This spirit of the Universe is indeed solar, but it is not the Sun’s light itself, visible to us through the presence of its body. It is the invisible spirit continually scattered by the solar rays throughout the whole region of ether. Through communication it extends constantly into our heaven and even to the centre of the earth, when the Sun is absent from us and in the darkest night, bestowing all gifts necessary for generation and life and pouring itself through all the bodies of the Universe.

Divine Love could not be contained within itself, but passed wholly beyond itself in Creation, as though multiplying itself. It likewise pours itself out entirely in preserving its creatures. Light, the closest likeness of divinity, also imitates divine love. It cannot be confined within its luminous body, but through the immense multiplication of rays spreads far and wide for the benefit of others. Born less for itself than for others, as a symbol of divine charity, it communicates itself to whatever it can and extends even to the most distant places, unless a dense body intercepts it.

Light also displays to us the infinite nature of God. For the little flame of a lamp or candle cannot be exhausted or diminished by the tireless flow of its rays or by communicating its flame without limit, as long as its food remains. As many rays as it has, so many little streams flow from it. However much it gives and however much is taken from it, it is neither emptied nor suffers loss. This belongs to spiritual nature alone and is foreign to bodily nature. Intellectual gifts, such as the sciences and knowledge of things, which are rightly regarded as spiritual lights, are of this kind: however often communicated, they always remain whole in their possessor. We must acknowledge that there is something divine in light.

Although the rays of a luminous body are spiritual in nature, they are nevertheless stopped by a dense body, because they use air as their vehicle. Without it we cannot perceive them, and through union with it they themselves become bodily in a certain way. They therefore penetrate only porous bodies. Thus spiritual things act among us through some perceptible intermediary, so that their action may be apprehended. When the luminous body is absent, its rays also withdraw: they do not leave its presence, because they flow immediately from it.

The air is imbued with radiance from afar not only through the presence of a luminous body and its rays, but also when the body is absent and the rays withdrawn, through the luminous spirit issuing from them. This is evident in a great eclipse of the Sun, when the sky is covered with very dense clouds or even the darkness of night, and when the Sun has sunk below the horizon. For that activity of present radiance, when the luminous body and its rays are absent, proceeds from nothing other than the approach and presence of spiritual radiance.

A TRANSPARENT BODY.

A transparent body such as glass, when struck by the Sun’s rays, gathers them and receives the Sun’s image within itself. It becomes luminous and, as it were, a Sun in miniature, emitting rays of its own towards the farther side facing away from the Sun. Thus the solar rays, refracted by their encounter with the glass, appear to pass through and penetrate the glass itself. Yet this does not really happen: because of the air adhering to them, the rays are stopped at the glass and only the spirit of light is transmitted. The rays poured out on the other side are rays of a glassy Sun, or of glass kindled into a luminous body by the solar rays.

Every transparent body, especially glass, is an intermediary of radiance, because it receives radiance within itself and communicates what it receives to the air beyond. It does not do this by transmitting luminous air from one side to the other, which is contrary to Nature, but by two other means. First, a transparent body is open to the passage of the spirit of radiance, receives it within itself and transmits it. Once transmitted, the spirit enters the air, whence comes abundant radiance. Second, through the benefit of the radiance it receives, the transparent intermediary becomes not merely illuminated but luminous, kindled with radiance like a wick by the spirit of light, which is friendly to transparent things. Every luminous body has the right and capacity to pour out radiance, something dense and opaque bodies cannot do except by reflection.

The pure natures of mixed bodies are also spiritual. Their bodies are their rinds and, as it were, earthenware vessels in which they are kept. Those lofty natures could not otherwise have crossed this lower sea and lodged in this centre of the abyss unless, bound to bodily elements, they were held in place by their weight. They are perceived through bodies, while bodies are moved and act through them. Thus each renders service to the other. This is the secret of Homer’s Juno, whom Jupiter lowered with the weight of an anvil attached to her feet.

Since the structure of the Universe is a single body, a single universal Nature composed of many natures and bodies as parts held together through their intermediaries and bonds, it should not seem strange that these members are joined to one another by a strong, though hidden, bond and lend each other mutual aid. For these manifold natures have not merely a relation but also communication and a kind of commerce: the extremes through intermediaries, and the intermediaries through their neighbours. This communication takes place through emissary spirits. Every region of the World and every nature, even an individual nature, abounds in spirits. Many continually flow out and give way to those flowing in. Through the constant arrival and departure of spirits there is thus a kind of renewal of the World’s parts and natures. This is the ladder of universal Nature revealed in a vision to the patriarch Jacob. These are Mercury’s wings, by whose aid he, mystically called the messenger of the Gods by the ancients, was believed frequently to visit the thresholds of the upper and lower worlds.

ACTIVE PRINCIPLES ARE SPIRITUAL.

The active principles of every kind of plant or animal are spiritual. Bodies are the passive instruments of spirits, through which the spirits exercise the faculties of sense and unfold their powers in manifold activities as the authors of those activities. Thus life in general may rightly be called a harmony of actions, or a continuous actuality, varied through the multiplicity of its actions, flowing from a spiritual source and unfolded through its bodily instruments.