NEUOFFENBARUNG11 May 1841
[Mo.01_004,01] Now that we have come to know all the inhabitants of this celestial body, let us look a little more closely at its surface on both sides.
[Mo.01_004,02] You can make out the side facing the Earth quite clearly with a good magnifying instrument. You will see that the surface of this body is very mountainous rather than flat. It differs from the Earth first in showing no surface of water and second in that its mountains do not run out in rays and chains from the highest points, as on Earth. They appear as rings, enclosing areas of various sizes. There are indeed some mountain ranges that resemble the Earth's both in radiating and in chain-like form, but they are much rarer. Those that run out in rays are not really ridges but an unbroken succession of small ring walls barely more than thirty fathoms across. Many thousands of such little ring walls then run in a straight line, from one large ring wall to another that is larger, just as large or often smaller. In this way they form a sort of roadway between all the ring walls. If you observe this celestial body through a more powerful telescope, you will discover these extensions as a kind of bright, shimmering ray. You will see them spreading in every direction from a point brighter and higher still. Their cell-like arrangement has led some astronomers into the mistaken belief that they have discovered vegetation there. Vegetation can be found nowhere on the entire side that faces the Earth and never will be found, because there is none. The same is true of the still rarer mountain ranges that resemble chains. They either consist entirely of such ring walls, arranged one after another like misshapen sugar loaves with little ring-shaped hollows at their tips, or they are successive cliff-like embankments that enclose a larger area, often more than fifty miles across. This area in turn consists entirely of larger and smaller ring walls, within which there are often individual truncated cones with small ring-shaped hollows. Even the little walls and the slopes of the cones often carry such little ring walls.
[Mo.01_004,03] You would like to know what purpose all this serves on the uninhabited surface of a celestial body.
[Mo.01_004,04] What if I were to ask you what purpose is served by all the tiny dots, hairs and notches of every kind in the leaves of trees, shrubs and plants, and by similar variations in all the other things of animate and inanimate creation? There would be a great deal to explain, especially if you consider the immeasurable significance hidden in a single hair on even the most insignificant moss.
[Mo.01_004,05] How much more is this true of half the surface of a whole celestial body. I can therefore tell you only something in general about it. First, all these ring walls on the lunar surface are positioned to receive the Earth's magnetism in such a way that their rims act as suckers for this imponderable fluid. Second, the various hollows are receptacles for this same fluid. The reason they are not all of the same size and depth is that this force must be distributed in precisely that variety of ways. The average of this very exact distribution produces a carefully balanced proportion, on which the orderly preservation and motion of the two celestial bodies facing one another invariably depend. That, in general, is one purpose of the formation of the lunar surface, which strikes you as rather odd.
[Mo.01_004,06] A second purpose of almost all these hollows is to hold and retain atmospheric air, which is constantly present there and necessary to preserve all these formations, just as water is held in hollows on the Earth. You will ask where this air comes from. I tell you that it comes from where the Earth's air comes from, the great storehouse of infinite space, filled everywhere with light and ether. At night, that is, when the side facing the Earth has no light, these hollows fill with atmospheric air. As sunlight gradually comes over them, a most abundant dew forms in these countless basins, precipitating from the air held in them. This dew firms up all the parts of the lunar surface again. It also seeps as pure water through the whole body of the Moon to feed the springs on the far side, which in turn form vapours and permanent layers of air. That, then, is another principal purpose of these formations of the lunar surface that seem so odd to you.
[Mo.01_004,07] Would you believe that all these basin-shaped formations on the surface of the Moon serve a third principal purpose?
[Mo.01_004,08] Oh yes, I say. All these basins are also dwellings for spirits in need of amendment. Teachers sent there from the better and purer world of spirits, often with help from the first heaven, rescue them from the first degree of hell.
[Mo.01_004,09] When these spirits are brought there, they are given another body made from and resembling the air in the basins. By means of it they can see spiritual things and, as far as their amendment requires, material things as well.
[Mo.01_004,10] On arrival they first inhabit those places on this celestial body that are deepest and at the same time darkest to your eye. As they improve, their coarse bodies of air are changed into ever finer ones, by virtue of which they come into a higher basin. Single spirits enter the small basins, while communities of like-minded spirits enter the larger ones.
[Mo.01_004,11] You will discover two points of particular brightness on the surface. The brightest is in the lower, southern region, and the smaller and somewhat less bright one is further into the northern half. These two are points of deliverance. The southern one, from which most of the bright rays spread, is for those who did not need to be patched up in the bodies of the people of the Moon. The northern point is for those whose love of the Earth could be cured only by the most tormenting confinement in the most wretched body of an inhabitant of the Moon. Only then are they brought back as spirits a second time into the airy basins of the more northerly surface of the Moon visible to you, from where they advance little by little towards the northern point of release already mentioned.
[Mo.01_004,12] Do not imagine that a journey through these receptacles goes as easily and quickly as you might expect of spirits. First, it is very hard. Each time a spirit moves higher, it must die in its previous basin, just as each of you must one day die bodily on the Earth. This dying is always more or less painful and is always accompanied by the feeling that one might be annihilated for ever. Consider, too, that such a spirit often has to pass through several thousand of these basins and often has to stay in one for a month, for half a year, or even for a whole year or longer. Then you will have some idea of the speed of such a journey.
[Mo.01_004,13] See, there are still spirits from the time of Abraham on this celestial body who are no more than three quarters of the way through their journey. What, then, are you to think of those who are arriving while you write?
[Mo.01_004,14] See, this is all that you need to know. If you love Me above all things with all the powers that I have granted you so that you might love Me, you will thereby come to see everything else, from the smallest to the greatest, point by point in the brightest light of My grace and in a more perfect spiritual state. There is therefore no need to tell you more about the inhabited side of this celestial body. In its physical contours it is altogether like the uninhabited side, except that material things prevail there, just as spiritual things prevail here.
[Mo.01_004,15] In that more perfect spiritual state, by the light of My grace, you will also come to see and distinguish how the animals and plants that form the soul of a Moon inhabitant by degrees correspond perfectly to the bodies of air that the spirits have laid aside on this side. As I said earlier, these bodies in a manner of speaking seep through the entire Moon with the water. Beginning at the lowly stage of vegetation and continuing through the whole succession of animal life, they reach the place appointed for them again.
[Mo.01_004,16] Finally, I tell you that it is I who make all this known to you. I disclose Myself to you, as I once gave Myself up in the garden of Gethsemane to the Jews, the chief priests, the Pharisees and the scribes. To you My giving Myself up of My own accord is unto life, as it was to them unto death. For just as eternal Love disclosed itself to them unto judgement and the fall, so the same eternal Love discloses itself to you unto life and eternal resurrection. This is the reason and the hidden, unfathomable wisdom of eternal Love: through the great I, the fall and death became life and resurrection for you. Amen. This says the I, from death unto life. Amen.