{"id":85905,"date":"2015-05-19T19:19:03","date_gmt":"2015-05-19T23:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=85905"},"modified":"2015-05-20T11:15:56","modified_gmt":"2015-05-20T15:15:56","slug":"the-secret-of-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/19\/the-secret-of-light\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret of Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"walter-russell24_905\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Walter Russell (May 19, 1871\u2013May 19, 1963) was the progenitor of a \u201cnew world-thought\u201d centered on light; in books such as The Electrifying Power of Man-Woman Balance<\/em>, The Book of Early Whisperings<\/em>, and The Dawn of a New Day in Human Relations<\/em>, he foresaw \u201ca marriage between religion and science\u201d in which the laws of physics would be rewritten. He believed that weight \u201cshould be measured dually as temperature is,\u201d with \u201can above and below zero,\u201d and that \u201cthe sunlight we feel upon our bodies is not actual light from the sun.\u201d (Russell\u2019s Wikipedia entry notes gingerly that his ideology \u201chas not been accepted by mainstream scientists.\u201d)<\/p>\n

In what\u2019s ostensibly his seminal text, The Secret of Light<\/em><\/a>, he outlines a philosophy rife with capitalized Nouns and portentous pseudo erudition:<\/p>\n

\n

Man lives in a bewildering complex world of EFFECT of which he knows not the CAUSE. Because of its seemingly infinite multiplicity and complexity, he fails to vision the simple underlying principle of Balance in all things. He, therefore, complexes Truth until its many angles, sides and facets have lost balance with each other and with him.<\/p>\n

Truth is simple. Balance is simple. Rhythmic balanced interchange between all pairs of opposite expressions in Natural phenomena, and in human relations, is the consummate art of God’s universe of Light. It is also the Law. In this one fundamental Universal Law lies the balanced continuity of all creative expression in God\u2019s electric wave universe of two conditioned lights in THE ETERNAL QUESTION seeming motion which record God\u2019s One Whole Idea of Creation into countless seemingly separate parts of that Whole Idea.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He mastered the casual authority of the simple declarative sentence. A personal favorite: \u201cTwo-way sex-conditioned spirals are the consummate individuals of all Creation.\u201d<\/p>\n

To illustrate these hypotheses, Russell relied on diagrams that are as visually compelling as they are inscrutable. \u201cAll matter is created by dividing gravity into pairs,\u201d he wrote in one. Another charts the location of every element along a \u201cnine-octave cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can see more of his diagrams here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\"WalterRussell_TheSecretOfLight_0140\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"walter-russell06_905\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"WalterRussell_TheSecretOfLight_0147\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"walter-russell27_905\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"walter-russell22\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"walter-russell16\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dan Piepenbring is the web editor of <\/em>The Paris Review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walter Russell (May 19, 1871\u2013May 19, 1963) was the progenitor of a \u201cnew world-thought\u201d centered on light; in books such as The Electrifying Power of Man-Woman Balance, The Book of Early Whisperings, and The Dawn of a New Day in Human Relations, he foresaw \u201ca marriage between religion and science\u201d in which the laws of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2384],"tags":[35,13006,18185,6857,18184,14550,18183],"class_list":["post-85905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look","tag-art","tag-diagrams","tag-new-age-philosophy","tag-spiritualism","tag-the-secret-of-light","tag-twentieth-century","tag-walter-russell"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nInscrutable, But Beautiful\u2014Walter Russell\u2019s New Age Diagrams<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Russell\u2019s philosophy centered on a radical new understanding of light\u2014so radical, it turned out, that no one could make sense of it.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/19\/the-secret-of-light\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Secret of Light by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"May 19, 2015 \u2013 Walter Russell (May 19, 1871\u2013May 19, 1963) was the progenitor of a \u201cnew world-thought\u201d centered on light; 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