times heavier than an atom of hydrogen. In this way, all through the table of atomic weights, hydrogen is taken as unity, without any attempt being made to estimate its absolute weight. But now with the atom of hydrogen dissected, so to speak, and found to consist of 18 somethings, while the atom of oxygen consisted of 290 of the same things, the sixteen to one relationship reappears: 290 divided by 18 gives us 16 and a minute decimal fraction. Again the nitrogen number divided by 18 gives us 14 and a minute fraction as the result, and that is the accepted atomic weight of nitrogen. This gave us a glimpse of a principle that might run all through the table of atomic weights. For reasons having to do with other work, it was impossible for the authors of this book to carry on the research further at the time it was begun. The results already sketched were published as an article in the magazine then called Lucifer, in November, 1895, and reprinted as a separate pamphlet bearing the title "Occult Chemistry," a pamphlet the surviving copies of which will one day be a recognised vindication of the method that will at some time in the future be generally applied to the investigation of Nature's mysteries. For the later research which this volume deals with does establish the principle with a force that can hardly be resisted by any fair-minded reader. With patience and industry—the authors being assisted in the counting in a way that will be described (and the method adopted involved a check upon the accuracy of the counting)—the minor atoms of almost all the known chemical elements, as they are commonly called, were counted and found to bear the same relation to their atomic weights as had been suggested by the cases of oxygen and nitrogen. This result throws back complete proof on the original estimate of the number of minor atoms in hydrogen, a figure which ordinary research has so far entirely failed to determine. The guesses have been widely various, from unity to many hundreds, but, unacquainted with the clairvoyant method, the ordinary physicist has no means of reaching the actual state of the facts.
Before going on with the details of the later research some very important discoveries arising from the early work must first be explained. As I have already said clairvoyant faculty of the appropriate order directed to the minute phenomena of Nature is practically infinite in its range. Not content with estimating the number of minor atoms in physical molecules, the authors proceeded to examine the minor atoms individually. They were found to be themselves elaborately complicated structures which, in this preliminary survey of the whole subject, I will not stop to explain (full explanation will be found later on) and they are composed of atoms belonging to an ultra-physical realm of Nature with which the occultist has long been familiar and describes as "the Astral Plane." Some rather pedantic critics have found fault with the term, as the "plane" in question is of course really a sphere entirely surrounding the physical globe, but as all occultists understand the word, "plane" simply signifies a condition of nature. Each condition, and there are many more than the two under consideration, blends with its neighbour, via atomic structure. Thus the atoms of the Astral plane in combination give rise to the finest variety of physical matter, the ether of space, which is not homogeneous but really atomic in its character, and the minute atoms of which physical molecules are composed are atoms of ether, "etheric atoms," as we have now learned to call them.
Many physicists, though not all, will resent the idea of treating the ether of space as atomic. But at all events the occultist has the satisfaction of knowing that the great Russian chemist, Mendeleef, preferred the atomic theory. In Sir William Tilden's recent book entitled "Chemical Discovery and Invention in the Twentieth Century," I read that Mendeleef, "disregarding conventional views," supposed the ether to have a molecular or atomic structure, and in time all physicists must come to recognise that the Electron is not, as so many suppose at present, an atom of electricity, but an atom of ether carrying a definite unit charge of electricity.
Long before the discovery of radium led to the recognition of the electron as the common constituent of all the bodies previously described as chemical elements, the minute particles of matter in question had been identified with the cathode rays observed in Sir William Crookes' vacuum tubes. When an electric current is passed through a tube from which the air (or other gas it may contain) has been almost entirely exhausted, a luminous glow pervades the tube manifestly emanating from the cathode or negative pole of the circuit. This effect was studied by Sir William Crookes very profoundly. Among other characteristics it was found that, if a minute windmill was set up in the tube before it was exhausted, the cathode ray caused the vanes to revolve, thus suggesting the idea that they consisted of actual particles driven against the vanes; the ray being thus evidently something more than a mere luminous effect. Here was a mechanical energy to be explained, and at the first glance it seemed difficult to reconcile the facts observed with the idea creeping into favour, that the particles, already invested with the name "electron," were atoms of electricity pure and simple. Electricity was found, or certain eminent physicists thought they had found, that electricity per se had inertia. So the windmills in the Crookes' vacuum tubes were supposed to be moved by the impact of electric atoms.
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,
