The planet Venus.

— The planet Venus is the intermediate point between Mercury and Jupiter. Its inhabitants have the same physical conformation as yours; the greater or lesser beauty and ideality in the forms is the only difference between the created beings. The subtlety of the air on Venus, comparable to that of high mountains, makes it unsuited to your lungs; diseases are unknown there. Its inhabitants feed only on fruits and dairy products; they are unaware of the barbarous custom of eating the corpses of animals, a ferocity that exists only on the inferior planets. Consequently, the gross needs of the body are annihilated, and love is adorned with all the passions and all the perfections that are only dreamed of on Earth. As at dawn, when the forms are clothed indistinctly and wrapped in the morning vapor, the perfection of the soul, near to being complete, has the ignorance and the desires of a happy childhood. Nature itself takes on the grace of veiled happiness; its delicate and rounded forms do not have the violence and harshness of earthly places; the sea, deep and calm, knows no tempest; the trees never bend under the action of the storm, and winter does not strip them of their verdure; nothing is noisy; everything smiles, everything is gentle. The customs, marked by quietude and tenderness, need no repression to keep themselves pure and strong. The political form takes on the expression of the family; each tribe or grouping of individuals has its chief, elected by age class. Old age there is the apogee of human dignity, because it brings one closer to the desired end. Free from disease and ugliness, it is calm and radiant, like a beautiful autumn afternoon. Earthly industry, applied to the restless pursuit of material well-being, is simplified and almost disappears in the superior regions, where it has not the least reason to exist. The sublime arts replace it and acquire a development and a perfection that your gross senses cannot imagine. The garments are uniform; great white tunics envelop the body in harmonious folds, without distorting it. Everything is easy for these beings who desire only God and who, stripped of gross interests, live simple and almost luminous.

Georges.

(Questions on the preceding dictation. Society of Paris, June 27, 1862. – Medium: Mr. Costel.)

Through your favorite medium you gave a description of the planet Venus, and we are pleased to note that it agrees with what has already been told to us, though with less precision. We would beg you to deign to complete it by answering a few questions. Tell us, first of all, how you have knowledge of that world. Answer. – I am wandering, but inspired by superior Spirits. I was sent on a mission to Venus.

Can the inhabitants of Earth incarnate there directly, upon leaving here?

Answer. – Upon leaving the Earth, the most advanced beings pass through a more or less prolonged erraticity, which strips them of the carnal bonds imperfectly broken by death.

Remark. – The question was not whether the inhabitants of Earth can incarnate there immediately after death, but directly, that is, without passing through intermediate worlds. He answered that this is possible for the most advanced.

Does the state of advancement of the inhabitants of Venus allow them to remember their passage through inferior worlds and to establish a comparison between the two situations?

Answer. – Men look behind them with the eyes of thought, which in an instant reconstitutes the extinguished past. Thus, the advanced Spirit sees with the same rapidity with which it moves, a rapidity more swift than electricity, a beautiful discovery that is closely connected with the revelation of Spiritism. Both enclose within themselves material and intellectual progress. Remark. – To establish a comparison, it is not necessary to know the personal position one occupies; it is enough to know the material and moral state of the inferior worlds through which one has passed in order to note the difference. According to what they tell us of the planet Mars, we ought to congratulate ourselves on being there no longer; and without leaving the Earth, it is enough to consider the barbarous and ferocious peoples and to know that we had to pass through those states in order to feel happier. Concerning the other worlds we have only hypothetical information; but it is possible that in those more advanced than ours, this knowledge has a degree of certainty that is not given to us. [See the description of the planet Mars by the Spirit of Maria João de Deus in the book Letters of a Dead Woman; as well as that of Humberto de Campos, in the book New Messages.]

Is the duration of life there, proportionally, longer or shorter than on Earth?

Answer. – On Venus incarnation is infinitely longer than the earthly trial. Stripped of human violences, relaxed and impregnated with the vivifying influence that penetrates it, the soul tries out the wings that transport it to glorious planets such as Jupiter and others like it. Remark. – As we have already noted, the duration of corporeal life is proportional to the advancement of the worlds. In His goodness, God willed to shorten the trials in the inferior worlds. To this reason is joined a physical cause: the more advanced the worlds, the less the bodies are consumed by the fire of the passions and by the diseases that are their consequence.

The character under which you describe the inhabitants of Venus leads us to think that among them there are no wars, quarrels, hatreds, and envy.

Answer. – Men become only what words can express, and their limited thought is deprived of the infinite. Thus, you always attribute, even to the superior planets, your passions and your inferior motives, poisons deposited in your beings by the grossness of the point of departure, of which you cure yourselves only slowly. Divisions, strifes, and wars are unknown on Venus, just as among you anthropophagy is unknown. Remark. – Indeed, the Earth presents us, through the innumerable variety of its social stages, with an infinity of types that can give us an idea of the worlds in which each of these types is the normal state.

What is the state of religion on that planet?

Answer. – Religion is the constant and active adoration of the Supreme Being; an adoration free of all error, that is, of any idolatrous worship.

Are its inhabitants all on the same level, or, as happens on Earth, are some more advanced than others? In that case, to which inhabitants of Earth do the least advanced correspond?

Answer. – The same proportional inequality exists among the inhabitants of Venus as among earthly beings. The least advanced are the stars of the earthly world, that is, your geniuses and your virtuous men.

Are there masters and servants?

Answer. – Servitude is the first degree of initiation. The slaves of Antiquity, like those of modern America, are beings destined to progress in a milieu superior to the one they inhabited in their last incarnation. Everywhere the inferior beings are subordinate to the superior; but on Venus this moral subordination cannot be compared to the corporeal subordination such as exists on Earth. The superior ones are not masters, but fathers of the inferior. Instead of exploiting them, they aid their progress.

Did Venus gradually arrive at the state in which it finds itself? Did it previously pass through the state in which the Earth, and even Mars, finds itself?

Answer. – An admirable unity reigns in the whole of the divine work. Like individuals, like everything that is created, animals and plants, the planets inevitably progress. Life, in its varied expressions, is a perpetual ascension toward the Creator, developing, in an immense spiral, the degrees of His eternity.

We have had concordant communications about Jupiter, Mars, and Venus. Why have we had only contradictory things about the Moon, which have not allowed us to fix an opinion?

Answer. – That gap will be filled, and soon you will have about the Moon revelations as clear and precise as those obtained about the other planets. If they have not yet been given to you, you will later understand the reason.

Remark. – Certainly this description of Venus has none of the characteristics of absolute authenticity; thus, we give it only as a hypothesis. Nevertheless, what has already been said about that world gives it, at least, a certain degree of probability and, in any case, it remains the picture of a world that must necessarily exist for every man who does not have the proud pretension of believing that the Earth is the apogee of human perfection; it is a link in the scale of the worlds and a degree accessible to those who do not feel strong enough to go directly to Jupiter.

[v. Mars and Jupiter.]