 Chapter 17 of Book of the Damned This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Patrick McAfee The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort Chapter 17A 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 Tarbus, 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 Thompson's, with brains that have smooth and slippery though corrugated surfaces, or that all intellect 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 the varier 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 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, service tells of a shadow that Schroeder saw in 1788 in the lunar Alps. First he saw light, but then, when this region was illuminated, he saw 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. Service explains, of course, otherwise he'd not be Professor Service. It's a little contest in relative approximations to realness. Professor Service thinks that what Schroeder saw was the round shadow of a mountain in the region that had become lighted. He assumes that Schroeder 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. Professor Service could, of course, explain why he disregards the light in the first place. Maybe he 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 is usually as orthodox as anybody, I suppose, at least he wrote FRAS 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. Hearst, were in the Blue Fountains near Sydney, New South Wales, and Mr. Hearst 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 dominance 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 a dumberatory 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 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 hardyhood that is unusual in his world of ethereal sensitiveness, Russell says of Hearst'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 hardyhood on 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 course. 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 Hearst. 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 astronomical journal. The disregard was almost complete, but we do note that the columns of the observatory are 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 Hearst 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 kindergarten. There is a merger, of course. We'll take a look at it first, that after all it may have been a shadow that Hearst 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 astronomical 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 antisocialists. It's not that. It's more like what unsquare meals are to bulls and antisocialists, 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 is 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 ergences, tale of a peacock, horns of a stag, dollars of a capitalist, eclipses of astronomers. Though I had 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 superhybernia, 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 RAS 8132. 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 inquiring 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, Walkie, who had made observations at least Saint Laurent's 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 Walkie'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 never 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 9 tenths of totality has great effect, even though the sky be clouded. Scott, Voyage of the Discovery, Volume 2, Page 215 There may have been an eclipse of the sun on October 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 9 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 irregularized eclipses. Our data of unregularized eclipses is 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. There is no suggestion here that these darknesses may have been eclipses. My own acceptance is that if in the 19th 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 dominance 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 24139, 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 33414, a darkness that came upon London August 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 1120 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, Wisconsin, at 3 p.m. March 19. In five minutes, the darkness equalled that of midnight. Consternation I think that some of us are likely to overdo our own superiority in 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 it was only a very dense mass of clouds. But some of the instances are interesting. Intense darkness at Memphis, Tennessee for about 15 minutes at 10 a.m. December 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, Kentucky 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 the place 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 number 117 F.G. Plummer gives a list of 18 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 that are 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 an enormous area or the opposite of circumstances of concentration because of his 19 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 18 instances the only one that I'd bother to contest is the profound darkness in Canada and the northern parts of the United States November 19 1819 which we have already considered. It's concomitance 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 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 Simon's meteorological magazine 3969 It came from a smokeless region no rain, no thunder lasted ten minutes too dark to go even out in the open. As to darkness in Great Britain one thinks of fogs but in nature 25289 there are some observations by Major J. Herschel upon an obscuration in London January 22, 1882 at 1030 a.m. so great that he could hear other 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 Baghdad 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 the 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 concomitance of darknesses that we are going to capitalize it is all very complicated and tremendous and our own treatment can be but impressionistic with the use of advanced seismology we shall now take up or the four principle 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 of 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 interplanetary 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, 2121 there is an account by Mr. S. W. Clifton collector of customs at Fremantle 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 rail-ray 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 suction 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 End of Chapter 17a Recording by Patrick McAfee Chicago gis.depall.edu slash P. McAfee Chapter 17b of the Book of the Damned This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Patrick McAfee The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort Chapter 17b In Finley's reports on the character of 600 tornadoes very suggestive bits of description occur Cloud bounded along the earth like a ball or that it was no meteorological phenomenon but something very much like a huge solid ball that was bounding along crushing and carrying with it everything within its field Cloud bounded along coming to the earth every 800 or 1000 yards Here's an interesting bit that I got somewhere else I offer it as a datum in super biology which however is a branch of advanced science that I'll not take up to things indefinitely called objects The tornado came wriggling, jumping, whirling like a great green snake darting out a score of glistening fangs Though it's interesting I think that's sensational myself it may be that vast green snakes sometimes rush past this earth taking a swift bite wherever they can They say that's a super biologic phenomenon Finley gives dozens of instances of tornado clouds that seem to be more like solid things swathed in clouds than clouds He notes that in the tornado at America's Georgia July 18, 1881 a strange sulfurous vapor was emitted from the cloud In many instances or meteoritic stones that have come from this earth's externality have had a sulfurous odor Why a wind effect should be sulfurous is not clear That a vast object from external regions should be sulfurous is in line with many data This phenomenon is described in the monthly weather review July 18, 1881 as a strange vapor burning and sickening all who approached close enough to breathe it The conventional explanation of tornadoes as wind effects which we do not deny in some instances is so strong in the United States that it is better to look elsewhere for an account of an object that has hurtled through this earth's atmosphere rising and falling and defying this earth's gravitation Nature 7-1-12 That according to a correspondent to the Birmingham Morning News the people living near King's Sutton, Bainbury saw about 1 o'clock December 7, 1872 something like a haycock hurtling through the air Like a meteor it was accompanied by fire and a dense smoke and made a noise like that of a railway train It was sometimes high in the air and sometimes near the ground The effect was tornado-like trees and walls were knocked down It's a late day now to try to verify this story but a list is given of persons whose property was injured We are told that this thing then disappeared all at once These are the smaller objects which may be derailed railway trains or big green snakes for all I know but our expression upon approach to this earth by vast dark bodies That likely they'd be made luminous would envelop in clouds perhaps or would have their own clouds but that they'd quake and that they'd affect this earth with quakes and that then would occur a fall of matter from such a world or rise of matter from this earth to a nearby world or both fall and rise or exchange of matter process known to advanced seismology as celestial metathesis Except that if matter from some other world and it would be like someone into his head that we absolutely deny gravitation just because we cannot accept orthodox dogmas Except that if matter from another world filling the sky of this earth generally as to a hemisphere or locally should be attracted to this earth it would seem thinkable that the whole thing should drop here and not merely its surface materials objects upon a ship's bottom from time to time they drop to the bottom of the ocean the ship does not or like our acceptance upon dripping from aerial ice fields we think of only a part of a nearby world succumbing except in being caught in suspension to this earth's gravitation and surface materials falling from that part explain or express or accept and what does it matter our attitude is here are the data see for yourself what does it matter what my notions may be here are the data but think for yourself or think for myself all mixed up we must be a long time must go by before we can know florida from long island so we've had data of fishes that have fallen from our now established and respectabilized super sargasso sea which we've almost forgotten it's now so respectable but we shall have data of fishes that have fallen during earthquakes these we accept were dragged down from ponds or other worlds that have been quaked when only a few miles away by this earth some other world also quaking this earth in a way or in its principle our subject is orthodox enough only grant proximity of other worlds which however will not be a matter of granting but will be a matter of data and one conventionally receives of their surfaces quaked even of a whole lake full of fishes being quaked and dragged down from one of them the lake full of fishes may cause a little pain to some minds but the fall of sand and stones is pleasantly enough thought of more scientific persons or more faithful hypnotics than we have taken up this subject un-painfully relatively to the moon for instance, Perry has gone over 15,000 records of earthquakes and he has correlated many with proximities of the moon or has attributed many to the pull of the moon when nearest to this earth also there is a paper upon this subject in the proceedings of the Royal Society of Cornwall 1845 or theoretically when at its closest to this earth the moon quakes the face of this earth and is itself quaked but does not itself fall to this earth as to showers of matter that may have come from the moon at such times one can go over old records and find what one pleases 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 meteoric or not not one of these occurrences fits in with principles 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 Perry made his great compilation we take most of our data from lists compiled long ago only the safe and un-painful 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 uncanny 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 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 correspondence 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 intermediates 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 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 ill-liberalities I'd not like to emphasize too much all succeeding volumes of knowledge have yielded scarcely and 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 X communicated continued to creep in 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. Simons 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 catalog report of the British Association 1852 omitting some extraordinary instances because they occurred before the 18th century earthquake preceded by a violent tempest England January 8th 1704 preceded by a brilliant meteor Switzerland November 4th 1704 luminous cloud moving at high velocity disappearing behind the horizon Florence December 9th 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 22nd 1732 Rain of Earth Carpentras France October 18th 1737 a black cloud London March 19th 1750 violent storm and a strange star of octagonal shape Slavage Norway April 15th 1752 balls of fire from a streak in the sky Algermann land 1752 numerous meteorites Lisbon October 15th 1755 terrible tempests over and over falls of hail and brilliant meteors instance after instance an immense globe Switzerland November 2nd 1761 Ablon Sulfurus cloud Germany April 1767 Extraordinary mass of vapor Boulon April 1780 Heavens obscured by a dark mist Grenada August 7th 1804 Strange howling noises in the air in large spots the sun Palermo, Italy April 16th 1817 luminous meteor moving in the same direction as the shock Naples November 22nd 1821 Fireball appearing in the sky apparent size of the moon Thuringer walled November 29th 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 Thompson or my own acceptance that we do not really think at all that we correlate around super magnets that I call dominance 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 were 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 psychovalency for these data if we're obedient slaves to the new dominant and repulsion to them if we're mere correlates to the 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 all together 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 in the 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 howl 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 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 wracked by the attraction of this earth black substances 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 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 off but from which water may drip I am 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 am 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 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 Comps Rendu 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 shown 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 worlds during earthquakes I note a few quake and an object in the sky called a large luminous meteor quarterly journal royal institute 5132 luminous body in the sky earthquake and fall of sand Italy, February 12th and 13th, 1870 la science pour tout 15159 many reports upon luminous object in the sky and earthquake Connecticut, February 27th 1883 monthly weather review February 1883 luminous object or meteor in the sky fall of stones from the sky and earthquake Italy, January 20th 1891 lastronomy 1891 154 earthquake and prodigious number of luminous bodies or globes in the air Boulogne, France June 7th, 1779 Cestier La Foudre 1169 earthquake at Manila 1863 and curious luminous appearance in the sky Ponton earthquakes page 124 the most notable appearance of fishes during an earthquake is that of Rio Bamba Humboldt sketched one of them and it's an uncanny looking thing thousands of them appeared on 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 Cien Sportu 6191 February 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 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 psychotropism 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 deux 17 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 lake full of them had been shaken down from the super sargasso sea under the circumstances we have thought of the occurrence 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 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 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 in the Canadian Institute proceedings 27198 there is an account of a commissioner at Dermsalah of the extraordinary Dermsalah meteorite coated with ice but the combination of events related by him is still more extraordinary that within a few months of the fall of this meteorite there had been a fall of live fishes at Benares a shower of red substance at Furuk Abad a dark spot a disk of the sun an earthquake an unnatural darkness of some duration and a luminous appearance in the sky that looked like an aurora borealis but there is more to this climax we are introduced to a new order of phenomena visitors the deputy commissioner writes that in the evening after the fall of the Dermsalah meteorite or a massive stone covered with ice he saw lights some of them were not very high they appeared and went out and reappeared I have read many accounts of the Dermsalah meteorite July 28, 1860 but never in any other of them a mention of this new correlate something as out of place in the 19th century as would have been an aeroplane the invention of which would not, in our acceptance have been permitted in the 19th century though adambrations to it were permitted this writer says that the lights moved like fire balloons but I am sure that they were neither fire balloons lanterns nor bonfires nothing of that sort but bonafide lights in the heavens it's a subject for which we shall have to have a separate expression trespassers upon territory to which something else has a legal right perhaps someone lost a rock and he and his friends came down looking for it in the evening or secret agents or emissaries who had an appointment with the esoteric ones near Durmsala things or beings coming down to explore and unable to stay down long in a way another strange occurrence during an earthquake is suggested the ancient Chinese tradition the marks like hoof marks in the ground we have thought with a low degree of acceptance of another world that may be in secret communication with certain esoteric ones of this earth's inhabitants and of messages in symbols like hoof marks that are sent to some receptor or special hill upon this earth and of messages that at times miscarry this other world comes close to this world there are quakes but advantage of proximity is taken to send a message the message designed for a receptor in India perhaps or in Central Europe miscarries all the way to England marks like the marks of the Chinese tradition are found upon a beach in Cornwall after an earthquake philosophical transactions fifty five hundred after the quake of July fifteen seventeen fifty seven upon the sands of pensance Cornwall in an area of more than one hundred square yards were found marks like hoof prints except that they were not crescentic we feel a similarity but note an arbitrary disregard of our own this time it seems to us that marks described as little cones surrounded by basins of equal diameter would be like hoof prints if hoofs printed in complete circles other disregards are that there were black specks on the tops of cones as if something perhaps gaseous had issued from them that from one of these formations came a gush of water as thick as a man's wrist of course the opening of springs is common in earthquakes but we suspect myself that the negative absolute is compelling to put in this datum and its disorders there's another matter in which the negative absolute seems to work against us though to super chemistry we have introduced the principle of celestial metathesis we have no good data of exchange of substances during proximities the data are all of falls and not of upward translations of course pulses are common during earthquakes but I haven't a datum upon a tree or a fish or a brick or a man that ever did go up and stay up and that never did come down again our classic of the horse and barn occurred in what was called a whirlwind it is said that in an earthquake in Calabria paving stones shot up far in the air the writer doesn't specifically say that they came down again but something seems to tell me they did the corpses of real bomba humble reported that in the quake of real bomba bodies were torn upward from graves that the vertical motion was so strong that bodies were tossed several hundred feet in the air I explain I explain that if in the center of greatest violence of an earthquake anything ever has gone up and has kept on going up the thoughts of the nearest observers were very likely upon other subjects the key of Lisbon we are told that it went down a vast throng of persons ran to the key for refuge the city of Lisbon was in profound darkness the key and all the people on it disappeared if it and they went down not a single corpse not a shred of clothing not a plank of the key nor so much as a splinter of it ever floated to the surface end of chapter 17 recording by Patrick McAfee Chicago h-i-s dot d-p-o-l dot edu slash p-m-c-a-f-e chapter 18 of the Book of the Damned this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Acacia Wood the Book of the Damned by Charles Fort chapter 18 the new dominant I mean primarily all that opposes exclusionism that development or progress or evolution is attempt to positive eyes and is a mechanism by which a positive existence is recruited that what we call existence is a womb of infinitude and is itself only a memory that eventually all attempts are broken down by the falsely excluded subjectively the breaking down is aided by our own sense of false and narrow limitations so the classic and academic artists wrought positivist paintings and express the only ideal that I am conscious of though we so often hear of ideals instead of different manifestations artistically, scientifically theologically politically of the one ideal they sought to satisfy in its artistic aspect cosmic craving for unity or completeness sometimes called harmony called beauty in some aspects by disregard they sought completeness but the light affects that they disregarded confinement to standardized subjects brought on the revolt of the impressionists so the Puritans tried to systematize and they disregarded physical needs or vices or relaxations they were invaded and overthrown when their narrowness became obvious and intolerable all things strive for positiveness for themselves or for quasi systems of which they are parts of the formality in the mathematic the regular and the uniform are aspects of the positive state but the positive is the universal so all attempted positiveness that seems to satisfy in the aspects of formality and regularity sooner or later disqualifies in the aspect of wideness or universalness so there is revolt against the science of today because the formulated utterances rooted as final truths in a past generation are now seen to be insufficiencies every pronouncement that has opposed our own acceptances has been found to be a composition like any academic painting something that is arbitrarily cut off from relations with environment or framed off from interfering and disturbing data or outlined with disregards our own attempt has been to take in the included but also to take in the excluded in a wider expressions we accept however that for every one of our expressions there are irreconcilable somewhere that final utterance would include all things however if such is a gossip of angels the final is unutterable in quasi existence where to think is to include but also to exclude the final if we admit that for every opinion we have expressed there must somewhere be an irreconcilable we are intermediateists and not positivists not even higher positivists of course it may be that someday we shall systematize and dogmatize and refuse to think of anything that we may be accused of disregarding and believe instead of merely accepting then if we could have a wider system which would acknowledge no irreconcilables we'd be higher positivists so long as we only accept we are not higher positivists but our feeling is at the new dominant even though we have thought of it only as another enslavement will be the nucleus for higher positivism and that it will be the means of elevating into infinitude a new batch of fixed stars the recruiting instrument it too will play out and will give way to some new medium for generating absoluteness it is our acceptance that all astronomers of today have lost their souls or rather all chance of attaining entity but that Copernicus and Kepler and Galileo and Newton and conceivably Laverrier are now fixed stars someday I shall attempt to identify them in all this I think we're quite a Moses we point out the promised land but unless we be cured of our intermediateism we will never be reported in monthly notices ourselves in our acceptance dominance in their succession displace preceding dominance not only because they are more nearly positive but because the old dominance as recruiting mediums play out is that the new dominant of wider inclusions is now manifesting throughout the world and that the old exclusionism is everywhere breaking down in physics exclusionism is breaking down by its own researches and radium for instance and in its speculations upon electrons or its merging away into metaphysics and by the desertion that has been going on for many years by such men as Gurney, Crooks Wallace, Flammarian Lodge to formally disregard phenomena no longer called spiritualism but now psychic research biology is in chaos conventional Darwinites mixed up with mutationists and orthogenesis and followers of Wiseman who take from Darwinism one of its pseudo bases and nevertheless try to reconcile their heresies with orthodoxy the painters are metaphysicians and psychologists the breaking down of exclusionism in China and Japan and in the United States has astonished history the science of astronomy is going downwards to that though Pickering for instance did speculate upon a trans-Neptunian planet and Lowell did try to have accepted heretical ideas as to Marx on Mars attention is now minutely focused upon such technicalities as variations in shades of Jupiter's fourth satellite and its final acceptance over refinement indicates decadence I think that the stronghold of inclusionism is an aeronautics I think that the stronghold of the old dominant when it was new was in the invention of the telescope or that coincidentally with the breakdown of exclusionism appears the means of finding out whether there are vast aerial fields of ice and floating lakes full of frogs and fishes or not and black substances and great quantities of vegetable matter and flesh which may be Dragon's flesh come from whether there are interplanetary trade routes and vast areas devastated by super-tamerlanes whether sometimes there are visitors to this earth who might be pursued and captured and questioned End of Chapter 18 Recording by Acacia Wood Chapter 19 of the Book of the Damned Chapter 19 I have industriously sought data for an expression upon birds but the prospecting has not been very quasi-satisfactory I think I rather emphasize our industriousness because a charge likely to be brought against the attitude of acceptance is that one who only accepts must be one of languid interest and little application of energy it doesn't seem to work out we are very industrious I suggest to some of our disciples that they look into the matter of messages upon pigeons of course attributed to the owners but said to be undecipherable I'd do it ourselves only that would be selfish that's more of the intermediateism that will keep us out of the firmament positivism is absolute egoism but look back in the time of Andre's Polar Expedition pigeons that would have no publicity ordinarily were often reported at that time in the Zoologist 3 1821 is recorded an instance of a bird puffin that had fallen to the ground with a fractured head interesting but mere speculation but what solid object high in the air had that bird struck against tremendous red rain in France October 16 and 17 1846 great storm at the time and red rain supposed to have been colored by matter swept up from this earth surface and then precipitated by Comtisrendis 23 832 but in Comtisrendis 24 625 the description of this red rain differs from one's impression of red sandy or muddy water it is said that this rain was so vividly red and so blood like that many persons in France were terrified two analyses are given Comtisrendis 24 one chemist notes a great quantity of corpuscles whether blood like corpuscles or not in the matter the other chemist sets down organic matter at 35% it may be that an interplanetary dragon had been slain somewhere or that this red fluid in which were many corpuscles came from something not altogether pleasant to contemplate about the size of the Catskill mountains perhaps but the present atom is that with this substance larks, quail, ducks and water hens some of them alive fell at lions and granobal and other places I have notes upon other birds that have fallen from the sky but unaccompanied by the red rain that makes the fall of birds in France peculiar and very peculiar if it be accepted that the red substance was extra mundane the other notes are upon birds that have fallen from the sky in the midst of storms or of exhausted but living birds falling not far from a storm area but now we shall have an instance for which I can find no parallel fall of dead birds from a clear sky far distant from any storm to which they could be attributed so remote from any discoverable storm that my own notion is that in the summer of 1896 something or some beings came as near to this earth as they could upon a hunting expedition that in the summer of 1896 an expedition of super-scientists passed over this earth and let down a dragnet and what would it catch sweeping through the air supposing it to have reached not quite to this earth in the monthly rather review 17 W. L. McCatty quotes from the Baton Rouge correspondence to the Philadelphia Times that in the summer of 1896 into the streets of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and from a clear sky fell hundreds of dead birds there were wild ducks and cat birds, woodpeckers and many birds of strange plumage some of them resembling canaries usually one does not have to look very far from any place to learn of a storm but the best that could be done in this instance was to say there had been a storm on the coast of Florida and unless he have psychochemic repulsion for the explanation the reader feels only momentary astonishment that dead birds from a storm in Florida should fall from an un-stormy sky in Louisiana and with his intellect greased like the plumage of a wild duck the datum then drops off our greasy shiny brains that they may be of some use after all that other modes of existence place a high value upon them as lubricants that were hunted for them a hunting expedition to this earth the newspapers report a tornado if from a clear sky or a sky in which there were no driven clouds or other evidences of still continuing wind power or if from a storm in Florida it could be accepted that hundreds of birds had fallen far away in Louisiana I conceive conventionally of heavier objects having fallen in Alabama say and of the fall of still heavier objects still nearer the origin in Florida the sources of information of the weather bureau are widespread it has no records of such falls so a dragnet that was let down from above somewhere or something that I learned from the more scientific of the investigators of psychic phenomena the reader begins their works with prejudice against telepathy and everything else of psychic phenomenon the writers deny spirit communication and say that the seeming data are data of only telepathy astonishing instances of meaning clairvoyance only telepathy after a while the reader finds himself agreeing that it's only telepathy which at first had been intolerable to him so maybe in 1896 a super dragnet did not sweep through this Earth's atmosphere gathering up all the birds within its field the meshes and suddenly breaking or that the birds of Baton Rouge were only from the super Sargazzo upon which we shall have another expression we thought we'd settled that and we thought we'd established that but nothing's ever settled and nothing's ever established in a real sense if in a real sense there is nothing in quasiness I suppose there had been a storm somewhere the storm in Florida perhaps and many birds have been swept upward into the super Sargazzo sea it has frigid regions and it has tropical regions that birds of diverse species had been swept upward into an icy region where huddling together for warmth they had died then later they had been dislodged meteor coming along boat, bicycle, dragon don't know what did come along something dislodged them so leaves of trees carried up there in whirlwind staying there years, ages perhaps only a few months but then falling to this earth at an unseasonable time for dead leaves fishes carried up there some of them dying and drying some of them living in volumes of water that are in abundance up there or that fall sometimes in the deluges that we call cloudbursts the astronomers won't think kindly of us and we haven't done anything to endear ourselves to the meteorologists but we're weak and malchish scientists, several times we've tried to get the aeronauts with us extraordinary things up there things that curators of museums would give up all hope of ever being fixed stars to obtain things left over from whirlwinds of the time of the pharaohs perhaps or that Elijah did go up in the sky in something like a chariot and may not be Vega after all and that there may be a wheel or so left of whatever he went up in we basically suggest that it would bring a high price but sell soon because after a while there'd be thousands of them hawked around we weakly drop a hint to the aeronauts in the scientific American 33197 there is an account of some hay that fell from the sky from the circumstances we inclined to accept that this hay went up in a whirlwind from this earth in the first place reach the super-surgasa sea and remain there for a long time before falling an interesting point in this expression is the usual attribution to a local and coinciding whirlwind and identification of it and then data that make that local whirlwind unacceptable that upon July 27th 1875 small masses of damp hay had fallen at Mountstown Ireland in the Dublin Daily Express Dr. J. W. Moore had explained nearby whirlwind to the south of Mountstown that coincided but according to the scientific American a similar fall had occurred near Wrexham England two days before in November 1918 I made some studies upon light objects thrown into the air on Mrs. Day I suppose I should have been more emotionally occupied but I made notes upon torn at papers thrown high windows of office buildings scraps of paper did stay together for a while several minutes sometimes cosmos 3, 4, 5, 74 that upon the 10th of April 1869 at Autritch Indra at Lore a great number of oak leaves enormous segregation of them fell from the sky very calm day so little wind that the leaves fell almost vertically fall lasted about 10 minutes Flammarian in the atmosphere page 412 tells the story he has to find a storm he does find a squall but it had occurred upon April 3rd Flammarian's two incredibilities are that leaves could remain a week in the air that they could stay together a week in the air think of some of your own observations upon papers thrown from an airplane are one incredibility that these leaves had been whirled up six months before when they were common on the ground and had been sustained of course not in the air but in a region gravitationally inert and had been precipitated by the disturbances of April rains I have no records of leaves that have so fallen from the sky in October or November the season when one might expect dead leaves to be raised from one place and precipitated somewhere else I emphasize that this occurred in April Lanature 1889 294 that upon April 19th 1889 dried leaves of different species oak elm etc fell from the sky this day too was a calm day the fall was tremendous the leaves were seen to fall 15 minutes but judging from the quantity on the ground it is the writer's opinion that they had already been falling half an hour I think that the geyser of corpses that sprang from rion bomba toward the sky must have been an interesting sight if I were a painter I'd like that subject but this cataract of dried leaves too is a study in the rhythms of the dead in this datum the point most agreeable to us is the very point that the writer in Lanature emphasizes windlessness he says that the surface of the Loire was absolutely smooth the river was strewn with leaves as far as he could see L'astronomie 1894-194 that upon the 7th of April 1894 dried leaves fell in Arvaux and Autre-Aubre France the fall is described as prodigious half an hour then upon the 11th a fall of dried leaves occurred at Pont Corée it is in this recurrence that we found some of our opposition to the conventional explanation the editor Flamarian explains he says that the leaves had been caught up in a cyclone which had expended its force and the heavier leaves had fallen first we think that that was all right for 1894 and that it was quite good enough for 1894 but in these more exacting days we want to know how wind power insufficient to hold some leaves in the air could sustain others four days the factors in this expression are unseasonableness not for dried leaves but for prodigious numbers direct fall windlessness month of April and localization in France the factor of localization is interesting not a note have I upon fall of leaves from the sky except these notes where the conventional explanation or old correlate acceptable it would seem that similar occurrences in other regions should be as frequent as in France the indication is that there may be quasi-permanent undulations in the super Sargasso sea or a pronounced inclination toward France inspiration that there may be a nearby world complementary to this world where autumn occurs at the time that is springtime here let some disciple have that but there may be a dip toward France so that leaves that are born high there are more likely to be held in suspension elsewhere some other time it shall take up super geography and be guilty of charts I think now that the super Sargasso sea is an oblique belt with changing ramifications over Great Britain, France, Italy and on to India relatively to the United States I am not very clear but think especially of the southern states their preponderance of our data indicates frigid regions aloft nevertheless such phenomena as putrefaction have occurred often enough to make super tropical regions also acceptable we shall have one more datum upon the super Sargasso sea it seems to me that by this time our requirements of support and reinforcement and agreement have been quite as rigorous for acceptance as ever for belief at least for full acceptance by virtue of mere acceptance we may in some later book deny the super Sargasso sea find that our data relate to some other complementary world instead or the moon and have abundant data for accepting that the moon is not more than 20 or 30 miles away however the super Sargasso sea functions very well as a nucleus around which to gather data that oppose exclusionism that is our main motive to oppose exclusionism or our agreement with cosmic processes the climax of our general discussion upon the super Sargasso sea coincidentally appears something else that may over throw it later notes and queries 8 12 228 that in the province of Makarata Italy summer of 1897 an immense number of small blood-colored clouds covered the sky about an hour later a storm broke and myriad seeds fell to the ground it is said that they were identified as products of a tree found only in Central Africa and the Antilles if in terms of conventional reasoning these seeds had been high in the air they had been in a cold region but it is our acceptance that these seeds had for a considerable time been in a warm region and for a time longer than is attributable to suspension by wind power it is said that a great number of the seeds were in the first stage of germination End of Chapter 19 Recording by Acacia Wood