Chapter 55: 542-553

Page 542

Feng-Shui
See page 228.

Page 548

"A complete, largely unsens'd World, held within our own [...] waiting for some Summons to Light"
The Hollow Earth theories posit that the planet Earth has a hollow interior and, possibly, a habitable inner surface. At one time, adventure literature made this idea popular, and it was a feature of many fantasy and science fiction works as well as some conspiracy theories.

Hollow Earth theory is also explored in Pynchon's 2006 novel Against the Day, where the Chums of Chance enter the "Telluric interior" through an opening in the Antarctic as a shortcut to the North Pole...

"Some of the greatest minds in the history of science, including Kepler, Halley, and Euler, had speculated as to the existence of a so-called 'hollow Earth.' One day, it was hoped, the technique of intra-planetary 'short-cutting' about to be exercised by the boys would become routine, as useful in its way as the Suez or the Panama Canal had proved to surface shipping." (Against the Day, p. 115).

It is also further explored in Mason & Dixon on pages 603, 707 and 739.