Paper 44 Overview: The Celestial Artisans

The celestial artisans are special spirit and semispirit beings who work on beautifying and decorating the morontia and spirit worlds. They work in seven different groups across the grand universe, but their main activities happen around the constellation headquarters. These artisans create real art and culture for the higher worlds which are very different from what we know on earth.

The celestial artisans are made up of teachers from the central universe and students who join them from different spiritual groups, including ascending mortals. No one can join this group for less than one thousand years, and all artisans are registered at their superuniverse headquarters. They work in seven main types of artistic activities: celestial musicians, heavenly reproducers, divine builders, thought recorders, energy manipulators, designers and embellishers, and harmony workers.

The celestial artisans live and work on many different worlds across the universe. They are found on superuniverse headquarters, local universe headquarters, constellation centers, system centers, and worlds settled in light and life. These artisans create beautiful art and culture in the morontia and spirit realms that can be hard for material minds to understand.

These artists were not created as celestial artisans but are made up of teachers from the central universe and volunteer students from groups like ascending mortals. The first teachers were assigned by the Infinite Spirit working with the Seven Master Spirits. They started with seven thousand instructors from Havona, and this group has grown into a brilliant team of skilled spirit workers.

Celestial musicians create beautiful music that humans can barely imagine with our limited hearing. They work with spirit sounds, not physical sound waves, and can send these melodies across the universe. These musicians create harmony in seven different ways, including spiritual sound, spiritual light, energy patterns, and even the melodies of thoughts.

The celestial musicians can create over one hundred thousand different types of sound, color, and energy. Music is the universal language of spirit communication, and the best music on earth is just a tiny echo of these heavenly melodies. One day, a great musician may appear on earth who could change the course of civilization, because "melody has power a whole world to transform."

The heavenly reproducers preserve and recreate important experiences that have value for morontia and spirit beings. They capture things that are worth keeping but are unknown on earth. These experiences include things that have "hardly entered into the mind of man" and realities that God has waiting for those who survive.

These reproducers work in seven groups: singers who repeat harmonies, color workers like painters, light picturizers who create something like motion pictures, historic pageant-makers, prophetic artists, life-story tellers, and administrative dramatists. They often work with the reversion directors to combine memory with rest and entertainment for spirits, sometimes creating huge shows with thousands of actors.

Divine builders create the homes and structures of the spirit worlds. In the spirit worlds, we have everything that humans are familiar with and much more, including homes, comforts, and necessities. The divine builders work in seven different groups to create all these things.

These groups include: home designers who build personal living spaces, vocation builders who create workplaces, play builders who make recreation areas, worship builders who create temples, education builders who construct schools, morontia planners who coordinate living arrangements, and public builders who create meeting places. Though humans cannot see these buildings, they are very real and beautiful to spirit beings.

Thought recorders preserve and share the higher thinking of the universe. They work in seven groups to capture ideas, concepts, and wisdom from across the realms. The first group, thought preservers, save the best ideas from all worlds, including important thoughts from earth.

The other six groups include: concept recorders who preserve idea pictures, ideograph recorders who improve on concept pictures, promoters of oratory who preserve speech, broadcast directors who send messages across the universe, rhythm recorders who create poetry-like expressions, and morontia recorders who save pictures of important morontia events. These recorders help save and share wisdom throughout the universe in ways that are much faster than human communication.

Energy manipulators work with all kinds of energy including physical, mental, and spiritual types. They are experts at controlling and using these energies for different purposes. The physical-energy manipulators work with power directors and understand the basic currents of energy in the superuniverses.

Other groups include mind-energy experts who help morontia beings communicate, spiritual-energy specialists who work with spirit laws, compound manipulators who combine all three types of energy, transport advisers who help with travel routes, communication experts, and teachers of rest who help spirits recharge their energy. These experts help spirit beings learn how to properly refresh their energy, which is as necessary in the spirit world as physical rest is on earth.

The designers and embellishers create beautiful decorations and experiences in the spirit worlds. They work in seven main groups to create beauty that spirit beings can appreciate. Their work is hard to explain to humans because we don't have similar experiences on earth.

The seven groups are: craftworkers of color who create beautiful color displays, sound designers who create beautiful spirit sounds, emotion designers who preserve special feelings, artists of odor who create something like spiritual fragrances, presence embellishers who arrange spirit beings in beautiful patterns, taste designers who improve appreciation of beauty, and morontia synthesizers who add finishing touches to create inspiring beauty. Humans can only experience these artistic joys after they are free from their physical bodies.

The harmony workers create with specialized forces and energies that exist in the spirit world but are unknown to humans. Their work is so different from anything on earth that it is almost impossible to describe. They work with spiritual concepts of beauty, truth, and goodness in ways that go beyond human understanding.

These artists help blend truth, beauty, and goodness into unified experiences. God perfectly unites these divine qualities, and spirits who know God can express themselves in ever-improving ways by becoming more like God. In this way, spirits can experience the blending of eternal truth, universal beauty, and divine goodness in their lives.

Sometimes, celestial artisans come to worlds like earth to help humans who have natural artistic talent. They work with the planetary angels and other spirits to help these gifted humans develop their abilities. Special human ability comes from three sources: natural talent from ancestors, guidance from the person's Thought Adjuster, and help from spirit artisans.

There are no class divisions among spirit artisans. No matter how humble your beginning, if you have talent, you will receive recognition as you progress spiritually. The spirit worlds allow everyone to fulfill their artistic dreams that may have been blocked on earth. However, as spirits evolve, they learn to focus less on personal ambition and more on working together with others. Before ascending mortals leave the local universe, they will have fulfilled every worthwhile ambition they had during their physical or morontia lives.