Then in the progress of ordinary research the discovery of radium by Madame Curie in the year 1902 put an entirely new face upon the subject of electrons. The beta particles emanating from radium were soon identified with the electrons of the cathode ray. Then followed the discovery that the gas helium, previously treated as a separate element, evolved itself as one consequence of the disintegration of radium. Transmutation, till then laughed at as a superstition of the alchemist, passed quietly into the region of accepted natural phenomena, and the chemical elements were seen to be bodies built up of electrons in varying number and probably in varying arrangements. So at last ordinary science had reached one important result of the occult research carried on seven years earlier. It has not yet reached the finer results of the occult research—the structure of the hydrogen atom with its eighteen etheric atoms and the way in which the atomic weights of all elements are explained by the number of etheric atoms entering into their constitution.
The ether of space, though defying instrumental examination, comes within scope of the clairvoyant faculty, and profoundly interesting discoveries were made during what I have called the early research in connexion with that branch of the inquiry. Etheric atoms combine to form molecules in many different ways, but combinations involving fewer atoms than the eighteen which give rise to hydrogen, make no impression on the physical senses nor on physical instruments of research. They give rise to varieties of molecular ether, the comprehension of which begins to illuminate realms of natural mystery as yet entirely untrodden by the ordinary physicist. Combinations below 18 in number give rise to three varieties of molecular ether, the functions of which when they come to be more fully studied will constitute a department of natural knowledge on the threshold of which we already stand. Some day we may perhaps be presented with a volume on Occult Physics as important in its way as the present dissertation on Occult Chemistry.
CHAPTER II.
DETAILS OF THE EARLY RESEARCH.
The article detailing the results of the research carried on in the year 1895 (see the November issue for that year of the magazine then called Lucifer), began with some general remarks about the clairvoyant faculty, already discussed in the preceding chapter. The original record then goes on as follows:—
The physical world is regarded as being composed of between sixty and seventy chemical elements, aggregated into an infinite variety of combinations. These combinations fall under the three main heads of solids, liquids and gases, the recognised substates of physical matter, with the theoretical ether scarcely admitted as material. Ether, to the scientist, is not a substate or even a state of matter, but is a something apart by itself. It would not be allowed that gold could be raised to the etheric condition as it might be to the liquid and gaseous; whereas the occultist knows that the gaseous is succeeded by the etheric, as the solid is succeeded by the liquid, and he knows also that the word "ether" covers four substates as distinct from each other as are the solids, liquids and gases, and that all chemical elements have their four etheric substates, the highest being common to all, and consisting of the ultimate physical atoms to which all elements are finally reducible. The chemical atom is regarded as the ultimate particle of any element, and is supposed to be indivisible and unable to exist in a free state. Mr. Crookes' researches have led the more advanced chemists to regard the atoms as compound, as a more or less complex aggregation of protyle.
To astral vision ether is a visible thing, and is seen permeating all substances and encircling every particle. A "solid" body is a body composed of a vast number of particles suspended in ether, each vibrating backwards and forwards in a particular field at a high rate of velocity; the particles are attracted towards each other more strongly than they are attracted by external influences, and they "cohere," or maintain towards each other a definite relation in space. Closer examination shows that the ether is not homogeneous but consists of particles of numerous kinds, differing in the aggregations of the minute bodies composing them; and a careful and more detailed method of analysis reveals that it has four distinct degrees, giving us, with the solid, liquid and gaseous, seven instead of four substates of matter in the physical world.
These four etheric substates will be best understood if the method be explained by which they were studied. This method consisted of taking what is called an atom of gas, and breaking it up time after time, until what proved to be the ultimate physical atom was reached, the breaking up of this last resulting in the production of astral, and no longer physical matter.