But Kisjonah also knew a little about the stars and began calculating from their course whether the middle of the night would soon be over; for at that time people were still far from having clocks such as those of the present day, and therefore made do with a calculation by the stars that was admittedly very unreliable.
After a while Kisjonah says: ‘According to my calculation, midnight should already be past now!’
I say: ‘Friend! Your calculation is no good, for we are still an hour away from the middle of the night. Therefore it is better not to calculate, for the course of the stars is different from what you think! Your reckoning is already false in itself, and so it will scarcely be possible for you ever to determine the middle of the night from the position and course of the stars. People capable of such a thing will only be born one day; but now the time is still far from here.’
Yet in the course of many different discussions the middle of the night did now arrive, and the moon rose, naturally only half shining. Then Kisjonah’s daughters at once asked Me again what the moon really was and how it kept changing its light.
But I said to them: ‘My most beloved little daughters, just behind you stand three spirits from the moon; ask them, and they will tell you precisely what the moon is, how it constantly changes its light, and sometimes even loses it entirely!’
Then the eldest at once asked the three spirits about the moon, and they said: ‘Lovely one! Your question to us about the moon is like one we might ask you about the earth you inhabit. You do not know why it is now dark on the earth, yet you do not ask about it; how can you now ask about the moon, which is much farther from you than your earth that bears you?
‘Look, like your earth, our moon too is a world; your earth is round like a sphere, and so is our moon. Your earth is lit by the great sun on only half of it at one time, and so is our moon; with you, the night lasts on average only about thirteen of your short hours, and then your earth’s day lasts just as long. But on the moon the night as well as the day lasts about fourteen day-and-night lengths of your earth, and from this comes the moon’s constant change of light as seen by your eye from this earth of yours; and that is a great difference between the moon and your much larger earth.
‘But a further, very mighty difference between your earth and the moon appears, consisting in this: the moon is inhabited by beings of my kind on only one side, which you cannot see, while your earth is inhabited on all sides or is habitable for the most part.
‘Oh, on the moon one does not live as blessedly as on your earth! Oh, there is much cold and much unbearable heat there, much hunger and not infrequently the most burning thirst! Therefore have no longing for this small but exceedingly harsh world, in whose fields no wheat and no grain, and much less any wine, grows.
‘But on the side that alone you can always see from this earth of yours, no fleshly being dwells, neither animal nor human being, but unhappy spirits who cannot easily help themselves, or cannot help themselves at all! And now you know everything you need to know.
‘But have no wish to learn more about the moon, for such knowledge would in the end have to make you most unhappy.
‘Hold only to love and let all wisdom go; for it is better to dine at the table of love than to lick the scant dew from the philosopher’s stone on the moon!’
After this description the three moon spirits leave, and the daughter asks Me quite confidentially whether things on the moon are really as the three moon spirits have now told her.
And I say: ‘Yes, My dear daughter, it is precisely so, and sometimes far worse still. But now let us allow the moon to go its way, and all of you look towards the east!
‘I shall now call some angels of heaven, and you will see them coming from there; therefore turn your eyes that way now!’