fast
to that which is rational and good. In this connection
the affirmations of another writer* are required:" While every orb inhabited by human races throughout the immensities of space presents, when viewed
from celestial appearance, during its first great human
epoch or day, an undivided heavenly sphere, encompassing it without rent or seam, there is visible to the
spiritual left of the planet earth the likeness of a
divided spheroid, and beyond this two others. These are
called, in heavenly language, the lower earths of spirits.
Also, to spiritual appearance, are visible their opposite
semicircles, three in number, and they are called the
upper earths of spirits.  The three hemispheres of the
lower spiritual earth of the planet are composed of
natural, intellectual, and moral disorders; and upon
*See "Arcana of Christianity," by Rev. T. L. Harris, p. 150, Sec.
265, 266, et seq.




THE LOCATION OF THE SUDIMER LAND.     137
their surfaces all such of its inhabitants as have left the
natural form, in inmost repugnance to Divine good and
truth, by the voluntary acceptance of evil as their good,
become confirmed in the inversion of the Divine law,
and divested of such apparent vestiges of good and truth
as cohere, on leaving earth, to their minds.
The three semicircles which are opposite appear in
spiritual representations as three immense, extended
spaces, the one beyond the other, inhabited temporarily
by such inhabitants of earth as, through willingness to
become purified of all evils, are gradually putting off
the remains of evils acquired in the world, and passing
into the fullness of regeneration, which, when attained,
qualifies them to become angels. It must be understood that this view is an accommodation to the present
condition of the human mind, and falls far short of the
stupendous reality.  In this same accommodated view
we behold beyond the outermost and nethermost of the
spheres of the lower earth the real hells of the planet,
which are extended on three planes corresponding to
the inversions of the natural, spiritual, and celestial
degrees in man-three infernal abodes."
The arrangement of the three heavens and the three
Wells, above and below the primary and ultimate
~egions of the earth, the writer further explains thus:




138                   A STELLAR KEY.
E.-Heavens of the Planet.                            E
D.-Superior region of the Upper Earth of Spirits.    D
C. —Intermediate region of the Upper Earth of Spirits.  C
B.-Ultimate region of the Upper Earth of Spirits.    B
O-Natural Earth.                               Earth.F.-Primary region of the Lower Earth of Spirits.     F
G.-Intermediate region of the Lower Earth of Spirits.  G
H.-ntermediate region of  the Lower Earth of Spirits.  G
H. —Final region of the Lower Earth of Spirits.      H
I.-Hells of the Planet.                              I
Without comment we pass on to take testimony from
the record of a distinguished- medium;* although, before introducing the dialogue, we are constrained to
remark that the Spirit communicating seems not to
* Through whom Judge Edmonds received a large variety of communications.




THE LOCATI(N OF THEI SUMMER LAND.    139
have investigated for himself, and thus does not really
know, what he gives to the inquirer. The first is a
Skeptic; the second the Spirit communicating.
SKEPTIC.-If you are able to learn the abstruse things
you state, I see no difficulty in your learning any thing
that a spirit may know-you might gather the most
sublime truths of the eternal world.,SPIRIT.-True, if I could converse with those who
know those sublime truths. [Here, very candidly, the
Spirit confesses a lack of knowledge.]
SKP.-And why can you not? If they can tell you
one thing they can another.
Sp. —Yes; just as easy asa man who is six feet high
can ble seven. The spirits I talk with are persons of
good education, and they can tell me facts in astronomy
or in any of the sciences, as easily as they could answer
me the most trifling question.  My spirit friends are
generally those whom I knew on earth. I seek only
for such things as any well-educated spirit could tell
me, facts concerning spirit-life. As to the sublime
truths you speak of, they are continually given to mortals in the ordinary mode of inspiration; for there is
no mortal that is not occasionally inspired. The great
truths are ever dawning upon us-and rarely, as I
think, does a truth come to the world of spirits that is
not immediately conveyed to earth by thousands who
wish to inspire their cherished friends.  The one great
truth that spirits have to tell us is, that they are often
with us and do communicate with mankind, although
the recipients of their inspiration are unconscious that
they are inspired. Nine out of ten of all the inventions of earth have been brought to it from a more




140              A STELLAR KEY.
advanced world.  The inventors have supposed the
ideas their own, and plumed themselves accordingly,
while they were merely receiving them from their
invisible friends.
SKiP.-I do not understand-according to your doctrine that spirits are like mortals, only more progressive
— how the spirits were able to make inventions, if they
could not while on earth.
SP. —Doubtless they are inspired, as we are. They
often tell me that they speak as they are impressed or
inspired to speak. Mlany of them claim to be impressible mediums, and to be able at any time to hold communication with the Lythylli.
SxE.-And what are the Lythylli?
SP.-Spirits of the next estate. Spirits who have
terminated their career in the spirit-worlds, and gone to
a system of worlds in the next degree of sublimationworlds as much more refined as their bodies are when
they have become Lythylli,-as spirits call those above
them.   They are those who have departed that life,
and returned to converse with those they left behind.
SKP. —And those Lythylli doubtless talk with beings
in a condition above them.
SP.-Of course, and so on, up to God. Many a
thought uttered on earth is freshly brought from the
highest source of inspiration.
SKP.-You will admit then that the books of the Old
Testament may have been inspired by God.
Sr.-I have always claimed that they were inspired.
It was not the Creator that spoke directly to man. The
truths and the commandments which start at the fountain of wisdom do not always arrive at earth in their




THE LOCATION OF THE SUMMER LAND.    141
original purity.  And yet as a rule the truth comes to
us as fast as we can receive it, and as pure as we can
bear it. There is not one mind in a million that is
capable of receiving truth in its purity. It requires a
very high development of all the faculties to open the
mind to its comprehension.
SKp.-I should like hereafter to discuss this matter
further, but now I am chiefly interested in the later
questions that have been before us. I am interested in
your system of astronomy. If there were a possibility
of demonstration or proof, how we might extend the
science! As a spirit man might visit the stars personally, instead of peeping at them through telescopes.
SP.-Yes, a few of them, but the great majority of
them are as far beyond a spirit's reach as they are from
ours. Remember that a spirit, placed upon a globe
which is 100,000,000,000 miles from us, looks upon a
sky almost identical with ours. The only difference is
probably the substitution of the planets of the spiritsystems for those of ours. The fixed stars are the same
to them as they are to us, being entirely too distant to
change their relative position. Perhaps observations
made on earth and upon a spirit-world 100,000,000,000
miles distant would by the parallax determine the distance of many of the stars.  But we well know there
are millions of stars that could not be surveyed from
_so narrow a base.
SKP.-Cannot spirits visit the fixed stars?
SP.-Some of them are near enough to be visited;
Sirius, for example.
SKP.-What is the difficulty 2 can they not move with
the swiftness of thought?




142              A STELLAR KEY.
SP.-Doubtless they can, through a vacuum such as
the stellar spaces. The difficulty is to think fast enough.
A spirit of strong will and great power can move
through space with great rapidity.  His will-force is
the motive power, and there is nothing to resist his
progress. He can go in a second of time a distance quite
incomprehensible to himself, and yet before he reaches
the fixed stars some time will have been consumed.
SxP. —You spoke of talking with a spirit who had
visited Sirius. Did he tell you any thing of it?
SP. —Yes. It is larger than our sun by a third. It
has a more extensive system of planets than we have.
The people inhabiting them did not seem to him any
more progressed than the people of earth, and he was
not so much pleased with the races he saw as he was
with our own Hellenic race. Only by visiting many
worlds can we become liberalized. A spirit only can be
truly cosmopolitan.  This astronomer, who had with a
company of others visited Sirius, learned that the machinery of that system of worlds was like ours. It had
its accompanying solar system for the residence of spirits,
and the successive systems for the Lythylli. It was one
of the many systems that with ours wheel round a
great and distant center, forming together one of the
many congeries of systems that revolve in almost
eternal years round a still greater center, which with
all the masses of worlds created roll round the central
orb of the universe.
SKP.-This is a fine picture.  I can imagine myself
located in space, and looking, upon the worlds which
like motes in the sunbeam fill the universe of God.
SP.-If you were able to take in at a glance the




THE LOCATION OF THE SUM1MER LAND.    143
whole creation, you would certainly find its movements
beautiful. Suppose the suns with their planets to form
a disc. Suppose the systems of spirit-worlds many in
number to lie parallel to the grosser solar systems upon
which human beings originate.  These discs move
through space in a platoon, side by side. They do not
advance in a line perpendicular to their discs, but parallel to them. All spheres having a common origin
must revolve in the same general direction.  The rotation upon their axes is also governed by an invisible law,
for there was no chance-work in the great arrangements
of the heavens. In no other way than this edgewise
movement could the systems move so safely and so well.
SKP. —Tell me something of the manner in which
spirits go and come between earth and the spirit-world.
SP.-Let us premise, that when a spirit of earth sets
his foot upon the globe destined for his second life he
finds himself standing upon solid ground.  He walks
upon it as he would have walked upon earth, and he
soon forgets the change of his condition.  The world
he walks on is as solid to him as this earth was to him
when he was here.  There are rocks and trees, water
and earth, fruits and flowers around him as there were
on earth, and he must have a good memory indeed if
he do not soon cease to think of his new abode otherwise
than to feel how much happier he is. He walks upon
the ground, and he steps with as firm a tread as ever he
did, and he weighs as much.
SKP.-How is it when he leaves earth for his home?
SP.-It requires little effort. He rises into the atmosphere about as high as the clouds above them, when
the sky is not clear, until he can see his direction. He




144:              A STELLAR KEY.
then provides for the sustenance of his lungs, and darts
off toward the sun of his system, which is always clearly
visible, like a very large star, shining with a soft light
easily recognized as fiom a spirit's sun. In a few seconds
after starting that sun, expands upon his view and the
planets of the system  become visible. He sees the
globe which is his destination, and directs his course to
it. Its southern hemisphere is toward him as he
approaches from earth, and as he nears it he turns to
that part of it.
SKP.-You say the spirit-sun is visible from here.
Where in the heavens is it situated?
SP.-It is within the constellation Ursa Major (called
sometimes Dipper), near the pole-star. The two stars
at the outer end of the cup are called the pointers, because they indicate the direction in which to find the
pole-star: the spirit-sun is seen over the open cup of the
Dipper, about one-third of the apparent distance from
the line of the cup that the pointers are apart, and
rather nearer to the handle end of the cup than the
outer end.  A line from our sun to that star would, 1
think, be found to be the true North.  Possibly the
vibratory change in the magnetic pole of our earth
would be accounted for by the revolutions round the
spirit-sun of the larger planets of that system. Possibly
the magnetic pole of the earth would be at the axis but
for'the vast accumulations of the metals in the locality
of the magnetic pole. If these matters were all understood, all the phenomena of earth-magnetism would be
clear to us.
SKP.-There must be parts of our earth where spirits
cannot so easily see their sun.
SP.-Yes, in the southern hemisphere. The earth




THE LOCATION OF THE SUTIMIER LAND.   1-k
would then be between. He would have to go off the
semi-diameter of the earth to see it, if he started from
the South pole.
SKP.-I have understood you to say that the world
upon which spirits from earth generally reside is not so
large as this.
Sp.-Yes, Juno is six thousand five hundred miles in
diameter. Its moon is two thousand miles in diameter
and one hundred and eighty thousand miles distant from
Juno. To the inhabitants of earth is apportioned the
planet Juno, to the inhabitants of our moon is apportioned the satellite of Juno, to the inhabitants of Venus
and Mercury is given Iris, the first planet from the sun.
SKP.-You spoke of the inhabitants of the moon. I
thought there was no atmosphere there, and that, therefore, no life could exist there?
Sp.-The side turned from us is inhabited. The side
turned toward us has no visible atmosphere, no water,
and no life.
SlKP.-How can that be?
SP.-The center of gravity of the moon is seven miles
out of the center of the mass. -That throws one side
out fourteen miles, and making an equivalent of a
mountain of that height. Although the atmosphere in
the moon may reach thirty or forty miles, yet at the
height of fourteen miles it would be insufficient to sustain life, and it would moreover be intensely cold. The
side thus projecting is attracted toward the earth, and
thus we never see but one side. On the other side,
however, there are soil, atmosphere, water, and vegeta
ble and animal life, as on this earth.
SKP.-I feel continually a disposition to ask you how
7




146              A STELLAR KEY.
you know these matters, such as the condition of the
other side of the moon, which has never been seen by
mortal eye, but you will reply that spirits have told you
so. This I cannot realize, for my friends do not come
back from heaven to instruct me. I wish, without pausing to controvert your statements, to hear all that you
have to say about the astronomy of the spirit-world.
You have, I suppose, learned the exact distance of
heaven from earth?
SP.-I think I have been correctly informed. I must
depend on the statements made to me, and wait till the
multitude of statements shall be received as proof. The
distance of the spirit-world from this solar system is
stated to be 103,000,000,000.  The size of their sun is
1,204,088 miles.  Its apparent size to an observer on
earth is about the same as that of our planet Venus.
S-p. —The greatest difficulty I find in all your theory
is learning to think of the invisible and intangible substance of a spirit's body as a real solid thing. It seems
nearer to nonentity.
SP.-We cannot easily comprehend a condition of
matter which we have never had opportunity to examine.
As we cannot see it nor feel it, it is natural to ignore its
existence.  Many a time in the period of your life have
comets swept across the heavens.  You have distinctly
seen them with the naked eye. One which you saw
was 50,000 miles in diameter, and of so rare a substance
that a star of the sixth magnitude was seen through its
center. Now as the lightest cloud will hide such a star,
it proves that the density of that little fleck of cloud
was more in that small space than in the 5,000 miles
depth of the mass of the comet. Indeed, it is not un



THE LOCATION OF THE SUMMER LAND.     147
reasonable to suppose that a room full of gas or smoky
air would, out in space, expand to the dimensions of
that comet, and be visible at the distance of a hundred
millions of miles. You can and do comprehend all
that, because the matter in question is gross matter,
though exceedingly rare. If it were sublimated matter,
however dense, the light of the sun would not reflect
from it, and therefore you would ignore its existence
because it required the eyes of philosophy to see it.
Remember that matter, though sublimated, is still
matter, and is subject to all the natural laws, just as
absolutely as the infinitesimal quantity of matter in the
rarer comets, which forms itself into a sphere and travels
through space like a solid planet. Nature does not excuse any particle of matter from obedience. If there be
but one particle of matter to make a world, that particle
must obey the law.
SKmP.-I am inclined to believe with you that all
matter in the universe, whether gross or refined, is
subject to the natural laws: I can, therefore, though
with difficulty, comprehend that the globes wherever
reside the spirits of the departed, may be real substantial
matter. I begin to see that it must be so, that spirit must
have a solid world to live on, as we have, else the conditions necessary to their happiness could not be found.
SP.-I am gratified that you have surmounted the old
prejudices so common, I might almost say universal, in the
world. Assuredly not one in a thousand ever thinks or
reasons upon the nature of a future life. Men muse and
dream about it, but the result of all is a few fantastic
glittering palaces built in the clouds, so very frail and
unsubstantial that they vanish like a spirit at the first
breath of common sense.




148               A STELLAR KEY.
CHAPTER XIV.
A PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW OF THE SUMMER LAND.
AN inspired discourse on this theme comes to us with
a number of cogent passages.*  The speaker is moved
to consider the question of elementary spirit and elementary matter, and to adduce arguments in favor of the
hypothesis that the original and primordial substance
was spirit.  Some writers, he proceeds to say, make a
distinction between matter and spirit-between the elemental particles of the two substances.  Now, one of
two things is certain: If the two substances, matter and
spirit, were primordial and distinct entities, then neither
is infinite, but finite-limited and bounded. That is to
say, the elements of matter are limited, and therefore
do not pervade the universe. But they do occupy points
of space. Now, it is a mathematical axiom that two
substances cannot occupy the same point of space at the
same time. But these writers tell us that spiritual substance, so-called, fills another portion of the universe.
Now, no mind can suppose that a particle of spiritual
substance, which is real, can occupy the same point of
space that matter occupies. What follows? Why,
that spirit itself is not infinite. Thus we have presented,
not a universe, but a dual-verse of living matter on one
* The extracts in this chapter are from a Lecture by the inspired S. J.
Finney, delivered in New York, March 27, 1864.




A PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW OF TIHE SUMMET LAND. 119
side and living spirit on the other.  Can matter be inspired by spirit, if the two are radically distinct and
both finite? Where is our infinity  It is only two
finites.  Where is the divine intelligence?  Where is
God    Where is religion? Where is our immortality?
It is a logical impossibility. The truth is this: fMan is
immortal only because he is the incarnation of the
Divine substance, and since that is infinite, he cannot
any more be dissolved than the universe can be.
On this subject of elementary matter and spirit, let
me quote the words of an immortal:-*
" The spiritual body is a substance; and yet it is not
what you term' matter.' Spirit bears.the same relation
to earthy matter -that light sustains to the element of
water-tthe same as the form to the ground which
enlivens it. The spiritual body is'matter' spiritualized; as the flower is the earth refined."
Observe the phraseology: "The spiritual body is
matter spiritualized."' Now I am going to analyze this
statement, and see if it will stand the test of investigation.
The Harmonial Philosophy does not teach us that the
words of an immortal are absolute authority on theoretical or philosophical questions. We take them like
any other authority, and we put questions to spirit
personages as though they were here on earth. If the
spirit-body is matter (in the ordinary signification of
the term) "spiritualized," then what follows? Why,
that what you call matter is spirit materialized.
Action and reaction are equal and correlative in the
* See a volume by the Author, entitled "The Present Age and Inner
Life." p. 124.




150               A STELLAR KEY.
dynamics of the universe.   The sun's auric waves
break into zones and the zones into planets, and from
the planets come satellites. Maark the recent developments of science —how they sustain the I-Iarnonial
Philosophy.  Twenty years ago'"Nature's Divine
Revelations" announced:   "In   the beginning  the
TJniverccelum  was one boundless, undefinable, and
unimaginable ocean of liquid fire."  What are the late
revelations of science? That the motions of the planets
are the mechanical equivalent of the heat exhausted
from the sun; that four hundred and fifty-three four
hundred and fifty-fourths of this gravitating tendency
has already been wasted as heat.    Only one four
hundred and fifty-fourth of the original heat of the
whole solar system remains to us as gravity.  Yet
if this one four hundred and fifty-fourth were converted
into heat, it would raise the temperature of a mass of
water, equal to the sun and planets in weight, twentyeight millions -of degrees centigrade. The heat of the
lime light is two thousand degrees centigrade; think
of a temperature equal to two mzillion degrees centigrade
-if you can. The gravitation of worlds is the result
of the heat lost. If our entire system were pure carbon,
its combustion would generate only one three thousand
five hundredths of twenty-eight million degrees centigrade. So the mechanical motion of the heavens is
always the complement of the heat lost. Therefore the
present state of the universe is the result of condensation.
Science is proving that the now solid worlds were
once in such a fine, ethereal state, that no external
sejises that man possesses could have revealed their ele



A PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW OF THE SUMMER LAND. 151
mental existence to him. Body had not appeared. It
came at last, by cooling and condensation-or by
" materialization."
Conversely-take water, raise its temperature till it
becomes steam: Can you see it? Out of that steam
unfold electricity; out of that, magnetism; and so on,
one substance after another, until you reach the limits
of external science-where will you stop? Nowhere
this side of the original state of what you call " matter,"
which state is an infinite remove from " body," and can
be called by no other name but spirit [essence?].
Now, what is "matter?" I answer, It is a word
which ought to be applied not to the original substratum of things, but only to the form or body of things.
It is a misuse of the word to apply it to the primordial
and eternal elements of the universe. It is a word
derived from the action of the senses upon the phenomena of body only. It, therefore, relates only to
body. But what is body?     Gross material?  No.
Heat a granite rock in your retort; analyze it; what
do you get? Gases. Put any thing through a chemical analysis, and what do you get? Not body, but a
gaseous substance.  And the more critically and
thoroughly you carry your analysis, the less do you see
of what you call " matter." Your granite rock is so
changed that, instead of having gravitation, it ascends
and escapes outward into the universe. Its specific
gravity is changed into specific levity. The signification, therefore, which you attach to "matter," is
unphilosophical. It is a word derived from the experience of the senses. Original elements are eternal, and
cannot, therefore, be seen by the senses, for they are




152               A STELLAR KEY.
limited by space and time. And how can faculties
limited under space and time reveal the existence
of elements which know neither space nor time?
Chronological functions are correlated only with chronological phenomena.  Only Pure Reason can know
Pure Being; for Pure Reason alone is consciousness of
Pare Being. Pure Intelligence is Pure Being knowing itself. Sensation knows only phenomena. It is,
therefore, only in pure intelligence, or spirit, that being
is known. Body is the phenomenon miscalled "matter."  The word " matter," therefore, derived, as it is,
only from the action of the senses, means only phenomena.   Pure intelligence is, therefore, the only
primordial stuff of things-the one eternal substance at
the basis of all bodies. And this I call pure spirit.
And by inductive science this pure spirit can never be
reached, for it is an infinite distance (in time) removed
from the phenomena of mere body. Eternity alone
could suffice to complete the empiricle process backward and inward to this great center of the Cosmos.
But man is pure spirit in his inmost, and hence pure
being is revealed directly, at once, in consciousness
itself.
But let us go a step further. Science is proving by
induction that these external material forms are only
appearances of fine, ethereal, everlasting essences.
The "material" world is only spirit materialized,
condensed, and made up into forms under light and
shadow. It is nothing but the image of the infinite
perfection. It is not spirit that you see and touch with
your fingers; it is the body, the shadow, the form. I
grant you it is real'to your senses, but real what?




A PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW OF THIE SUMMER LAND. 153
Answer: Real phenomena. Hence you see the view I
take that the only substance in the universe, in the first
instance, must be Spirit. Whatever it may become
afterwards, in appearance, in phenomenon, in manifestation, whether it be in the solar atmosphere breaking
off into waves and circles of suns, one after the other,
from the great vortex of the Univerccelun, or the systems of planetary worlds derived from the great central
source, or the vegetation and the animal life that exists
on those planets, it is all one original stuff emanating
from the great Central Sun, through ever-expanding
circles toward the circumference.  But action and
reaction are equal, and if these material worlds are
spirit materialized, then  the spirit-spheres are body
spiritualized.  We cannot have a spiritualizing or
upward process until we have a materializing or downward process. These are complements of each other.
One is attained by the translation of heat into the
mechanical motions of the heavens, while the attainment of spiritual development, or the spirit-spheres, is
but regaining the heat so lost. And you will find, as
you rise through the sphere of immortal life, that you
are departing from  mere mechanics - that, as you
approach nearer and nearer the impersonal God-the
Divine intelligence-you flee farther and farther from
the limited and bounded; that the, shadows of these
material bodies are disappearing, while the reascending
energies of this one only substance are unfolding spirit.
The Spirit-world is developed by a reverse complementary action of the " materializing" process. The
spiritualizing process must repeat on a higher scale, in
reverse order, the cycles of the career of world build7*




154              A STELLAR KEY.
ing, because action and reaction are equal.  These
worlds come out of the solar atmosphere, being condensed from vast solar rings. Science confirms this
view; every step of its progress brings us more and
more near to this great general truth. Now what follows? That the spirit-sphere which emanates from this
grosser " material" sphere, and constitutes the second
sphere, or Summer Land, must be created by a process
exactly the reverse of that by which the earth and other
planets are produced.
Science teaches us that the whole solar system was
once filled with solar ether, and was itself a portion of
a vast zone of some far-off stellar center, and that the
process of world-formation was by the breaking up of
these zones of solar atmosphere into planetary bodies.
What, then, must be the spiritual-process, but a resmelting, a disintegration of the elements, and a rolling
of them back, through successive stages, toward the
great Central Sun of the universe again, but in a higher
plane? You must have a process of building the spiritsphere exactly the reverse of that of building these
planetary worlds. And when you realize this law of
analogy, you will see how vast must be that second
sphere-the Summer Land.
Now, in regard to this subject, I consider that some
minds have fallen into a most illogical mistake in locating the Summer Land. Although one writer admits
fully the principle that spirit emanations from the earth
asced. and forml another sphere, yet he locates tile
spilit-zone immediately around the earth's equator, and
makes it only sixty degrees wide. Now two millions
of human beings pass to the Spirit-world from this




A PIIILOSOPHICAL VIEW OF THE SUMMER LAND. 155
earth every year, making for every century two hundred millions. Geology is teaching us that man has
inhabited this planet at least one hundred thousand
years. Stretch your eyes down the future for one hundred thousand more. Consider two hundred thousand
years as the probable life of the world. Then consider
the increase of population for one hundred thousand
years to come, and say if you can that such a sphere is
adequate for the teeming millions of this earth. Can
you find sufficient space for that number of beings in a
zone sixty degrees wide around the equator, at the distance of the moon? Such a limited spirit-sphere finds
no response in reason.
There is another objection to this limited view of the
Summer Land. It makes the highest sphere of the
Spirit-world reach just beyond the moon.   Now,
though the moon is not yet inhabited, the time may
come when it will be, and a spirit-sphere evolved from
that satellite. What will be the consequence? The
two spheres of the earth and the moon will run into one
another, creating utter confusion in spiritual geography.
But this conception of the dimensions of the Summer Land is far too contracted. Look out upon this
boundless universe of God. How many peopled worlds
are swinging through the vast ocean of immensity!
Shall there be no unitive World where all these peoples
associate? Are we to be confined to this little speck
of earth, this mote of shadow in the everlasting sunbeam? Why has God given me my social nature, if I
am not to feel the waves of affection that float from the
immortal Societies arisen from other worlds? And what
roonm have I for immortal associations on such a little




156               A STELLAR iKEY.
spiritual sphere as that which is supposed to environ
this planet? No, no; give me a sphere vast enongh to
inolid all the relations of the innumerable worlds of
the universe-a space commensurate with the grandeur
and glory and vastness of that universe-a universal
Sunmlier Land.
But further, against this limited notion, the Spiritworld is made up of the aggregate emanations, in zonal
forms, of all the teeming planets of one great circle of
suns, each one of which contributes its quota of spiritualized elements. As you approach a flower-garden,
vou first discover it by your senses. You cannot see
the emanations of its life. I have seen the flaming
aura of these forms in Nature. A handful even of dead
earth has its emanations, because it is undergoing a process of change and translation. So with all the, forms
of earth; the elements rise, and they can never entirely
come back again. Some of the grosser constituents
may settle near the earth, and become reorganized, but
the entire elements never return. The earth, as it revolves through space, become more dense; its inner
life is flowing from it; where does it go8  Out into
space, like an aura.  The currents of these material
elements flow first toward the north, where, by process
of refinement, getting eliminated, they rise into the
higher atmosphere and flow southward.  You may see
these emanations, by mneans of spirit-vision, sweeping
toward the south pole, surging toward the spiritual
zone, moving upward into the vast magnificent ocean
of the spirit-sphere, and thus forming a vast zonal circle
called the Summer Land. It is a step toward the Divine Center, a translation from the condition of cold,




A PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW OF THE SUMMER LAND. 157
gross matter. It is a process of eliminating what you
call "matter" into spirit, unfolding its powers and
qualities, and making it real, substantial, perfect, and
beautiful.  Hence the relation between the Spiritworld and this earth, or other earths, that are peopled
or unpeopled, must be first an elemental relation. We
talk about the vastness and magnificence of our Mississippi River. Do you suppose there are no rivers of
finer and more ethereal waters in the Spirit-world?
Years ago angels told me: " Could you open your
spirit-eyes, you would see vast rivers of magnetic or
spiritual life rolling from the planets toward the spirithome in the universe-flowing from these solid worlds
to make up the elements of the spheres."  On the
bosoms of these rivers the elementary particles of refined organisms ascend. But man alone as a personality ascends. Why? Because he alone is a microcosm.
The other forms contribute elements; man contributes
his personality. This world is joined to the other by
positive and negative laws, just as the magnetic current
between the two poles of a battery connects the two
ends, and each is indispensable to the other in the
grand process of change and of cosmical spirit-elevation.




158              A STELLAR KEY.
CHAPTER XV.
THE SPIRITUAL ZONES AMONG THE STARS.
A CLAIRVOYANT looking into space from the earth sees
a great number of shining belts in different directions.
These nebulous rings in the sky, which diminish and
increase, symmetrically, as they recede from  and
approach to their respective aphelions and perihelions,
mislead clairvoyants, mediums, and even many spirits,
with respect to the location and dimensions of the
different spirit-worlds.  The cause of conflicting testimony is thus disclosed. The first year.or more of my
own observations I was frequently mistaken on these
identical points. The judgment improves in the state
of clairvoyance the same as under any other educational
stimulation.
Almost every star or globe, like the earth, has one or
more meteoric belts revolving around the planet's
body, and in appearance similar to the rings of Saturn.
They are variable in magnitude, in brightness, and
apparently in the order or periodicity of their revolution. (In a future volume these grand heavenly wonders will be treated at length.) The general principle
is, that the planets double their distances as they recede
from the sun. Between the orbits of Earth and Mars
there is a space of about 50,000,000 miles in width, and
between Mars and Jupiter's orbit there is an interval
of "airy nothing" not less than 319,000,000 of miles




THE SPIRITUAL ZONES AMONGO THE STARS.  159
broad. In this space we observe a vast bright belt of
apparently continuous solid matter, which, upon closer
examination, is revealed as a river of small stars flowing, or revolving like numerous other rings, around the
positive sun of our system. This splendid panorama
of stellar beauties I formerly supposed might be the
" Second Sphere."  But further growth in clairvoyance
sharpened the discriminating faculties, and thus the
circle of asteroids in that portion of the heavens became
clearly understood.  There are about 31,400,000 miles
of space between the orbits of Venus and Mercury. In
this interval, also, as between Mercury and the Sun, I
perceive rivers of cometary bodies-looking like the
gorgeous rings of Saturn, only far more loaded with
the red flames of fire, and a kind of blazing ether, from
which a vast white reflection is sometimes spread
through the whole southern hemisphere of the heavens.
Some seers have supposed (and myself among them)
that one of these broad continuous asteroidal rings was
the real spirit-world belonging to our earth.  Miore
accurate information, however, conveys new ideas of
magnitudes and relations; and the first Summer Land
is found to be revolving near the grand orbit of the
Milky Way.
There is something to be learned from the law of
gravitation-the weight and the lightness of bodiesby which law the logical and mathematical reason can
approximately locate the Solid Spiritual Zone in space.
The philosophy of the schools [see Comstock and other
authors] teaches that the force of gravity is greatest at
the surface of the earth, and decreases both upward
and downward but in different degrees. It decreases




160              A STELLAR KEY.
above the surface as the square of the distance from the
center increases. From the surface to the center it decreases, simply as the distance increases.  That is,
gravity at the surface of the earth (which is about
4,000 miles from the center) is four times more powerful than it would be at double that distance, or 8,000
miles from the center. According to the principles just
stated, a body which at the surface of the earth weighs
a pound, at the center of the earth will weigh nothing.
1,000 miles from the center it will weigh I of a pound,
2,000'  "'    "    " "    of a pound,
3,000 "'(     "    "  -" of a pound,
4,000 "  "  "   "   "    "   1 pound,
8,000  "  "  "  "'',
812000               1 
12,000  "  (  i;  1''', and so on.
The force of gravity is absolutely greatest at the
center of the earth; but at that point it is exerted in
all directions, and consequently a body at that point
would remain stationary, because there is no superior
attraction for it to obey.
Conversely, ascending into the atmosphere, the higher
the rarer, and yet, as " the force of gravity is absolutely
greatest at the center," so at the highest point of our atmosphere a new dentsity exists from which, as a basis, a
new action of the law is developed. Popular science
presented the atmospheric scale thus:Altitude in Miles.                   Density.
0....,  O       1
14....... ~ "
21.......       -
28...... e.
105.......     T: u'
105.....           -
35.       *           o.     1024
140                             -u
etc.                              etc.




THE SPIRITUAL ZONES AMONG THE STARS.   161
From this table it will be seen, says Prof. Iirkwood,
that at the height of 35 miles the air is one thousand
times rarer than at the surface of the earth; and that,
supposing the same rate of decrease to continue, at the
height of 140 miles the rarity would be one trillion times
greater.  The atmosphere, however, is not unlimited.
When it becomes so rare that the force of repulsion between its particles is counterbalanced by the earth's
attraction, no further expansion is possible. To determine the altitude of its superior surface is a problem at
once difficult and interesting.
Science has recognized the probability of what to the
clairvoyants has been long well known, that the interplanetary spaces are filled with a refined and elastic
ether, through which all planets revolve, and by which
a perfectly electrical and magnetic symnpathy is established between all inhabited planets and the Summer
Land.
The plane of the orbit of the Summer Land appears
to be at an angle of 20~ with that of the sun. [The
volume on " Astronomy," which I hope to reach some
time not far future, will contain these facts more in detail.]  The sidewise appearance of the Spiritual Zone,
and also its appearance as a stratified belt, are indicated
in the illustrations already presented., The remarks of
I-Iumboldt, in his Cosmos, vol. 1, p. 126, concerning the
solar light are here in order: Those who have lived for
many years in the zone of palms, must retain a pleasant
impression of the mild radiance with which the Zodiacal Light, shooting pyramidally upward, illumines a
part of the uniform length of tropical nights.  I have
seen it shine with an intensity of light equal to the




162              A STELLAR KEY.
Milky Way in Sagittarius, and that not only in the
rare and dry atmosphere of the summits of the Andes,
at an elevation of from thirteen to fifteen thousand
feet, but even on the boundless grassy plains, the Llanso
of Venezuela, and on the sea-shore, beneath the ever
clear sky of Cumrana.
In another place this author brings out something
equally important:'" Great as is the obscurity which still
envelops the material cause of the Zodiacal Light, still,
however, with the mathematical certainty that the
solar atmosphere cannot reach beyond nine-twentieths
of the distance of Mercury-the opinion supported by
Laplace, Schubert, Arago, Poisson, and Biot, according
to which the Zodiacal Light radiates from a vapory
flattened ring, freely revolving in space between the
orbits of Venus and Mars, appears, in the very deficient
state of observation, to be the most satisfactory..
No telescope has yet indicated any sidereal character in
the vaporous, rotating, and flattened ring of the Zodiacal Light.  Whether the particles of which this ring
consists, and which, according to some, are conceived
to rotate upon themselves, in obedience to dynamic conditions, and, according to others, merely to revolve
around the sun, are illumined or self-luminous, like
many kinds of terrestrial vapors, is a question as yet undecided."
Leaving upon the reader's mind these few suggestive
words from a scientific authority, I pass on to consider
other branches of this beautiful tree of stellar truth.




TRAVELLNG AND SOCIETY IN THE SUMMER LANDI. 163
CHAPTER XVI.
TRAVELING AND SOCIETY IN THE SUMMER LAND.
THLE human Will, having by constitution and relation
a  power"9 which is higher than organic "force," can
overcome the force of material gravity, and attain a
buoyancy in accordance with the refinemenlts and tides
of the ethereal rivers of space, and thus the individual
may rise bodily, and float like a person bathing and
floating in a beautiful stream in summer-time. The
spirit-body, remember, floats on the bosom of these
flowing celestial streams. Upon the celestial current
the spirit moves with the speed of light. Individuals so
borne along testify that they experience or realize no
motion, unless they-approach and glide past an orb or
other body in space. One celestial traveler said that
he was conscious of moving or floating at the rate of
what seemed to be not more than a mile an hour;
another said that she was not conscious of any motion
at all; and yet it was asserted that both were " flying
through space millions of miles an hour, three times
farther than from here to the sun, inside of one hundred
and twenty-five minutes!" A voyage on the celestial
seas may be accomplished quicker than a telegraphoperator could record the fact for the daily press.
Birds, you know, ride beautifully through the atmosphere; sometimes without so much as moving their
wings.  Certain winged ones can keep themselves




164               A STELLAR KEY.
moving through the air by means of the momentum
accumulated by the previous use of their strong electrical wings. You observe that these peculiar birds work
their wings vigorously and rapidly before they suspend
their motions, and commit themselves with such beautiful confidence to the buoyancy and integrity of the
viewless air. This fact in outward creation illustrates
the principle of traveling by spirit will-power. Birds
of loftiest flight work upon and frictionize the air on
the same principle as the glass cylinder in " a magnetic
machine " works against the silken cushions. According to my investigation, birds develop themselves into
Leyden-jars. All birds, by the motions of their wings
in the act of flying, fill their bodies and very bones with
essential electricity. Their feathers are non-conductors,
and thus the electricity or essence which they collect is
not easily exhausted. Birds cannot easily bring their
forces and wills to bear against a strong current of air,
but they accomplish the whole feat of a6rial navigation
sufficiently to illustrate the principle of post-mortem
traveling on these celestial currents. Birds' of flight
bring the electrical principle of the atmosphere into the
finest tissues and air-chambers of their hollow bones.
Ornithologists find that the bones of birds are supplied
with nothing substantial to the eye. Some suppose
they are filled with air; yes, just as a Leyden-jar is filled
with electricity. Through the spreading and vibrations
of their wings they develop electricity and discharge it,
as the electric eel discharges the subtile current without
communicating any shock to itself. These birds, unless
they have untrammeled opportunities to expand and
vibrate their wings, and thus to ascend and fly, have no




TRAYELING AND SOCIETY IN THE SUMMER LAND. 165
buoyancy. Like heavy domestic fowls, if you clip one
of their wings, or in any way accustom them to the footexercises of a yard-life, they seem to lose the power of
working up the magnetic forces, whereby they gather
the more external electric or buoyant principle.
Domestic birds do not lose this power, but they lose the
habit of flying, and therefore have no more buoyancy
than any wingless bodies of similar weight. It is possible for earth's present inhabitants to realize what I am
now stating-the ability, not bodily to fly through the
air exactly as birds do by means of wings, but in
harmony with the buoyant electric principle, and by a
wise employment of this sovereign " power" which is
implanted in spirit, with which all may measurably
conquer circumstances. By this "power," mankind,
preserving each his own peculiar life and individuality,
in harmony with those invariable celestial river-tides, or
currents, will be enabled after death to travel from the
Summer Land to different departments of the heavens
so filled with orbs, and to visit what would seem to be
immeasurable localities and interminable avenues with
more ease, naturalness, and infinitely more pleasure,
than you can now travel from your home to foreign
places on this globe.
Again, this power of the spirit's will is marvelous in
a chemical point of view. Do you suppose that the
good Father has made mankind to live no more than
"' three-score and ten years," and that then the whole
life and temple of each one will be utterly destroyed?
No! man is built to live an hundred years. But the
finest piece of mechanism possible to conceive is this
spiritual constitution of man. Will it cease to be of




1066             A TELLAR KEY.
service? It has been urged many times that this world
is but the rudimental existence. Do you not see that
these crude and unsatisfactory adaptations-these undisciplined and ungoverned elements of character-are
only in their elementary state?  Mankind require
germination and development from the inmost. The
love of art, like art itself in this world, is but prophetic.
If a man's spirit yearns to paint the Madonna so that
she would seem to others' eyes to be a loving, breathing,
palpitating lady of heaven, and yet but a work of art
on insensate canvas, is this yearning not a prophecy to
his own love-laden soul that the intense aspirations
which the good Father implanted shall find ultimate
gratification? In a word, is it not plainly saying to the
spirit that, by means of that "power" which shall be
unfolded from within, he will develop as perfect a
"form" as he had conceived as possible on the canvas,
and, indeed, infinitely more holy, loving, breathing,
adorable, and heavenly?
Spiritual investigators in America have had a great
many demonstrations of this form-making power of
spirit within the last ten years. The illustrations have
been furnished by many spirits of great intelligence, of
power over the chemical affinities of the air. Persons
who have taken no interest in either Science or Art,
will not be able soon " after death"' to do these almost
magical or miraculous things with imponderable principles. It is said that a great many inhabitants in the
Summer Land know nothing about what wondrous
changes can be accomplished in the air by the will. I
have a good mother who, although she has been there
a full score of years, does not yet form a clear concep



TRAVELING AND SOCIETY IN THE SUMMER LAND. 167
tion of how-that is, on what principle in matter and
mind-these " manifestations" occur, some of which
she herself has occasionally made by the senses of persons still on earth. She, an affectionate and reverential
spirit, does not apply her mind to study the method.
For her it is enough to know that it can.be done, and
that, like breathing, it is productive of happiness. Is
not this natural to some minds? How many think,
when on a steamboat, of the prodigious force of the
concealed engine? Much less do persons think of the
days and years of agony and poverty and discouragements which the successive inventors of that hidden
steam-machine experienced before they brought it to its
present degree of perfection. Men do not often think
of these things-of method; they only look at ultimates
and results.
So with myriads who now reside in the Summer
Land. They take particular interest in what is possible, and only see results that are wrought in terrestrial
circles.
In the city of New York, on many different occasions,
most beautiful transient flowers were chemically and
artistically formed out of suitable elements, the magnetic essences, which ever pervade the atmosphere.
These astonishing specimens of spirit workmanship were
presented to members of the circle. Each flower thus
formed was perfectly paclpcble to the bodily senses.
The different colors and odors were distinct. And the
stems and leaves could be felt and held in the hand.
On one occasion a spirit-flower was placed on the mantel, according to directions, and the member who did
it went back to the table; then the eyes of each inves



168               A STELLAR KEY.
tigator were fixed upon the flower, and in the course of
twelve minutes the whole plant totally vanished!
Those who have deeply investigated are familiar
with this " power of will of spirit," which can be effectually used by the wise, intelligent, and artistic. The
most gifted spirits have the "'power," chemically, to
bring together magnetically essential particles that are
floating in the human atmosphere. Thus they construct and inspire with transient animation some of
the most perfect forms of beauty. And yet the mere
bodily presence of peculiar temperaments in a circle,
will utterly prevent such a manifestation. Some persons breathe in and use up the requisite particles in the
atmosphere. In most instances a certain combination
of imponderable principles is indispensable to such
manifestations. That combination is, for the most part,
accidental or fortuitous; because even spirits, as a general thing, are not regulated by an intellectual appreciation of scientific combinations. Neither spirits from
the Summer Land nor terrestrial investigators have
ascertained how many of certain vital and mental temperaments should be associated to constitute a perfectly
successful circle for the manifestation of palpable
" forms."  At present, therefore, throughout the country, the manifestation takes the form of " social intercourse." Being social, it is regulated by no intellectual
by-laws, or " scientific formulas," and disorder, confusion, and contradictions are the not unfrequent consequences. But this phase of haphazard, disorderly intercourse is passing, and Spiritualists are adopting
methods that will lead to a more thorough understanding of their high and glorious opportunities.




TRAVELING AND SOCIETY IN THE SUMMER LAND. 169
Principles are both omnipresent and impersonal.
All the principles of the male and female Divinity are,
therefore, impersonally present in that very spot which
you now occupy. For instance, you may find where
you now are all possible chemical principles-the electricities, the atmospheres, the gases, the ethers, the polarities-including the principles of vegetation-and
all the forces and particles of organic life. What is the
proof? The proof is, you can breathe! Breathing is
a chemical transaction. Chemistry is at the basis of
all respiration. You discharge the carbonic acid, the
watery vapor, and the nitrogen, while you take in and
appropriate the oxygen, which is brimming with elec,
tricity and magnetism, whereby you realize the fire and
the force of the vital and cerebral systems. There, too,
is a principle of vegetation. What is the proof? The
proof is, that if you were to bring suitable conditions
together, the process of vegetation would immediately
commence. I know a German chemist, who in five
days vivified a seed, that would not otherwise sprout in
less than six weeks by the ordinary course of nature.
Ile vivified it by directing upon and through it an
electro-magnetic current.
The vegetative principle is beautifully illustrated by
frostings on the window-glass on cold wintry nights.
Reduce sufficiently the temperature of any room with
window-glass exposed to the air, and forthwith the
principle of vegetation will manifest itself.  Next
morning you find beautiful pencilings of plants, vines,
and twigs with branches.  The vegetable principle
gathers about itself the particles which assume the
forms and shapes which the principle inspires.
8




170              A STELLAR KEY.
In like manner the principle of organic life is all
through this world, and in every possible nook and
corner of it. Take a tumbler, put in it a little wheat or
rye flour, and then some water; let it stand one week
in a warm atmosphere-would there not be evidences
of organic life? How could it happen? Would some
personal God send down the formative fiat and fix up
that little flour and water so that it would begin to
squirm with life? Thinkers know better. Through all
parts and particles of the immeasurable universe this
principle of organic life exists; only waiting conditions,
forces, and suitable opportunity for a full and complete
manifestation.
In this world men see the omnipresence and impersonality of principles crudely illustrated. But when we
advance beyond this world-when we become masters
of " circumstances," what may not be possible? When
we rise up into perfect proprietorship; when our richest
jewel will be self-possession; when we shall have the
full enjoyment and complete knowledge of those attributes which oftentimes cause their possessor more
unhappiness than gratification-when this time comes,
what may we not expect?
Benjamin Franklin, the philosopher and philanthropist, has been recently seen in the City of New York.
You would have pledged your solemn oath that he was
present! And yet he may have been a million leagues
from the place of "chemical manifestation."  To spiritpower there is scarcely any limit. It would be difficult
for any spirit to "prove an alibi."  This is an important point for all'investigators to remember.  The
power of the spirit is the power for all to study. The




TRAVELING AND SOCIETY IN TIIH SUMM[IER LAND. 171
force of the soul is not so important. The soul is
organically wedged up in the body. No man's " soul"
ever goes out of his body but once; then it never
returns, for from that moment the body is dead. The
supposition that spirits come down the shining highway
and enter personally the bodies of mediums, as though
mediums were automatons, is unphilosophical. Many
very sensible persons have affirmed that they have' vacated " their own proper physical organizations, in
order to give room for certain spirits who wished to
enter.  There never was a more complete misapprehension. Mediums have been permitted to say and do
a great many things, because of the assumption being
credited that they were not personally present in their
own bodies. A multitude of Spiritualists and mediums
are now recovering from the effects of such mischievous
superstitions.
And yet the power of the will of a dweller of the
Summer Land to make himself seen and felt at an
immense distance, as though he were present in the
organs of the medium's person, is almost inconceivable.
It is marvelous to the unphilosophical observer.  It
would seem that the communicating mind was bodily
and directly within the circle of your presence. The
psychological connection between the medium-brain
and the spirit's will is perfect. The characteristics and
habits of the spirit may be transmitted to the medium
-that is, when the psychological control of the brainorgans and thought-faculties of the medium is complete.
The medium, for the time being, is no self-responsible
individual; for the will of the communicating spirit
gives form, shape, gesture, expression, and speech-all




172               A STELLAR KEY.
which, to an unprepared observer, looking at the matter sensuously, seems as though the controlling spirit
was there embodied, and that the customary proprietor
of the "organism" had departed for a time to some
other place. These possessional " appearances," in this
sense, are not deceptive.
Take, for example, the case of Miss —, who has
surprised, delighted, and instructed the people so often
-floating them off in her golden chariots of eloquence
throughout the infinitude of beautiful thoughts-how
fertile her inspired brain with appropriate illustrations,
and beautiful imagery, and, sometimes, with the
material of profound discourse! She is an instance of
what we call " inspiration "-an elevation of mentality
to a place in the sphere of thought where she, personally, almost ceases to be, and where her higher impersonal faculties gather themselves to the work, just as
your poetic talents and reasoning powers would act were
they promoted to a higher state of freedom, impressibility, and action. Lifted out of the immediate consciousness of personality, out of egotism, the brain-organs and
impressible thought-faculties become at once conscious
of and familiar with the subject presented to them. In
this state high mountains become " a feelin."  It is
the closest identification of consciousness with principle. But mere "intellectual displays" are slowly
giving way to a superior form of inspiration. The
psychological power of spirit over the faculties is a
question exceedingly important to all investigators.
We must have a scientific basis for these spiritual
temples.  Purely philosophical principles can alone
make these manifestations reasonable to all humanity.




TRAVELING AND SOCIETY- IN THE SUImMME LAND. 173
The wondrous power of spirit to impress its thought
at a long distance is just as natural as is conversation.
Here, we do not always truly impress our thoughts.
There, if the affections of two persons are in sympathy
with each other, the converse is perfect.  Those celestial Brotherhoods-the immense communities which I
have elsewhere described-can impress each other's
thoughts through immeasurable distances. But nothing
of this can occur where there is no affiliation. Why
not? Because of the law of attraction and repulsion.
If the attraction between distant Brotherhoods is not
perfect, they can form no mind-telegraphic communication with each other.
The Summer Land, more especially those portions of
it which are in connection with the inhabitants of earth,
appears to my interior eyes like a neighboring planet.
It is the next room in the house not made with hands.
But there are an infinite number of other rooms.
Characteristics and peculiarities of the lower territories
or sections may not prevail in any of the higher divisions of the sphere.  When the eyes of the seer look
higher, forthwith many of those things which so distinctly
prevailed, as peculiarly adapted to the neighboring existence, utterly cease to exist, both out of the people and
the scenery, as mankind progressively rise out of
peculiar and special attachments, attractions, gravitations, and relations. In that section of the other sphere
which lies next to us, the law of social attraction is as
powerfully operative as it is in this world. It is not
easy to tell why, but the dwellers are gregarious. They
are attracted socially to remain very near each other.
But higher up, or, rather, away in more refined sections,




174               A STELLAR KEY.
the people are influenced by other interests.  In fact,
the Indian-like gregariousness becomes distasteful to
those who seek and encourage the finer attractions of
the Summer Land.    Their new and higher and larger
affections render their former selfish relations almost
antipathies.
The next sphere of human existence is only another
department in the great educational system of eternity.
There mankind have opportunities to outgrow the errors
and follies of this life, and thus innumerable myriads
become prepared for another ascension.*  If a man
leaves this world in good spiritual circumstances, he
may possibly ascend at once to a better brotherhood, and
be straightway engaged in higher duties, in obedience
to higher sympathies and attractions.  Those who can
see what is "beautiful"' are prepared to receive and
enjoy what otherwise they could not. While those who
go in darkness of spirit, who have brought upon themselves discord and misery, go there without these finer
attractions and advantages, and of course they become
subjects for the philanthropic treatment and attention
of others who have souls for higher sympathies and the
essence of a more beautiful happiness.
Individual attractions and repulsions prevail very
decidedly in some sections of the upper world. They
cannot be wholly conquered by will, though they may
be governed. Affinities and antipathies come from the
action of the temperaments of different spirits in the
vicinity of each other. When you pray, therefore, be
* In confirmation of this the reader is referred to " Death and the
After Life "-last chapter, concerning the Isle of Akropanamede.




TRAVELING AND SOCIETY IN THE SUMIIER LAND. 175
sure to pray for the highest manifestation of the kingdom of heaven; that is, for a social and national condition above the plane of these ungovernable attractions
and repulsions-for blessings above the sphere of antipathies and unwise sympathies.
The wisest lovers there make great progress by refining and elevating the persons who are the objects of
their love.  But earthly minds too often depress the
objects of their attraction. Is your undisguised attraction a manifestation of your love, or of your' passion?
The source of your interest is perceived and realized by
the object.  Suppose your attraction is not reciprocated  Why are you so forsaken, or not accepted? Because
you do not make a distinction between your love and
your passion for the object of interest. Thus many are
disappointed in the very place where they had supposed
marriage would be beautiful and friendship permanent.
There is in all this system of affection and disaffection
a fine spiritual chemistry and a subtile law of magnetism.   lankind have not yet learned the difference between mere passional inclination and true spiritual
love, which attracts and ennobles its object.  The
former-the attractions of passion-are all of the
" earth, earthy."  They are not found in any of the
celestial brotherhoods. The wisest do not encourage indiscriminate inclination; they are swayed by neither external attractions nor disinclinations. They rise up into
the celestial atmosphere of pure immortal affection.
It rules all their thoughts, and thus the wisest person in
the Summer Land is the most loving.  Thus you find
that yery distinguished persons, both men and women,
when they return to visit your habitations, use great




176              A STELLAR KEY.
simplicity of expression. They talk mostly about love
and sympathy among mankind.    They seek earnestly
to encourage people to cultivate greater fraternity and
unity of spirit. They bestow fine and beautiful influences. But those wise ones do not often discourse on
the great moral themes and momentous political questions which wholly interested them and their friends
before they left the earth.
Divinity, in its central life, IS LOVE. In this truth you
behold the source of " salvation " to yourself and to all
your neighbors in the wide world.  The moment you
passionately love your object, with a selfish and jealous
desire to exclude all other hearts from contact with it,
that moment your exclusive love becomes a chemical
earthly poison.  Under that changeful influence, and
governed by nothing more wise than vital forces and
their fiery impulses, you will surely be affected with
diseases and mental distortions which may disturb your
rest beyond the grave.`
Mankind everywhere should work to bring the " kingdom of heaven on the earth"-and not pray for it
merely. People associate together and tile minister will
pray. "Thy will be done on earth "-that is, "may
the divine laws, and celestial principles, and heavenly
methods, be carried out in human society as they are in
the Summer Land." What does such a prayer amount
to? Nothing, unless you put your affections and your
will to the worlc of overcoming ignorance and obtaining' power" by which you can practice some portion of
that which you are constantly supplicating heaven to
help you to accomplish.
Fraternal love is at the bottom of true heavenly




TRAVELING AND SOCIETY IN THE SUMMER LAND. 177
society. Let us, then, cease being swayed by these
lower attractions which constantly produce family feuds
and cause a few persons to associate to the exclusion of
the rest of mankind. Selfish and jealous attractions do
not prevail in the best societies of the upper world.
They cherish, encourage, and manifest pure love. The
front pews in the heavenly society are not set apart for
the rich people and the back pews for the poor; neither
do they make great distinctions in accordance with the
dictates of a foolish and arbitrary fashion.  They who
have been servants are not treated as inferior members
of the human family.  While on earth, and among socalled Christians, they are treated as though they were
allied closely to brutes, and not human beings; in consequence of which they are angered, and become thieves
and liars, and do not hesitate to cheat and steal whenever they can.
Nothing but a radical development in society, in
politics, and in religion, can ever induce some people to
think deeply, and arrive at the conception that every
human spirit is capable of being pure in its love for trhe
neighbor.  I do not mean that you can love all persons with the same kind and degree of love. I do not
mean that you will ever exist without the feeling of
inclination and disinclination. That would be impossible. But you need not be so warped and swayed by
them as to be poisoned in your thoughts and affections
toward those of a different nation and temperament.
The true and noble in the Summer Land work diligently among the members of its inferior societies to
bring about that state of heavenly peace and concord.
When the inferior societies of the other sphere are har8*




178              A STELLAR KEY.
monized, the earth-land will also be more harmonized;
then all the races and peoples will begin to feel more
of that "prayer " which is now but a lip-service among
the conductors of the Churches.
The time is approaching when mind will be spreme!
Spirit, with the power of its will and the healing of its
love, is to take the ascendant. Then circumstances
will be to man like the sheaves which Joseph saw in
his dream, all bowing to the central sheaf; they will
all bow to the master, not to the machinations of his
will, not to his high animal ambitions, but only to the
fine power of his spirit.  When a man grows above
desiring selfish ends-when he arrives at that heavenly
point-then will all high and eternal things be his.
And he will also own the whole world. He owns the
city and the country; the sky, the ocean, and all the
earth. He also becomes the proprietor of all mankind.
For we are all possessors of each other in the heavenly
or harmonial state.
Spiritualists have strength and inspiration adequate
to the living of an entirely new life with reference to
each other not only, but also with reference to all those
who are not so blest —the " neighbors " who swarm in
the towns, villages, cities, and different countries of
the globe.  They are morally and intellectually able
to rise above all condemnation and misrepresentation,
and be sweet, and pure, and generous, and forgiving,
under all circumstances. They have but to rise up into
this' feeling" that power in the spirit is a portion of
God; that the inmost spirit only partakes of such
power; that force is only animal; and that when you
raise your hand in anger to strike another, you place




TRAVELING AND SOCIETY IN THE SUIEMER LAND. 179
yourself on a level with your misdirected opponent./
For the time being you are no better than he, however
much he may be the provoker of your anger and you
the innocent party. Rise out of that combative condition. See if you cannot be strong enough to "love
your enemies' in the fine Platonic sense, which is the
most beautiful manifestation of spirit. MIankind can
never have fraternal festive occasions in this world
unless they attain to higher growth.  The festive
seasons in the higher Societies of the Summer Landfromn 1851-to 1855 were memorable to all who witnessed
them or took part in their celestial joys.  The old
Greeks, Goths, Romans, Germans, and others, forgot
the heart-hatreds that existed during the feudal period
of knight-errantry and chivalry. Miany of these celestial Brotherhoods are composed of men who fell in those
desperate struggles in old England-Normans, Saxons,
Scots, Picts, Romans, Celts, French-and among them
are many of the old "Scottish Chiefs," who waged
such persistent wars in the early days of European civilization. Theme festive periods are perfect illustrations
of the Pentecostal times recorded by the writers of the
New Testament. Now I realize that correspondingly
joyful festive occasions are possible in this discordant
world of ours.  It is an occasion when hundreds of
thousands may receive baptisms from the inhabitants
of superior spheres.
One of these celestial gatherings was in session in
1851. The first sound in my ear was music.   The
melody thereof filled the whole heavens. It seemed
to fill the earth with heavenly harmony, and I became
a part of the scene. The landscapes all around me




180              A STELLAR KEY.
seemed to throb and pulsate, and each part responded
to every beat of the universal music. And it seemed
that there were in the other world all kinds of musical
instruments. The effect from the heavenly instrumentation was indescribable. But subsequently, in 1855, by
most careful examination and interrogations, I found
that no such thing as a musical instrument was ever
known to exist in that part of the Summer Land. But
the investigation disclosed the fact that the human
voice is a totality of sounds! The inhabitants there
have such perfect acquaintance with the powers and
sounds of the voice, that, by combining the voices of
particular persons, they can imitate all possible varieties
and shades of instrumental music. They accomplish
more than has ever entered into the heart of man to
conceive. The association of harmonious voices, which
is but crudely developed in this world, is one of the
celestial realities.
These heavenly festive occasions seem to continue for
several of our years. To them, however, it is but a
short period; to us it would seem to be very long. It
is a glorious Sabbath-tine to them.
With them there is no account of time. An event
is one beat in the universal anthem of eternal harmony.
They terminate their festivals by dividing themselves
up into sub-societies for the accomplishment of certain
missions.  Some of them   accept missions to other
Brotherhoods, not yet harmonized, in other and more
distant parts. Others visit those who are constantly
arriving from the earth, and from the planets in space.
Think of the soldiers that were constantly ascending
-from the Union and Confederate Hospitals, and from




TRAVELING AND SOCIETY IN THE SUMMIER LAND. 181
the battle-fields, during the hours of warfare, and think,
too, of the dying that is every moment going on in
earthly cities-the old and infirm, the poor and the
outcast, the starving and despairing —for all these the
beavenly Societies are formed, and they go about their
philanthropic missions. It may seem strange to some
of you that any work of this kind should engage and
absorb the heart-interests of the inhabitants of the Summer Land. But are not the attractions of the best faculties of human nature immortal! Is it not natural that
good spirits, good men and good women, should divide
into Societies and form themselves into Associations for
the furtherance of good missions? Every member of the
Excursional Groups has this power of Will (which I
have already described), by which it is possible to travel
with great speed through space. In this way some of
the guardians rescue unhappy men and womei who are
about to shoot, or poison, or otherwise destroy themselves. A guardian angel may save some sad, lone
one, who is about to drown herself in the stream.
Many suicidal characters are thus saved. Many are
not, however, because they cannot be approached. But
there is no instance (one of them said) throughout the
intricate parts of human society, where any thing of
this kind occurs, but some friendly and sympathizing
spirits are present, either to prevent the misfortune, or
else to soothe the sad one's darkened passage on to
another sphere.
So, therefore, when we each arrive in the Summer
Land, we shall find persons who are perfectly acquainted with all that we have ever done; no matter how
multitudinous the floors, how thick the walls, or how




182               A STELLAR KEY.
many doors were locked between us and the worldjust the same to angel-eyes as though there were no
walls, no floors, no doors, no locks-just as though all
dwelling-houses were transparent crystal palaces, instead of these thick boards and hard stones. Angels'
eyes are clairvoyant, and they can see as clearly through
the substances of space as you can see objects before you.
This truth will exert an influence on minds that cannot
be reached by principles.
Now take the moral import and apply it all through
society. You will not forget that there are many
heavenly eyes constantly watching your footsteps.
However faithless, however worthless, however fleet
you may travel on earth, you cannot get away from
them. Neither can you escape from    yourself! Go
steal a gold watch or a treasure, be false and deceive
others, if you choose; you will never be able to get away
from  yourself; nor can you hide away from   those'guardians"' who love you, who know whatever you
do, and who are always seeking to save, and cherish,
and make you better. Carry this memory with you
through life. It is not the gospel of " fear."  But it is
the doctrine of truth, which puts a strange and mysterious check on the play of ungoverned appetites and
passions. All intuitive souls naturally believe that the
over-arching heavens are  full of eyes."  It was this
conviction which inspired the following very appropriate lines:
Ah me I the solemn thought that man
Is compassed by such eyes as these I
That every action from its birth
A purer nature sees I




TRAVELING AND SOCIETY IN THE SUMMER LAND. 183
Perchance they mark not acts alone;
It may be thoughts lie open, too:
Each sin committed and conceived,
The sinless angels view.
Ah I what a sight for holy eyes,
The open heart of sinful man I
What is their pity, what their grief,
When such a sight they scan I
They see the good, whose head is crowned
With praise from every human lip,
Full of all frailty when disguise
From his weak heart they strip.
They mark how selfishness defiles
The love which men esteem most pure:
They mark how oft the virtue slips
We blindly hold most sure.
Well might we shudder at the gaze
That sees what lies most deep within,
If angels loved, like men, to mark
The weakness and the sin.
They love to succor and to heal;
In woe they soothe, in guilt reprove:
It is for kindly offices
They leave their home above.




184               A STELLAR KEY.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SUMMER LAND AS SEEN BY CLAIRVOYANCE.
I Now behold the forms of earth and the bodies of
men, including my own, in a light and with a degree
of perception never before presented. I discover that I
can only see the forms by judging what and where they
are, by the light of the spirit: for the outer body is
beyond my perception, and I only see well-constituted
and living spirits. By possessing this perception, I am
enabled to commune with all the possessions of this
Sphere, and now behold the extended fields and living
habitations of this elevated existence.
There are to be observed three specific degrees of
form and development: the young and unmatured;
the advanced stages of these up to the mediatorial
degree of manhood; and the highest of them all, which
is the perfect form and most highly developed of all the
spirits there existing.
I perceive that whenever an infant dies on any of
the earths, the undeveloped body of its spirit becomes
deposited in this Sphere, and is fully unfolded in intellect, and highly enlightened concerning all of its own
existence and prior situation. The infant that has had
life and dies in infancy, is, I perceive, in this Sphere,
NOTE.-It maybe a source of instruction and satisfaction to those who
have not yet examined works on the Spiritual Philosophy, to read a
few extracts from "Nature's Divine Revelations," pp. 647, et seq.




THE SUBBIER LAND AS SEEN BY CLAIRVOYANCE. 185
fully developed and perfected. So it is with all uninformed spirits who escape the body on any earth; for
each is here educated in the truths and beauties of the
whole existence. So it is also with the intelligent and
highly cultivated; for they are here more advanced,
and occupy a position more elevated and refined.
Moreover, I discover three distinct societies or associations of men and females, each occupying a position
determined by their degree of cultivation, sympathy for
one another, and power of approaching each other's
sphere of knowledge and attainment. And what is
well to relate is, that each society is encompassed by a
peculiar sphere or atmosphere, which is an exhalation
from the specific quality of their interior or spiritual
characters. -'Every spirit has a peculiar sphere of its
own, and also a general one in which it can with
pleasure exist. And spirits know and associate with
each other according to the quality of the sphere which
is exhaled from their interiors. They associate only
as spheres are agreeable, and as they are capable of
approaching each other with pleasure.
So it is also with mankind on earth. They dwell in
each other's society only as they can coalesce, and
approach each other with pleasure. So also are existing on earth the three specific degrees of development,
which are youth, manhood, and mature age. But they
are in a rudimental condition, and not situated in order
as they are in the Second Sphere.
I perceive that spirits approach other according to
the relative degrees of brilliancy which surrounds and
encompasses their forms. Thus association is determined and made perfect by the law of congeniality and




386              A STELLAR KEY.
affinity, or affection. They have an affection for one
another in proportion to the similarity in the degrees of
love and purity to which they have attained. Thus
are the three states or societies established.
In the first society are an immense number of infant
and uncultivated spirits, which are in various degrees
of advancement and cultivation, according as such have
proceeded from the earth.  In the second group or
society are those who have become highly instructed in
the principles and truths of the Divine Mind. And
into this society all who die on earth with minds
properly unfolded are immersed, because here they can
associate agreeably. In the third society I discover
spirits of the most enlightened character. The most of
them proceed from the planets Jupiter and Saturn, and
also from planets in other solar systems. This society
is so highly illuminated with wisdom that it is almost
impossible for the spirits of the lower societies to
approach it.  If they make an effort to enter their
midst, this is immediately overcome by the strong
repulsion arising from the non-affinity existing between
them and their respective spheres.
The atmosphere that flows from and encompasses
and protects the first society, is of a mingled and rather
unilluminated appearance.  Its brilliancy is rather
faint in comparison to that of those above it. It
appears gloomy, dark, and rather uncongenial, because
it is an emanation from uncultivated intellects. Yet
there is a purity-an exceeding purity among them,
viewed comparatively with that existing on earth.
The second society is enveloped with an atmosphere
of far more congenial variegations, presenting a re



TIE SUMMER LAND AS SEEN BY CLAIRVOYANCE. 187
splendent brilliancy which indicates purity and elevation. It appears like the mingling of many colors,
such as are not known on earth. And these are all so
perfectly conjoined, and are blended together in such
harmony, that the whole aroma is of'itself a representation of purity and refinement. Yet it is a sphere
emanating from the whole body of the society, indicating the wisdom of the spirits composing it. Their
Wisdom consists in a knowledge of truths and principles concerning material and rudimental things; and
in them they are highly enlightened. And the inconceivable variety of colors surrounding them arises from
their dissimilar stages of intellectual advancement.
Yet they are all in the same plane of wisdom, and
thus form one society, enveloped by this beautiful and
refined atmosphere.
The third society is also clothed with an aerial garment, which is a perfect representation of the character
and perfection of their interiors. I behold in it all
colors, and a variety of reflections proceeding from the
subordinate societies; and these reflections render their
spiritual emanation so very beautiful that language is
inadequate to describe it.
Those of the first society are in the plane of natural
thought; that is, they are just emerging from  the
instructions and impressions of earth, into the wisdom
of the higher societies.
The second society is in the plane or sphere of causes;
that is, they are just emerging from a superior knowledge of visible effects presented on earth, to a perception of the interior causes of them: and their wisdom
extends to the lowest and first cause of all material




188              A STELLAR KEY.
things.  Therefore they have a knowledge of all
interior causes, essences, and their modes of external
manifestation: but they are not in the possession of
superior wisdom concerning the uses for which causes
and effects were instituted.
The third society is in the plane of efects; and
those composing it have a perception of all ultimate
design, and of the universal adaptation of things to
each other. Their minds are exceedingly luminous.
With their powers of penetration, the externals of
things are laid open, and they perceive only the character and quality of the interior. Their vision extends
to every recess of their own habitation, and their
knowledge comprehends all subordinate material existences.' They have a most unlimited presentation of all
created things below their elevated position; and their
wisdom is light, and love, and brilliancy, and even
ecstasy, to a degree that transcends description.7 With
their unfolded spiritual powers they behold the vast
landscapes of the spirit-home, too extensive to be comprehended by men on earth, and too beautiful to be
appreciated or enjoyed by them.
The third society are not only in a state of emergement from the plane of causes to that of effects, but
also from their sphere to the third world of human
existence.
And what is well to relate is, that notwithstanding
the dissimilitude that exists between the three societies,
there is a perfect unity among them, and a mutual
dependence one upon another;t and there is a continual
aspiring affection that gyrates from the infant intellect
to the high and superior wisdom of the third society!




THE SUMMER LAND AS SEEN BY CLAIRVOYANCE. 189
There is a unity of action, an agreeableness of situation,
and a propriety of position, wllich cause them all to
live one for another, like a brotherhood.
And, moreover, it is profitable to remark that each
society or group is well situated, well conditioned, and
well cultivated, in reference to the specific state which
each is compelled to sustain. The situations are perfect in proportion to the degree of wisdom and refinement to which each has attained. The lowest appears
inferior in comparison to the higher and superior;
though even the first, to man on earth, would appear to
be a high state of perfection. By the varieties of condition and development, the societies are made perfect.
They are thus as one brotherhood, joined by mutual
affections and actions, and perpetuated in goodness by
the benign and gentle influences that proceed from the
highest society to the lower ones, and from these to it
again.
The societies in the Second Sphere are very much to
be admired, because of the perfect harmony which pervades them, and the perfect melody and concert of
rudimental and perfected knowledge which they manifest. In a corresponding manner does there exist a
concert of action, a unity of feeling, and a universal
love, one for another.
The inhabitants do not converse vocally, but immerse
their thoughts into one another by radiating them upon
the countenance. And I perceive that thought enters
the spirit by a process of breathing, or rather it is introduced by influx, according to the desires of those conversing. They perceive thought by and through the
eyes, inasmuch as these, like the general countenance,




190              A STELLAR KEY.
are an index to the quality and workings of the interior.
They seemingly hear each other converse; but that is
owing to a previous knowledge of sound by which
words are distinguished and their meaning apprehended.
They perceive things without them by their sense of
vision; but they are conscious that it is the refection
which they perceive, and not the substance. Therefore,
they exercise jacdgment concerning all they perceivenot judging from sensuous observation, but from the
character of the substance observed.
I also discover that spirits in this Sphere approach
and associate with each other according to.the mutual
affinity subsisting between them, even as do the inhabitants of earth; but the difference is in the mode of
associating. Men on earth associate with one another
by the guidance of their gross and rudimental senses, as
these are productive of inclination and desire. Instead
of this, men associate in this higher Sphere by a
knowledge of each other's inherent purity, and the state
of-each others affections.
Moreover, I perceive that the former experience of
every person, both male and female, is treasured up in
the memory, from which they can extract representations of that which they previonsly fktew or ex periienced. Every thing appears indelibly impressed upon
the memory, and is mirrored forth with a vividness in
proportion to the strength of the impression. Therefore, whatever thought enters the human mind on
earth, becomes a resident in the memory, and is here
brought forth with the appearance of newness that
makes it both interesting and instructive. Those things




THE SUMMER LAND AS SEEN BY CLAIRVOYANCE. 191
experienced which are disagreeable to the memory are
deposited in its depths and concealed from the view of
any other being, by the prevalence of those events and
experiences which it pleases the mind to remember,
and which the mind takes delight in contemplating.
Hence it is proper for all men on earth to do and think
only that which pleases them most (according to wisdom), and which they would most earnestly desire to
remember; and iot to do those things, or encourage
those thoughts, which are opposed to the superior
delights of the mind. If this cannot be done in the
present social and mental condition of the world, then
it is proper to change those conditions, so that even tAis
great good and pleasure may be obtained.
When spirits conversing appeal to each other's
memory, the memory mirrors forth a perfect representation of the thing remembered, which is perceived and
understood by the conversing spirit. I behold beautiful representations in the memory of those in the higher
societies. These representations are of the most exquisite character, because they proceed from the memory
of highly enlightened intellects; and they are therefore
delightful, inviting, and instructive.
I perceive that every thing in this Sphere is created
and manifested only by and through the exercise and
direction of wisdcom. Hence the perfect order and
uniformity that subsist, and the inexpressible happiness
that flows as a consequience from such exquisite harmony and unity of action. Every thing is appreciated
as a blessing conferred upon them by the light and life
of Divine Love, and the order and form of Divine
Wisdom.




192              A STELLAR KEY.
It is pleasing to behold these heavenly societies; for
I see them at this moment existing in the most perfect
degree of brotherly love, and joined inseparably together by constant ascending and descending affections.
How very clear and bright are their countenances and
expressions! They are unblemished by artificiality,
and unspotted by rudimental and gross intrusions —for
they are above and superior to these, and highly developed. The first society is indeed low, in comparison to the highest but the variety and the degrees
nevertheless form of the whole a complete brotherhood.
The diversity consists in the different degrees of development; and the lowest cannot approach the highest, because of the dissimilarity of quality and spheres.
But the lowest contains and involves the highest, while
the latter, in return, comprehends and pervades the
whole Sphere, manifesting a grace and beauty beyond
the power of language to describe. And there exists
almost an infinite variety of dispositions, of loves, of
affections, and of wisdom, among them; yet each modification of previous conditions of mind is only an ascending degree of refinement toward perfection.
The whole is beautiful-surpassingly beautiful and
sublime! for there exists that continual emanation of
love and wisdom from societies and individual forms,
displaying a brilliancy of illumination beyond any light
or color on earth. It is even so very bright and beautiful, that those in the lower societies who approach are
almost thrown into ectasies of delight. They become
prostrated, and apparently fall on their faces, because
of the beauty and brilliancy of the aroma that encompasses the superior societies of the spirit-home.




THE SUMMEE LAND AS SEEN BY CLAIRVOYANCE. 193
Thus it is that all preserve an order in their lives
and situations; and thus it is that their approach to
each other is graduated according to the unfolding
of the spiritual senses and faculties to the external.
They represent the circular and spiral forms; for
there exists among them a uniform and also an ascending movement. And one is continually unfolding the possessions of another, even as from the germ
are unfolded the body and the flower. "And even as
the flower perpetuates the species of the plant, so does
tlie superior society pervade the lower ones, and is constantly introducing them into its own vast possessions;
and thus all go onward to a still higher Sphere of spiritual and intellectual elevation.
9




194                A STELLAR KEY.
CHAPTER XVIII
SYNOPSIS OF THE IDEAS PRESENTED.
COLERIDGE'S intellect must have been endowed with
insight, for no poet ever more forcibly pictured the
great truth of primordial developments:"Contemplant Spiritsl. ye that hover o'er
With untired gaze the immeasurable fount
Ebullient with creative Deity f
And ye of plastic power, that interfused
Roll through the grosser and material mass
In organizing surge I Holies of God 1"
The first goings forth or out-births from the great
celestial Center are essential oceans of matter. These,
after due elaboration or gestation, give birth to sunsand become cognizable to the outward senses of man.
These suns become centers, or mothers, from      which
earths are born, with all the elements of matter, and
each minutest particle infused with the vivifying,
vitalizing spirit of the parent Formator. The Essences
of heat or fire-electricity, etherium, magnetism-are
all the natural or outward manifestations of the productive energy, the vitalizing Cause of all existences.
It pervades all substances, and animates all forms.
The order of progression of solid matter is from the
lower to the higher, from the crude to the refined, from
the simple to the complicated, from the imperfect to the




SYNOPSIS OF THE IDEAS PRESENTED.      195
perfect —but in distinct degrees or congeries. That is,
the lower must first be. developed, to\ elaborate the
materials and prepare the way for the higher. Thus,
after the sun gave birth to the earth-and the same of
all other planets-by the action of the vitality within
the particles of matter, and its constant emanation in
the form of heat, light, electricity, &c.-first from the
great Central sphere to the sun, and thence to the
earth, acting upon the granite and other rocks, with
the atmosphere, the water, and other compound and
simple elements-new compounds were formed, possessing the vital principle in sufficient quantities to give
definite forms, as crystallization, organization, motion,
life, sensation, intelligence-the last being the highest
or ultimate attribute of production on our earth, and
possessed or reached to perfection only by man.
A glance at the progress of matter in the production
of our earth and its inhabitants, will serve as an illustration of the same process and progress of worlds in
the vast expanse of the universe, that are perpetually
and incessantly-being brought into existence, and ultimating the grand object of the whole-namely, to
develop and perfect individualized, self-conscious, everexisting, immortal spirits, that shall be in the " image
and likeness " of the Central Cause, and dwell forever
in the Summer Spheres of space.
I now recapitulate the process of the earth's origin.
Within the circumference of the sun, elementary particles of matter gather around a nucleus, which continues to aggregate and increase in dimension and
variety of parts, in its perpetual and endless revolutions
and evolutions, gradually advancing toward the outer




196               A STELLAR KEY.
surface of this fiery orb, as it increases in complexity
and density, until it approaches the extreme verge of
the sun; when, by the impetus or centrifugal force it
has attained, from its more compact structure and consequent increase of specific gravity, it breaks loose from
its parent and flies off at a tangent into illimitable
space.  If a ball of lead and another of cotton of the
same size be tied each to a string, and whirled violently
around until the strings break, the lead ball will fly off
in almost a straight line, for a long distance, before it
makes a curve toward the earth; while the cotton ball
will perform a graceful curve from the moment it
breaks loose, and soon falls to the ground. The experiment will illustrate the movements of a planet, when,
first thrown off from the sun (being much more dense);
or, in other words, it will account for the eccentric
movement of comets, which, in fact, are new-born and
baby earths or planets. The extreme tenuity, fluidity,
and rarefaction of its particles, and its consequent
feeble cohesive attraction, and its irregular orbital
and axillary movements, give the new earth elongated,
attenuated, and many various forms, as presented to the
beholder on another planet. Sometimes it happens
that the caudal extremity gets so "long drawn cut,"
and so far from  the center of gravity-the proper
polarity or axis not being yet fully established-that a
part or parts become detached or broken off. The
detached parts become meteoric bodies, or else " satellites," which continue to revolve around and within the
orbit of the new earth. Our earth has one belt of these
meteoricparasites. Other planets several.
In the lapse of ages, the attractive and repulsive, or




SYNOPSIS OF TIIE IDEAS PRESENTED.   197
the centripetal and centrifugal forces become equalized,
the particles of matter have formed more intimate associations, the outer surfaces have locked up a large portion of the free caloric within the embrace of their own
substance, and have consequently condensed and hardened —a globular form has succeeded the oblate
sphere, with its spinal extremity, and a regular orbit is
defined and maintained. Oxygen and nitrogen have
united in the proper proportions to form the atmosphere; oxygen and hydrogen have combined to form
water; oxygen and silicon have entered into an adamantine embrace to form quartz rock; oxygen and carbon have formed a tripartite union with calcium, producing immense beds of carboniferous lime-stone.
Numerous other combinations of oxygen with gases,
metals, and other elements-and these again combining
with other simple or compound substances, have brought
out of this vast amorphous mass of elementary materials, as they existed in an intensely heated and rarefied
state, when first thrown off from the sun, new, and
more solid, and more permanent forms.
In all this beautiful, harmonious, and ever-progressive plan of productive affinities, oxygen plays a very
conspicuous part, as a positive, energizing, vitalizing
pril;iple, electricity, Galvanism, and magnetism being
different developments of the scame principle.  It
appears to have grasped and to have held fast within
its embrace the very germs of vitality. Phosphorus is
another form of its tangible development, not yet
understood by chemists or physiologists.  No living
plant or animal can exist without it.  It is always
found in the seeds and germinal principles, and in the




198               A STELLAR KEY.
substances of the brain and nerves, but in no other part
of vegetables or animals, as entering into an organic
compound.
In the course of time, when " the waters had subsided," the heat and light emanating continually from
the sun-upon the waters of the seas, and in rain, and
mist, and dew-acted upon the surfaces of the granite
and other rocks, abrading, decomposing, and uniting
with their elements to produce other new compounds
of a more refined and perfect nature. Thus, large beds
of gelatinous matter were formed in shallow pools
beneath the water level, and a slimy coating upon the
surfaces of the rocks above the water. [See Great
Harmonica, vol. 5, Part III.]   Thus soil was first
formed-a preparation, elaboration, and combination
of material, susceptible of developing vegetable life,
marine and terrestrial.  The first vegetable forms
springing from these slimy rocks were simple, and not
defined in their structure, being lichens, or cryptogamous plants, about seventy per cent. of whose substance
is gelatin.
As one forcible evidence of the fact of vegetables first
originating from the elements of the rock on which they
germinate, and from the heat, light, atmosphere, and
moisture, is, that each rock of different chemical composition, when exposed to these influences, will produce
a moss peculiar to itself, and the same rock, in any
latitude where it can grow, will always produce a plant
of the same species, and each plant in its turn, of the
thousands. of classes, orders, genera, species, and varieties now in existence, will invariably produce an animalcule, or insect, peculiar to itself. These are facts




SYNOPSIS OF THIS IDEAS PRESENTED.    199
that have been abundantly substantiated by the most
scientific naturalists of the age.
The first forms of vegetation were brought into
being, and perfected in their kind-elaborating from
their own substance a germ or nucleus of vitality with
the impress of its own individuality, inclosed within a
receptacle capable of preserving and sustaining it, till
the favorable action of the elements (in heat, light,
moisture, and the soil) could bring forth from each
germ or seed " an image and likeness " of its parentthe organized substance or body of the original plant,
having performed the ultimate object of its existence,
dies, and the elements of which it is composed mingle
with the thin soil on the surface of the rocks, adding
to its substance, increasing its complexity, and reffning its particles; so that, with the return of the vernal
equinox, and the genial rays of the sun, not only
the seeds of the old lichen unfold and expand into the
same species, but a new and more complicated plant,
with distinct and marked differences (perhaps a fern),
makes its appearance, and rears its graceful stem, and
spreads its glossy foliage above the lowly moss.
Thus the ever-present and ever-active principle of
vitality and creative Energy, acting and reacting upon
the materials of our globe, started the kingdoms of
Nature, which have and will ever continue to progress
-from the simple to the more complicated vegetable
forms: animalcule, infusia, radiata, mollusca, vertebrata, and Man as the Ultimate. T'he lowest and
imperfect first, and the more complex and perfect after,
in regular progression, but in distinct degrees. Each
new type being dependent upon all that preceded it for




200              A STELLAR KEY.
its existence, but yet distinct and different from its predecessors.
Thus-it requires certain conditions, proportions, and
combinations of elementary inorganic substances to
produce a vegetable-and vegetable growth is dependent
entirely upon elementary regimen-while animals cannot be produced or sustained in their existence by
inorganic or elementary matter.  The organic compounds of the blood, muscular fiber, gelatin, skin, hair,
nails, or horns, &c., are all formed in exact constituents
or proportions from the elementary particles that enter
into their composition from the vegetable. The vegetable kingdom must, therefore, have existed before the —
animal-the vegetable realm being the stepping-stone,
or connecting-link, between the elementary or mineral
kingdom  and the animal. Hence, if the vegetable
kingdom should by any cause be blotted out from the
face of the earth, the animnal would soon be annihilated.
Each type of the endless variety of inorganic and
organized substances is but a link in the great chain
of cause and effect, and each type or species is so marked
and distinct as easily to be distinguished, and each
variety and unity of the human species is so indelibly
stamped with its own perfected individuality as to be
recognized from the myriads of the same species.
Thus fixed, unvarying, and universal laws of the
Father govern and regulate all his universe. Throughout all the rumifications of the spiritual, physical, and
celestial, etern: I unity, order, and harmony reigns —conception, development, progression, and perfection mark
all things, and all point with irresistible force of reason
and demonstration to the immortality of the Spirit.




SYXOPSIS OF THE IDEAS PRESENTED.    201
In taking this philosophical view of the plan and
progress of Nature and the works of God, how grand,
how sublime, how comprehensive, how rational and
satisfactory-to the independent-thinking and inquiring
mind, who wishes to " have a reason for the faith that
is within him " —how perfectly are the love and wisdom
and justice of the Father and Mother conjugated and
displayed! And how real, conclusive, and overwhelming the evidence-appealing directly to the senses, the
intellect, and the affections-of the self-conscious,
immortal existence and progressive happiness of the
a spirit" that is within us! The human race being the
last and highest development of earth, and mind the
only organism possessing reason and intelligence that
examines and investigates all that is beneath and around
itself, and that has a consciousness of the futureendeavoring to raise or draw aside the thin, semitransparent vail that hangs suspended between the
physical and spiritual existence-analogy, "reasoning
from what we know," points directly not only to the
probability, but to the absolute certainty and necessity
of a future existences called the Summer Land.
All organic forms below man not only produce their
like, but the substance of their material forms mingle
with previously formed compounds, to produce a new
and distinct type superior to itself. But the human
type has ano superior develoypzent, and there is no ret'iogression in the works of Nature. Each new unfolding
is superior to the preceding. Man, then, is destined
for other and higher Spheres. In those Spheres, or
new states of existence, man's spirit must present not
only an " image and likeness " of Nature and God, but
9*




202              A STELLAR KIEY.
a consciousness of identity and individual selfhood.
Feeling and knowing this, he should so live while in
this rudimentary and preparatory state of existence,
that all his physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual
structure, formation, growth, and maturity, be fully
developed, cultivated, and perfected; so that when tlle
"mortal puts on immortality," and seeks 6' a home in
the heavens," it can expand into a celestial life, without
spot or blemish to mar its beauty or impede its progress
in bliss and glory eternal.
THE END.




JUST PUBLISHED.
A VOICE FROM THE INNER LIFE-A NEW             WORK,
BY
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS:
TENTITLED
ARABULA;
OR,
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THE CHILDREN'S
PR-OERESS K                    VE LYCEUM,
A MANUAL,
With directions for the Organization and Management of Sunday-Schools,
adapted to the Bodies and Minds of the Young, and containing Rules,
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Original and Selected.
By ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS.
"A pebble in the streamlet scant
Has changed the course of many a river;
A dew-drop on the baby plant
Has warped the giant oak forever."
{" The Lyceum externally is a work of art-its emblems all bearing
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one step higher in progress. The pretty picturesque targets all point
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white badge fluttering wing-like upward, and beckoning to the little
ones at the "Fountain" to gather up their ribbons (red, like the heartglow* of childhood), and follow to that pearly gate, where the angels
waif to let them in. Religion is natural-this is one of its most natural
expressions, leading to harmony, love, and happiness.
"Suffer little children to come unto me," said the gentle Nazarene,
" for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." Is it strange then that one
lovely constellation of pure little ones should attract to us the holiest
and most divine influences? If any doubt that this Lyceum movement
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feel the holy influences that fall in showers from the higher spheres,
the uprisings of the soul, as involuntarily it answers to the call from its
true home, the inspirations that fall upon the heart like angel breathings, thrilling each string with melody, and filling the whole being with
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L' Whereas, An interchange of views with regard to the management and various
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OF THE
Whilltea's           Ugatm1            |Bvao       l,
BY
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JUsT published, a beautiful, compact, yet comprehensive
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CHILDREN'IS PR OGRt ESSIVE LYCEUMS.
These attractive institutions, known as Spiritualistic Sunday-Schools, have multiplied rapidly during the past year.
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In this Manual will be found Rules, Marches, Lessons, I:nvocations, Silver Chain Recitations, Hymns and Songs. Spiritualists, and Friends of Progress generally, can now take immediate steps in behalf of the true Physical and Spiritual
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E. WATERS & SONS,
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A CHILDREN'S PROGRESSIVE LYCEUM, when fully organized, in accordance
with the recently developed system, requires the following equipments:TWELVE TARGETS, with title and number of group, and age of the members,
beautifully printed on each side, with twelve small silk fcags (10x15) for each
target below the staff, mounted, ready for use. Each target corresponds in color
to the color of the badges worn by the mnenbers of the group. These targets are
firmly fixed in staffs five feet and four inches long, with a joint in the center; a
brad in the lower end to fasten in the floor, and worsted galloon strings to tie the
staff to the top of a chair or settee in the hall. We lnt in the strings so that
they may be fastened to the staffs at the proper height. (For instructions, significations, &c., see the "Manual.")
TWELVE DOZEN PRINTED COTTON              FLAGS, Stars and Stripes, of three
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staffs, three feet long; the next size on blue staffs, three feet six inches long;
the largest on black walnut-stained-four feet long, carried by the higher
groups.
TWELVE SILK FLAGS (20x80), for Leaders. These beautiful flags are fastened
on black walnut staffs. four feet nine inches lon. Tle Leaders should carry
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ONE LARGE SILK FLAG (86x54). for the Guardian of the groups, on a staff six
feet long, surmounted with an appropriate ornament.
TWELVE BADGES, appropriate for principal offlicers and their assistants, arranged
in a strong paper box, properly labeled.
TWELVE DOZEN        SILK  BAI'GES, in durable labeled boxes, for leaders and
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methods, meaning, &c., see the "'MNlanual.")
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so that all may participate in the beautiful Songs, Hymns, Silver-Chain Recitations. &c.
A GUARDIAN'S JOURNAL, properly ruled and classified according to groups, and
well bound.
GROUP BOOKS, for Leaders, one dozen in different colors, and properly ruled.
REWARDS OF MERIT, of several varieties, furnished at short notice.
BOOKS OF MS. MUSIC, for all the songs in Manual.
A BANNER CHEST, with tray for badges and manuals, is indispensable-five feet
and two inches long and eighteen inches square, inside measure; with lid to open
back and level, supported by slides, to serve as a table on which to arrange the
flacs. This chest is furnished with a good lock and two or three keys-one for
Conductor and one for each of the Guards.
And finally, A LIBRARY of valuable and entertaining books, free from sectarianism, adapted to children an!d young people generally.  (The residents of every
community have books appropriate to such a library, which they will doubtless
freely contribute, if kindly invited to do so.)
0-   The undersigned will be happy to respond by letter and circular to questions relative to the organization and government of these attractive schools.
g~ The foregoing list of equipments (whole or in part), with the exception
of books for the library, may be obtained at the most reasonable prices, by addressing
]E. WATE1eR                 & Sye, -0N,
303 River St., Troy, N. YT




PR OSPE CTrUS
der
von dem amerikanischen Seher und Verkiindiger der
"Harmonischen Philosophie"
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS
in der.Reihenfolge ihrer Veroffentlichung in Nord-Amerika erschienenen und
mit Autorisation ihres Verfassers
eines Theils yon
dem   im  Jahre 1858 verstorbenen
Prasidenten der Kaiserlich Leopoldinisch-Carolinischen Akademie der
Naturforscher zu Breslau,
9icafsm~fr @r. ~|rstian 6otfdie   get    n Qax.te2it,
und andcrn Theils von
dessen Mitarbeiter und Ilerausgeber
Gregor Constantin Wittig,
aus dem Englischen in's Deutscho iibersetzten Werke.
These volumes, as fast as translated into the German language, will be
forwarded to America, and can be obtained at the offices of
WILLIAM TJVHITE & CO.,
158 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON, MASS., OR,
644 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.
NaO'W:R }3LD5     A:ND> rFOR SA:LiEB
THE    MHARlJf O.IA, 4th vol., " THE REFORMfEIR.'
ALSO
THE MAGIC STAFF, an Autobiography.
Price of each, $2.75. Postage, 32 cts.