Uranographic studies

In a certain way the three communications below constitute the initiation of a young medium. One sees that they hold promise for the future. They serve as an introduction to a series of dictations that the Spirit proposes to give under the title of Uranographic Studies. We leave to the readers the task of appraising their form and substance.

I.

Some time ago it was announced, here and elsewhere, by various Spirits and through several mediums, that revelations would be made to you concerning the system of the worlds. I was called to contribute, in the order of my destiny, that such a prediction might be realized.

Before opening what I might call our uranographic studies, it is important to firmly establish the first principle, so that the edifice, set upon solid foundations, may have within itself the conditions of durability.

This first principle, this first cause, is the great and sovereign power that gave life to the worlds and to beings; this preamble to all serious meditation is God! Before that venerated name everything bows, and the ethereal harp of the heavens makes its strings of gold vibrate. Children of the Earth, you who for so long have stammered that great name without understanding it, how many audacious theories have been inscribed since the beginning of the ages in the annals of human philosophy! how many erroneous interpretations of the universal conscience have come to light through the antiquated beliefs of the ancient peoples! and even today, when the Christian era in its splendor has dawned upon the world, what idea is formed of the first of beings, of the being par excellence, of him who is? Have we not seen, in recent times, proud pantheism rise haughtily up to him whom it deemed fit to qualify as the absorbing being, of the great all, from whose bosom everything came forth and into which everything must enter and one day merge, without distinction of individualities? Have we not seen gross atheism shamefully spread scepticism, the denier and corrupter of all intellectual progress, notwithstanding what the sophists its defenders may have said? It would be endless to mention scrupulously all the errors that have been accepted concerning the primordial and eternal principle; reflection alone suffices to show you that earthly man will always err when he claims to explain this problem, insoluble for many disincarnate Spirits. This is to tell you implicitly that you must, or rather that we must, humbly bow before the Great Being; it is to tell you, children, that if it is within us to rise up to the idea of the Infinite Being, this ought to suffice us and to forbid to all the proud pretension of keeping our eyes open before the Sun, without our being immediately blinded by the dazzling splendor of God in his eternal glory! Keep this well in mind, for it is the prelude of our studies: Believe in God, creator and organizer of the spheres; love God, creator and protector of souls, and we shall be able to penetrate together, humbly and at the same time studiously, into the sanctuary where He has sown the gifts of his infinite power. Galileo. n II.

Having established the first point of our thesis, the second question that presents itself is that of the power that conserves beings and that has come by convention to be called Nature. After the word that sums up everything, the one that represents everything. Now, what is nature? Hear first the definition of the modern naturalist; he says: Nature is the exterior throne of the divine power. To such a definition I shall add this one, which sums up all the ideas of the observers: Nature is the effective power of the Creator. Let us attend to this double explanation of the same word which, by a marvelous combination of language, represents two things at first sight so different. Indeed nature, as understood in the first sense, represents the effect, whose cause is expressed in the second. A landscape of vast horizons, with leafy trees, beneath which we feel life rising in the sap; a meadow enameled with fragrant flowers and crowned by the sun: this is called Nature. And if we wish to designate the force that orients the stars in space and makes the grain of wheat germinate in the earth? It is still Nature. May the observation of these various denominations be for you a source of profound reflections; may it serve to teach you that, if we make use of the same word to express the effect and the cause, it is because, in reality, cause and effect are one and the same. The star attracts the star in space according to laws inherent in the constitution of the Universe, and is attracted with the same force as that which resides in it. Behold the cause and the effect. The solar ray perfumes the flower, and the bee goes there to seek honey; here, the perfume is again effect and cause. Wherever on Earth you direct your gaze, you will be able to observe this double nature. Let us conclude from this that if Nature is, as I have named it, the effective force of God, it is at the same time the throne of his power; it is, simultaneously, active and passive, effect and cause, matter and immaterial force; it is the law that creates, that governs, that beautifies; it is the being and the image; it is the manifestation of the creative power, infinitely beautiful, infinitely admirable, infinitely worthy of the will of which it is the messenger. Galileo.

III.

Our third study will have for its theme space. n Many definitions of space have already been given, the principal one being this: space is the extension that separates two bodies, from which certain sophists deduced that where there are no bodies there is no space. It was upon this that some doctors of theology based themselves to establish that space is necessarily finite, alleging that a certain number of finite bodies could not form an infinite series and that, where the bodies ended, space would likewise end.

They also defined space as being the place where the worlds move, the void where matter acts, etc. Let us leave all these definitions, which define nothing, in the treatises where they repose.

Space is one of those words that express a primitive and axiomatic idea, evident in itself, and concerning which the various definitions that may be given do nothing but obscure it. We all know what space is, and I only wish to establish that it is infinite, so that our later studies may not encounter a barrier opposing the investigations of our gaze.

Now, I say that space is infinite, for the reason that it is impossible to imagine for it any limit whatever, and because, despite the difficulty we meet in conceiving the infinite, it is easier for us to advance eternally through space, in thought, than to stop at any point, beyond which we should no longer find extension to traverse.

To figure to ourselves, as far as our limited faculties permit, the infinity of space, let us suppose that, setting out from the Earth, lost in the midst of the infinite, toward any point of the Universe, with the prodigious velocity of the electric spark, which travels thousands of leagues per second, and that, having traveled millions of leagues, hardly have we left this globe before we find ourselves in a place from which we barely make it out under the aspect of a pale star. After an instant, still following the same direction, we arrive at those distant stars that you scarcely perceive from your terrestrial station. From there, not only does the Earth entirely disappear from our gaze in the depths of the heavens, but the Sun itself, with all its splendor, has been eclipsed by the vastness that separates it from us. Animated still with the same velocity of the lightning, at each step that we advance in the extension, we cross systems of worlds, isles of ethereal light, starry roads, sumptuous regions where God has sown worlds in the same profusion with which He has sown the plants in the terrestrial meadows. Now, it is only a few minutes since we set out, and already hundreds of millions of millions of leagues separate us from the Earth, billions of worlds have passed before our sight, and yet, listen! in reality, we have not advanced a single step in the Universe.

If we continue for centuries, thousands of centuries, millions of hundred-century periods, and always with the same velocity of the lightning, neither shall we have advanced a single step, whatever the side toward which we direct ourselves and whatever the point toward which we make our way, starting from that invisible little grain whence we set out and which we call Earth.

That is what space is!

Galileo.

[1]

Translator's note: See Genesis, chapter VI, item 1. – Space and time.

[2] [see Galileo.]