Book of the Damned — Chapter 17-a

17 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 a 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--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.

But only because it's more circumstantial, and because it has corroboration, do I think it more extraordinary than-- Vast poised thing, black as 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 fountains, 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 corralled 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 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 this 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 this observation which had been made by Russell as well as Hirst.

If it hadn't been Proctor, it would have been someone else--but one notes that the attack came out in a newspaper.

There is no discussion of this 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 respect--"quite as dark as the shadow of this earth during the 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 in 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 to 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 especial 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, 1903, as the almanac said, but we should, none of us, have liked to swear to the fact."

This eclipse had been set down at nine-tenths of totality.

The sky was overcast at the time.

So it is not only that many eclipses unrecognized by astronomers as eclipses have occurred, but that intermediatism, or impositivism, breaks into their own seemingly regularized eclipses.

Our data of unregularized eclipses, as profound as those that are conventionally--or officially?

--recognized, that have occurred relatively to this earth: In _Notes and Queries_ there are several allusions to intense darknesses that have occurred upon this earth, quite as eclipses occur, but that are not referable to any known eclipsing body.

Of course there is no suggestion here that these darknesses may have been eclipses.

My own acceptance is that if in the nineteenth century anyone had uttered such a thought as that, he'd have felt the blight of a Dominant; that Materialistic Science was a jealous god, excluding, as works of the devil, all utterances against the seemingly uniform, regular, periodic;

that to defy him would have brought on--withering by ridicule--shrinking away by publishers--contempt of friends and family--justifiable grounds for divorce--that one who would so defy would feel what unbelievers in relics of saints felt in an earlier age; what befell virgins who forgot to keep fires burning, in a still earlier age--but that, if he'd almost absolutely hold out, just the same--new fixed star reported in _Monthly Notices_.

Altogether, the point in Positivism here is that by Dominants and their correlates, quasi-existence strives for the positive state, aggregating, around a nucleus, or dominant, systematized members of a religion, a science, a society--but that "individuals" who do not surrender and submerge may of themselves highly approximate to positiveness--the fixed, the real, the absolute.

In _Notes and Queries_, 2-4-139, there is an account of a darkness in Holland, in the midst of a bright day, so intense and terrifying that many panic-stricken persons lost their lives stumbling into the canals.

_Gentleman's Magazine_, 33-414: A darkness that came upon London, Aug.

19, 1763, "greater than at the great eclipse of 1748." However, our preference is not to go so far back for data.

For a list of historic "dark days," see Humboldt, _Cosmos_, 1-120. _Monthly Weather Review_, March, 1886-79: That, according to the _La Crosse Daily Republican_, of March 20, 1886, darkness suddenly settled upon the city of Oshkosh, Wis.

, at 3 P. M.

, March 19. In five minutes the darkness equaled that of midnight.

Consternation.

I think that some of us are likely to overdo our own superiority and the absurd fears of the Middle Ages-- Oshkosh.

People in the streets rushing in all directions--horses running away--women and children running into cellars--little modern touch after all: gas meters instead of images and relics of saints.

This darkness, which lasted from eight to ten minutes, occurred in a day that had been "light but cloudy."

It passed from west to east, and brightness followed: then came reports from towns to the west of Oshkosh: that the same phenomenon had already occurred there.

A "wave of total darkness" had passed from west to east.

Other instances are recorded in the _Monthly Weather Review_, but, as to all of them, we have a sense of being pretty well-eclipsed, ourselves, by the conventional explanation that the obscuring body was only a very dense mass of clouds.

But some of the instances are interesting--intense darkness at Memphis, Tenn.

, for about fifteen minutes, at 10 A. M.

, Dec.

2, 1904--"We are told that in some quarters a panic prevailed, and that some were shouting and praying and imagining that the end of the world had come."

(_M.

W.

R.

_, 32-522. ) At Louisville, Ky.

, March 7, 1911, at about 8 A. M.

: duration about half an hour; had been raining moderately, and then hail had fallen.

"The intense blackness and general ominous appearance of the storm spread terror throughout the city."

(_M.

W.

R.

_, 39-345. ) However, this merger between possible eclipses by unknown dark bodies and commonplace terrestrial phenomena is formidable.

As to darknesses that have fallen upon vast areas, conventionality is--smoke from forest fires.

In the _U.

S.

Forest Service Bulletin_, No. 117, F.

G.

Plummer gives a list of eighteen darknesses that have occurred in the United States and Canada.

He is one of the primitives, but I should say that his dogmatism is shaken by vibrations from the new Dominant.

His difficulty, which he acknowledges, but which he would have disregarded had he written a decade or so earlier, is the profundity of some of these obscurations.

He says that mere smokiness cannot account for such "awe-inspiring dark days."

So he conceives of eddies in the air, concentrating the smoke from forest fires.

Then, in the inconsistency or discord of all quasi-intellection that is striving for consistency or harmony, he tells of the vastness of some of these darknesses.

Of course Mr. Plummer did not really think upon this subject, but one does feel that he might have approximated higher to real thinking than by speaking of concentration and then listing data of enormous area, or the opposite of circumstances of concentration--because, of his nineteen instances, nine are set down as covering all New England.

In quasi-existence, everything generates or is part of its own opposite.

Every attempt at peace prepares the way for war; all attempts at justice result in injustice in some other respect: so Mr. Plummer's attempt to bring order into his data, with the explanation of darkness caused by smoke from forest fires, results in such confusion that he ends up by saying that these daytime darknesses have occurred "often with little or no turbidity of the air near the earth's surface"--or with no evidence at all of smoke--except that there is almost always a forest fire somewhere.

However, of the eighteen instances, the only one that I'd bother to contest is the profound darkness in Canada and northern parts of the United States, Nov.

19, 1819--which we have already considered.

Its concomitants: Lights in the sky;

Fall of a black substance;

Shocks like those of an earthquake.

In this instance, the only available forest fire was one to the south of the Ohio River.

For all I know, soot from a very great fire south of the Ohio might fall in Montreal, Canada, and conceivably, by some freak of reflection, light from it might be seen in Montreal, but the earthquake is not assimilable with a forest fire.

On the other hand, it will soon be our expression that profound darkness, fall of matter from the sky, lights in the sky, and earthquakes are phenomena of the near approach of other worlds to this world.

It is such comprehensiveness, as contrasted with inclusion of a few factors and disregard for the rest, that we call higher approximation to realness--or universalness.

A darkness, of April 17, 1904, at Wimbledon, England (_Symons' Met.

Mag.

_, 39-69).

It came from a smokeless region: no rain, no thunder;

lasted 10 minutes; too dark to go "even out in the open."

As to darknesses in Great Britain, one thinks of fogs--but in _Nature_, 25-289, there are some observations by Major J. Herschel, upon an obscuration in London, Jan.

22, 1882, at 10:30 A. M.

, so great that he could hear persons upon the opposite side of the street, but could not see them--"It was obvious that there was no fog to speak of."

_Annual Register_, 1857-132: An account by Charles A. Murray, British Envoy to Persia, of a darkness of May 20, 1857, that came upon Bagdad--"a darkness more intense than ordinary midnight, when neither stars nor moon are visible...."

"After a short time the black darkness was succeeded by a red, lurid gloom, such as I never saw in any part of the world."

"Panic seized the whole city."

"A dense volume of red sand fell."

This matter of sand falling seems to suggest conventional explanation enough, or that a simoon, heavily charged with terrestrial sand, had obscured the sun, but Mr. Murray, who says that he had had experience with simoons, gives his opinion that "it cannot have been a simoon."

It is our comprehensiveness now, or this matter of concomitants of darknesses that we are going to capitalize.

It is all very complicated and tremendous, and our own treatment can be but impressionistic, but a few of the rudiments of Advanced Seismology we shall now take up--or the four principal phenomena of another world's close approach to this world.

If a large substantial mass, or super-construction, should enter this earth's atmosphere, it is our acceptance that it would sometimes--depending upon velocity--appear luminous or look like a cloud, or like a cloud with a luminous nucleus.

Later we shall have an expression upon luminosity--different from the luminosity of incandescence--that comes upon objects falling from the sky, or entering this earth's atmosphere.

Now our expression is that worlds have often come close to this earth, and that smaller objects--size of a haystack or size of several dozen skyscrapers lumped, have often hurtled through this earth's atmosphere, and have been mistaken for clouds, because they were enveloped in clouds-- Or that around something coming from the intense cold of inter-planetary space--that is of some regions: our own suspicion is that other regions are tropical--the moisture of this earth's atmosphere would condense into a cloud-like appearance around it.

In _Nature_, 20-121, there is an account by Mr. S.

W.

Clifton, Collector of Customs, at Freemantle, Western Australia, sent to the Melbourne Observatory--a clear day--appearance of a small black cloud, moving not very swiftly--bursting into a ball of fire, of the apparent size of the moon-- Or that something with the velocity of an ordinary meteorite could not collect vapor around it, but that slower-moving objects--speed of a railway train, say--may.

The clouds of tornadoes have so often been described as if they were solid objects that I now accept that sometimes they are: that some so-called tornadoes are objects hurtling through this earth's atmosphere, not only generating disturbances by their suctions, but crushing, with their bulk, all things in their way, rising and falling and finally disappearing, demonstrating that gravitation is not the power that the primitives think it is, if an object moving at relatively low velocity be not pulled to this earth, or being so momentarily affected, bounds away.