The Book of the Damned (31 page)

That is what we now shall do.

Our expressions are for acceptance only.

Our data:

We take them from four classes of phenomena that have preceded or accompanied earthquakes:

Unusual clouds, darkness profound, luminous appearances in the sky, and falls of substances and objects whether commonly called meteoritic or not.

Not one of these occurrences fits in with principles of primitive, or primary, seismology, and every one of them is a datum of a quaked body passing close to this earth or suspended over it. To the primitives there is not a reason in the world why a convulsion of this earth’s surface should be accompanied by unusual sights in the sky, by darkness, or by the fall of substances or objects from the sky. As to phenomena like these, or storms, preceding earthquakes, the irreconcilability is still greater.

It was before 1860 that Perrey made his great compilation. We take most of our data from lists compiled long ago. Only the safe and unpainful have been published in recent years—at least in ambitious, voluminous form. The restraining hand of the “System”—as we call it, whether it has any real existence or not—is tight upon the sciences of today. The uncanniest aspect of our quasi-existence that I know of is that everything that seems to have one identity has also as high a seeming of everything else. In this oneness of allness, or continuity, the protecting hand strangles; the parental stifles; love is inseparable from phenomena of hate. There is only Continuity—that is in quasi-existence.
Nature,
at least in its correspondents’ columns, still evades this protective strangulation, and the
Monthly Weather Review
is still a rich field of unfaithful observation: but, in looking over other long-established periodicals, I have noted their glimmers of quasi-individuality fade gradually, after about 1860, and the surrender of their attempted identities to a higher attempted organization. Some of them, expressing Intermediateness-wide endeavor to localize the universal, or to localize self, soul, identity, entity—or positiveness or realness—held out until as far as 1880; traces findable up to 1890—and then, expressing the universal process—except that here and there in the world’s history there may have been successful approximations to positiveness by “individuals”—who only then became individuals and attained to selves or souls of their own—surrendered, submitted, became parts of a higher organization’s attempt to individualize or systematize into a complete thing, or to localize the universal or the attributes of the universal. After the death of Richard Proctor, whose occasional illiberalities I’d not like to emphasize too much, all succeeding volumes of
Knowledge
have yielded scarcely an unconventionality. Note the great number of times that the
American Journal of Science
and the
Report of the British Association
are quoted: note that, after, say, 1885, they’re scarcely mentioned in these inspired but illicit pages—as by hypnosis and inertia, we keep on saying.

About 1880.

Throttle and disregard.

But the coercion could not be positive, and many of the excommunicated continued to creep in; or, even to this day, some of the strangled are faintly breathing.

Some of our data have been hard to find. We could tell stories of great labor and fruitless quests that would, though perhaps imperceptibly, stir the sympathy of a Mr. Symons. But, in this matter of concurrence of earthquakes with aerial phenomena, which are as unassociable with earthquakes, if internally caused, as falls of sand on convulsed small boys full of sour apples, the abundance of so-called evidence is so great that we can only sketchily go over the data, beginning with Robert Mallet’s Catalogue
(Rept. Brit. Assoc.,
1852), omitting some extraordinary instances, because they occurred before the eighteenth century:

Earthquake “preceded” by a violent tempest, England, Jan. 8, 1704—“preceded” by a brilliant meteor, Switzerland, Nov. 4, 1704—“luminous cloud, moving at high velocity, disappearing behind the horizon,” Florence, Dec. 9, 1731—“thick mists in the air, through which a dim light was seen: several weeks before the shock, globes of light had been seen in the air,” Swabia, May 22, 1732—rain of earth, Carpentras, France, Oct. 18, 1737—a black cloud, London, March 19, 1750—violent storm and a strange star of octagonal shape, Slavange, Norway, April 15, 1752—balls of fire from a streak in the sky, Augermannland, 1752—numerous meteorites, Lisbon, Oct. 15, 1755—“terrible tempests” over and over—“falls of hail” and “brilliant meteors,” instance after instance—“an immense globe,” Switzerland, Nov. 2, 1761—oblong, sulphurous cloud, Germany, April, 1767—extraordinary mass of vapor, Boulogne, April, 1780—heavens obscured by a dark mist, Grenada, Aug. 7, 1804—“strange, howling noises in the air, and large spots obscuring the sun,” Palermo, Italy, April 16, 1817—“luminous meteor moving in the same direction as the shock,” Naples, Nov. 22, 1821—fireball appearing in the sky: apparent size of the moon, Thuringerwald, Nov. 29, 1831.

And, unless you be polarized by the New Dominant, which is calling for recognition of multiplicities of external things, as a Dominant, dawning new over Europe in 1492, called for recognition of terrestrial externality to Europe—unless you have this contact with the new, you have no affinity for these data—beans that drop from a magnet—irreconcilables that glide from the mind of a Thomson—

Or my own acceptance that we do not really think at all; that we correlate around super-magnets that I call Dominants—a Spiritual Dominant in one age, and responsively to it up spring monasteries, and the stake and the cross are its symbols: a Materialist Dominant, and up spring laboratories, and microscopes and telescopes and crucibles are its icons—that we’re nothing but iron filings relatively to a succession of magnets that displace preceding magnets.

With no soul of your own, and with no soul of my own—except that someday some of us may no longer be Intermediatisms, but may hold out against the cosmos that once upon a time thousands of fishes were cast from one pail of water—we have psycho-valency for these data, if we’re obedient slaves to the New Dominant, and repulsion to them, if we’re mere correlates to the Old Dominant. I’m a soulless and selfless correlate to the New Dominant, myself: I see what I have to see. The only inducement I can hold out, in my attempt to rake up disciples, is that someday the New will be fashionable: the new correlates will sneer at the old correlates. After all, there is some inducement to that—and I’m not altogether sure it’s desirable to end up as a fixed star.

As a correlate to the New Dominant, I am very much impressed with some of these data—the luminous object that moved in the same direction as an earthquake—it seems very acceptable that a quake followed this thing as it passed near this earth’s surface. The streak that was seen in the sky—or only a streak that was visible of another world—and objects, or meteorites that were shaken down from it. The quake at Carpentras, France: and that, above Carpentras, was a smaller world, more violently quaked, so that earth was shaken down from it.

But I like best the super-wolves that were seen to cross the sun during the earthquake at Palermo.

They howled.

Or the loves of the worlds. The call they feel for one another. They try to move closer and howl when they get there.

The howls of the planets.

I have discovered a new unintelligibility.

In the
Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal—
have
to go away back to 1841—days of less efficient strangulation—Sir David Milne lists phenomena of quakes in Great Britain. I pick out a few that indicate to me that other worlds were near this earth’s surface:

Violent storm before a shock of 1703—ball of fire “preceding,” 1750—a large ball of fire seen upon day following a quake, 1755—“uncommon phenomenon in the air: a large luminous body, bent like a crescent, which stretched itself over the heavens, 1816—vast ball of fire, 1750—black rains and black snows, 1755—numerous instances of upward projection—or upward attraction?—during quakes—“preceded by a cloud, very black and lowering,” 1795— fall of black powder, preceding a quake, by six hours, 1837.

Some of these instances seem to me to be very striking—a smaller world: it is greatly racked by the attraction of this earth—black substance is torn down from it—not until six hours later, after an approach still closer, does this earth suffer perturbation. As to the extraordinary spectacle of a thing, world, super-construction, that was seen in the sky, in 1816, I have not yet been able to find out more. I think that here our acceptance is relatively sound: that this occurrence was tremendously of more importance than such occurrence as, say, transits of Venus, upon which hundreds of papers have been written—that not another mention have I found, though I have not looked so especially as I shall look for more data—that all but undetailed record of this occurrence was suppressed.

Altogether we have considerable agreement here between data of vast masses that do not fall to this earth, but from which substances fall, and data of fields of ice from which ice may not fall, but from which water may drip. I’m beginning to modify: that, at a distance from this earth, gravitation has more effect than we have supposed, though less effect than the dogmatists suppose and “prove.” I’m coming out stronger for the acceptance of a Neutral Zone—that this earth, like other magnets, has a neutral zone, in which is the Super-Sargasso Sea, and in which other worlds may be buoyed up, though projecting parts may be subject to this earth’s attraction—

But my preference:

Here are the data.

I now have one of the most interesting of the new correlates. I think I should have brought it in before, but, whether out of place here, because not accompanied by earthquake, or not, we’ll have it. I offer it as an instance of an eclipse, by a vast, dark body that has been seen and reported by an astronomer. The astronomer is M. Lias: the phenomenon was seen by him, at Pernambuco, April 11, 1860.

Comptes Rendus,
50-1197:

It was about noon—sky cloudless—suddenly the light of the sun was diminished. The darkness increased, and, to illustrate its intensity, we are told that the planet Venus shone brilliant. But Venus was of low visibility at this time. The observation that burns incense to the New Dominant is:

That around the sun appeared a corona.

There are many other instances that indicate proximity of other world’s during earthquakes. I note a few—quake and an object in the sky, called “a large, luminous meteor”
(Quar. Jour. Roy. Inst.,
5-132); luminous body in the sky, earthquake, and fall of sand, Italy, Feb. 12 and 13, 1870
(La Science Pour Tous,
15-159); many reports upon luminous object in the sky and earthquake, Connecticut, Feb. 27, 1883
(Monthly Weather Review,
February, 1883); luminous object, or meteor, in the sky, fall of stones from the sky, and earthquake, Italy, Jan. 20, 1891
(L’Astronomie,
1891-154); earthquake and prodigious number of luminous bodies, or globes, in the air, Boulogne, France, June 7, 1779 (Sestier,
La Foudre,
1-169); earthquake at Manila, 1863, and “curious luminous appearance in the sky” (Ponton,
Earthquakes,
p. 124).

The most notable appearance of fishes during an earthquake is that of Riobamba. Humboldt sketched one of them, and it’s an uncanny-looking thing. Thousands of them appeared upon the ground during this tremendous earthquake. Humboldt says that they were cast up from subterranean sources. I think not myself, and have data for thinking not, but there’d be such a row arguing back and forth that it’s simpler to consider a clearer instance of the fall of living fishes from the sky, during an earthquake. I can’t quite accept, myself, whether a large lake, and all the fishes in it, was torn down from some other world, or a lake in the Super-Sargasso Sea, distracted between two pulling worlds, was dragged down to this earth—

Here are the data:

La Science Pour Tous,
6-191:

Feb. 16, 1861. An earthquake at Singapore. Then came an extraordinary downpour of rain—or as much water as any good-sized lake would consist of. For three days this rain or this fall of water came down in torrents. In pools on the ground, formed by this deluge, great numbers of fishes were found. The writer says that he had, himself, seen nothing but water fall from the sky. Whether I’m emphasizing what a deluge it was or not, he says that so terrific had been the downpour that he had not been able to see three steps away from him. The natives said that the fishes had fallen from the sky. Three days later the pools dried up and many dead fishes were found, but, in the first place—though that’s an expression for which we have an instinctive dislike—the fishes had been active and uninjured. Then follows material for another of our little studies in the phenomena of disregard. A psycho-tropism here is mechanically to take pen in hand and mechanically write that fishes found on the ground after a heavy rainfall came from overflowing streams.

The writer of the account says that some of the fishes had been found in his courtyard, which was surrounded by high walls—paying no attention to this, a correspondent
(La Science Pour Tous,
6-317) explains that in the heavy rain a body of water had probably overflowed, carrying fishes with it. We are told by the first writer that these fishes of Singapore were of a species that was very abundant near Singapore. So I think, myself that a whole lakeful of them had been shaken down from the Super-Sargasso Sea, under the circumstances we have thought of. However, if appearance of strange fishes after an earthquake be more pleasing in the sight, or to the nostrils, of the New Dominant, we faithfully and piously supply that incense—An account of the occurrence at Singapore was read by M. de Castelnau, before the French Academy. M. de Castelnau recalled that, upon a former occasion, he had submitted to the Academy the circumstance that fishes of a new species had appeared at the Cape of Good Hope, after an earthquake.

It seems proper, and it will give luster to the new orthodoxy, now to have an instance in which, not merely quake and fall of rocks, or meteorites, or quake and either eclipse or luminous appearances in the sky have occurred, but in which are combined all the phenomena, one or more of which, when accompanying earthquake, indicate, in our acceptance, the proximity of another world. This time a longer duration is indicated than in other instances.