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THE SOLAR VORTEX. The envelope of the sun, and the surrounding volume of the second aura, constitute the solar vortex. The mass of the second aura is created around any star or sun by its action in or upon the first or universal aura, and the mass or volume, so brought into existence, is thereafter inseparable from that star or sun. This volume of second aura takes the shape of a great vortex ring. The equatorial diameter of this ring is as wide as the extense of the system which depends upon the animatory motions of that star for its light and heat. The polar diameter of this vast vortex ring is much less than the equatorial diameter. At the poles of the ring there are re-entrance-spaces formed like cones, with their apices towards the solar centre.

Plate V.

THE SOLAR VORTEX

The gold and red represent the active centre of first and second finites.
The black ring represents the envelope of third and fourth finites,
and the blue sphere the volume of second aura.

The bullae of this entire volume of second aura at length become disposed in a perfectly equilibrated and regular arrangement. The volume of the vortex ring possesses en masse a perpetual vortico-spiral circulation, as well as a general axillary rotation. The axis of the general rotation passes through the cones, and is from West to East, as this is the course of the revolution of the planets in their
orbiting around the sun; and the planets revolve around the sun chiefly because they are buoyed and borne along by the rotating motion of the vortex itself.

When the bullae of this vortex-volume of second aura are thus fully arranged and connected, the bullae nearer the sun being the more compressed, then the perpendicular flow (N-S) of the vortex as a whole will be impeded by the necessity that the swifter currents near the sun should wait upon the dragging slowness of motion in the circumference. But the general rotary motion (W-E) will remain in unimpeded actuality for the whole mass. Hence the general axillary motion of the whole ring will make a full revolution, while the vortex en masse achieves only a single step of the N-S or vortexing advance. Hence the rotary motion of the volume of the vortex around its axis will, be rapid. But its other motion, its perpendicular, vortex, or N-S flow will be tranquil ; and as it were of a serene, almost latent current and pressure.

The other or vortex motion, at the polar cones of the solar vortex, is from North to South. This is assured because the earth lies in the course of the general flow of the solar vortex ; and the current of that flow passes over the earth from its south to its north pole, "and so tends back into its vortex.

Moreover, as the endeavor and motion of this vortex current is not exactly perpendicular, or in a straight line from South to North, but always acts with a certain simultaneous side-trend and effort from West to East, arising from its intrinsic vortico-spiral activity, with a sort of screw-thread twist, — this general twisting action of the vortex of second aura or magnetic element, in its passage over the earth, will tend to roll and revolve the earth itself around and around on its axis. And, as the second aura everywhere interpenetrates the bullae of the ether, the air, the waters of the earth, and all its layers of upper soils and minerals, it lays hold of the globe as it were by slender but omnipotent fingers, and turns it about day by day.

THE BULLAE OF THE SECOND AURA are dilated towards the circumference of the volume, and more and more compressed towards its center, until this increasing compression terminates abruptly in the extreme condensation of the encrusting flamy metallic envelope or body of the starry sun. Thus the envelope or body of a sun, and its vortex of second ether, form as it were one body; and the two rotate as one. Or we may perhaps call the volume of second aura about the sun a sort of atmospheric extension of the sun's envelope. And it is in such intimately graded connection therewith that the two necessarily turn about as one, as a man's body and his sphere make one; or as it is with the magnetic needle and the magnetic sphere. And as the iron of the magnetic needle is turned about by the turning about of its sphere by a finer elemental vortex, so here we may consider that it is the living vortex flow of the primal aura, both interpenetrating and surrounding the volume of second aura, which turns it continually and bears it along, and the flamy crustal body of the sun with it, so that the two necessarily revolve as one.

Hence the envelope or crusted body of the sun itself is in continual rotation, in the same direction as the planets travel. And, moreover, whenever in that enveloping flamy crust of the starry sun the breaking solar bubbles we call sun spots are perceptible, these also are seen to be carried along in the same general direction ; as if they also travelled around the sun.

The circumfluent volume of the aura of the solar vortex never penetrates into the active interior space of a star. The spiraling curves of the vortex therefore circle about it, as if they embraced its space round about, in soft arching curves. From
this there results a peculiar irregularity in the absolute rotation of the flamy, half-fluid encrusting envelope of a star or sun. The northern half of the envelope always rotates a little faster from west to east than the southern half.

The solar vortex, including the sun-envelope, always possesses some trace of the two motions proper to the intrinsic vortico-spiral conatus of its bullae. The currents of the vortex gyre, near and about the sun, are therefore not only in their common rotary motion about the axis of the vortex ; but they retain also their common endeavor and pressure along the lines of the vortex or progressive motion; although this progressive or vortex motion of the aura volume is extremely slow. The stream of this motion moves of its own impulse and nature in a large full half curve from north to south. If the effect of this slower subsidiary motion be considered separately from the swifter and chief rotary motion, it will be apparent that the general rotary movement of the upper part of the vortex volume near the sun would gain a little on that of the lower.

For the general slant of the curve of this subsidiary progressive motion, from the north pole of the sun's envelope to its equator, will coincide in general with the common rotary motion of the sphere. It therefore adds itself thereto, producing a trifling acceleration of the absolute speed of that rotation. From the equator of the sun's envelope to its southern pole, the reverse of this will be true. The slant
of the curving subsidiary motion will be counter to the common rotary motion of the sphere, and will subtract therefrom. It is as when a man on board a boat paces the deck back and forth, now going with the general stream of the boat's motion, and now against it.

The fact that the northern hemisphere of the sun's half fluid envelope rotates from west to east a trifle faster than the southern hemisphere, a fact indicated in Swedenborg's postulates as to the two directions of advance present in a true vortex circulation, has been noted by astronomical observation.

THE ACTIVE SOLAR CENTRE, of living animatory force within this envelope or body, acts that animatory motion continually into its enveloping body, as a motion of alternating expansion and contraction ; and from its body, so intimately one with its atmospheric spheres or vortex, the effect goes out as communicated waves of alternate contraction and expansion endlessly running through the elastic bullae of the surrounding volume. Each recurrent expansion of the active solar space sets the dense envelope about that expanding solar center into sharp
fluctuations, which give an impulse and pressure to the elastic foam-texture of the second aura around it, and starts a sort of wave, the undulatory pressure of which runs outward from the sun through the vortex volume wave after wave; every impulse of the sun's expansions tending to expand the vortex also. It is as if the solar space or sun were the great pulmonary center of its system, and at each expansive motion of that miracle of inner solar breathing the whole vortex like a mighty breast lifts and expands.

LIGHT. Thus light is an undulatory wave motion or pressure running through the vortex, from the sun outward. The impulse, the inciting force, of these undulations of light, is the alternate expansion and contraction of the active solar space within the sun, called by Swedenborg its animatory motion, derived from the reciprocal cardiac and pulmonic activities of the Divine in His creation. That light is an undulatory motion or pressure, see E. A. K. part I. 170; Lesser Principia, 118. 121. 130. That the spring and origin of light is animatory motion, see E. A. K. part I. 300. That the origin of the undulations of light is animatory motion of the sun and the stars, see E. A. K. part L 170. That the animatory motion itself is an alternate expansion and contraction perpetually kept up, see E. A. K. part L 299. That such animatory motion may always be truly called a breathing, see A. K. 392. b. That animatory motion is derived into the universe, as Into the heavens, by the pulmonic and cardiac motions which the Lord acts into the Spiritual Sun, see D. L. W. 392. That the interior activity of suns and stars, in their use, is immediately the act of the spiritual Sun within them, for if withdrawn they would collapse, see D. L. W. 157.

OUTSIDE THE VORTEX-RING VOLUME OF SECOND AURA, the first aura exists ; for it is the universal or interstellar aura. The vortex ring volumes of a second aura exist as it were submerged in, and em- braced all about, by the first aura. The innumerable stars and their vortices exist therein as local active centers, where the series of creative-proceeding is to be produced to new localized ultimation ; therefore the circling motions of each volume of second aura regard its central star or sun.

THE DETERMINATIONS OF THE FIRST AURA are not the same as those of the second ; nor does the sweep of its currents regard any star, but they are co-extensive with the breadth of finite creation. Therefore the center it regards is a universal one, indeed ; and the light it inmostly carries is that of God. the Moral Sun, the Sun of Wisdom and of Life. Hence all the vortices of the second aura ever created, each with its springing motion about its own active center, are thus wholly embraced around by the primal aura and borne deep in its bosom, and
are carried by its supreme tides, as it were not knowing, to such purposes and places as God wills.

For by it the universe is ruled ; by it, greatest forms and least are held together; and by it, ends flow through orderly sequence of means, to results.

The first aura is not only present outside the vortex volumes of second aura, embracing them about and holding their mass of bullae together in a coherent contiguous volume; it is present wiihin this derivative vortex also, filling the interstices between every bulla of its volume, and equilibrating all things therein by its pressure. Thus everywhere within a solar vortex, the bullae of the first aura and the second flow together in one vortex volume; and nothing so small can exist in that vortex that it is not bathed about and acted upon by both the first and second auras. The primal planetary masses are conditioned with this environment from their first moment. The bullae of the first aura and the second flow about the primitive earths, everywhere pressing their surface, urging, acting, sustaining and moulding as by liquid hands.

It is the common rotary motion of the vortex which swings the primal earths about the sun from stream, that those earths are carried outwards from their common birth-place, immediately around the active solar space, by widenirg circles, each to .his own place and distance, there to circle in its own orbit and freedom everlastingly. This distance is not the same for any two earths ; although the common carrier-stream of the vortex is the same for all, no two of tie primitive earth masses find their own place and freedom at the same point of the circle.

So soon as the great crustal envelope of the sun collapses into the globular masses, an ordering action begins in these globes. Under the conditions of the surrounding pressure, the finites or vortex rings of which the spherical earth masses are composed, must begin to slip into place among each other, pole to pole; since that is the mutual arrangement in which they take up the least room. Moreover, all the finites of which the earth masses are composed, are compounds of the primitives of the Spiritual Sun, and the everlasting reflexive conatus of these primitives to a circling and recircling motion is everywhere within them. Thus as soon as the finites composing the earth-mass are adjoined pole to pole, a certain common push and endeavor of the whole mass will make itself felt, from the push and endeavor common to each finite of that mass. In this manner the enormous volume of the finites constituent of any planetary mass, will almost at once come to be arranged into a perfect order and flow ; slow, impeded, indeed, but yet real, and emulous of the circulation in the interior of a finite. So soon as this occurs, the primitive earth will cease to be a perfectly round ball-like mass, will become flattened at the poles, in emulation also of the generic configuration of a finite. At this stage each earth will assume the character, and possess the active powers, of a finite; a large finite, or substantial. "Every planet, therefore, however great ... is only a larger finite ; the difference between the two consisting only in degrees and dimensions.''

The powers and motions of earths, as astronomical bodies, refer themselves back to this interior condition. The very conatus to axillary motion they get from this interior arrangement and circulation of their substance. And it is from this intrinsic
ground that all earths derive their endeavor and power to that large motion en masse, which describes continually about the sun the great circle of their orbits ; and presents a very image in vast outline of a finite left in its free and unimpeded motion.

The primitive earths, however, differ in size, as finites also differ in size. No two earths, probably, in all the universe, are exactly of the same dimensions. Thus earths would come under the law of finites, the law that all of their orbits are of the same general type, but differ in size; small finites describing orbits of small diameter, and large finites of large diameter. The diameter of the native orbit of a finite is always in direct proportion to the mass of the moving body ; so it is with the earths of the universe of so many sizes ; yet each describes an orbit strictly commensurate to its individual power and form and mass.

THE PROGRESS OF THE EARTHS TO THEIR ORBITS. And now a word more as to the progression of the primitive earths from the sun outwards to their orbits. As the second aura is a foam-structure of a relatively coarse order, the ether of a solar vortex cannot be regarded as a wholly frictionless medium. This, however, does not oppress the motions of the planets. That stream is frictionless to us, with the flow of which we ourselves spontaneously run. Thus the aura of the great solar vortex is frictionless to the planets, which are borne along in its circling stream, as boats might ride in some great maelstrom flow of the sea. Nor is there even so much of friction as is implied in this image. The earths are not only passively borne in this revolving flow; they go spontaneously.

The primitive earths, all starting alike from the near presence of the sun, travel by successively widening circles from the region of greater density to less ; until each earth reaches that particular circle in the vortex, where it is in individual freedom in its relation with the vortex and with respect to its own proportional size and mass ; and where its own conatus to orbital motion coincides with the diameter of the revolving volume of aura which carries it. Thus each earth finds its own free and rightful place in the stream of the great whirling vortex which carries it about the parent sun; and it thereafter continues to move on that particular wave of the circling stream, as its own particular orbit, age after age unceasingly. Nor will there ever be any friction to stop the motion of the earths; even though the second aura is not abstractly a frictionless medium. Still less is an aura in motion frictionless. But the stream we go with is frictionless to us ; and where the aptitude and power of the interior circulation coincide with the measure and flow of the outer cosmic stream in which it is borne, as in every stream of Providence, there then exists the image and ideal of freedom itself; and the push and flow and determining crowd of the surrounding stream is unperceived.

During the time taken by the raw mass of a primitive earth to pass by circling gyres from the sun to its own place and orbit in the vortex, many things are accomplished for it; and many things happen to it.

First and foremost of its conditioning is, that it leaves the central region of the vortex, where the density of the medium is high and where the undulations of light and heat, communicated by the animatory motion of the solar center, are in their fullest and most immediate force. From this region each earth travels by gradations through regions where the vortex density continually lessens, and also the undulatory pressure of the outgoing waves of light and heat. And alike when near the sun, as when departing from it, the earth mass is surrounded, acted upon, compressed, and carried, by the vortex itself, in which vortex both the first aura and the second are distinctly together. For the first aura is interstitially between all the bullae of the second aura ; and so surrounds, embraces, and urges them all.

THE THIRD AURA, OR ETHER. Now the primitive earth masses, having the constitution of solid balls, cannot expand, on reaching an environment of lesser density, as the sun spots and the satellites do. What happens to the earths is contrary to this. Their mass grows smaller. For when an earth has entered a region of somewhat lessened density, the finites composing the surface layers of that primeval earth mass, loosen and free themselves, especially on the side turned towards the sun, and whole outermost layers of the dense earth-mass lift softly and lightly. The finites freeing themselves from the bond of their mutual pressure, begin to float in little finest curves and turns, according to their own inherent will of motion. By this means, in the course of the repeated diurnal rotations of the earth, it becomes surrounded by a sort of free halitus or sphere of the same substance, the same substantials, as those of which its core is composed.

Plate VI.

A BULLA OF THE THIRD AURA OR ETHER

Cross-section: the red represents the active centre of the first aura bullae,
 the green the envelope of fourth finites.

So soon as this halitus of fourth finites begins to arise from the earth, as if the earth were evaporating away at its surface, it everywhere enters and circles in and among the bullae of the surrounding vortex. Then little volumes of the first or celestial aura gather up the finites of this floating sphere, press them together, and form of them minute spherical envelopes of a diameter commensurate with their native orbits. The volume of first aura, which formed such an envelope of fourth finites about itself, remains in that envelope, as it were the soul and active interior space of that particular bulla ; while the envelope is as a sort of body, formed from the fine primeval mother-mass of that particular earth ; — a body which the central volume or soul of celestial aura has formed to itself for the performance of a new and more ultimate degree of vital use. Thus it is that as the earth passes outwards, all around it there begin to originate new bullae, of a larger size than any hitherto ; and these new bullae are as entities begotten by the first or celestial aura as an active from the finites of the mother earth, as reactive. These bullae are the very bullae of the third degree of atmosphere, technically called the ether.

These new bullae differ from those of the first and second aura, not only by their greater size, but in having envelopes which are perfectly round, and without polar openings or cones. Thus it is impossible for bullae of the third degree of atmosphere to be colligated pole to pole and form long pores and channels, in the same way as can the bullae of the first and second.

As we see with bullae of warm vapor or steam, the tendency is to rise from the surface of the earth, where they are formed, into a higher region, and that this tendency is great in proportion to their heat ; so here with the bullae of the third atmosphere or ether. As fast as they are formed, being as it were exalted and empowered by the beams of the sun near at hand, they expand and mount on all
sides from the earth ; and as they mount, new bullae, ishaping from below, follow them, and still new ones are shaped at the surface of the earth and pass upward. Thus an atmosphere of new and larger bullae of a different type is as it were spun and woven as a vestment about the surface of the earth. The volume of it became very great. And it did not cease to be formed in continually enlarging mass, until the earth, in its farthest journey from the sun, entered regions where his heat in a marked degree grew less. For when it reached so great a distance that the bullae of the outermost circumference of volume of ether, already formed, began to lose the first warmth communicated by the near presence of the radiant sun, then those bullae of their own accord no longer sped away from the earth, but as it were drove back upon it ; in every pressure seeking to return, as they chilled and contracted. With this, the further formation of the ether sphere would cease. Thus about each of the primitive earths there was formed a sphere of ether, or third atmosphere, individual and as it were personal to that earth alone.

In all the productions and changes characterizing the formation of this third aura, each earth-mass must act as reagent in the process for that particular volume originating around itself; its own motor powers, rotary and orbital, are part of the instrumental means of the production. Its own substance is given off from its mass to form the envelopes of the bullae; and the site where those bullae are first formed is immediately about its surface, where the first and second auras encompass and press upon its rounded sides. To this ether the eye is formed. To
this is formed the common sensory plane and animus. It gives also the life-formative of the vegetable kingdom and of the insect world.. 

The volume of third aura or ether is in no case similar in all respects on any two earths of the universe. Therefore the pressure and habit of its action differ on all earths of creation; and the play of the living sensory organs, afterwards framed to receive and reciprocate the motions of this third degree of atmosphere, will differ on every earth in the universe ; and that so distinctly that sensory organs framed to the powers of this ether upon one earth, if transferred to the ether sphere of another earth, would be without their usual power of sense-reciprocation. The eye, seeing upon one earth, would be blind upon another. The planes of imagination would all lie differently. And the vegetation of one earth would be of forms unusual to another ; and no two worlds are the same as to atmospheres, earths, or forms arising out of them.

This third atmosphere is the ground of the celestial-natural heaven, the heaven of the vegetative paradises. And the fact that the volumes of this third atmosphere are as many as the satellites and planets created, is the elemental basis of the further fact, that the number of natural heavens is as many as the number of satellites and planets; that each satellite and planet is surrounded by its own local natural heaven; that their genius is not alike; and that the man who has his interiors opened to the degree of the natural heaven, who lives in the common imaginative sensory, is able to live and make his everlasting home only in the near vicinage of the surface of the earth upon which he was begotten and brought forth. For only to the air and ether of his own earth has his ear, his eye, his common sensory, and their plane of life, been framed responsive ; only there do men exist of the same genius in lower planes with his own , with whom he may be associated, and of their life partake.

THE FOURTH AURA, OR AIR. The like law of planetary differentiation and localization exists for the fourth atmosphere, the aerial elementary, which is the last of the active bullular atmospheres properly to be called ethers or auras. The second aura and the primitive earth-mass bear the same mutual relation and office in the production of the fourth aura or atmosphere, as the first aura and the mother mass of the earth in the production of the third aura or ether. The first aura and the primal-earth mass are as active and reactive in framing" the constitution of the bullae of the third atmosphere. The first aura exists in the internal or nuclear centre ; the substantial or fourth finites of which the earth is composed forming their enveloping bodies. The second aura is the active to the reactive of the substantiates of the primal earth in the production of a fourth aura. The bullae of this aura will then have a volume of second aura as a nuclear centre; their enveloping body having been taken from the mother mass of the natural earth. This fourth atmosphere does not enter the human body; although it has an organ formed to itself, the ear. In this atmosphere the spiritual-natural heaven is founded. In the formation of the envelopes of the bullae of the fourth aura, the substantials or fourth ffnites of the earth mass are not used immediately or individually, but certain grosser finites, called fifth finites, concreted from the fourth finites by free composition. Thus the fifth finites are more ultimate, lower, and finited, than the mass of the planetary core itself. This appears in all their uses. Indeed, to the activity of the fifth finites our atmospheric fire is due, the activity of the fourth finites being the elementary electric fire.

Plate VII.

A BULLA OF THE FOURTH AURA OR AERIAL ELEMENTARY.

Cross-section: the blue represents the active centre of second aura bullae,
the brown the envelope of fifth finites

The formation of fifth finites takes place at the surface of the planets, wherever great layers and masses of the fourth finites have freed themselves from old connections; moving one among another they mutually finite themselves into a new and more compounded grade of vortex-ring entities than has yet existed.

These new finites possess all the powers of the previous finites; they have an interior circulation, and spontaneously rise and run and circle in a certain orbit. They move, however, far more slowly, than the fourth finites do ; and the diameter of the orbit they describe in their motions is much greater. When such finites, therefore, rise and move in swarms over the surface of the earth; the circle of their reflexing activities will be wide enough to inclose in its limits a volume of the bullae of the second aura. Then that volume of second aura, with first aura bullae in its interstices, will convolute and roll these finites, and form of them relatively large spherical envelopes. Of the large bullae thus formed, the volume of fourth elementary is composed.

ORIGIN OF THE WATER MOLECULE. The volume of the air or fourth atmosphere was never so large as that of the ether or third atmosphere ; and a large portion of the original volume has been compressed into materia for the earth's uses. There is now left, therefore, but a comparatively thin envelope, not many miles thick, pressing closely upon the earth's surface. This is the atmosphere the lower
layers of which were compressed into the waters and grosser materia of creation. For the waters which cover the earth, the salts of the sea, the rocks of its upper crusts, are formed directly, not from the materia of the planetary mass, but from compressions of that fourth aura.

The general cause of this compressive action is the passage of the earth, with all its great surrounding volumes of third and fourth atmospheres about it, into regions of the vortex sphere far colder than those where the volumes of the third and fourth atmospheres were formed. The immediate agency of the compression is the immense return endeavor, or return pressure back upon the earth, of the cooling and contracting bullae of the great volumes of the third and fourth atmospheres. The sum of this contraction-endeavor of the whole vast spherical volume is directed and massed from every side towards the centre of the solid resistant globe of the primitive earth. The globe cannot yield nor can it be pushed away. It is solid. And from every side like pressure comes, from like causes, which sustains and prevents escape. The immense return conatus and effort of the vast cooling sphere of atmospheric bullae, concentrating its radii in towards the earth, brings an enormous pressure to bear upon the bullular texture of its own volume in the vicinage of the earth, and upon the volume of the fourth elementaries particularly; since that volume is more ultimate and finite, and with relatively less spring of interipr resistance and reaction.

The bullae of the fourth atmosphere caught under this cooling pressure, and driven towards the unyielding surface of the planet, are as it were compressed to their lowest and smallest dimensions until each is reduced to a small, round, unyielding little mass. This new little mass is not homogeneous. The fifth finites of the envelope of the parent bullae the same as those of the atmospheric fire, will still form the exterior of the mass; the third finites of the envelopes of the bullae of the second aura, en- closed in the nuclear centres of the parent bullae, the same finites which constitute the primitives of the finer group of metals, will fill the centre. Thus the new particles, spherical in form, non-elastic or solid, the first really material thing formed in creation, will consist, as we have said, of two constituents, namely, the primitives of the metallic family, and fifth finites or those belonging to the later atmospheric fires.

Now these new, spherical, hard molecules or masses, thus formed by the compression of the lower layers of the fourth elementary or atmosphere, are actuallv the molecules of water. The ether, interfluent in their interstices, renders them fluid.

Hence under the enormous pressure of the cooling ether-sphere about the earth, the coarse foam-bullae of the aerial elementary or fourth aura, in its layers next the earth, begin to be so hardly compressed that they are each condensed into a molecule of water. Then there appears over the surface of the mother earth a mass of water, the tide of which rises higher and higher, as layer after layer of the aura or atmosphere above changes its nature and form under the compressing force, until the pressure of the upper atmospheres is for a time satisfied; and a great unsalt sea, leagues in depth, covers the ball oi the earth.

Author: Lillian G. Beekman From AN OUTLINE OF SWEDENBORG'S COSMOLOGY (1907)