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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
THE vast dark thing that looked like a poised crow of unholy
dimensions. Assuming that I shall ever have any readers, let him, or both of
them, if I shall ever have such popularity as that, note how dim that bold black
datum is at the distance of only two chapters.
The question:
Was it a thing or the shadow of a thing?
Acceptance either way calls not for mere revision but
revolution in the science of astronomy. But the dimness of the datum of only two
chapters ago. The carved stone disk of Tarbes, and the rain that fell every
afternoon for twenty -- if I haven't forgotten, myself, whether it was
twenty-three or twenty-five days! -- upon one small area. We are all Thomsons,
with brains that have smooth and slippery, though corrugated, surfaces -- or that
all intellection is associative -- or that we remember that which correlates with
a dominant -- and a few chapters go by, and there's scarcely an impression that
hasn't slid off our smooth and slippery brains, of Leverrier and the
"planet Vulcan." There are two ways by which irreconcilables can be
remembered -- if they can be correlated in a system more nearly real than the
system that rejects them -- and by repetition and repetition and repetition.
Vast black thing like a crow poised over the moon.
The datum is so important to us, because it enforces, in
another field, our acceptance that dark bodies of planetary size traverse this
solar system.
Our position:
That the things have been seen:
Also that their shadows have been seen.
Vast black thing poised like a crow over the moon. So far it
is a single instance. By single instance, we mean the negligible.
In Popular Science, 34-158, Serviss tells of a shadow
that Schroeter saw, in 1788, in the lunar Alps. First he saw a light. But then,
when this region was illuminated, he saw a round shadow where the light had
been.
Our own expression:
That he saw a luminous object near the moon: that that part of
the moon became illuminated, and the object was lost to view; but that then its
shadow underneath was seen.
Serviss explains, of course. Otherwise he'd not be Prof.
Serviss. It's a little contest in relative approximations to realness. Prof.
Serviss thinks that what Schroeter saw was the "round" shadow of a
mountain -- in the region that had become lighted. He assumes that Schroeter never
looked again to see whether the shadow could be attributed to a mountain. That's
the crux: conceivably a mountain could cast a round shadow -- and that means
detached -- shadow, in the lighted part of the moon. Prof. Serviss could, of
course, explain why he disregards the light in the first place -- maybe it had
always been there "in the first place." If he couldn't explain, he'd
still be an amateur.
We have another datum. I think it is more extraordinary than--
Vast thing, black and poised, like a crow, over the moon.
Mr. H.C. Russell, who was usually as orthodox as anybody, I
suppose -- at least, he wrote "F.R.A.S." after his name -- tells in the Observatory,
2-374, one of the wickedest, or most preposterous, stories that we have so far
exhumed:
That he and another astronomer, G. D. Hirst, were in the Blue
Mountains, near Sydney, N.S.W., and Mr. Hirst was looking at the moon--
He saw on the moon what Russell calls "one of those
remarkable facts, which being seen should be recorded, although no explanation
can at present be offered."
That may be so. It is very rarely done. Our own expression
upon evolution by successive dominants and their correlates is against it. On
the other hand, we express that every era records a few observations out of
harmony with it, but adumbratory or preparatory to the spirit of eras still to
come. It's very rarely done. Lashed by the phantom-scourge of a now passing era,
the world of astronomers is in a state of terrorism, though of a highly
attenuated, modernized, devitalized kind. Let an astronomer see something that
is not of the conventional, celestial sights, or something that it is
"improper" to see -- his very dignity is in danger. Some one of the
corraled and scourged may stick a smile into his back. He'll be thought of
unkindly.
With a hardihood that is unusual in his world of ethereal
sensitivenesses, Russell says, of Hirst's observation:
"He found that a large part of it covered with a dark
shade, quite as dark as the shadow of the earth during an eclipse of the
moon."
But the climax of hardihood or impropriety or wickedness,
preposterousness or enlightenment:
"One could hardly resist the conviction that it was a
shadow, yet it could not be the shadow of any known body."
Richard Proctor was a man of some liberality. After a while we
shall have a letter, which once upon a time we'd have called delirious -- don't
know that we could read such a thing now, for the first time, without
incredulous laughter -- which Mr. Proctor permitted to be published in Knowledge.
But a dark, unknown world that could cast a shadow upon a large part of the
moon, perhaps extending far beyond the limb of the moon; a shadow as deep as the
shadow of the earth--
Too much for Mr. Proctor's politeness.
I haven't read what he said, but it seems to have been a
little coarse. Russell says that Proctor "freely used" his name in the
Echo, of March 14, 1879, ridiculing the observation which had been made
by Russell as well as Hirst. If it hadn't been Proctor, it would have been some
one else -- but one notes that the attack came out in a newspaper. There is no
discussion of the remarkable subject, no mention in any other astronomic
journal. The disregard was almost complete -- but we do note that the columns of
the Observatory were open to Russell to answer Proctor.
In the answer, I note considerable intermediateness. Far back
in 1879, it would have been a beautiful positivism, if Russell had said--
"There was a shadow on the moon. Absolutely it was cast
by an unknown body."
According to our religion, if he had then given all his time
to the maintaining of this one stand, of course breaking all friendships, all
ties with his fellow astronomers, his apotheosis would have occurred, greatly
assisted by means well known to quasi-existence when its compromises and
evasions, and phenomena that are partly this and partly that, are flouted by the
definite and uncompromising. It would be impossible in a real existence, but Mr.
Russell, of quasi-existence, says that he did resist the conviction; that he had
said that one could "hardly resist"; and most of his resentment is
against Mr. Proctor's thinking that he had not resisted. It seems too bad -- if
apotheosis be desirable.
The point in Intermediatism here is:
Not that to adapt to the conditions of quasi-existence is to
have what is called success in quasi-existence, but is to lose one's soul--
But is to lose "one's" chance of attaining soul,
self, or entity.
One indignation quoted from Proctor interests us:
"What happens on the moon may at any time happen to this
earth."
Or:
That is just the teaching of this department of Advanced
Astronomy:
That Russell and Hirst saw the sun eclipsed relatively to the
moon by a vast dark body;
That many times have eclipses occurred relatively to this
earth, by vast, dark bodies;
That there have been many eclipses that have not been
recognized as eclipses by scientific kindergartens.
There is a merger, of course. We'll take a look at it
first -- that, after all, it may have been a shadow that Hirst and Russell saw,
but the only significance is that the sun was eclipsed relatively to the moon by
a cosmic haze of some kind, or a swarm of meteors close together, or a gaseous
discharge left behind by a comet. My own acceptance is that vagueness of shadow
is a function of vagueness of intervention; that a shadow as dense as the shadow
of this earth is cast by a body denser than hazes and swarms. The information
seems definite enough in this respec t-- "quite as dark as the shadow of the
earth during an eclipse of the moon."
Though we may not always be as patient toward them as we
should be, it is our acceptance that the astronomic primitives have done a great
deal of good work: for instance, in the allaying of fears upon this earth.
Sometimes it may seem as if all science were to us very much like what a red
flag is to bulls and anti-socialists. It's not that: it's more like what
unsquare meals are to bulls and anti-socialists -- not the scientific, but the
insufficient. Our acceptance is that Evil is the negative state, by which we
mean the state of maladjustment, discord, ugliness, disorganization,
inconsistency, injustice, and so on -- as determined in Intermediateness, not by
real standards, but only by higher approximations to adjustment, harmony,
beauty, organization, consistency, justice and so on. Evil is outlived virtue,
or incipient virtue that has not yet established itself, or any other phenomenon
that is not seeming adjustment, harmony, consistency with a dominant. The
astronomers have functioned bravely in the past. They've been good for business:
the big interests think kindly, if at all, of them. It's bad for trade to have
an intense darkness come upon an unaware community and frighten people out of
their purchasing values. But if an obscuration be foretold, and if it then occur
-- may seem a little uncanny -- only a shadow -- and no one who was about the
buy a pair of shoes runs home panic-stricken and saves the money.
Upon general principles we accept that astronomers have
quasi-systematized data of eclipses -- or have included some and disregarded
others.
They have done well.
They have functioned.
But now they're negatives, or they're out of harmony--
If we are in harmony with a new dominant, or the spirit of a
new era, in which Exclusionism must be overthrown; if we have data of many
obscurations that have occurred, not only upon the moon, but upon our own earth,
as convincing of vast intervening bodies, usually invisible, as is any
regularized, predicted eclipse.
One looks up at the sky.
It seems incredible that, say, at the distance of the moon,
there could be, but be invisible, a solid body, say, the size of the moon.
One looks up at the moon, at a time when only a crescent of it
is visible. The tendency is to build up the rest of it in one's mind; but the
unillumined part looks as vacant as the rest of the sky, and it's of the same
blueness as the rest of the sky. There's a vast area of solid substance
before
one's eyes. It's indistinguishable from the sky.
In some of our little lessons upon the beauties of modesty and
humility, we have picked out basic arrogances -- tail of a peacock, horns of a
stag, dollars of a capitalist -- eclipses of astronomers. Though I have no desire
for the job, I'd engage to list hundreds of instances in which the report upon
an expected eclipse has been "sky overcast" or "weather
unfavorable." In our Super-Hibernia, the unfavorable has been construed as
the favorable. Some time ago, when we were lost, because we had not recognized
our own dominant, when we were still of the unchosen and likely to be more
malicious than we now are -- because we have noted a steady tolerance creeping
into our attitude -- if astronomers are not to blame, but are only correlates to a
dominant -- we advertised a predicted eclipse that did not occur at all. Now,
without any special feeling, except that of recognition of the fate of all
attempted absolutism, we give the instance, noting that, though such an evil
thing to orthodoxy, it was orthodoxy that recorded the non-event.
Monthly Notices of the R. A. S.,
8-132:
"Remarkable appearances during the total eclipse of the
moon on March 19, 1848":
In an extract from a letter from Mr. Forster, of Bruges, it is
said that, according to the writer's observations at the time of the predicted
total eclipse, the moon shone with about three times the intensity of the mean
illumination of an eclipsed lunar disk: that the British Consul, at Ghent, who
did not know of the predicted eclipse, had written enquiring as to the
"blood-red" color of the moon.
This is not very satisfactory to what used to be our malices.
But there follows another letter, from another astronomer, Walkey, who had made
observations at Clyst St. Lawrence: that, instead of an eclipse, the moon became
-- as is printed in italics -- "most beautifully
illuminated"..."rather tinged with a deep red"..."the moon
being as perfect with light as if there had been no eclipse whatever."
I note that Chambers, in his work upon eclipses, gives
Forster's letter in full -- and not a mention of Walkey's letter.
There is no attempt in Monthly Notices to explain
upon the notion of greater distance of the moon, and the earth's shadow falling
short, which would make as much trouble for astronomers, if that were not
foreseen, as no eclipse at all. Also there is no refuge in saying that virtually
never, even in total eclipses, is the moon totally dark -- "as perfect with
light as if there had been no eclipse whatever." It is said that at the
time there had been an aurora borealis, which might have caused the luminosity,
without a datum that such an effect, by an aurora, had ever been observed upon
the moon.
But single instances -- so an observation by Scott, in the
Antarctic. The force of this datum lies in my own acceptance, based upon
especially looking up this point, that an eclipse nine-tenths of totality has
great effect, even though the sky be clouded.
Scott (Voyage of the Discovery, vol. II, p. 215):
"There may have been an eclipse of the sun, Sept. 21,
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