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PRIVATE EDITORIAL WORKING DRAFT — lightly normalized transcription. Historical claims below are attributed to The Flaming Sword and are not independently verified.
EDITOR FLAMING SWORD:—I see the astronomers are making great preparations for observing and photographing the sun’s eclipse on the 28th inst. I should be glad to see something in THE FLAMING SWORD concerning this phenomenon. Is there any special significance to be attached to this eclipse? Astronomers seem to be able to foretell eclipses accurately, and to map out the path of totality. If the Copernican system be not true, how do you account for this accuracy?—READER.
We have gone over much of this ground concerning eclipses before; but as general interest has been aroused by the coming eclipse, we deal with the subject again briefly. Astronomers are in possession of the facts of observation of the phenomena of eclipses; they make calculations from the basis of these facts; the eclipses occur, and the people are filled with wonder. There is nothing strange or mysterious about the prediction of eclipses; of course, there are intricacies to be considered, but the matter is simpler by far than is generally supposed.
Accurate eclipse predictions do not prove the Copernican system; astronomers of past systems were able to predict eclipses for centuries to come. Eclipses recur at specific intervals. The length of an eclipse cycle is 18 years, and 10 to 12 days according to the number of leap years intervening. During an eclipse cycle, 70 eclipses occur,—41 solar, and 29 lunar; and these are repeated during the next cycle. In proof of this, we quote from Astronomer Newcomb: “There is a curious law of the recurrence of eclipses, which has been known from ancient times. It is based on the fact that the sun and moon return to nearly the same positions relative to the node and perigee of the moon’s orbit, after a period of 6,585 days, and 8 hours, or 18 years and 12 days. Hence, eclipses of every sort repeat themselves at this interval.”
This should settle the question in the mind of the inquirer and others, regarding whether a theory of astronomy has anything to do with foretelling eclipses. But how about the path of totality? The recurrence of the path in given latitude and longitude, is regular. If the eclipse cycle were just 6,585 days, every time an eclipse of a given kind or character occurred, the path would cover the same longitude; but notice the 8 hours remaining over. 8 hours of time cover 120° of longitude; and the same kind of an eclipse will be visible 120° west of where it was visible before; but after a period of three occurrences of the same eclipse, or kind of an eclipse, the path will cover the same ground.
This coming eclipse is a repetition of the total eclipses of 1846, 1864, and 1882. That of 1846 had a path very nearly the same as the coming one; that of 1864 was visible on the Pacific Ocean, and ended where the coming one begins; while the one of 1882 swept from Egypt to just south of Japan. The next eclipse of this same series will occur June 8, 1918, and will be visible on the Pacific Ocean again; but in a higher latitude; but with a knowledge of what relation the moon’s orbit will sustain to the sun at that time, the path can be located as to latitude to a degree. With such facts in possession of the astronomer, it is not a difficult matter to predict eclipses and to map out the paths, from the records of previous eclipses and paths. The Copernican system has nothing to do with it; observed angles, not distances, enter into the calculations; time, not system, is considered!
But do not the astronomers project their shadow maps on the basis of the earth’s convexity? We reproduce a map of the path of totality in the coming eclipse. Take a good look at the map; it
[Embedded source figure on PDF p. 9. Printed map heading: “THE GREAT ASTRONOMICAL EVENT OF MAY 28, 1900.” Printed map caption: “THE SOLAR ECLIPSE IN THE HOLLOW GLOBE.” “Accurate Map of the Path of Totality; the Course of the Shadow that Sweeps the Great Concavity from the Pacific Ocean to Egypt.”]
is furnished by the Naval Observatory. The projection is accurate, but observe it in whatever way you will, it represents a concavity—a concave earth! The convex earth of the astronomer has exactly the same curvature in his mind that the concave earth does in fact; and the path, if mapped from the basis of the supposition that the earth is convex, will be exactly the same as from the concave basis; and the sweep of the shadow on a supposed convex earth must necessarily fit the actual concave surface; it is but a simple matter of spherical triangles, which are the same, whether on the outside or inside.
The results of the observations of this eclipse will be on a par with all modern astronomical observations; they will solve no problems, answer no questions, settle no difficulties which confront the astronomical world. The object of the astronomer in these observations is to make better observations of the sun’s corona and prominences, and to secure better photographs of the same; and also to make search for the supposed inter-Mercurial planet. Whatever discoveries the astronomers have been able to make have been worthless, from the standpoint of practical application of them, because the astronomer is sadly deficient on the lines of comprehension of the principles and laws of relation of the physical cosmos and humanity. If they observe the corona, it will still remain a mystery to them. The subject of the corona constitutes one of the hundreds of puzzling and unsolved problems with which the astronomer deals unsuccessfully!
The striking thing about the corona is, that it should occur at all, if the Copernican system be true! For why should there be any peculiar electrical phenomena simply because the moon, 92,000,000 miles from the sun, happens to get in line with the human eye and the sun? How could the moon at that distance, at that time, have any different effect on the sun from what it does at other times? There is some sense to the corona in the universe as it exists, and as it is demonstrated to be, in the Koreshan System—a cell, where the sun and moon come into close conjunction and proximity in fact, not in appearance only!
There is no special significance to be attached by the astronomer to this particular eclipse, more than to others which occur from year to year; but every eclipse has a special meaning when considered from the standpoint of the laws of correspondence. To the modern world eclipses have no significance; to the ancients they were significant, but that which the ancients held to be signified by eclipses is laughed at by the modern scientists! The idea was entertained that at the time of the eclipse of the sun, a dragon was swallowing up its substance; and this today is considered as a foolish superstition and a rank absurdity; and yet there is truth in it, as we will show.
Those who have witnessed a total eclipse will remember the feeling of awe that possessed them at the time of totality; animals become alarmed, and all nature seems to sympathize with the hidden sun. This awe, this alarm and fear in the world of effect, in creation, has its origin in the cause of all things; and we have but to go back nineteen hundred years to find that Cause. Jesus was the anthropostic Sun; and the Gospels record the fact that at the time of his crucifixion there was an extraordinary eclipse of the sun; and when the middle of totality was reached, Jesus cried out, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani?” The Sun himself was eclipsed; he was alarmed, and cried out in anguish and desperation! Two great eclipses occurred at that time; one in the anthropostic world, and the other in the physical cosmos,—the co-ordinated universes.
During an eclipse cycle, energies in the interior spheres are heaped up; and during the time of the eclipse they are transposed to another cycle, in darkness, accompanied by a great coronal display. Jesus was the point of transposition of the spiritual forces of the Jewish age to the Christian dispensation; typically, on the cross, he was cast out into outer darkness, into the mouth of the dragon;—really, when he was sown in the race, as the Holy Spirit, the conserved energies of the Jewish dispensation, he was swallowed up by the dragon power,—by the hungry maw of a mortal world; and he impulsed the world for another cycle.
The eclipse legends of numerous peoples of the earth today are but fragments of that great system of interpretation of the Messianic function, known to the world in the past ages. The System has come again, and is known today as Koreshanity. About the eclipse of the sun are arranged the great facts which demonstrate the necessity for the exercise of the Messianic functions in humanity; Koreshan Science of Astronomy is of some use in the application of its principles to human life. Every fact is of use when understood, for there is not a fact in the universe that is not related to the whole, and the whole is related to its Cause. We are all familiar with the saying, “No cross, no crown.” The result of the eclipse of the sun nineteen hundred years ago is the exaltation and crowning of the Messiah; and we may paraphrase the saying into a truthful scientific statement, suggestive to the cause of the coronal display, “No eclipse, no corona!”
The Flaming Sword · Vol. 14, No. 27 · 25 May 1900 · PDF pp. 8–9