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BOOK OF THE DAMNED
By Charles Fort
CHAPTER: 01,
02, 03,
04, 05,
06, 07,
08, 09,
10, 11,
12, 13,
14, 15,
16, 17,
18, 19,
20, 21,
22, 23,
24, 25,
26, 27,
28
WE see conventionally. It is not only that we think and act
and speak and dress alike, because of our surrender to social attempt at Entity,
in which we are only super-cellular. We see what it is "proper" that
we should see. It is orthodox enough to say that a horse is not a horse, to an
infant -- any more than is an orange an orange to the unsophisticated. It's
interesting to walk along a street sometimes and look at things and wonder what
they'd look like, if we hadn't been taught to see horses and trees and houses as
horses and trees and houses. I think that to super-sight they are local stresses
merging indistinguishably into one another, in an all-inclusive nexus.
I think that it would be credible enough to say that many
times have Monstrator and Elvera and Azuria crossed telescopic fields of vision,
and were not even seen -- because it wouldn't be proper to see them; it wouldn't
be respectable, and it wouldn't be respectful: it would be insulting to old
bones to see them: it would bring on evil influences from the relics of St.
Isaac to see them.
But our data:
Of vast worlds that are orbitless, or that are navigable, or
that are adrift in inter-planetary tides and currents: the data that we shall
have of their approach, in modern times, within five or six miles of this
earth--
But then their visits, or approaches, to other planets, or to
other of the few regularized bodies that have surrendered to the attempted
Entity of this solar system as a whole--
The question that we can't very well evade:
Have these other worlds, or super-constructions, ever been
seen by astronomers?
I think there would not be much approximation to realness in
taking refuge in the notion of astronomers who stare and squint and see only
that which it is respectable and respectful to see. It is all very well to say
that astronomers are hypnotics, and that an astronomer looking at the moon is
hypnotized by the moon, but our acceptance is that the bodies of this present
expression often visit the moon, or cross it, or are held in temporary
suspension near it -- then some of them must often have been within the diameter
of an astronomer's hypnosis.
Our general expression:
That, upon the oceans of this earth, there are regularized
vessels, but also that there are tramp vessels:
That, upon the super-ocean, there are regularized planets, but
also that there are tramp worlds:
That astronomers are like mercantile purists who would deny
commercial vagabondage.
Our acceptance is that vast celestial vagabonds have been
excluded by astronomers, primarily because their irresponsibilities are an
affront to the pure and the precise, or to attempted positivism; and secondarily
because they have not been seen so very often. The planets steadily reflect the
light of the sun: upon this uniformity a system that we call Primary Astronomy
has been built up; but now the subject-matter of Advanced Astronomy is data of
celestial phenomena that are sometimes light and sometimes dark, varying like
some of the satellites of Jupiter, but with a wider range. However, light or
dark, they have been seen and reported so often that the only important reason
for their exclusion is -- that they don't fit in.
With dark bodies that are probably external to our own solar
system, I have, in the provincialism that no one can escape, not much concern.
Dark bodies afloat in outer space would have been damned a few years ago, but
now they're sanctioned by Prof. Barnard -- and, if he says they're all right, you
may think of them without the fear of doing something wrong or ridiculous -- the
close kinship we note so often between the evil and the absurd -- I suppose by the
ridiculous I mean the froth of evil. The dark companion of Algol, for instance.
Though that's a clear case of celestial miscegenation, the purists, or
positivists, admit that's so. In the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 1915-394, Prof. Barnard writes of an object -- he calls it an
"object" -- in Cephus. His idea is that there are dark, opaque bodies
outside this solar system. But in the Astrophysical Journal, 1916-1, he
modifies into regarding them as "dark nebul�." That's not so
interesting.
We accept that Venus, for instance, has often been visited by
other worlds, or by super-constructions, from which come cinders and coke and
coal; that sometimes these things have reflected light and have been seen from
this earth -- by professional astronomers. It will be noted that throughout this
chapter our data are accursed Brahmins -- as, by hypnosis and inertia, we keep on
and keep on saying, just as a good many of the scientists of the 19th century
kept on and kept on admitting the power of the system that preceded them -- or
Continuity would be smashed. There's a big chance here for us to be
instantaneously translated to the Positive Absolute -- oh, well--
What I emphasize here is that our damned data are observations
by astronomers of the highest standing, excommunicated by astronomers of similar
standing -- but backed up by the dominant spirit of their era -- to which all minds
had to equilibrate or be negligible, unheard, submerged. It would seem
sometimes, in this book, as if our revolts were against the dogmatisms and
pontifications of single scientists of eminence. This is only a convenience,
because it seems necessary to personify. If we look over Philosophical
Transactions, or the publications of the Royal Astronomical Society, for
instance, we see that Herschel, for instance, was as powerless as any boy
star-gazer, to enforce acceptance of any observation of his that did not
harmonize with the system that was growing up as independently of him and all
other astronomers, as a phase in the development of an embryo compels all cells
to take on appearances concordantly with the design and the predetermined
progress and schedule of the whole.
Visitors to Venus:
Evans, "Ways of the Planets," p. 140:
That, in 1645, a body large enough to look like a satellite
was seen near Venus. Four times in the first half of the 18th century, a similar
observation was reported. The last report occurred in 1767.
A large body has been seen -- seven times, according to Science
Gossip, 1886-178 -- near Venus. At least one astronomer, Houzeau, accepted
these observations and named the -- world, planet, super-construction -- "Neith." His views are mentioned "in passing,
but without endorsement," in the Trans. N. Y. Acad., 5-249.
Houzeau or some one writing for the magazine-section of a
Sunday newspaper -- outer darkness for both alike. A new satellite in this solar
system might be a little disturbing -- though the formulas of La Place, which were
considered final in his day, have survived the admittance of five or six hundred
bodies not included in those formulas -- a satellite to Venus might be a little
disturbing, but would be explained -- but a large body approaching a planet --
staying a while -- going away -- coming back some other time -- anchoring, as
it were--
Azuria is pretty bad, but Azuria is no worse than Neith.
Astrophysical Journal, 1-127:
A light-reflecting body, or a bright spot near Mars: seen Nov.
25, 1894, by Prof. Pickering and others, at the Lowell Observatory, above an
unilluminated part of Mars -- self-luminous, it would seem -- thought to have been a
cloud -- but estimated to have been about twenty miles away from the planet.
Luminous spot seen moving across the disk of Mercury, in 1799,
by Harding and Schroeter. (Monthly Notices of the R. A. S., 38-338.)
In the first Bulletin issued by the Lowell
Observatory, in 1903, Prof. Lowell describes a body that was seen on the
terminator of Mars, May 20, 1903. On May 27, it was "suspected." If
still there, it had moved, we are told, about 300 miles -- "probably a dust
cloud."
Very conspicuous and brilliant spots seen on the disk of Mars,
Oct. and Nov., 1911. (Popular Astronomy, Vol. 19, No. 10.)
So one of them accepted six or seven observations that were in
agreement, except that they could not be regularized, upon a world -- planet --
satellite -- and he gave it a name. He named it "Neith."
Monstrator and Elvera and Azuria and Super-Romanimus--
Or heresy and orthodoxy and the oneness of all quasiness, and
our ways and means and methods are the very same. Or, if we name things that may
not be, we are not of lonely guilt in the nomenclature of absences--
But now Leverrier and "Vulcan."
Leverrier again.
Or to demonstrate the collapsibility of froth, stick a pin in
the largest bubble of it. Astronomy and inflation: and by inflation we mean
expansion of the attenuated. Or that the science of Astronomy is a phantom-film
distended with myth-stuff -- but always our acceptance that it approximates higher
to substantiality than did the system that preceded it.
So Leverrier and the "planet Vulcan."
And we repeat, and it will do us small good to repeat. If you
be of the masses that the astronomers have hypnotized -- being themselves
hypnotized, or they could not hypnotize others -- or that the hypnotist's control
is not the masterful power that it is popularly supposed to be, but only
transference of state from one hypnotic to another--
If you be of the masses that the astronomers have hypnotized,
you will not be able even to remember. Ten pages from here, and Leverrier and
the "planet Vulcan" will have fallen from your mind, like beans from a
magnet, or like data of cold meteorites from the mind of a Thomson.
Leverrier and the "planet Vulcan."
And much the good it will do us to repeat.
But at least temporarily we shall have an impression of a
historic fiasco, such as, in our acceptance, could occur only in a
quasi-existence.
In 1859, Dr. Lescarbault, an amateur astronomer, of Org�res,
France, announced that, upon March 26, of that year, he had seen a body of
planetary size cross the sun. We are in a subject that is now as unholy to the
present system as ever were its own subjects to the system that preceded it, or
as ever were slanders against miracles to the preceding system. Nevertheless few
text-books go so far as quite to disregard the tragedy. The method of the
systematists is slightingly to give a few instances of the unholy, and dispose
of the few. If it were desirable to them to deny that there are mountains upon
this earth, they would record a few observations upon some slight eminences near
Orange, N.J., but say that commuters, though estimable persons in several ways,
are likely to have their observations mixed. The text-books casually mention a
few of the "supposed" observations upon "Vulcan," and then
pass on.
Dr. Lescarbault wrote to Leverrier, who hastened to
Org�res--
Because this announcement assimilated with his own
calculations upon a planet between Mercury and the sun--
Because this solar system itself has never attained
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