The Seven Superuniverses

15:3.1Prac­ti­cally all of the starry realms vis­i­ble to the naked eye on Uran­tia be­long to the sev­enth sec­tion of the grand uni­verse, the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton. The vast Milky Way starry sys­tem rep­re­sents the cen­tral nu­cleus of Or­von­ton, be­ing largely be­yond the bor­ders of your lo­cal uni­verse. This great ag­gre­ga­tion of suns, dark is­lands of space, dou­ble stars, glob­u­lar clus­ters, star clouds, spi­ral and other neb­u­lae, to­gether with myr­i­ads of in­di­vid­ual plan­ets, forms a watch­like, elon­gated-cir­cu­lar group­ing of about one sev­enth of the in­hab­ited evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses.

15:3.2From the as­tro­nom­i­cal po­si­tion of Uran­tia, as you look through the cross sec­tion of near-by sys­tems to the great Milky Way, you ob­serve that the spheres of Or­von­ton are trav­el­ing in a vast elon­gated plane, the breadth be­ing far greater than the thick­ness and the length far greater than the breadth.

15:3.3Ob­ser­va­tion of the so-called Milky Way dis­closes the com­par­a­tive in­crease in Or­von­ton stel­lar den­sity when the heav­ens are viewed in one di­rec­tion, while on ei­ther side the den­sity di­min­ishes; the num­ber of stars and other spheres de­creases away from the chief plane of our ma­te­rial super­uni­verse. When the an­gle of ob­ser­va­tion is pro­pi­tious, gaz­ing through the main body of this realm of max­i­mum den­sity, you are look­ing to­ward the res­i­den­tial uni­verse and the cen­ter of all things.

15:3.4Of the ten ma­jor di­vi­sions of Or­von­ton, eight have been roughly iden­ti­fied by Uran­tian as­tron­o­mers. The other two are dif­fi­cult of sep­a­rate rec­og­ni­tion be­cause you are obliged to view these phe­nom­ena from the in­side. If you could look upon the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton from a po­si­tion far-dis­tant in space, you would im­me­di­ately rec­og­nize the ten ma­jor sec­tors of the sev­enth galaxy.

15:3.5The ro­ta­tional cen­ter of your mi­nor sec­tor is sit­u­ated far away in the enor­mous and dense star cloud of Sagit­tar­ius, around which your lo­cal uni­verse and its as­so­ci­ated cre­ations all move, and from op­po­site sides of the vast Sagit­tar­ius sub­galac­tic sys­tem you may ob­serve two great streams of star clouds emerg­ing in stu­pen­dous stel­lar coils.

15:3.6The nu­cleus of the phys­i­cal sys­tem to which your sun and its as­so­ci­ated plan­ets be­long is the cen­ter of the one­time And­ro­no­ver neb­ula. This for­mer spi­ral neb­ula was slightly dis­torted by the grav­ity dis­rup­tions as­so­ci­ated with the events which were at­ten­dant upon the birth of your so­lar sys­tem, and which were oc­ca­sioned by the near ap­proach of a large neigh­bor­ing neb­ula. This near col­li­sion changed And­ro­no­ver into a some­what glob­u­lar ag­gre­ga­tion but did not wholly de­stroy the two-way pro­ces­sion of the suns and their as­so­ci­ated phys­i­cal groups. Your so­lar sys­tem now oc­cu­pies a fairly cen­tral po­si­tion in one of the arms of this dis­torted spi­ral, sit­u­ated about half­way from the cen­ter out to­wards the edge of the star stream.

15:3.7The Sagit­tar­ius sec­tor and all other sec­tors and di­vi­sions of Or­von­ton are in ro­ta­tion around Uversa, and some of the con­fu­sion of Uran­tian star ob­servers arises out of the il­lu­sions and rel­a­tive dis­tor­tions pro­duced by the fol­low­ing mul­ti­ple rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ments:

15:3.81. The rev­o­lu­tion of Uran­tia around its sun.

15:3.92. The cir­cuit of your so­lar sys­tem about the nu­cleus of the for­mer And­ro­no­ver neb­ula.

15:3.103. The ro­ta­tion of the And­ro­no­ver stel­lar fam­ily and the as­so­ci­ated clus­ters about the com­pos­ite ro­ta­tion-grav­ity cen­ter of the star cloud of Neb­a­don.

15:3.114. The swing of the lo­cal star cloud of Neb­a­don and its as­so­ci­ated cre­ations around the Sagit­tar­ius cen­ter of their mi­nor sec­tor.

15:3.125. The ro­ta­tion of the one hun­dred mi­nor sec­tors, in­clud­ing Sagit­tar­ius, about their ma­jor sec­tor.

15:3.136. The whirl of the ten ma­jor sec­tors, the so-called star drifts, about the Uversa head­quar­ters of Or­von­ton.

15:3.147. The move­ment of Or­von­ton and six as­so­ci­ated super­uni­verses around Par­a­dise and Ha­vona, the coun­ter­clock­wise pro­ces­sional of the super­uni­verse space level.

15:3.15These mul­ti­ple mo­tions are of sev­eral or­ders: The space paths of your planet and your so­lar sys­tem are ge­netic, in­her­ent in ori­gin. The ab­so­lute coun­ter­clock­wise mo­tion of Or­von­ton is also ge­netic, in­her­ent in the ar­chi­tec­tural plans of the mas­ter uni­verse. But the in­ter­ven­ing mo­tions are of com­pos­ite ori­gin, be­ing de­rived in part from the con­sti­tu­tive seg­men­ta­tion of mat­ter-en­ergy into the super­uni­verses and in part pro­duced by the in­tel­li­gent and pur­pose­ful ac­tion of the Par­a­dise force or­ga­niz­ers.

15:3.16The lo­cal uni­verses are in closer prox­im­ity as they ap­proach Ha­vona; the cir­cuits are greater in num­ber, and there is in­creased super­im­po­si­tion, layer upon layer. But far­ther out from the eter­nal cen­ter there are fewer and fewer sys­tems, lay­ers, cir­cuits, and uni­verses.