Intermediary or transitory worlds.

In one of the answers given in our previous issue, we saw that there would be, it seems, worlds destined for wandering Spirits. The idea of such worlds was not in the mind of any of those present, and no one would have thought of it had it not been for the spontaneous revelation of Mozart, a new proof that Spirit communications can be independent of any preconceived opinion. Wishing to delve deeper into this question, we submitted it to another Spirit, outside the Society and through another medium, who had no knowledge of it.

(To Saint Augustine). Are there, in fact, as has already been said, worlds that serve as stations or resting points for wandering Spirits? Answer. – Yes, but they are gradational, that is, among the other worlds they occupy intermediate positions, according to the nature of the Spirits who can have access to them and where they enjoy greater or lesser well-being.

Can the Spirits who inhabit these worlds leave them freely?

Answer. – Yes, the Spirits who find themselves in these worlds can leave them, in order to go where they must go. Picture them as flocks of birds that alight on an island, to await there the renewal of their strength, in order to continue on to their destination.

While they remain in the transitory worlds, do the Spirits progress?

Answer. – Certainly. Those who go to such worlds do so with the aim of instructing themselves and of being able more easily to obtain permission to pass on to other, better places and to reach the perfection that the elect attain.

By their special nature, do the transitory worlds remain perpetually destined for wandering Spirits? Answer. – No, their condition is merely temporary.

Are these worlds at the same time inhabited by corporeal beings?

Answer. – No.

Do they have a constitution similar to that of the other planets?

Answer. – Yes, but barren is their surface.

Why this barrenness?

Answer. – Those who inhabit them need nothing.

Is this barrenness permanent and does it stem from the special nature they present?

Answer. – No; they are barren transitorily.

Do the worlds of this category, then, lack natural beauties?

Answer. – Nature reflects the beauties of immensity, which are no less admirable than that which you call natural beauties.

Are there worlds of this kind in our planetary system?

Answer. – No.

The state of such worlds being transitory, will the Earth one day belong to their number?

Answer. – It has already belonged.

At what time?

Answer. – During its formation.

Observation. – Once more this communication confirms the great truth: nothing is useless in Nature; everything has an end, a destination.

Nowhere is there a void; everything is inhabited, there is life everywhere. Thus, during the long succession of centuries that passed before the appearance of man on Earth, during the slow periods of transition that the geological strata attest, even before the formation of the first organic beings, in that formless mass, in that arid chaos, where the elements were in confusion, there was no absence of life. Beings exempt from our needs, from our physical sensations, found refuge there. God willed that, even so, still imperfect, the Earth should serve for something. Who would dare to affirm that, among the thousands of worlds that revolve in immensity, a single one, one of the smallest, lost in the bosom of their infinite multitude, enjoys the exclusive privilege of being peopled? What then would be the use of the others? Would God have made them solely to delight our sight? An absurd supposition, incompatible with the wisdom that shines in all His works. No one will dispute that, in this idea of the existence of worlds still unfit for material life and, nonetheless, already peopled with living beings appropriate to such an environment, there is something great and sublime, in which perhaps the solution to more than one problem may be found.

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Translator's note: See The Spirits' Book. – Part Two. – Chapter VI: Transitory Worlds.