and its light (the astral) is the concentrated primordial element. Such is the origin of the serpent, metamorphosed in Christian ages {158} into Satan. It is the _Od_, the _Ob_, and the _Aour_ of Moses and the Kabalists. When in its passive state, when it acts on those who are unwittingly drawn within its current, the astral light is the _Ob_, or Python. Moses was determined to exterminate all those who, sensitive to its influence, allowed themselves to fall under the easy control of the vicious beings which move in the astral waves like fish in the water; beings who surround us, and whom Bulwer-Lytton calls in _Zanoni_ “the dwellers of the threshold.” It becomes the _Od_, as soon as it is vivified by the _conscious efflux_ of an immortal soul; for then the astral currents are acting under the guidance of either an adept, a pure spirit, or an able mesmerizer, who is pure himself and knows how to direct the blind forces. In such cases even a high Planetary Spirit, one of the class of beings that have never been embodied (though there are many among these hierarchies who have lived on our earth), descends occasionally to our sphere, and purifying the surrounding atmosphere enables the _subject_ to see, and opens in him the springs of true divine prophecy. As to the term _Aoûr_, the word is used to designate certain occult properties of the universal agent. It pertains more directly to the domain of the alchemist, and is of no interest to the general public. The author of the _Homoiomerian_ system of philosophy, Anaxagoras of Clazomenè, firmly believed that the spiritual prototypes of all things, as well as their elements, were to be found in the boundless ether, where they were generated, whence they evolved, and whither they returned from earth. In common with the Hindus who had personified their Akas’a (sky or ether) and made of it a deific entity, the Greeks and Latins had deified Æther. Virgil calls Zeus, _pater omnipotens æther_;[283] _Magnus_, the great god, Ether. These beings above alluded to are the elemental spirits of the Kabalists,[284] whom the Christian clergy denounce as “devils,” the enemies of mankind. “Already Tertullian,” gravely remarks Des Mousseaux, in his chapter on {159} the devils, “has _formally_ discovered the secret of their cunning.” A priceless discovery, that. And now that we have learned so much of the mental labors of the holy fathers and their achievements in astral anthropology, need we be surprised at all, if, in the zeal of their spiritual explorations, they have so far neglected their own planet as at times to deny not only its right to motion but even its sphericity?