Eureka - Video One
Eureka - Text w/ Annotations
https://www.belladeflor.com/s/Eureka-Video-One-Commentary-by-Bella-DeFlor.pdf
EUREKA Video Script
Poe Wrote the Universe
Eureka: Video 1 — A Deconstruction by Bella DeFlor
What if I told you Edgar Allan Poe was not only a master of psychological horror and Gothic literature. What if I told you he wrote the universe into being.
In 1848, one year before his death, Poe delivered a lecture in New York City titled On the Universe. This was not a scientific lecture in the traditional sense. It was not about stars and galaxies the way astronomers spoke of them.
It was about reality.
It was about spirit.
It was about time.
It was about consciousness.
He then expanded the lecture into a full written work called Eureka: A Prose Poem. Poe did not call Eureka a scientific paper or even a theory. He called it a poem, because to him creation was not merely mechanical. It was mythic.
This mirrors ancient traditions where the universe is spoken or sung into being
• In Ancient Egypt, Ptah speaks the world into existence.
• In Hermeticism, the Logos is the divine word that generates all things.
• In Pythagoreanism, the music of the spheres reflects cosmic harmony.
• In Hinduism, the syllable Om is the vibration of creation.
• In Kabbalah, the Book of Creation speaks of forming the world through Hebrew letters and sound.
• In Gnostic texts, reality emanates through harmonic resonance.
• In Sufism, Kun fayakun translates to Be, and it is, the expression of divine creation through sound.
• In the Bible, in Genesis, God says Let there be light, and speaks life into existence.
Poe even writes in Eureka the phrase, In the beginning, as he enters these cosmic and metaphysical viewpoints. That sounds familiar because those exact words are also written in Genesis. Poe taps into this lineage. In Eureka, he suggests that the universe itself is composed like a poem, through vibration, harmony, and meaning.
In this video, I introduce Poe’s Eureka and explore key concepts on its opening pages. This video begins a series. I will go through Eureka in chronological order within the poem. There is a direct link in the comments so you can read the section I am discussing. My page includes additional commentary. Feel free to share your thoughts and questions in the comments.
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Poe’s Preface
Let us begin with the Preface to Eureka, where Poe lays the groundwork for everything to come. He writes
To the few who love me and whom I love, to those who feel rather than think, to the dreamers and those who put their faith in dreams as in the only realities, I offer this book of truths, not in its character of truth teller, but for the beauty that abounds in its truth, constituting it true.
To these I present the composition as an art product alone. Let us say as a romance. Or, if I be not urging too lofty a claim, as a poem. What I here propound is true, therefore it cannot die. Or if by any means it be now trodden down so that it die, it will rise again to the life everlasting. Nevertheless, it is as a poem only that I wish this work to be judged after I am dead.
I absolutely love this. Let us break it down.
Poe dedicates Eureka
• To the few who love him and whom he loves.
• To those who feel rather than think, people who lead with intuition over intellect.
• To those who believe in dreams as reality.
This is important. Poe frames this work not for scientists but for intuitives, mystics, and dreamers. He is telling us to feel Eureka in order to understand it. He offers it as a book of truths, not because he wants to be seen as a prophet. He says it is not the act of truth telling that makes something true. It is the beauty within the truth that reveals it as true.
He then calls the universe a romance.
A poem.
A piece of art.
Finally, he says if he is to be judged after death, let it be by this work. Not by his stories or by public opinion, but by Eureka. That is what I want to do here. Not dissect Poe’s life through rumor and myth, but through what he believed was his most important creation.
The Scope of Eureka
On the first page, Poe writes
I design to speak of the Physical, Metaphysical and Mathematical, of the Material and Spiritual Universe, of its Essence, its Origin, its Creation, its Present Condition, and its Destiny.
That is a lot. What he means is simple. He will speak about existence itself across every layer, from math and matter to spirit and soul.
Today, we explain most of the universe through science and math. There are still things that cannot be measured, things that lie in the spiritual realm. Perhaps we do not yet have the consciousness to access certain truths. We will. Just as people in Poe’s day could not have imagined the internet.
Original Unity and the Seed of Return
Poe then writes
In the Original Unity of the First Thing lies the Secondary Cause of All Things, with the Germ of their Inevitable Annihilation.
He is saying that everything comes from a unified Source, what ancient philosophies might call
• The One
• The Monad
• The Absolute
• The All
• The Logos
• The Divine Mind
• The Ground of Being
From this Original Unity, everything else comes into existence. Even something as simple as numbers reflects this logic. First there is 1. Then 2, 3, 4, and so on. What comes before 1. Zero. Or better yet, the Void.
Poe is asking the same thing. What comes before God. What comes before creation. If there is a Source, all things must return to it.
Which brings us to the second half of that sentence. The germ of their inevitable annihilation. Everything that exists carries the seed of its own return. This is not negative. It is a cosmic cycle. Everything that is created must also dissolve so it can return to Unity.
What Poe Means by Universe
Poe clarifies how he uses the word Universe in Eureka, and he writes
I mean to designate the utmost conceivable expanse of space, with all things, spiritual and material, that can be imagined to exist within the compass of that expanse.
He wants us to understand that he is not only talking about stars and planets. He is talking about everything, the physical and the non physical, matter and spirit, thought and dream.
When he says the universe of stars, he is referring to the material layer. The true Universe in Eureka includes all of existence. Everything that ever was and everything that could be.
Reframing Poe
Take a moment and reflect on how Edgar Allan Poe is often portrayed.
An indecent madman.
A drunk.
A depressive who wrote about death.
Now compare that to what we have just touched in Eureka. Poe is far ahead of his time. I know these concepts can be difficult at first. If you would like more videos on topics like
• Zeroes and Ones
• How religion has used ancient texts
let me know in the comments.
To understand Eureka, you must use your intuition. And when Poe says Universe, he means everything in it, not only the cosmos.
A Challenge to How We Think
Before Poe dives into creation, he challenges how people were taught to think. He includes a fictional letter in Eureka, supposedly written in the year 2848 and found floating in a bottle in the Sea of Darkness. It is a playful, imaginative way to express his frustration with rigid thinking in philosophy both in his time and in ours.
In this letter, Poe critiques the two dominant approaches to truth
Deductive reasoning. You start with a supposed truth and build from it logically. This method comes from Aristotle, whom Poe jokingly calls Aries Tottle.
Inductive reasoning. You observe the world, collect facts, and draw conclusions. This method comes from Francis Bacon, whom Poe renames Hog.
Poe’s point. These two methods were treated as the only valid ways to understand anything. If you could not prove something through logic or measure it through observation, it was dismissed. No matter how true or profound it might be. Intuition and imagination were labeled foolish. Theorists were not taken seriously.
Poe writes, No man dared utter a truth for which he felt himself indebted to his soul alone.
If your truth came from within, it did not count. Poe calls out the arrogance of that mindset.
He then challenges one of the most sacred beliefs in classical philosophy, the axiom, which is supposed to be a self evident, undeniable truth. He says
No such things as axioms ever existed, or can possibly exist at all.
This is a huge claim. He argues that so called unshakable truths are not actually solid. He gives examples of past axioms once believed without question that were later proven false. For example, Nothing can come from nothing, or Darkness cannot come from light. These were considered absolute. Yet they were false. Why keep building our knowledge on foundations that shift.
Poe also calls out John Stuart Mill. Mill argued that contradictions cannot exist in nature, that a tree cannot be both a tree and not a tree. Mill also said we cannot judge truth by what we are able or unable to imagine. Then he relies on imagination to make his point. That is a contradiction.
Poe asks. If imagination cannot prove truth, how can it disprove it. You cannot have it both ways.
Poe is not trying to destroy logic. He is trying to free us from using it exclusively. Truth does not always arrive through equations. Sometimes it arrives through intuition, vision, and resonance. That truth can be just as real.
He closes this section by saying that instead of following only narrow paths of logic, the soul longs to range freely, to think in ways that do not follow one method or rulebook, to access truth not only through data but by feeling for pattern, meaning, and harmony.
This part of Eureka clears the road. Before he shows how the universe was created, he shows why the ways we have been taught to think are incomplete. Only then can we begin to understand the beauty of existence.
Beyond Thin Truths
Poe looks at deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, and the logical systems that followed, and says the issue is not that they are wrong. The issue is that they are thin. Axioms are treated as self evident truths, unchanging and reliable. Poe says real truth is layered. It carries depth, time, and apparent contradiction. A statement can be partially true while still hiding a deeper truth beneath it.
Deductive reasoning builds from axioms. It turns truth into a formula. If this, then that. Once truth becomes mechanical, we lose its mystery. We lose what cannot be measured. We lose its ability to evolve.
Inductive reasoning starts from observation. That sounds safer. Poe points out that we may already have missed the real starting point. If truth began before it took form, then beginning only with what we can measure starts the story in the middle.
Poe’s critique of Mill highlights the same problem. If imagination cannot prove truth, it cannot disprove it either.
Truth can exist without being directly experienced. Lack of experience does not erase reality. Experience can reveal a truth, but it does not create the truth. Even then, what we see is only a piece of something deeper.
Poe creates space for a different kind of knowing. Not only logic and observation, but intuition, imagination, and resonance. The kind of truth you feel before you can name it. The kind of truth that existed long before we had language for it.
Why Eureka
After dismantling the old ways of thinking, Poe does not leave us empty. He offers something else. He gives us Eureka.
He re centers our attention
• Not on formulas, but on feeling
• Not on dogma, but on intuition
• Not on intellect, but on soul
He begins to speak not only as a scientist, but as a poet and a mystic. A soul in search of origin.
This is why he dedicates Eureka to those who feel rather than to those who think. Poe knew thinking has limits. Feeling does not need to be infinite. It needs to be deep enough to remember. Feeling allows us to reach past the fragmented world of matter and return to the Original Unity behind it all.
Closing
I am stopping here for now. I will continue with Eureka in my next video. You will find this section available on my website and linked in the comments. Thank you for watching.
Follow me @IsabelEthereal across all platforms.
Always think critically.
Question loudly.
And remember
Echoes are not evidence.
There is more to unveil.
I will be back soon.
