of old Persia, inheritor of its
unforgotten lore, and using some of its powers. I tried to pierce
through the great veil of nature, and feel the life that quickened it
within. I tried to comprehend the birth and growth of planets, and to
do this I rose spiritually and passed beyond earth's confines into that
seeming void which is the Matrix where they germinate. On one of these
journeys I was struck by the phantasm, so it seemed, of a planet I had
not observed before. I could not then observe closer, and coming again
on another occasion it had disappeared. After the lapse of many months
I saw it once more, brilliant with fiery beauty. Its motion was slow,
revolving around some invisible centre. I pondered over it, and seemed
to know that the invisible centre was its primordial spiritual state,
from which it emerged a little while and into which it then withdrew.
Short was its day; its shining faded into a glimmer, and then into
darkness in a few months. I learned its time and cycles; I made
preparations and determined to await its coming.

The Birth of a Planet

At first silence and then an inner music, and then the sounds of song
throughout the vastness of its orbit grew as many in number as there
were stars at gaze. Avenues and vistas of sound! They reeled to and fro.
They poured from a universal stillness quick with unheard things. They
rushed forth and broke into a myriad voices gay with childhood. From age
and the eternal they rushed forth into youth. They filled the void with
reveling and exultation. In rebellion they then returned and entered
the dreadful Fountain. Again they came forth, and the sounds faded into
whispers; they rejoiced once again, and again died into silence.

And now all around glowed a vast twilight; it filled the cradle of the
planet with colorless fire. I felt a rippling motion which impelled me
away from the centre to the circumference. At that began to curdle,
a milky and nebulous substance rocked to and fro. At every motion the
pulsation of its rhythm carried it farther and farther away from the
centre; it grew darker, and a great purple shadow covered it so that I
could see it no longer. I was now on the outer verge, where the twilight
still continued to encircle the planet with zones of clear transparent
light.

As night after night I rose up to visit it they grew many-colored and
brighter. I saw the imagination of nature visibly at work. I wandered
through shadowy immaterial for