(25) A writer has said: "Science offers the illustration of a rapidly moving wheel, top, or cylinder, to show the effects of increasing rates of vibration. The illustration supposes a wheel, top, or revolving cylinder, running at a high rate of speed—we will call this revolving thing 'the object' in following out the illustration. Let us suppose the object to be moving slowly. It may be seen readily, but no sound of its movement reaches the ear. Then the speed is gradually increased. In a few moments the movement becomes so rapid that a deep growl or low note may be heard. Then as the rate of motion is increased the note rises higher in the musical scale. Then, the motion being still further increased, the next highest note is distinguished. Then, one after another, all the notes of the musical scale appear, rising higher and higher as the motion is increased.

(26) Finally, when the motions have reached a certain rate, the final note perceptible to human ears is reached, and the shrill, piercing shriek dies away, and silence follows. No sound is then heard from the revolving object, for its rate of motion is so high that the human ear cannot register the vibrations. Then comes the perception of rising degrees of Heat. After quite a time in which degrees of heat are being manifested without any sign of distinguishable color (though certain colors are there, but imperceptible to human vision) there gradually is manifested a dull dark reddish color in the revolving object. As the rate of speed increases, the red becomes brighter. Then, as the speed is still further increased, the red changes into an orange color. Then follow, successively, the shades of green, blue, indigo, and finally violet, as the rate of vibrations increase. Then the violet fades away, and all color disappears, the human eye not being able to register them. But there are invisible rays emanating from the revolving object, the rays that are used in photographing, and other subtle rays of light. Then begin to be manifested the peculiar rays known as the 'X Rays,' etc., as the constitution of the object changes. Electricity and Magnetism are emitted when the appropriate rate of vibration is attained.

(52) In addition to the colors of the spectrum there are a vast number of vibratory color waves, some too low and others too high to be registered by the human optical apparatus. It is appalling to contemplate man's colossal ignorance concerning these vistas of abstract space. As in the past man explored unknown continents, so in the future, armed with curious implements fashioned for the purpose, he will explore these little known fastnesses of light, color, sound, and consciousness.

(33) Since light is the basic physical manifestation of life, bathing all creation in its radiance, it is highly important to realize, in part at least, the subtle nature of this divine substance. That which is called light is actually a rate of vibration causing certain reactions upon the optic nerve. Few realize how they are walled in by the limitations

(27) "When the revolving object reaches a certain degree or rate of vibration, its molecules disintegrate, and resolve themselves into the original elements or atoms. Then the atoms, in turn disintegrate, and are resolved into the countless corpuscles which constitute the atom. And finally even the corpuscles disintegrate, and a condition of ethereal substance is produced. Science does not dare to follow the illustration further, but the occultists teach that if the vibrations were continuously increased the revolving object would mount up the successive states of manifestation, and would display the various higher stages of consciousness." The occultists teach that each and every mental or emotional state has its own distinctive rate of vibration, and that the secret of "emotional contagion" is due to the fact that similar vibrations are set up in the emotional nature of persons subjected to the influence of strong emotion in another person. All manifestations of thought, emotion, will, desire, or feeling, or any other mental state, are accompanied and caused by vibrations of a certain high rate, and that these vibrations tend to influence others in their field of "induction," and tend to set up in the others similar vibrations. In this fact lies the secret of Mental Influence, Personal Magnetism, etc. A knowledge and mastery of the science of mental vibrations enables the skilled Rosicrucian to change the rate of his mental vibrations at will, and to thus maintain a state of mental calm and power, unaffected by the thought vibrations of those around him.

(32) "Light," writes Edwin D. Babbitt, "reveals the glories of the external world and yet is the most glorious of them all. It gives beauty, reveals beauty and is itself most beautiful. It is the analyzer, the truth-teller and the exposer of shams, for it shows things as they are. Its infinite streams measure off the universe and flow into our telescopes from stars which are quintillions of miles distant. On the other hand it descends to objects inconceivably small, and reveals through the microscope objects fifty millions of times less than can be seen by the naked eye. Like all other fine forces, its movement is wonderfully soft, yet penetrating and powerful. Without its vivifying influence, vegetable, animal, and human life must immediately perish from the earth, and general ruin take place. We shall do well, then, to consider this potential and beautiful principle of light and its component colors, for the more deeply we penetrate into its inner laws, the more will it present itself as a marvelous storehouse of power to vitalize, heal, refine, and delight mankind." (See The Principles of Light and Color.)

(1) Seen from a distance, objects appear reduced and close together, however far apart they be: within easy range, their sizes and the distances that separate them are observed correctly.

Distant objects show in this reduction because they must be drawn together for vision and the light must be concentrated to suit the size of the pupil; besides, as we are placed farther and farther away from the material mass under observation, it is more and more the bare form that reaches us, stripped, so to speak, of magnitude as of all other quality.

Or it may be that we appreciate the magnitude of an object by observing the salience and recession of its several parts, so that to perceive its true size we must have it close at hand.

Or again, it may be that magnitude is known incidentally from the observation of colour. With an object at hand we know how much space is covered by the colour; at a distance, only that something is coloured, for the parts, quantitatively distinct among themselves, do not give us the precise knowledge of that quantity, the colours themselves reaching us only in a blurred impression.

What wonder, then, if size be like sound- reduced when the form reaches us but faintly- for in sound the hearing is concerned only about the form; magnitude is not discerned except incidentally.

Well, in hearing magnitude is known incidentally; but how? Touch conveys a direct impression of a visible object; what gives us the same direct impression of an object of hearing?

The magnitude of a sound is known not by actual quantity but by degree of impact, by intensity- and this in no indirect knowledge; the ear appreciates a certain degree of force, exactly as the palate perceives by no indirect knowledge, a certain degree of sweetness. But the true magnitude of a sound is its extension; this the hearing may define to itself incidentally by deduction from the degree of intensity but not to the point of precision. The intensity is merely the definite effect at a particular spot; the magnitude is a matter of totality, the sum of space occupied.

Still the colours seen from a distance are faint; but they are not small as the masses are.

True; but there is the common fact of diminution. There is colour with its diminution, faintness; there is magnitude with its diminution, smallness; and magnitude follows colour diminishing stage by stage with it.

But, the phenomenon is more easily explained by the example of things of wide variety. Take mountains dotted with houses, woods and other land-marks; the observation of each detail gives us the means of calculating, by the single objects noted, the total extent covered: but, where no such detail of form reaches us, our vision, which deals with detail, has not the means towards the knowledge of the whole by measurement of any one clearly discerned magnitude. This applies even to objects of vision close at hand: where there is variety and the eye sweeps over all at one glance so that the forms are not all caught, the total appears the less in proportion to the detail which has escaped the eye; observe each single point and then you can estimate the volume precisely. Again, magnitudes of one colour and unbroken form trick the sense of quantity: the vision can no longer estimate by the particular; it slips away, not finding the stand-by of the difference between part and part.

It was the detail that prevented a near object deceiving our sense of magnitude: in the case of the distant object, because the eye does not pass stage by stage through the stretch of intervening space so as to note its forms, therefore it cannot report the magnitude of that space.

(41) In The Principles of Light and Color, Edwin D. Babbitt confirms the correspondence of the color and musical scales: "As C is at the bottom of the musical scale and made with the coarsest waves of air, so is red at the bottom of the chromatic scale and made with the coarsest waves of luminous ether. As the musical note B [the seventh note of the scale] requires 45 vibrations of air every time the note C at the lower end of the scale requires 24, or but little over half as many, so does extreme violet require about 300 trillions of vibrations of ether in a second, while extreme red requires only about 450 trillions, which also are but little more than half as many. When one musical octave is finished another one commences and progresses with just twice as many vibrations as were used in the first octave, and so the same notes are repeated on a finer scale. In the same way when the scale of colors visible to the ordinary eye is completed in the violet, another octave of finer invisible colors, with just twice as many vibrations, will commence and progress on precisely the same law."

(28) So truly does advanced modern scientific thought recognize the nature of vibrations, that the axiom is announced that "The difference in things consists entirely of difference in vibrations." This axiom is akin to the ancient occult aphorism that "Things manifest differences according to their rate of vibrations." So, it is seen, all human investigation tends to prove the truth of the old occult axiom that "Everything vibrates." IV. The Principle of Rhythm The Principle of Rhythm manifests that universal regular swing or time-beat which is apparent in all the manifested world, from its highest to its lowest manifestation. The ancient occult axiom "Everything beats time" expresses this fundamental fact of the Cosmos.

(67) Timaeus: and that large motion produces “loud” sound, and motion of the opposite kind “soft” sound. The subject of concords of sounds must necessarily be treated in a later part of our exposition. We have still remaining a fourth kind of sensation, which we must divide up seeing that it embraces numerous varieties, which, as a whole, we call “colors.” This consists of a flame which issues from the several bodies, and possesses particles so proportioned to the visual stream as to produce sensation; and as regards the visual stream, we have already stated merely the causes which produced it.

(87) In its going, that always-one wheel, in its turning about, generateth the others, and yet none of them vanish out of sight, but that all seven be visible or in sight.

(18) Some are strongest in the quality of the tone or sound, and those are light or bright also; and when the light shineth on them, they look like the rising of the flash of lightning, as if something would lift itself aloft there.