Extracted text
Part XI
TO RETURN to the diaphragm. The lateral rings, which are the periphery of the cold and heat forces, assume the form of rings at that special relation, because a condensed ring of levity is the polaric opposite of the laminæ, plates or scales of gravity. The levic force is not reformed from the mass until it is condensed at that periphery. This point or periphery is the aggregate positive pole of gravity, the aggregate reflex circle from the earth, and is therefore the origin of the moon. By this may be seen the truth of the statement: ‘Round tires like the moon.” (Isa. iii: 18.)
What is the origin of gravity? It is the child of cold and heat. Its father is cold, its mother is heat. The union of these two produces the levic pole, the starting point of the force of gravity, which solidifies in metallic form at the circumference, the earth. The sun in the third atmosphere is pendant, so to speak, from the pivot at the center. As the center revolves in its vertical revolution, the pendant sun in the third atmosphere moves in an orbit through the space of that atmosphere. This makes night and day.
The lateral revolution in the sun (producing the diaphragm and peripheral zones of levic force) produces a slow revolution of the cold and heat poles of the lateral cycle from north to south. From the cold pole of the zone to midway between these extremes, from the cold it grows warmer, and from the hot, colder, until the temperate is reached.
There are four poles—the four winds of heaven, the four foundations of the earth, the four seasons. As heat and cold are the parents of levic force, levity is at its maximum when the hot pole is south, and the cold pole north; for then is the greatest degree of heat south, and the greatest degree of cold at the north. While the levic force is at its maximum it is not in its equilibrium, in the zone, for contraction by cold diminishes the levic force north, but increases it south. When the temperate poles are north and south, there is a minimum degree of levic force; there is equilibrium in the zone because the levic force is equally distributed.
On the line of the ecliptic, which is the center or median line of the Zodiac, is a point of continual greatest gravity. This is where the metals are thickest. It is not the equatorial line of the earth. The sun (the reflected sun in the third space, or outer atmosphere) naturally pends toward this line. As he moves toward this line or ecliptic from north to south, or from south to north, he acquires a momentum induced by the attraction of gravic force, but regulated by the zone of levic force. As the sun moves north, levic force increases gradually at that point, because expansion progresses in that direction by the action of the heat of the sun. The expansion increases as the hot pole of the zone moves toward the north pole. When levic force there is at its maximum, the point of its greatest attraction for the gravic cycle in the ecliptic is reached, that side of the zone is pulled down, and the sun gets an impetus again toward the south.
As the sun moves toward the south, the levic zone increases at the south, until the hot and cold poles are south and north, and the levic force at the south or hot pole of the zone is at its maximum, when the attraction becomes sufficiently great to overcome the momentum of the sun, and he takes his course again toward the north. These dippings of the rings are the moon’s nodes or noddings. They form four poles, which with the modifications of heat and cold in the zone, govern the sun’s motions, and make the four seasons by the regulation of the sun’s motion.
The Gravic Physical Spirit Spreads a Picture of the Earth on the Atmosphere
In the Koreshan System the ascending and descending nodes of the moon are accounted for, but on entirely different principles from the old theory. The moon that we see is the transposed expansion by reflection of the levic zone, and the law governing the changes in the levic zone produces the moon’s changes. The moon, so to speak, is the ghost of the earth, for the reason that the gravic force takes the picture of the earth, transforms it into a ring or zone, and then again spreads out the picture to our vision against one of the atmospheres.
The occasion of the weather being colder in winter is partly explained by the action of the zone, and also by the fact that the sun’s face is partly turned from us; consequently we get the indirect instead of the vertical rays. This is a simple fact, true of any system. The planets are reflections from the earth planes or strata. There are seven of them. They are reflected from these strata or planes by the sun’s action upon the planes. The stars are direct reflections from the sun, and are fixed in their relations to the sun and to one another, but not in their relations to the earth. They revolve nearly with the sun, but change their positions according to laws that will be explained in future.
The poles referred to, in connection with the diaphragm, are situated within the space of the zone, and not directly on the zone. The two poles at the two solstitial points of the zone are stellar points. The zone is the product of the influx of the levic force, and is thrown off as a ring by the vortical action induced by the solar influxes; while at the same time it is a new creation, yet the zone is a perpetual one. It is the positive pole of gravity; and the moment the zone is formed, or rather the moment the levic “force” reaches this extremity, it becomes gravic “force,” and is eliminated and determined toward the negative pole of gravity at the circumference of the shell. At a short distance it meets a counterflow, which becomes the formative line of a second zone.
This second ring is larger than the first, and its orbit, instead of being parallel with the diaphragm and first zone, inclines to the orbit of these so as to cross them. The orbit of the zone is not the orbit of the stellar points, as perceived from a distant point of view; for this reason, the ring or zone has two motions; one is the vortical motion, which is in the direction of the ring, from north to south; the other is the motion induced by the vertical motion of the sun, or the motion from east to west. Both these motions are retarded by the motion of the vortex and the vertex.
Foreshortening Is the Principle of Perspective Diminution
Foreshortening is the diminution of the visual area, or the apparent attraction of an object occupying space, as it recedes objectively in the distance. The law of foreshortening applies as well to space as to the object occupying it, though of course without the object, diminution would not be apparent. Foreshortening in art is the representation, on canvas or other surface, of the principle of perspective diminution as observed in Nature.
The operation of the principle of perspective diminution, as above described, is a phenomenon belonging to that department of general scientifics denominated optics. There can be no accurate interpretation of form and function without a thorough knowledge of optics; hence the study of the organs directly concerned in visual phenomena is the first prerequisite to the general and specific disclosure of the laws which govern cosmic manifestation.
The conclusions reached by the so called scientists who flourished at the time when human progress was just emerging from the dark or middle ages, were falsely arrived at because, in the interpretation of Nature, the definitions given to phenomena were applied regardless of scientific facts. The impression of every scope of area planted upon the retina of the eye is made by the passage of converging motions, reaching a focal point just behind the lens of the eye, in what is called the vitreous humor. From this pole or focus the motions diverge in every direction to the inner sheath of the eyeball. This sheath is an expansion of the optic nerve, and covers the entire surface of the inner expansion of the globe.
Observe a balloon, sixty feet in diameter, at the distance of one hundred feet. The lines converging to the pupil of the eye, and entering the visual focus from the circle of the area of the balloon, converge to an abrupt focal point. Let the balloon recede to the distance of one thousand feet. The circle of its area is the same as when one hundred feet distant, but the appearance is much smaller, because the convergent lines from the circle of its area enter the eye more acutely, and conspire to the formation of a more acute angle, at the focus behind the lens and at the visual focal point. The circle of the area of the converging lines in the second application, at the distance of one hundred feet, where the balloon was first observed, is much smaller than the first circle. If the reason had not learned to discriminate in the measurement of distance, by the aid of other objects and conditions, the balloon at one thousand feet would appear to be one hundred feet away, but occupying the space of the smaller circle only.
The Optical ‘Organ and Its Function
The construction of the eye has much to do with the discrimination of size, as related to proximity or remoteness, besides its mere adaptation to the implantation of the picture upon the retina. The columnar formation of the retinal coat and the rods of Jacob comprise metric poles and zones to define impressions and contribute to the processes of the mind in its rational determinations. No two pairs of eyes are alike in the construction of the lens; and there is no absolute criterion for the demarkation of the normal lens, as to its degree of convexity. The more convex the lens, the more myopic the vision; the less convex the lens, the more hyperopic the vision. In either case the formation of the lens may be perfect; that is, the lens may be clear and without astigmatism (unevenness).
The vanishing point of an object in perspective is proximate or remote according to the contour of the lens. That vanishing point in space called the horizon, observed from a given altitude, deviates with each person making the observation, according to the adaptation and capacity of the lens of each; no two persons perceiving the horizon at the same distance. Hence, by the same law, a magnifying glass extends the vanishing point, therefore it extends the horizon. The passage of a balloon, sixty feet in diameter, through the air, in a rectilinear course to its vanishing point, would describe the form of a tube whose diameter would be of the same proportion; namely, sixty feet.
The fact is, the tube would be of equal dimensions the entire length. The appearance of the tube would be a cone, the base of which would be at the starting point of the balloon, and its apex at the objective end—the vanishing point, where the object recedes from view. This deception in appearance, or optical delusion, is due to foreshortening. It has passed out of sight, though the balloon is still describing, in its passage, a dimension the area of which is sixty feet, as at first, with a radius of thirty feet, beyond the point of evanescence or vanishing. Now place a balloon one hundred feet in diameter, at the point where the one sixty feet in dimension disappears. Its margin of twenty feet, forming a band or wheel around the sixty feet of diameter, that through foreshortening has disappeared, will not appear as a margin, but as a solid area.
Illustration of Appearance and Reality, and Fallacious Demonstration of the Convexity of the Earth
If the balloon of one hundred feet were placed at the point where the balloon of sixty feet. disappears, and were covered with black material over an area of sixty feet, the remaining marginal area being of white material, the balloon maintaining the same side to the observer, it would exhibit the area of the white margin as a white speck, because the sixty feet of black occupying the vanished area would have disappeared by virtue of the law of foreshortening, and the forty added feet of diameter would have diminished in appearance, not in reality, to a narrow ring, which has the appearance of a continuous surface.
With an object sixty feet in diameter, we have described a continuous tube sixty feet in diameter, the radius of which is thirty feet. The longitudinal axis of the tube is thirty feet from its circumference throughout its entire length, though in appearance the tube is narrowing down to an apex, and the apparent, not real, length of the radius is shortening. We will suppose the balloon to have been moving in a straight horizontal course. The axis of the tube will therefore be a straight horizontal line; but if the line is represented by a thread, at its subjective end or point of observation, to maintain the apparent size of the line at the vanishing point of the tube, or the vanishing point of the sixty foot balloon, the thread must have gradually enlarged to the dimension of the tube. The apparent thread at the vanishing point is sixty feet in diameter. As the space of the area is apparently annihilated, the visual axis is only theoretical, not practical, for it is virtually annihilated; hence, for geodetic measurement or surveys there can be no practical level, because of the annihilation of space in perspective.
The tube has an actual longitudinal axis. We have supposed a balloon sixty feet in diameter, and, therefore, a described tube of proportionate dimensions. Now let us adjust a transit instrument thirty feet from the longitudinal axis of the tube, (horizontal to, and parallel with it,) and therefore on a line with the side of the tube. The hair-line drawn horizontally across the focus of the objective glass in the instrument, will not strike the point of apparent convergence of the side of the tube at the vanishing extremity, but will indicate a line across the sky somewhat above or outside the vanishing point.
With the passage of the balloon, sixty feet in diameter, through space, we have described a tube of the same diameter, the longitudinal axis of which is just thirty feet from the sides of the tube. The balloon has passed out of sight at the vanishing point. At this distance in space we have placed a balloon one hundred feet in diameter. Its margin beyond the sixty foot tube is twenty feet on every side. Now let us represent two opposing radii, by two rods starting from the opposite sides of the tube and extending outward across the twenty foot margin, and beyond this margin ten feet on either side. The space between the two inner ends of the two poles being practically and virtually annihilated, the two rods would appear to indicate a continuous pole from the outer end of each, across the annihilated space.
If these poles or rods—thirty feet in length, the inner ends resting at the radial point of the diameter of the tube really measuring sixty feet, apparently extending also across the sixty feet of annihilated space—are pushed toward each other, you observe the phenomenon of a pole being pushed and contracted lengthwise until both poles, thirty feet long, meet at the actual axis of the tube. The poles have both dropped out of sight, or disappeared from view. Does this phenomenon prove that from the sides of the tube the longitudinal axis curves every way? Yet this is the argument that the savants of science (?) employ to demonstrate the convexity of the earth’s surface. In order to see the ends of the poles, while they remain in contiguity at the tubular axis, the poles themselves must be elongated so as to extend beyond the dimension of thirty feet.
Let this second balloon continue the course of the first. It will describe a tube one hundred feet in diameter. The balloon will reach the vanishing point, and the described horizontal tube will conform to the appearance. If the balloon has disappeared from view through the application of the law of foreshortening, the length of a pole reaching from the actual axis of the tube must be more than fifty feet long for the top of it to be observed from the center of the starting point of the balloon or tube. Does this prove that the actual horizontal axis curves? Yet such is the argument of the “savants,” to prove that the earth is convex.
What Two Railroad Tracks Demonstrate in Reality and Appearance
Let the observer stand between two railroad tracks, four feet apart. The tracks appear to run together in the distance. Place an object six feet long at the vanishing point of the tracks, just large enough to be seen at that distance. Paint four feet of the middle of the object black, and one foot at each end white. That portion of it—shortened, apparently—between the tracks can be seen from any point within vanishing distance. At vanishing distance only the white extremities can be seen, as they extend outside the four-foot limit. Four feet of the object, that part of it lying between the tracks, has vanished with the space between the rails.
What is the relation of the rails beyond the point of vanishing? They certainly (though it is not apparent) sustain the same relative parallel direction. The farther the distance is extended, the longer the object has to be for the observer to discern the ends of the object across the track. Does it prove, because the object across the track (beyond the vanishing point) must be elongated according to the extension of the distance, that the center of the two rails curves each way from the sides of the rails lying straight and parallel to one another? Yet this is the argument of the great and wise “savants.”
Let us suppose the geodetic line of the horizon represents one rail, and a line parallel to it—four feet from the surface of the earth, and above it—comprises the representation of the other rail. The two lines meet at the vanishing point; this is denominated the horizon. These lines run parallel, precisely as did the two rails.
Editorial transcription checked against the cited scans; historical claims remain those of The Flaming Sword.
The Flaming Sword · Vol. 27, No. 11 · Nov 1913 · PDF pp. 5–7