NEUOFFENBARUNG8 May 1841
[Mo.01_002,01] The people on the Moon, like those on the Earth, are of both sexes. They were created by an angel vested with authority, a thousand years later than the people of the Earth.
[Mo.01_002,02] As to their natural stature, they are only a little over two feet tall and bear a great resemblance to the dwarfs of the north. They have a very large belly that performs two functions. The ordinary stomach digests their food. A second stomach collects a kind of light gas, which gives them three advantages.
[Mo.01_002,03] First, this gas makes them light. They have too little timber to build bridges over their rivers, but can leap over any river very easily. Where rivers are especially wide, or where there are inland seas here and there, they can easily swim across the surface like fish. This is the first advantage of this stomach.
[Mo.01_002,04] The second advantage is that by expelling this air they make a sort of popping sound, by which they let one another know of their presence in the underground chambers. They also use this air for a louder outward speech, which is, however, exceedingly rudimentary. The speech produced by their lungs is extremely weak and quiet. It is used only by the spirit lodged in a Moon inhabitant for its amendment. At first the native inhabitant of the Moon has an aversion to this speech. As the spirit gradually improves, the Moon inhabitant's soul befriends the indwelling spirit of a person from Earth who is to be reformed. At last the Moon inhabitant's soul becomes entirely one with the reformed spirit. This state brings about the death of the Moon inhabitant's body, usually without pain.
[Mo.01_002,05] A third advantage of the air in this stomach is that they can warm their underground caves in the cold night by releasing it frequently. This happens as follows. Their caves are hollowed out inside almost in the shape of a large, blunt-topped bell. They enter from below by a kind of stairway. The light air they expel collects under this airtight bell, makes their dwelling tolerably warm and prevents the extremely cold, heavy air outside from flowing in freely. The light gas takes in only as much outside air as is indispensable to physical life. The air in this stomach serves the same purpose during the unbearably hot periods of the day, when the inhabitants of the Moon must likewise go underground. The difference is that the action of the food stomach turns the gas into cooling oxygen. By releasing it repeatedly they also protect their bell-shaped dwelling from the entry of hot air. That is the third advantage of the wind stomach.
[Mo.01_002,06] Another peculiarity of these people is that their eyes have two capacities. The first is sight, as with you. The second is that their eyes also serve as a light in their dark rooms. This capacity is found even on the Earth, both in certain animals and, in some regions, in people whose pupils are red, like those of rabbits. A further peculiarity of these people is their exceedingly keen hearing. They can easily hear the slightest sound from a considerable distance, which is why the funnels of their ears are much larger and more compact.
[Mo.01_002,07] The males are much stronger than the females. The difference is not as it is on Earth, but as great as that between a ten-year-old child and a man in his full strength. The men on the Moon are therefore extremely tender towards their wives. They literally carry them in their hands and also on their shoulders, with the women's feet hanging down on their chests on either side of the neck. This is why two people are always seen there one above the other.
[Mo.01_002,08] A woman there is allowed to do hardly any work. Her husband feeds her, even chewing the food thoroughly first and then passing it from his mouth into hers. Outside the dwelling she comes down from his shoulders only to relieve herself or when she is far advanced in pregnancy and about to give birth. A woman gives birth only twice in her whole life, once during the day and once at night. She always brings four living children into the world, four boys by day and four girls by night. The children can walk at once, and the boys are accustomed from the start to carrying the girls. That children there sometimes die in childhood is just as natural as it is on Earth. Other spirits do not take up residence in them until they are a hundred days old or more.
[Mo.01_002,09] All these inhabitants of the Moon have second sight. The angelic spirits appointed to go there instruct them inwardly in the knowledge of God. The teaching they receive from the angelic spirits also instructs the indwelling spirit of the person from Earth. The soul of the Moon inhabitant thus makes good the damage that the person on Earth did to their soul through foolish addiction to worldly things. A person who has been reformed so harshly on the Moon has a patched soul, and in this very respect will always differ from the perfectly pure spirits. Such a person will never be able to enter their free communities, but will stand in the same relation to them as the Moon to the Earth. The Moon always accompanies the Earth, yet can never draw close to it as one friend draws close to another.
[Mo.01_002,10] There are, however, spirits who did not need to be placed within an inhabitant of the Moon to be reformed, but who as spirits already acquired an utter aversion to the Earth. They are led away from there to higher regions and may be admitted to the realm of children, the highest degree of blessedness open to them. It would be impossible for them to go higher. Their limited nature could no more endure a higher state than a person on Earth could live in the finest ether while still in the body.
[Mo.01_002,11] See, that is the lot of the best of the worldly-minded. Those who do not freely renounce the world out of love for Me, but from whom worldliness must be driven out by such extraordinary means of compulsion through My great mercy, have not acted freely. Whoever does not act freely acts like a slave. Who could count a slave's compelled action as a merit of their own? But if slaves fulfil the condition imposed on them, their action is worth at least being given bread to eat, so that they too may live, in so far as they have worked willingly, though driven to it by necessity.
[Mo.01_002,12] You can now understand fully why such beings are capable of no higher blessedness than that of children passing from earthly life into spiritual life. They themselves are still slaves to blind obedience, and must be so.