Celestial body

“ If the celestial bodies, or, to speak only of one class, if all the planets were at rest, that is, without motion, they would, on account of the great attractive power of the sun, rapidly approach it, and finally unite with it and form one body. ”

“ As the heart and brain are the most important parts of the body, so the sun and moon are the most powerful celestial bodies; and as there is much reciprocal action between the former, so is there much mutual dependence between the latter. In the same way the liver corresponds to Jupiter, the kidneys to Venus, the milt to Saturn, the gall to Mars, and the lungs to Mercury, and the resemblance of the functions of these various organs to the assumed astrological character of the planets is pointed out in a manner similar to that followed by other astrological writers. ”

“ The movement being different, the nature of the bodies must also be different; hence the celestial [209] body does not burn or freeze what it touches, or do anything else that pertains to the four elements. [209:1]
And since the Cosmos is a sphere—the zodiac proves that—and in every sphere 'down' means 'towards the centre', for the centre is farthest distant from every point, and heavy things fall 'down' and fall to the earth .
All these things are made by the Gods, ordered by Mind, moved by Soul. About the Gods we have spoken already. ”

“ And the scene is wrapped in somnolence and rest.
From a solitary star, in the realms of space afar,
Faintly twinkling through the shadows of the night,
See the stellar force increased, till the scintillating east
Seems a galaxy of constellations bright. 127
With its glittering display, see the gorgeous Milky Way,
Which in twain the vaulted universe divides,
As the bridal veil serene of some fair celestial queen,
Who, in jewelled state, o'er astral space presides.
All the heavens seem in tune, and the vacillating moon
Bathes the landscape with her floods of silvery light ”

“ Below, and occupying the middle region, revolves the Sun, the chief, prince, and moderator of the other stars, the soul of the world, whose immense globe spreads its light through space. After him come, like two companions, Venus and Mercury. Lastly, the lowest globe is occupied by the moon, which borrows its light from the star of day. Below this last celestial circle, there is nothing but what is mortal and corruptible, except the souls given by a beneficent Divinity to the race of men. ”

“ Assuming the earth to be the centre of the universe, the celestial bodies which have a proper movement of their own among the stars were arranged in the order of their apparent periods of revolution—Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the Moon. ”

“ Is not this Medium much rarer within the dense Bodies of the Sun, Stars, Planets and Comets, than in the empty celestial Spaces between them? And in passing from them to great distances, doth it not grow denser and denser perpetually, and thereby cause the gravity of those great Bodies towards one another, and of their parts towards the Bodies; every Body endeavouring to go from the denser parts of the Medium towards the rarer? ”

“ There can, then, be no doubt as to the existence of a spiral-like nebulous spot in the vicinity of that star, but of which the eye, even with the aid of a most powerful telescope, can perceive naught. What wonderful prospects for the future here open to view! A veritable astronomy of the invisible begins. Celestial orbs, ever veiled from our direct gaze, are rendered perceptible—ay, trace their own picture. ”

“ This motion of the heavenly bodies is known to be an apparent one merely, and caused by the turning of our own earth upon its axis. A man standing upon the earth's surface can look up and see above him one-half the great celestial vault, gemmed with twinkling stars, and bearing, perhaps, within its ample curve one or two serenely shining planets and the lustrous moon. But at any given moment the observer can see nothing of the other half of the heavenly sphere. ”

“ When in a serene and clear night we contemplate all those stars with which the celestial vault is illuminated, it might be imagined that by being conveyed into another planet more remote from the sun, we should see these glittering stars larger, and emitting a brighter light, since we should be so much nearer to them. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the celestial spaces — at least within the region that the earth traverses — are crowded with angular bits of stony matter, ranging in weight from thousands of pounds down to particles as light as the finest dust. Every night millions of the smaller bits fall swiftly upon our earth’s atmosphere, sparkle for a moment as shooting stars, and are burnt into vapor by the heat engendered from their friction in the atmosphere. ”

“ By what rule, let me inquire, are we justified in extending the sublime law of gravitation to the various planets of the solar system, and even as high as the fixed stars? Obviously for the only reason that we perceive in the magnificent evolutions of the celestial bodies the same class of effects which appertain to terrestrial attraction. ”

“ But it is not a mere detail, a matter of indifference to either scientist or religious man, as to what the sun and earth are—whether he can treat them as things that can be weighed, measured, compared, analyzed, as, a few pages back, we have shown has been done, or whether, as one of the chief astrologers of to-day puts it, he—
"Believes that the sun is the body of the Logos of this solar system, 'in Him we live and move and have our being.' The planets are his angels, being modifications in the consciousness of the Logos,"
and that the sun
"Stands as Power, having Love and Will united." ”

“ Our sun together with all its planets fills only the 31,419,460,000,000,000th part of the whole space between itself and the next solar body. Gracious Heavens! thought I,—in what an unfathomable abyss of emptiness were this universe swallowed up and lost, if all were void and utter vacuity except the few shining points of dust which we call a planetary system! ”

“ It took the modest form of an interrogatory. "Is it not reasonable to think," he asks, "that the great and stupendous body of the sun is made up of two kinds of matter, very different in their qualities; that by far the greater part is solid and dark, and that this immense and dark globe is encompassed with a thin covering of that resplendent substance from which the sun would seem to derive the whole of his vivifying heat and energy?" ”

“ When we come to consider the vast majority of the glistening points on the celestial sphere—all in fact except the five great planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—we are dealing with bodies that are self-luminous like the sun, but that vary in size quite as the bodies of the solar system do, some stars being smaller than the sun and others many hundred fold larger than he is ”

“ Which in the sense of Seeing must come either from the Sun, the fix’d Stars, or Fire: whose Particles being put into a very quick Motion, communicate it to the Celestial Matter about, whence ’tis convey’d in a very short time to the most distant parts, just like Sound through the Air. If it were not for this Motion of the intermediate Ætherial Matter, we should be all in Darkness, and have Sight neither of Sun nor Stars, nor any thing else, for all other Light must come to us by Reflection from them. This Motion perceived by the Eyes is called Light. ”

“ IT will be convenient to consider different bodies in the solar system, and to study them with the special object of ascertaining what information they afford as to the great celestial evolution. We cannot hesitate as to which of the bodies should first claim our attention. Not on account of the predominant importance of our sun to the inhabitants of the earth, but rather because the sun is nearly a thousand times greater than the greatest of the planets, do we assign to the great luminary the first position in this discussion. ”

“ The Horizon, the Zenith, and the Meridian. First, let us consider what is the ordinary appearance of the sky. When we go out of doors on a clear night we see the heavens in the shape of a great dome arched above us and filled with stars. What we thus see is one half of the spherical shell of the heavens which surrounds us on all sides, the earth being apparently placed at its centre. The other half is concealed from our sight behind, or below, the earth. This spherical shell, of which only one half is visible to us at a time, is called the celestial sphere. ”

“ Between the two groups of astral force operating in this manner, the Sun acts as a mediating element through its double function of supporting the activity of the three lower planets by means of its heat and of conveying to the earth, through its light, the forces of the three higher planets. In the human microcosm the Sun-forces accomplish a corresponding task by means of the influences which radiate from the heart through the body along the paths taken by the blood. ”

“ These other cold celestial bodies which absorb the solar rays without themselves becoming hot are known as nebulæ. More recent researches make us believe that these peculiar celestial bodies occur nearly everywhere in the sky. ”

“ Also, any marked accumulation of a powerfully acting medium round the various celestial bodies would cause, if varied in any way by their changes of relative position, perturbations in their movements. ”

“ The whole of our solar system is a manifestation of its LOGOS, and every particle in it is definitely part of His vehicles. All the physical matter of the solar system taken as a totality constitutes His physical body; all the astral matter within it constitutes His astral body ”

“ Under this first Head of Celestial Persons we must likewise take notice of the Command which the Angels receiv'd, to produce the several Changes in Nature, and sully the Beauty of the Creation. Accordingly they are represented as infecting the Stars and Planets with malignant Influences, weakning the Light of the Sun, bringing down the Winter into the milder Regions of Nature, planting Winds and Storms in several Quarters of the Sky, storing the Clouds with Thunder, and in short, perverting the Whole Frame of the Universe to the Condition of its criminal Inhabitants. ”

“ Our little Earth revolves round the mighty Sun; the Sun itself and the whole solar system are moving with inconceivable velocity towards a point in the constellation of Hercules; together with all the nearer stars it forms a cluster in the heavens, which appears to our eyes as the Milky Way; while outside our star cluster again are innumerable others, which far transcend, alike in magnitude, in grandeur, and in distance, the feeble powers of our finite imagination. ”

“ And so small, Maximina! Each one of the stars that you see is thousands and millions of times bigger than our earth. Our solar system, of which we are the poorest and most insignificant part, belongs to that great nebula that crosses the sky like a white band. Each particle of that dust is a sun around which revolve other worlds, which, like ours, have no light of their own. ”

“ Were the earth transparent as crystal, so that we could see downward through it and outward in all directions to the celestial sphere, the Galaxy or Milky Way would appear as a belt or zone of cloudlike luminosity extending all the way round the heavens. As the horizon cuts the celestial sphere in two, we see at anyone time only one-half of the Milky Way, spanning the dome of the sky as a cloudlike arch. ”

“ We should see the countless hosts of fixed stars moving in thronged groups, in different directions; nebulas wandering through space, and becoming condensed and dissolved like clouds, the veil of the milky way separated and broken up in many parts, and motion ruling supreme in every portion of the vault of heaven, even as on the earth's surface, where we see it unfolded in the germ, the leaf, and the blossom, the organisms of the vegetable world. ”

“ Heaven is fashioned on a transcendently large scale. It is not a single sphere, but a universal chain of vast and luminous star-groups, scattered harmoniously throughout the infinite regions of space, so that a part of it lies suspended preciously near to our own Solar System. ”

“ Traversing space with inestimable velocity and performing their revolutions with unvaried regularity, they have long been known as part of our solar system. It seems strange that a cosmical body so near the earth as the zodiacal light should have received comparatively so little attention. ”

“ Between this body and the heavens there are suspended, in this aërial spirit, seven stars, separated by determinate spaces, which, on account of their motion, we call planets or wandering bodies, although, in reality, none are less so. The sun is carried along in the midst of these, a body of great size and power, the ruler, not only of the seasons and of the different climates, but also of the stars themselves and of the heavens. ”

“ The celestial bodies are seemingly actuated by invisible gears and are held rigidly in their proper places by a mighty force whose power is incalculable. This is evidenced by the fact that all celestial bodies conform to that inexorable law, Divine Harmony. ”

“ We have seen how each star is itself, in all probability, the centre of another and distinct solar system, the constituents of which are too dark and far off to be visible to us; nothing visible here but the central sun alone, and that only as a twinkling speck. ”

“ The earth, the mother mote of my being, I could no longer see.
So with a stately swiftness, in the profoundest silence, the solar system fell from me, as it had been a garment, until the sun was a mere star amid the multitude of stars, with its eddy of planet-specks lost in the confused glittering of the remoter light. I was no longer a denizen of the solar system: I had come to the Outer Universe, I seemed to grasp and comprehend the whole world of matter. ”