In these meetings of the Parisian Society for Spiritualistic Studies, I wrote for my part, some pages on astronomical subjects signed "Galileo." The communications remained in the possession of the society, and in 1867 Allan Kardec published them under the head _General Uranography_, in his work entitled _Genesis_. (I have preserved one of the first copies, with his dedication.) These astronomical pages taught me nothing. So I was not slow in concluding that they were only the echo of what I already knew, and that Galileo had no hand in them. When I wrote the pages, I was in a kind of waking dream. Besides, my hand stopped writing when I began to think of other subjects. [Illustration: PLATE II. HOUSE OF ZOROASTRE OF JUPITER FROM SOMNAMBULISTIC DRAWING BY VICTORIEN SARDOU.] [Illustration: PLATE III. ANIMALS' QUARTERS. HOUSE OF ZOROASTRE OF JUPITER FROM SOMNAMBULISTIC DRAWING BY VICTORIEN SARDOU.] I may quote here what I said on this subject in my work, _The Worlds of Space_ (_Les Terres du Ciel_), in the edition of 1884, p. 181:-- The writing medium is not put to sleep, nor is he magnetized or hypnotized in any way. One is simply received into a circle of determinate ideas. The brain acts (by the mediation of the nervous system) a little differently from what it does in its normal state. The difference is not so great as one might suppose. The chief difference may be described as follows: In the normal state we think of what we are going to write _before_ the act of writing begins. There is a direct action of the will in causing the pen, the hand, and the fore-arm to move over the paper. In the abnormal state, on the other hand, we do not think before writing; we do not move the hand, but let it remain inert, passive, free; we place it upon the paper, taking care merely that it shall meet with the least possible resistance; we think of a word, a figure, a stroke of the pen, and the hand of its own volition begins to write. But the writing medium must _think_ of what he is doing, not beforehand, but continuously; otherwise the hand stops. For example, try to write the word "ocean," not _voluntarily_ (the ordinary way), but by simply taking a lead-pencil, and letting the hand rest lightly and freely upon the paper, while you think of your word and observe carefully whether the hand will write. Very good; it does begin to move over the paper, writing first an _o_, then a _c_, and the rest. At least that was my experience when I was studying the new problems of spiritualism and magnetism.