Prismatic Investiture of the Microcosm

p. 162

CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH

PRISMATIC INVESTITURE OF THE MICROCOSM

THE chemical dark rays are more bent than the luminous. The chemical rays increase in power as you ascend the spectrum, from the red ray to the violet. The chemical rays typified by the Egyptians under the name of their divinity, Taut or Thoth, are most powerful in the morning; the luminous rays are most active at noon (Isis, or abstractedly 'manifestation'); the heating rays (Osiris) are most operative in the afternoon. The chemical rays are the most powerful in spring (germination, 'producing', or 'making'), the most luminous in the summer (ripening, or 'knowing'), the most heating in the autumn (perpetuating). The chemical rays have more power in the Temperate Zone; the luminous and heating, in the Tropical. There are more chemical rays given off from the centre of the sun than from the parts near its circumference.

Click to enlarge
Fig. 32 and 32A

Each prismatic atom, when a ray of light strikes upon it, opens out on a vertical axis, as a radius or fan of seven different 'widths' of the seven colours, from the least refrangible red up to the most refrangible violet. (Refer to diagram above.)

'The Egyptian Priests chanted the seven vowels as a hymn addressed to Serapis' (Eusebe-Salverte, Dionysius of Halicarnassus).

p. 163

'The vowels were retained to a comparatively late period in the mystic allegories relative to the Solar System.' 'The seven vowels are consecrated to the seven principal planets' (Belot, Chiromancie, 16th cent.).

Click to enlarge
Fig. 33: PRISMATIC SPECTRUM

The cause of the splendour and variety of colours lies deep in the affinities of nature. There is a singular and mysterious alliance between colour and sound. There are seven pure tones in the diatonic scale, because the harmonic octave is on the margin, or border, or rhythmic point, or the First and Seventh, like the chemical dark rays on the margin of the solar spectrum. (See explanatory chart of the Prismatic Colours above.)

Red is the deep bass vibration of ether. To produce the sensation of red to the eye, the luminous line must vibrate 477 millions of millions of times in a second. Blue, or rather purple, is the high treble vibration, like the upper C in music. There must be a vibration of 699 millions of millions in a second to produce it; while the cord that produces the high C must vibrate 516 times per second.

Heat, in its effect upon nature, produces colours and sounds. The world’s temperature declines one degree

p. 164

at the height of 100 feet from the earth. There is a difference of one degree in the temperature, corresponding to each 1,000 feet, at the elevation of 30,000 feet. Colouration is effected, at the surface of the earth, to the same amount in one minute that takes half an hour over three miles high, in the full rays of the sun. The dissemination of light in the atmosphere is wholly due to the aqueous vapour in it. The spectrum is gained from the sun. In the air opposite to it, there is no spectrum. These conclusions result from balloon observations made in April 1863, and the philosophical deductions are a victory for 'aqueous vapour'.

It has been demonstrated that flames are both sensitive and sounding; they have, therefore, special affinities.

'The author of The Nature and Origin of Evil is of opinion that there is some inconceivable benefit in Pain, abstractly considered; that Pain, however inflicted or wherever felt, communicates some good to the General System of Being; and that every animal is some way or other the better for the pain of every other animal. This opinion he carries so far as to suppose that there passes some principle of union through all animal life, as attraction is communicated to all corporeal nature; and that the evils suffered on this globe may by some inconceivable means contribute to the felicity of the inhabitants of the remotest planet.'--Contemporary review of the Nature and Origin of Evil.

'Without subordination, no created System can exist: all subordination implying Imperfection; all Imperfection, Evil; and all Evil, some kind of Inconveniency or Suffering.'--Soame Jenyns, Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil.

'Whether Subordination implies Imperfection may

p. 165

be disputed. The means respecting themselves may be as perfect as the end. The Weed as a Weed is no less perfect than the Oak as an Oak. Imperfection may imply primitive Evil, or the Absence of some Good; but this Privation produces no Suffering, but by the Help of Knowledge.' 'Here the point of view is erroneously taken for granted. The end of the oak, in another comprehension, may be the weed, as well as the end of the weed the oak. The contraries may be converse, out of our appreciation.'--Review of the above work in Miscellaneous and Fugitive Pieces. London: T. Davies, 1774.

'There is no evil but must inhere in a conscious being, or be referred to it; that is, Evil must be felt before it is Evil.'--Review of A Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil, p. 5 of the same Miscellaneous and Fugitive Pieces. London: T. Davies, Russell Street, Covent Garden, Bookseller to the Royal Academy. 1774. Query, whether the Review of this Book, though attributed to Dr. Johnson, be not by Soame Jenyns himself, the author of the book?

'Thoughts, or ideas, or notions--call them what you will--differ from each other, not in kind, but in force. The basis of all things cannot be, as the popular philosophy alleges, mind. It is infinitely improbable that the cause of mind--that is, of existence--is similar to mind.'--Shelley's Essays. The foregoing is contained in that on Life. He means Reason, in this objection to MIND. Shelley further remarks: 'The words I, and YOU, and THEY, are grammatical devices, invented simply for arrangement, and totally devoid of the intense and exclusive sense usually attached to them.'

In the Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston, part ii. (1749), there occur the following observations:

p. 166

'N.B.--I desire the reader to take notice that the very learned Gerard John Vossius, in his three accurate dissertations, De Tribus Symbolis, or Of The Three Creeds--that called The Apostles’ Creed, that called The Athanasian Creed, and that called the Nicene or Constantinopolitan Creed, with the Filioque, has proved them to be all falsely so called: that the first was only the Creed of the Roman Church about A.D. 400; that the second was a forgery about 400 years after Athanasius had been dead, or about A.D. 767, and this in the West and in the Latin Church only, and did not obtain in the Greek Church till about 400 years afterwards, or about A.D. 1200; and that the third had the term Filioque first inserted into it about the time when the Athanasian Creed was produced, and not sooner, or about A.D. 767.'