Astronomers call it lateral refraction when a star oscillates and makes images in the heated atmosphere; but to Yermah it had a different significance. He first saw Venus seven degrees high, apparently motionless. The planet oscillated up and down, then horizontally, outlining a Maltese cross—the primordial sign of matter.[[32]]
Finally, it rose perpendicularly, descended sideways at an angle, and returned to the spot whence it started, completing a triangle—the universal emblem of spirit.
While Yermah sat on the rock lost in reverie, the sub-conscious man made its final peace with cosmic law. His entire life passed before him in successive events when he knew that here was the end; but with this realization he leaned confidently upon the Divine.
Under the impulse of utter helplessness, he arose and kissed his hand reverently to the evening star—a practice taught him in the nursery.
As a child it was his first act of adoration before his tongue learned to fashion appropriate speech or his mind to comprehend veneration. In this supreme moment, he turned back to that time insistently.
Finally, he knelt—and lifting up his arms as if to embrace a heavenly ray, Yermah kissed the air as if it were the raiment of God. Turning his face up to the sky, he closed his eyes in silent prayer.
Rising, he approached the mouth of the crater which faces north. He could hear the angry, hissing roar of the subterranean fires, and the scorching flames licked out at him as he fed them his belongings one by one.
But a short time previous, Yermah had passed his thirty-third birthday, and, as he now stood ready for self-immolation, he was in the prime and glory of vigorous manhood.
He had the illumined face of a saint, and was uplifted by that spirit which sustained martyrs in the after years. Even his fair young body seemed to be spiritualized.
“O Thou Ineffable One! Thou Spirit of Fire! Take that which is thine! Lap thy purifying tongue about me, and leave no dross!”