The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE EQUINOX without limit, created spirits would lose themselves in the infinite, and from lack of the power to concentrate themselves somewhere, they would be dead and impotent everywhere, lost as they would be in the immensity of God. All created spirits have, then, bodies, some subtler, some grosser, according to the surroundings in which they are called to live. The soul of a dead man would, then, not be able to live in the atmosphere of the living, any more than we can live in earth or in water. For an airy, or rather an ethereal, spirit, it would be necessary to have an artificial body similar to the apparatus of our divers, in order that it might come to us. All that we can see of the dead are the reflections which they have left in the atmospheric light, light whose imprints we evoke by the sympathy of our memories. The souls of the dead are above our atmosphere. Our respirable air becomes earth for them. This is what the Saviour declares in His Gospel, when He makes the soul of a saint say : “Now the great abyss is established between us, and those who are above can no longer descend to those who are below.” The hands which Mr. Home causes to appear are, then, composed of air coloured by the reflection which his sick imagination attracts and projects.’ 1 “The luminous agent being also that of heat, one understands the sudden variations of temperature occasioned by the abnormal projections or sudden absorptions of the light. There follows a sudden atmospheric perturbation, which produces the noise of storms, and the creaking of woodwork.”—E. L. 220