1. TO return to the master vortex; refer to plate TOW-SANG, Book of Ben. It is an error to say that the eye seeth the sun by means of a straight line. The line of sight to the sun is spiral and oval. But it is equally an error to say that light cometh from the sun to the earth, or to any other planet; which hath given rise to the still greater errors of computing the time of travel of light, and the degree of heat of a planet by its proximity to the sun.
2. To determine the distance of the sun from the earth, allowance must be made for the vortexian spirality. By which reason the sun is in fact some seven million miles nearer the earth than its measure would indicate. The same rule applieth to all planets save the moon. And even this is seen by means of the curved lines of the earth's vortex.
3. As the moon's vortex rideth around on the outer part of the earth's vortex, we discover the elliptic course thereof; so by the roads of a comet do we discover the spirality and curve of the master's vortex. Observe a comet in different positions as it followeth the sun's vortex.
4. When the head of a comet falleth within the overlapping waves of the sun's vortex, the head is sometimes swallowed up and sometimes driven backward, spitting flames of fire the while. The nearer the comet approacheth an elliptic course, the longer will it live; the opposite condition applieth to hyperbolic comets, for they oft die or dissolve in one journey. If a comet be seen today in hyperbole, and in any angle of the heavens; and if, in ten years or a hundred years, a comet be seen in the same place, it would be an error to say it was the same comet.
5. It is an error to prophesy the heat of venus being more or less because of her approximation nearer the sun. There is no more heat in the master vortex in general, than there is a hundred miles above the earth, save and except when very near the sun's photosphere, that is to say, within one or two thousand miles at most.
6. There is a sun planet in the centre of the photosphere, at a distance interior, from three thousand miles to thirty thousand miles, and it is light all the way around. But within the body of the photosphere there are numerous planets, some globular, some elongated and irregular. These are usually called sun-spots. Because when they present their negative surface toward the earth they seem black. For the most part these planets in the photosphere are rather external than internal at the times they appear as spots. They have independent motions in their respective places.
7. Wherefrom it may be said: When an unlearned man saith: THE SUN, we know what he meaneth; but when a learned man saith: THE SUN, we know not what he meaneth, whether the whole central group, or the sun planet only.
8. If one were to go into a circular field, a little way from the middle, and there construct an electric battery, from which he extendeth outward a multitude of wires, to small batteries p. 583 in distant parts of the field, his batteries would then represent somewhat the solar phalanx, the central one being the sun. There would be more volume of electricity manifested at the central battery; but the intensity of the spark at one of the small batteries would, other things being equal, be equal to the spark at the central battery.
9. Neither is there more intensity of heat at the sun, than in any electric flash. Neither must it be surmised that the sun centre is an electric battery; nor that it supplieth in any sense anything to any other planet. As previously stated, there are two things, corpor and ethe; the latter is the solvent of corpor. Whirling vortices of the solution make planets. And these are the sum and substance of all things manifested in the universe. (As to the cause of these whirlpools, see
10. It is an error to say the sun threw off rings or planets. No thing hath power to throw off itself, or a part thereof, save some living creature. They have instanced water flying from the periphery of a rapidly rotating wheel. This would merely imply that some one was trying to fasten worlds on the sun's periphery, but that the sun cast them off. Who that SOME ONE was they say not; nor do they offer a reason as to how such thrown-off substance came to be in the way of the sun in the first place.
11. It is equally erroneous to say that the presence of this planet or that, throweth an influence on mortals, according to their birth under certain stars. It is this same astrological ignorance that attributeth to the sun the throwing-off of light and heat and of possessing attraction of gravitation, and of throwing-off rings to make planets of.
12. Man hath ever sought in corporeal things for the cause of this and that; he buildeth up certain tables and diagrams, and calleth it science or philosophy. If, on one morning, he put on the left shoe first, and something happen that day, he proveth by that shoe a new philosophy. By the tides he proveth the cause of the moon; or by the moon the cause of the tides. Anything under the sun that is corporeal, rather than search in the subtle and potent, unseen worlds.
13. Let it be premised, then, that the etherean firmament is not a waste and interminable nothingness; but that, on the contrary, it is in many regions, even between the earth and the sun, sufficiently dense for a corporeal man to dwell upon, and to walk about, even as on the earth. Some of these are as transparent as water or clear glass, and some opaque. Some of these etherean worlds are large as the earth, and some a thousand times larger. Some are as immense fac-similes of snow-flakes; with arches a thousand miles high and broad. Some of them are as oceans of water; some transparent and some opaque; and some of them dense clouds of ashes. But so great are the numbers and so vast the varieties of these thousands of millions of etherean worlds, that description is impossible. Yet, by the telescopic power of the earth's vortexian lens, these worlds are magnified so as to seem to be nonentities.
14. Worlds in solution, the etherean heavens, are therefore governed by no power in, or escaping from, corporeal worlds. In the language of the ancient prophets, they are a law unto themselves. And yet these unseen worlds have much power and influence on the vortices of corporeal worlds.
15. In making observations with the spectroscope, these otherwise unseen worlds are sometimes seen; but in a general way the spectroscope revealeth only the refraction of high altitudes in the earth's vortex. It is an error to say the spectrum divideth the sun's rays per se. It is an error to say the spectroscope hath revealed certain colors in the atmosphere or photosphere of the sun or other stars. Its revelations for the most part pertain to what is contained in the vortexian lens of the earth, no matter whether the view be toward the sun or another star.