Summer-Land
Andrew Jackson Davis, "the Phoughkeepsie Seer", wrote (sometimes in a trance state, he claimed) more than a dozen books. Like many lengthy works by clairvoyants during the spiritualist explosion in New York state during the mid-19th.c, they can be a slog to get through. But as with much in this genre they also have their share of noteworthy curiosities (typically depictions of the lands and entities inhabiting our post-death celestial homes). Titles for the pieces in this series come from his books A Stellar Key to the Summer Land, Views of Our Heavenly Home; History and Philosophy of Evil; with Suggestions for More Ennobling Institutions and Philosophical Systems of Education; The Diakka, and Their Earthly Victims; Being an Explanation of Much that is False and Repulsive in Spiritualism. "Summer-Land" (with or without the hyphen; he used both forms interchangeably) was Davis's term for the heavenly spheres where we spend our busy afterlives.
Mixed media (ink, watercolor, acrylic, fabric, vintage ephemera on 22” x 30” Fabriano 300 lb. watercolor paper.
"the belt of immortal beauty and harmony is, I repeat, *within* the sixth circle of suns"
"the sphere of the fixed stars--each the throne of some unintelligible and lawless deity or demon--not made by hands"
"Egyptian darkness and Jersey lightning are the same!"
"a tree in Mercury--if such there be"
"The Universe is ablaze every moment with these myriad-gated spheres of beauty and glory. The infinite-master Powers of the Univercoelum, and the plastic Essences and animated Ethers of the highest regions of matter."
"all things which are in the brain of man are arranged into series, and as it were, fascicles, and into series within series, thus into fascicles."
"a clairvoyant looking into space from the earth sees a great number of shining belts in different directions"