Translation from German by Robert Hutwohl[1]
IF it were necessary to provide a proof that human knowledge is only very superficial, it would suffice to cite the fact that we hardly know about the surface of the globe on which we live, and know practically nothing of the nature of the earth’s interior at its depths. In this respect we are still at a point of view comparable to that of the uncivilized peoples of the interior of Africa, who also have very strange ideas about human anatomy and do not know what the internal structure of their own bodies is. There are still scholars today who believe that our earth is a sphere filled to bursting point with fiery lava and molten rock, and covered only with a relatively thin, cooled crust, while others assume that the earth is hollow inside. Yes, there are even people who claim that this hollow globe is inhabited by people (but by a special race of people) and that it is much more beautiful there than on the surface of the earth.
Lord Lytton Bulwer gave us a poetic description of this “coming race” in one of his novels[2] ; others have followed him and, in a supposedly clairvoyant state, have explored the interior of the earth and then described it. But it must be remembered that such descriptions, even if they agree with each other to some extent, are by no means reliable; for when an idealist creates in his imagination an idea of a paradise lying in the interior of the earth, he thereby creates mental images that cling to the astral light and can then be perceived by clairvoyants. These then believe what they have seen to be reality, although it is in fact only a creation of the imagination.
For example, a very well-known author in the field of occultism published a brochure a few years ago in which he reported a message allegedly given to him by an adept, according to which there is a hole in our earth, extending through the entire globe from the North Pole to the South Pole. This is a very old idea, first proposed by a sea captain named Symes; the hole in question is known in America and England as “Captain Symes Hole.” Later, a certain M. L. Shermann also wrote a book about it. According to this, our earth is a hollow sphere with a shell 40 to 50 English miles thick, and its interior is a beautiful world whose forms are in a higher state of evolution than ours. This interior can be reached through a funnel-shaped opening in the as yet unexplored polar sea, and through this a canal leads in a spiral into the interior of the earth, which can then be reached without difficulty even with the largest ships.
The author claims that the reason why no one has yet discovered this entrance to the interior of the earth is because the time for this great discovery has not yet come and the world is not yet ripe for it.[3] He says: “Every great historical event has always taken place in a certain sequence and order; discoveries have been made when the need arose. If we were to follow the warm Kuro-Siva current in the Pacific Ocean, which flows through the Bering Strait into the open Polar Sea, we would find there, instead of a cold zone, a very temperate climate as soon as we had overcome the surrounding wall of glaciers and flowing icebergs, which extends for about ten degrees of latitude. The existence of this warm region at the North Pole seems to be a necessity, since otherwise, from century to century, ever larger, never-melting masses of ice would accumulate at the pole, so that finally all the water on earth would collect there through precipitation and upset the earth’s equilibrium.[4]
Whether these theories have been refuted by the experiences of recent explorers, whether these travelers have reached the pole or have penetrated into this supposedly warm region, we will leave open for the time being. Perhaps future airship journeys will give us information on this. It is also conceivable that the hole in question at the North Pole belongs only to the astral body of the earth and does not exist for physical perception.[5] On the other hand, it may be of interest to hear what has been said about the interior of the globe.
The proponents of the theory that the earth’s interior is a hell of a fiery liquid mass base themselves on the fact that deep drilling has shown that the temperature has risen by about 1° F. at a depth of fifty or sixty feet (20 meters). But we have already reached depths of 37,000 feet in the sea without finding any sign of the proximity of this terrible volcano. Moreover, an artesian well was drilled near St. Louis (Missouri) to a depth of 3,843 feet, and the deeper one went, the colder it became after a certain depth had been exceeded. Therefore, according to the same law, the interior of the earth must be terribly cold. The idea that we live on a globe 8,000 miles in diameter, made of molten granite and metals, separated from it only by a relatively thin crust of earth, and consequently in danger of this crust breaking at any moment and of us being swallowed up by this terrible crater, is repugnant to our feelings and reason. Everywhere in nature we find that there is a wise arrangement underlying the whole, so that a globe filled with fiery lava or completely empty is hardly conceivable as a place of residence for mankind.
For a long time, the scientific community believed that volcanoes were safety valves through which the heat and swelling waves of the fiery lava filling the entire interior of the earth could escape, thus preventing the earth from bursting. An imaginative geologist proposed proving this theory. If he had received the necessary funds from the government, he wanted to bore an underground tunnel into the crater of Vesuvius and channel the water of the Mediterranean into it. The steam that would then develop would, in his opinion, cause the earth to burst, and the correctness of his theory would be proven.[6]
Various facts could be cited here to prove that this theory of the origin of volcanoes and earthquakes is erroneous and that the cause of such phenomena is not to be found in the interior of the earth but only in the interior of the earth’s crust. However, it is no longer necessary to cite these proofs here, since representatives of science have recently arrived at more reasonable views on the matter. We will only mention that the crater of a volcano could overflow with liquid lava, but could not hurl stones high into the air if the explosive force required for this did not have a solid background; just as one cannot shoot a cannonball out of a tube open at both ends. On the other hand, it is interesting to learn that the author of the “Hollow Globe” already in 1884 found the cause of volcanic phenomena in chemical decompositions that take place in the interior of the earth’s crust and are produced by the influence of (at that time) still unknown natural forces,[7] which he calls “spiritual” forces.
He says: “There are positive and negative, male and female, physical and spiritual elements and forces which pervade the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms; and among these is a force far more powerful than electricity. Were these forces not in operation, the earth would cease to revolve upon its axis and the world would stand still. These elements or forces exist independently of all forms, but are that which forms the forms, and as they are invisible to us, we may call them “spiritual essences,” whose existence is revealed to us by their effects. There is therefore in all things an invisible “spiritual” element, and our whole globe is a great reservoir of these spiritual forces, which are governed by, and have been governed and ordered by, a higher power which we call “Will and Intelligence” from the very beginning.”[8]
“Magnetism and electricity are the two great positive and negative forces in nature. They are contained in all things and their activity is especially developed in the mineral kingdom. Even the hardest granite, like all material things, is basically concentrated, embodied “force”; for what we call “matter” and “force” are essentially one and the same; they represent the positive and negative poles of one and the same eternal principle. If we now call this “one element” from which the phenomena arise which we call “force and matter” “aura” (radiant matter), we can imagine that the aura of a thing contains the “quintessence” of all the elements belonging to the thing in a very refined state and can produce certain effects where magnetism and electricity have no power to do so, because they only operate on a lower, more material level. So-called “spiritual”, i.e. “finer” processes in nature require “refined” forces and more ethereal essences. For example, it is known that the human organism is permeated by something called “nerve aura,” “nerve fluid,” or “odic force,” “animal magnetism,” etc., which has its seat in the brain but extends its activity to the most distant parts of the body. This “etherealized” essence is the product of the electromagnetic fluid, and the od accumulated in the earth’s body produces the phenomena of the polar lights (Aurora borealis).”
Such higher forces are at work not only in the human body, but also in the body of the earth, and the only obstacle to their manifestation is the resistance of coarse matter. The more this resistance is overcome in the course of time (according to the law of evolution), the more our earth and all the organisms living on it will become refined and more “ethereal”. This progress takes place through the effect of the spiritual rays of the sun on the spiritual elements of the earth slumbering in the earth’s interior, through which they are awakened. The material attracts matter, the spiritual the spirit. What we call “gravitation” or “gravitational force” is the attraction of matter. If the earth is a hollow sphere in its interior, there is no attraction towards its center; Rather, the material shell would attract any material present inside, so that a “centrifugal” gravitation would take place from the center of the sphere to the periphery,[9] while outside the globe, gravitation is a centripetal phenomenon.
Nor can our sun be a ball of molten matter and lose none of its heat; for the heat we receive from it is produced by the electromagnetic relations which exist between the sun and the earth, and the sun receives from its planet as much as it gives to it. The same is true of the vibrations of the ether which produce the phenomenon which we call “light.” There are material and also “spiritual” light waves, and if there are beings in the interior of the earth which are organized differently from us and have the ability to perceive spiritual rays of light, it will be as bright for them there as it is for us on the surface of the earth, and perhaps what
If the interior of the earth were a sphere filled with fiery matter, uninhabited by any living being, it would be a waste of space which we find nowhere else in nature. The egg contains the yolk, the nut shell the kernel; in all fruits we find that the interior is the essential, the exterior a product of the interior and a secondary matter. Our whole physical organism is also a product of nature; earthly man is, as it were, a child of the earth; the earth is his mother and we may consider her as an animal organism, a living being of great dimensions. She breathes and lives; she has functions similar to ours; she has her inherent power of motion (will) by means of which she rotates on her axis and describes her orbit around the sun. We have a network of electric threads which make up our nervous system, and the earth has her electric, magnetic and other currents in the soil, in the sea and in the air. We too have various openings in our bodies through which our inner being is connected with the outer world. If we draw logical conclusions from the analogies we find in nature, we arrive at the view that the interior of our globe is in a higher state of development than our outer world. We are not puppets set in motion by an extra-worldly mastermind, but the development of our powers takes place within ourselves, and the same is true of the earth and all the planets. Their movement does not require the assumption of an extra-worldly, all-powerful magician who directs it by some supernatural force from without; the will of God is the universal, omnipresent law in all of nature, the wisdom of which is revealed wherever there is no obstacle to its operation.
From all this, it is clear that the interior of our earth is not a mass of useless dead matter; but we shall not attempt to decide what it looks like, since the opinions of supposedly clairvoyant authorities contradict each other and we cannot know whether or how much truth there is in it, even from the apparently most reliable description. In my opinion the matter will remain a mystery until we ourselves are sufficiently developed to penetrate the material shell of our globe with our etheric body. Perhaps then it will happen that everything that we now consider to be impenetrable, solid matter will appear to us only as a dream image.
Notes:
[1] The hollow globe. By Dr. Franz Hartmann [Die hohle Weltkugel. Von Dr. Franz Hartmann. Zentralblatt für Okkultismus 4, no. 1 (July 1910), 3-8. Translation from German by Robert Hutwohl 2024.
[2] [R.H.—By Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The title was published two years later in the German language as: Vril. Das Geschlecht der Zukunft,” in 1873, Leipzig, being a translation of Sir Lytton’s English title: Vril, the Power of the Coming Race, 1871.]
[3] [R.H.—Regarding the north polar explorer, Admiral Byrd’s diary, search for: The Missing Secret Diary of Admiral Byrd Fact or Fiction? This is of course, was well after Dr. Hartmann’s death in 1912. Also, To the Pole. The Diary and Notebook of Richard E. Byrd, 1925-1927. Richard Evelyn Byrd. Edited by Raimund E. Goerler. Ohio State University Press, 1998.
[4] No such warm zone has been found so far. H.
[5] [R.H.—Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine writes of the First Root-race being the race which never dies, located at the Sacred Imperishable Land, the North Pole, of a people whose outer bodies are non-physical.]
[6] [R.H.—Theosophical literature such as The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett and the Alice Bailey/D.K. works mention volcanic activity is related to human emotions, worldwide. and of course manufactured by the elementals of fire and governed by the world-soul (see the note further on.)]
[7] We are thinking here of X-rays, radium, etc.
[8] One can therefore say that all external phenomena in nature have their causes in the states and activities of the “world soul”.
[9] Something similar is said in the well-known book “Etidorhpa”. H. [R.H.—Etidorhpa, or, the end of the earth: the strange history of a mysterious being and the account of a remarkable journey. Authored by John Uri Lloyd, privately printed by Carbondale, IL, Southern Illinois University Press, 1998. Illustrations by John Augustus Napp, who also illustrated Manly P. Hall’s Secret Teachings of All Ages.]