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Part III.
Koreshan Science in Contrast with the Speculations of Modern Scientists Concerning the Sun; Solar Light and Heat Conserved; Non-Vital and Biologic Alchemy.
EVERY STRATUM of metallic substance is the terminal place of radiations of its own specific quality. Each stratum entering into the arrangement of the metallic shell is deposited from energy—the quality of its substantial existence before becoming material at the terminal point and conjunction of the cathodic and anodic current of energy. The deposition of the new atom is the product of the union of the positive and negative currents. When the new atom is deposited, the old one is transmuted to energy. It is thus that the interflow of the ether from center to circumference and from circumference to center is renewed and maintained in perpetuity. If the reader will carefully compare this presentation of science with the uncertainties of the so called scientific men of the present and the past, he will notice the infinite distinction between assumption and positive knowledge. Professor Proctor, in “Our Place Among Infinities,” says:
As soon as we inquire into the adaptation of the sun’s powers to the work which we have regarded as specially assigned to him, we recognize a mystery of mysteries in the seeming waste of his gigantic energies. [Is this ‘‘seeming waste,’’ his “mystery of mysteries,’’ scientific understanding, or is it ignorance?] Our earth receives less than the two thousand millionth part of the heat and light emitted by the sun; all the planets together receive less than the two hundred and thirty millionth part ; the rest is seemingly scattered uselessly through interstellar depths. To other worlds, circling around other suns, our sun may indeed appear as a star; but how minute the quantity of light and heat so received from him, compared with the enormous quantity apparently wasted. The portion which seems squandered is scarcely affected at all by such small uses ; and that portion is more than two hundred and thirty millions of times as great as the portion used to warm and to illuminate the solar system. And then consider what is the actual amount of energy thus seemingly wasted.
I have computed (adopting Sir J. Herschel’s estimate of the amount of heat poured by the sun upon each square mile of the earth’s surface) that the sun emits in each second as much heat as would result from the burning of 11,600,000,000,000,000 tons of coal, and of this enormous amount of energy the portion utilized (that is, the heat received by the various members of the solar system) corresponds only to that due to the consumption of about 50 millions of tons—only 50 millions out of 11,600 millions of millions. The force wasted is, in fact, very nearly the whole of the inconceivable amount expended.
Professor Newcomb is equally uncertain. He informs us that:
A constant ‘dissipation of energy’ is going on in nature. We all know that the sun has been radiating heat into space during the whole course of his existence. A small portion of this heat strikes the earth, and supports life and motion on its surface. All this portion of the sun’s heat, after performing its function, is radiated off into space by the earth itself. The portion of the sun’s radiant heat received by the earth is, however, comparatively insignificant, since our luminary radiates in every direction equally, [It is evident from this that Professor Newcomb does not comprehend the laws of combustion as they pertain to the influence of the sun,] while the earth can receive only a part represented by the ratio which its apparent angular magnitude as seen from the sun bears to the whole celestial sphere, which a simple calculation shows to be the ratio of 1 to 2, 170,000,000.
The stars radiate heat as well as the sun. Thus we have a continuous radiation from all the visible bodies of the universe, which must have been going on from the beginning. This radiation cannot go on forever, unless the force expended in producing the heat be returned to the sun in some form. There is no known law of radiation, except that it proceeds out in straight lines from the radiating center. If the heat were returned back to the sun from space, it would have to return to the center from all directions; the earth would then intercept as much of the incoming as of the outgoing heat; that is, we should receive as much heat from the sky at night as from the sun by day. We know very well that this is not the case; indeed, there is no evidence of any heat at all reaching us from space except what is radiated from the stars. Since, then, the solar heat does not now return to the sun, we have to inquire what becomes of it, and whether a compensation may not at some time be effected whereby all the lost heat will be received back again. Now, if we trace the radiated heat into the wilds of space, we may make three possible hypotheses respecting its ultimate destiny :
(1) We may suppose it to be absolutely annihilated, just as it was formerly supposed to be annihilated when it was lost by friction. (2) It may continue its onward course through space forever. (3) It may, through some agency of which we have no conception, be ultimately gathered and returned to the sources from which it emanated. The first of these hypotheses is one which the scientific thinkers of the present day would not regard as at all philosophical. The second alternative— that the heat radiated from the sun and stars continues its onward course through space forever—is the one most in accord with our scientific conceptions. We actually receive heat from the most distant star visible in our telescopes, and this heat has, according to the best judgment we can form, been traveling thousands of years without any loss whatever.
If the hypothesis now under consideration be the correct one, then the heat radiated by the sun and stars is forever lost to them. There is no known way by which the heat thus sent off can be returned to the sun. It is all expended in producing vibrations in the ethereal medium, which constantly extend out farther and farther into space. The third hypothesis, like the first, is a simple conjecture permitted by the necessary imperfection of our knowledge. We may regard it as good as an observed fact, that the sun has been radiating heat into void space for thousands or even millions of years without any diminution of the supply.
The above entire batch of hypotheses, which no scientist can or will deny are founded on assumption, is full of contradictions and inconsistencies which should never find a place in any literature honored with the distinction of science. If it could be supposed for a moment that heat could radiate through space, claimed to be ten thousand-fold more frigid than the North Pole, billions and billions of miles—to say nothing of the comparatively small distance of 93,000,000 miles, the so called distance of the sun from the earth, it would constitute an assumption in contradiction to all the preconceived opinions held to by the so called scientists.
Suppose we take, for instance, the argument employed to prove that the earth is a mass of molten fluid, surrounded by a comparatively thin geologic crust. In penetrating the earth we find, so it is stated, that the deeper we penetrate the crust the more heated it becomes. Taking the ratio of this increase of temperature, we can determine the point where the heat would be intense enough to melt into a state of igneous fluidity any known rock, mineral, or metallic substance; hence it is concluded by the geologist, that the interior of the earth is a molten fire. By this process of reasoning we might equally determine that—because in the ascension of a baloon toward the sun there is a depression of temperature at a given ratio, which is a rapid one—we can prove that the sun itself, 93,000,000 miles from us, as claimed by the astronomers, is congealed into an iceberg as much colder, as the most frigid portion of the Arctic regions is colder than the molten mass which they say is beneath our feet.
It in no wise follows, because radiations of energy from the sun produce heat at, near, or under the surface of the earth, that the energy proceeds through space in the specific quality of heat. In fact, it is absolutely certain that the radiation of energy from the sun through space is not heat at all, but is transmuted to heat by the operation of the law of the correlation of energy. Light is merely one degree of the phenomena of electric action, but while identical in substance with heat, it is not the same in its present quality as light. Light is convertible to heat, or, stating it differently, the energy which produces the phenomenon of light, through correlation, will produce the phenomenon of heat. Heat is produced in our own atmosphere through the meeting of the descending or cathodic, and ascending or anodic currents of energy—one generated above, the other generated below.
In considering the differentiations and analogies of non-vital and biologic alchemy, it is of the utmost importance that the mind of the student divest itself of all mental predilection induced by a careless perusal of expressed opinions, in works regarded as authority, wherein are found the promiscuous conglomerations of thought derived from both schools—that of transmutation and that of atomic persistency and inconvertibility. Either all things—including matter and energy —are interconvertible, or matter is persistent and atomically eternal and unchangeable. Unfortunately for the progress of scientific development, the thoughts of both schools are so intermingled that comparatively few people are aware that the so called school of evolution; which embraces the nebular hypothesis, is strictly a transmutation school of thought; and it cannot consistently hold to its views on evolution, and at the same time entertain the modern chemical idea. Chemistry and evolution do not belong together.
All transpositions of matter, either atomic or molecular, are due to and depend upon the correlation of matter with energy. The strata of metals constituting the outer crust of the cosmic shell pass alternately through every phase of metallic quality. The gold stratum comprising the most circumferential lamina, before becoming stratified as gold occupied the space and quality of the silver lamina, and before being deposited as gold from its condition as silver, was first transmuted to energy. The anodic current from gold, meeting the cathodic current from silver, results in the double transformation of silver to gold and gold to silver, the process of deposition and sublimation being operative in both laminæ. This is true of all the laminæ comprising the complex rind.
Through non-vital solutions of interflow, ranging from center to circumference and from circumference to center, in which are contained the solvencies of substance, are determined places and forms of stratification and their relations, thence the determination of form itself in its universal aspect. Alchemy, therefore, becomes the science which must comprise the foundation of our knowledge of metamorphosis and the mutations of function. The laws or principles of alchemy are not confined to what are usually denominated physical things, or to what, in Koreshanity, is denominated the non-vital or the alchemico-organic field of thought, but, by the application of the great law of analogy, are transposed to the biologic or the anthropostic field ;— correspondential laws being operative in the biological or, what is denominated in Koreshanity, organo-vital alchemy.
Editorial transcription checked against the cited scans; the historical claims remain those of The Flaming Sword.
The Flaming Sword · Vol. 15, No. 40 · Aug 23, 1901 · PDF pp. 6-7