The Antipodes

The Antipodes is the region diametrically opposite the Worm-men’s side of the terrestrial globe in the Blazing-World. It is not merely a remote destination: when the Immaterial Spirits disappear, the Worm-men’s descent through the Earth and the Fly-men’s circuit of the globe lead to their discovery there, where the Spirits are safe and carry their own light. The episode turns an apparent plunge into darkness into a test of how far observation and explanation can reach.

Place in the Blazing-World

The Empress’s search begins after the spirits vanish from her presence when she announces her intention to make a Cabbala. She falls into a trance, then fears that the Spirits have been condemned to the lowest and darkest vehicles because of some fault in their answers. The Worm-men and Fly-men are sent to find them, making the Antipodes the goal of a coordinated investigation rather than a place the Empress visits herself.

The Worm-men report that their descent took them through the Earth to its very center. They questioned the creatures they encountered along the way and learned there that the Spirits had stayed in the center for a time before continuing to the Antipodes. The Fly-men confirm the report from the opposite direction: having rounded the Earth, they meet the Spirits at the far side. The two journeys converge on the same location, lending the discovery the force of corroborated testimony.

Light and the Spirits’ Vehicles

The Empress imagines that the Spirits may be trapped in a black abyss. The Worm-men challenge this assumption by describing the Earth as warm, fruitful, quiet, safe, and inhabited by creatures who see by an inner light despite the absence of the Sun. Their account eases the Empress’s distress, though she still wants to know the Spirits’ actual condition.

At the Antipodes, the Fly-men find the Spirits in good condition. The Spirits explain that their vehicles carry light like cats’ eyes, glow-worms’ tails, and rotten wood. This detail directly answers the fear that a journey beneath the Earth must end in darkness: the Spirits’ own material vehicles make them luminous. The far side of the globe is thus not described as a punishment or a supernatural realm, but as a reachable place within the Blazing-World’s terrestrial geography.

Knowledge, Matter, and the Journey Back

The investigation also establishes the limits of what the Empress and her informants can know. The Worm-men can report the Spirits’ route from creatures at the center of the Earth; the Fly-men can verify their location by traveling around the globe; and the Spirits themselves can correct the Empress’s fears by sending a message. Yet this knowledge arrives through embodied travelers, testimony, and communication, not through the Empress’s initial conjecture.

The episode’s treatment of spirits echoes the broader account that they depend on material vehicles for motion. The Spirits tell the Empress that incorporeal spirits move by means of their corporeal vehicles, and that vehicles can take different forms. In the Antipodes scene, those vehicles are not abstract: their glow is the concrete circumstance that explains why the Spirits do not fear the darkness the Empress associates with the Earth. Once the Fly-men relay the Spirits’ apology and offer to help make the Cabbala, the Empress is greatly relieved and generously rewards both groups of explorers. The Antipodes therefore marks the turn from anxious speculation to a discovery grounded in travel and report.