sung of Surya .... “hiding behind his Yogi,* robes his head that no one could see;” the ascetic’s dress being, as all know, dyed expressly into a red-yellow hue, a colouring matter with pinkish patches on it, rudely representing the vital principle in man’s blood—­the symbol of the vital principle in the sun, or what is now called chromosphere.  The “rose-coloured region!” How little astronomers will ever know of its real nature, even though hundreds of eclipses furnish them with the indisputable evidence of its presence.  The sun is so thickly surrounded by a shell of this “red matter,” that it is useless for them to speculate with only the help of their physical instruments, upon the nature of that which they can never see or detect with mortal eye behind that brilliant, radiant zone of matter.

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* There is an interesting story in the Puranas relating to this subject. 
The Devas, it would appear, asked the great Rishi Vasishta to bring the
sun into Satya Loka.   The Rishi requested the Sun-god to do so.   The
Sun-god replied that all the worlds would be destroyed if he were to
leave his place.   The Rishi then offered to place his red-coloured cloth
(Kashay Vastram) in the place of the sun’s disk, and did so.   The
visible body of the sun is this robe of Vasishta, it would seem.
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If the “Adepts” are asked:  “What then, in your views, is the nature of our sun and what is there beyond that cosmic veil?”—­they answer:  beyond rotates and beats the heart and head of our system; externally is spread its robe, the nature of which is not matter, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, such as you are acquainted with, but vital electricity, condensed and made visible.*

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* If the “English F.T.S.” would take the trouble of consulting p. 11 of
the “Magia Adamica” of Eugenius Philalethes, his learned compatriot, he
would find therein the difference between a visible and an invisible
planet is clearly hinted at as it was safe to do at a time when the iron
claw of orthodoxy had the power as well as disposition to tear the flesh
from heretic bones.   “The earth is invisible,” says he, .... “and which
is more, the eye of man never saw the earth, nor can it be seen
without art.   To make this element visible is the greatest secret in
magic ....  As for this feculent, gross body upon which we walk, it is
a compost, and no earth but it hath earth in it .... in a word, all the
elements are visible but one, namely, the earth:   and when thou hast
attained to so much perfection as to know why God hath placed the earth
in abscondito, thou hast an excellent figure whereby to know God
himself, and how he is visible, how invisible,”  The italics are the
author’s, it being the custom of the Alchemists to emphasize those words
which had a double meaning in their code.   Here “God himself” visible
and invisible, relates to their lapis philosophorum—­Nature’s seventh
principle.
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And if the statement is objected to on the grounds