Numen

“ We knew that the light is intrinsic, that it comes from the comet itself, and not from the sun. We knew that it is composed of three parts, the head, the nucleus, and the tail. The head, or coma, of a comet, is its main visual part, a ball of transparent light; the nucleus is the bright spot of light directly behind it; and the tail is the wonderful luminous cloud that streams from the head out over the heavens. ”

“ It was the nucleus that I had to look out for. The head I took to be the effect of radiation, light—an immense coma thrown off from the parent nucleus. The nucleus is the heart of the comet, the one part that had ever defied all our calculations. The real danger was there—likewise the secret. It might be anything, and was so much of a mystery that I would wait until I could see it before I would venture an opinion. It might be fire, a great knot of electrical force, atomic explosion, radiation—anything. Perhaps in its heart I would discover the secret of cohesion. ”

“ The first subject to which I shall allude, is the precession of the equinoxes and nutation, which are produced entirely by the attraction which one body (the sun or the moon) exerts separately upon every separate particle on the earth. ”

“ Illuminating earth with borrowed light,
Or throws out its own rays from its own body,
Howe’er that be, moves with a shape no larger
Than seems that shape which our eyes contemplate.
For all things which we look at from far off
Through much air, seem to our vision to grow dim
Before their contours lessen. Therefore the moon,
Seeing that it presents a clear aspect
And definite shape, must needs by us on earth
Be seen on high in its defining outline
Just as it is, and of its actual size.
Lastly consider all those fires of aether
You see from the earth. ”

“ The essential part about us is the nucleus, which sometimes appears as a bright stellar point, and sometimes rather gives the notion of a planetary disc, seen through a nebulous haze. What is generally called our head, is simply this nebulous haze which surrounds the nucleus; the train of illuminated vapour which is often, though by no means always, attached to the head, is usually termed by you the tail, though, allow me to observe, rather improperly, since this appendage often precedes us in our motions. ”

“ We might even go so far as to say that possibly Mira presents to us an example of what our sun will be in the course of time, as the dead and barren moon shows us, as in a magician's glass, the approaching fate of the earth. ”

“ Changing your place to one of the peaks on the dividing wall you would look down into Theophilus on one side and Cyrillus on the other. Then upon lifting your eyes to the black, airless sky you would see the stars sparkling on all hands, and, hanging in the heavens like a portentous, strangely colored moon many times larger than the disk of the sun, would appear the mottled orb of the earth. ”

“ These layers envelop the nucleus or central body of the sun somewhat as the atmosphere envelops our earth. It is through these vapour layers that the bright white body of the sun is seen. Of the innermost region, the heart or nucleus of the sun, we know almost nothing. The central body or nucleus is surrounded by a brilliantly luminous envelope or layer of vaporous matter which is what we see when we look at the sun and which the astronomer calls the photosphere. ”

“ The elements in mediaeval cosmology were assigned to a definite region of the universe. Being mortal and imperfect they occupied four spheres below the moon, the elemental region or region of imperfection, as distinguished from the ethereal region above the moon. Immediately within the sphere of the moon came that of Fire, below this the Air, then Water, and lowest of all the solid sphere of Earth. [Pg 23] Fire being the most ethereal of the elements constantly tends to rise upward, while Earth sinks towards the center of the universe. ”

“ One is struck, without doubt, with the near approach, which our elements show, between the line of nodes of the zodiacal light and that of the nodes of the terrestrial equator upon the ecliptic. This circumstance, as far as it is verified, may help to explain the causes of this luminous phenomenon—causes which are, it may be, more local than has hitherto been supposed. ”

“ One of the most important discoveries of the last century, the discovery which perhaps more than any other has tended to place the nebular theory in an impregnable position, is that which tells us that the elements of which the sun is composed are the same as the elements of which our earth is made. ”

“ CHAPTER V. THE ROMANCE OF THE MOON. A spectator endowed with infinite power of sight, and placed at the unknown centre round which gravitates the universe, would have seen myriads of atoms filling all space during the chaotic epoch of creation. But by degrees, as centuries went on, a change took place; a law of gravitation manifested itself which the wandering atoms obeyed; these atoms, combined chemically according to their affinities, formed themselves into molecules, and made those nebulous masses with which the depths of the heavens are strewed. ”

“ Seven Planets.—The seven planets design the seven colors that appear in their original state, from whence we have so many different artificial ones.
Seven Cherubims.—The seven cherubims represent the seven metals, viz., gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, tin and quicksilver.
Conception in the Moon.—The conception, or woman, rising in the moon, demonstrates the purity that matter subsists of, in order to remain in its pure state unmixed with any other body, from which must come a new king, and a revolution or fulness of time filled with glory whose name is Albra. ”

“ These ethereal and molecular actions are going on eternally about us. The photographer's sensitized plate may receive an image that maps out the constellations, or, through the prism of the spectroscope in lines of light, we may read of the constituents of the nebulae, and thus upon the waves of ether do we hold communion across the universe by that ethereal chain of motion which binds us to the stars! ”

“ A bare view of the Figure is enough to shew, that as the Earth advances from Capricorn toward Aries, and the Sun appears to move from Cancer toward Libra, the north Pole recedes toward the dark, which causes the days to decrease, and the nights to increase in length, till the Earth comes to Aries, and then they are equal as before; for the boundary of light and darkness cut the Equator and all it’s parallels equally, or in halves. ”

“ We Academics have no view of our own finding, but do tell me this—why are those, who assume that the moon is an earth, turning things upside down, any more than you, who fix the earth where she is, suspended in mid air, a body considerably larger than the moon? |B| At least mathematicians tell us so, calculating the magnitude of the obscuring body from what takes place in eclipses, and from the passages of the moon through the shadow. ”

“ The study of astrology itself, as professing to discover, by celestial phenomena, future mutations in the elements and terrestrial bodies, ought, perhaps, not to be despised.† The theory of the tides, for example, is altogether an astrological doctrine, and, long before the days of Sir Isaac Newton, was as well understood as it is at this moment. ”

“ So far, indeed, this was but common doctrine, shared by all the science of the time, and eminently expounded in every astrological system. The magic founded upon it began with the notion that this close correspondence between heaven and earth might carry an influence able to react in an upward, contrary, and unnatural direction. Plants and precious stones, rightly employed, might prove able to bind the stellar powers on which all depended. Names and forms of conjuration might control the superior spirits which the stars represented. ”

“ However this may be, it is at least proved that the luminous phenomenon arises from matter which circulates in obedience to planetary laws; the entire mass constituting the Zodiacal light must be constantly approaching, and incessantly raining its substance down upon, the sun. ”

“ In primeval times, our rude forefathers were puzzled how to explain the nature of sun and moon and stars, and they thought they had hit on the interpretation of the phenomenon when they said that the stars were diamonds stuck in the heavenly vault, and that the sun was a luminous stone, a carbuncle ”

“ As evidence of this, it is said that less than half as many elements have been discovered in the sun as in the earth, and that comets and nebula, which are less developed forms of matter than the sun, have a few simple substances only. ”

“ And all the Cœlestial Constellations, the Sun and Moon, are in themselves nothing but stones, from which the Terrestrial do arise, being as it were their burnt part, Coal, Ashes, Outcast, Excrement, Expurgation, from which the Cœlestial Stones separating themselves, become clear and transparent by their proper brightness: And the whole Globe of the Earth is nothing else but a dejected, slidden down, commixt, broken, recocted Rubbish, and blown as ’twere into one Mass, having obtained Rest and Constancy in the middle Circle of the Firmament. ”

“ My Child shall know, that the Stone called the Philosophers Stone, comes out of Saturn. And therefore when it is perfected, it makes projection, as well in mans Body from all Diseases, which may assault them either within or without, be they what they will, or called by what name soever, as also in the imperfect Metals. [Pg 185]
And know, my Child, for a Truth, that in the whole vegetable work there is no higher nor greater Secret than in Saturn; for we do not find that perfection in Gold which is in Saturn ”

“ Let a Sign ascend in a Nativity or Question, if the Ascendant be in those Degrees you see are called Light, the Childe or Querent shall be more fair; if the degree ascending be of those we call Dark, his Complexion shall be nothing so fair, but more obscure and dark; and if he be born deformed, the deformity shall be more and greater; but if he be deformed when the light degrees of a Sign ascend, the imperfection shall be more tolerable. ”

“ Surely, the object of God in the creation of our terrestrial race, or the benefits of the death of Jesus Christ, can have no more to do with the habitability of the moon, than the doctrine of the Trinity has to do with the multiplication table and the rule of three, or the hypostatical union with the chemical composition of water and light. ”

“ But it is none of our present business to explain the causes of the appearances of nature. Let those things which we have last said be true or false, we have at least made out, in the preceding discourse, that the rays of light are directly propagated from the tails of comets in right lines through the heavens, in which those tails appear to the spectators wherever placed; and consequently the tails must ascend from the heads of the comets towards the parts opposite to the sun. ”

“ Again, let the nature in question be the Corporeal Substance of the Moon; that is, let us inquire whether it be rare, consisting of flame or air, as most of the old philosophers opined; or dense and solid, as Gilbert and many moderns, with some ancients, maintain. The reasons for the latter opinion rest chiefly on this, that the moon reflects the rays of the sun; nor does light seem to be reflected except by solid bodies. ”

“ Since the Fixed Stars are prodigious spheres of fire, like our Sun, and at inconceivable distances from one another, as well as from us, it is reasonable to conclude they are made for the same purposes that the Sun is; each to bestow light, heat, and vegetation on a certain number of inhabited Planets, kept by gravitation within the sphere of it’s activity. ”

“ The telescope photographs the nebula—celestial photography is one of the most interesting and instructive branches of modern astronomy—and when you look at a picture of a nebula, you see an actual photograph of an object that marks the beginning of Nature’s work. ”

“ However, speculation apart, we have in the discovery just made a most important fact for our guidance—the fact, namely, that a body which to ordinary observation has been in all respects like the star in the Crown, and even under spectroscopic observation shone for a while with true stellar light, has dwindled into a nebula giving the spectrum which has heretofore been regarded as indicative of ordinary gaseity.—English Mechanic. ”

“ Stars, the moon, the deep bright ether, waters, the rainbow, a pure lovely flower—none of them ever appear to us, or are believed by us to be mere physical and unconscious dead aggregates of atoms. That is what they are ”

“ And it is not surprising that this should come to pass, when we have to do with the cause that ranks lowest among the gods. For consider the fifth substance, which is subject to no change of any sort, in the region of the light of the moon: I mean where our world of continuous generation and decay borders on the fifth substance. We perceive that in the region of her light it seems to undergo certain alterations and to be affected by external influences. ”

“ If we could take our stand somewhere in the midst of immensity and, with vision of infinite reach, look about us, we should perhaps see a countless number of stellar systems, amid which ours would be unnoticeable, like a single star among the multitude glittering in the terrestial sky on a clear night. ”

“ They have thus clearly expressed it, that even each individual being in this world has its corresponding star. Although the influences of the spheres extend over all beings, there is besides the influence of a particular star directed to each particular species; a fact noticed also in reference to the several forces in one organic body; for the whole Universe is like one organic body, as we have stated above. Thus the philosophers speak of the peculiar influence of the moon on the particular element water. ”