28 chapters
9 hour read
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28 chapters
1
1
A procession of the damned. By the damned, I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded. Battalions of the accursed, captained by pallid data that I have exhumed, will march. You'll read them—or they'll march. Some of them livid and some of them fiery and some of them rotten. Some of them are corpses, skeletons, mummies, twitching, tottering, animated by companions that have been damned alive. There are giants that will walk by, though sound asleep. There are
19 minute read
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2
2
In the autumn of 1883, and for years afterward, occurred brilliant-colored sunsets, such as had never been seen before within the memory of all observers. Also there were blue moons. I think that one is likely to smile incredulously at the notion of blue moons. Nevertheless they were as common as were green suns in 1883. Science had to account for these unconventionalities. Such publications as Nature and Knowledge were besieged with inquiries. I suppose, in Alaska and in the South Sea Islands,
9 minute read
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3
3
So then, it is our expression that Science relates to real knowledge no more than does the growth of a plant, or the organization of a department store, or the development of a nation: that all are assimilative, or organizing, or systematizing processes that represent different attempts to attain the positive state—the state commonly called heaven, I suppose I mean. There can be no real science where there are indeterminate variables, but every variable is, in finer terms, indeterminate, or irre
30 minute read
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4
4
It is in the records of the French Academy that, upon March 17, 1669, in the town of Châtillon-sur-Seine, fell a reddish substance that was "thick, viscous, and putrid." American Journal of Science , 1-41-404: Story of a highly unpleasant substance that had fallen from the sky, in Wilson County, Tennessee. We read that Dr. Troost visited the place and investigated. Later we're going to investigate some investigations—but never mind that now. Dr. Troost reported that the substance was clear blood
16 minute read
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5
5
I shall attempt not much of correlation of dates. A mathematic-minded positivist, with his delusion that in an intermediate state twice two are four, whereas, if we accept Continuity, we cannot accept that there are anywhere two things to start with, would search our data for periodicities. It is so obvious to me that the mathematic, or the regular, is the attribute of the Universal, that I have not much inclination to look for it in the local. Still, in this solar system, "as a whole," there is
27 minute read
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6
6
Lead, silver, diamonds, glass. They sound like the accursed, but they're not: they're now of the chosen—that is, when they occur in metallic or stony masses that Science has recognized as meteorites. We find that resistance is to substances not so mixed in or incorporated. Of accursed data, it seems to me that punk is pretty damnable. In the Report of the British Association , 1878-376, there is mention of a light chocolate-brown substance that has fallen with meteorites. No particulars given; n
23 minute read
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7
7
The living things that have come down to this earth: Attempts to preserve the system: That small frogs and toads, for instance, never have fallen from the sky, but were—"on the ground, in the first place"; or that there have been such falls—"up from one place in a whirlwind, and down in another." Were there some especially froggy place near Europe, as there is an especially sandy place, the scientific explanation would of course be that all small frogs falling from the sky in Europe come from th
31 minute read
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8
8
I accept that, when there are storms, the damnedest of excluded, excommunicated things—things that are leprous to the faithful—are brought down—from the Super-Sargasso Sea—or from what for convenience we call the Super-Sargasso Sea—which by no means has been taken into full acceptance yet. That things are brought down by storms, just as, from the depths of the sea things are brought up by storms. To be sure it is orthodoxy that storms have little, if any, effect below the waves of the ocean—but—
44 minute read
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9
9
My own pseudo-conclusion: That we've been damned by giants sound asleep, or by great scientific principles and abstractions that cannot realize themselves: that little harlots have visited their caprices upon us; that clowns, with buckets of water from which they pretend to cast thousands of good-sized fishes have anathematized us for laughing disrespectfully, because, as with all clowns, underlying buffoonery is the desire to be taken seriously; that pale ignorances, presiding over microscopes
14 minute read
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10
10
Early explorers have Florida mixed up with Newfoundland. But the confusion is worse than that still earlier. It arises from simplicity. Very early explorers think that all land westward is one land, India: awareness of other lands as well as India comes as a slow process. I do not now think of things arriving upon this earth from some especial other world. That was my notion when I started to collect our data. Or, as is a commonplace of observation, all intellection begins with the illusion of h
15 minute read
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11
11
One of the damnedest in our whole saturnalia of the accursed— Because it is hopeless to try to shake off an excommunication only by saying that we're damned by blacker things than ourselves; and that the damned are those who admit they're of the damned. Inertia and hypnosis are too strong for us. We say that: then we go right on admitting we're of the damned. It is only by being more nearly real that we can sweep away the quasi-things that oppose us. Of course, as a whole, we have considerable a
27 minute read
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12
12
Astronomy. And a watchman looking at half a dozen lanterns, where a street's been torn up. There are gas lights and kerosene lamps and electric lights in the neighborhood: matches flaring, fires in stoves, bonfires, house afire somewhere; lights of automobiles, illuminated signs— The watchman and his one little system. Ethics. And some young ladies and the dear old professor of a very "select" seminary. Drugs and divorce and rape: venereal diseases, drunkenness, murder— Excluded. The prim and th
21 minute read
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13
13
One of the most extraordinary of phenomena, or alleged phenomena, of psychic research, or alleged research—if in quasi-existence there never has been real research, but only approximations to research that merge away, or that are continuous with, prejudice and convenience— "Stone-throwing." It's attributed to poltergeists. They're mischievous spirits. Poltergeists do not assimilate with our own present quasi-system, which is an attempt to correlate denied or disregarded data as phenomena of extr
31 minute read
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14
14
We see conventionally. It is not only that we think and act and speak and dress alike, because of our surrender to social attempt at Entity, in which we are only super-cellular. We see what it is "proper" that we should see. It is orthodox enough to say that a horse is not a horse, to an infant—any more than is an orange an orange to the unsophisticated. It's interesting to walk along a street sometimes and look at things and wonder what they'd look like, if we hadn't been taught to see horses a
31 minute read
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15
15
Short chapter coming now, and it's the worst of them all. I think it's speculative. It's a lapse from our usual pseudo-standards. I think it must mean that the preceding chapter was very efficiently done, and that now by the rhythm of all quasi-things—which can't be real things, if they're rhythms, because a rhythm is an appearance that turns into its own opposite and then back again—but now, to pay up, we're what we weren't. Short chapter, and I think we'll fill in with several points in Interm
7 minute read
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16.
16.
Angels. Hordes upon hordes of them. Beings massed like the clouds of souls, or the commingling whiffs of spirituality, or the exhalations of souls that Doré pictured so often. It may be that the Milky Way is a composition of stiff, frozen, finally-static, absolute angels. We shall have data of little Milky Ways, moving swiftly; or data of hosts of angels, not absolute, or still dynamic. I suspect, myself, that the fixed stars are really fixed, and that the minute motions said to have been detect
14 minute read
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17
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 Tarbe
38 minute read
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18
18
The New Dominant. I mean "primarily" all that opposes Exclusionism— That Development or Progress or Evolution is Attempt to Positivize, 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 incubatory—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 pai
4 minute read
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19
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 attribu
11 minute read
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20
20
The New Dominant. Inclusionism. In it we have a pseudo-standard. We have a datum, and we give it an interpretation, in accordance with our pseudo-standard. At present we have not the delusions of Absolutism that may have translated some of the positivists of the nineteenth century to heaven. We are Intermediatists—but feel a lurking suspicion that we may some day solidify and dogmatize and illiberalize into higher positivists. At present we do not ask whether something be reasonable or preposter
21 minute read
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21
21
Knowledge , Dec. 28, 1883: "Seeing so many meteorological phenomena in your excellent paper, Knowledge , I am tempted to ask for an explanation of the following, which I saw when on board the British India Company's steamer Patna , while on a voyage up the Persian Gulf. In May, 1880, on a dark night, about 11:30 P.M. , there suddenly appeared on each side of the ship an enormous luminous wheel, whirling around, the spokes of which seemed to brush the ship along. The spokes would be 200 or 300 ya
15 minute read
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Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society , 1-157: Extract from the log of the bark Lady of the Lake , by Capt. F.W. Banner: Communicated by R.H. Scott, F.R.S.: That, upon the 22nd of March, 1870, at Lat. 5° 47' N., Long. 27° 52' W., the sailors of the Lady of the Lake saw a remarkable object, or "cloud," in the sky. They reported to the captain. According to Capt. Banner, it was a cloud of circular form, with an included semi-circle divided into four parts, the central dividing shaft beginnin
1 minute read
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23
23
Text-books tell us that the Dhurmsalla meteorites were picked up "soon," or "within half an hour." Given a little time the conventionalists may argue that these stones were hot when they fell, but that their great interior coldness had overcome the molten state of their surfaces. According to the Deputy Commissioner of Dhurmsalla, these stones had been picked up "immediately" by passing coolies. These stones were so cold that they benumbed the fingers. But they had fallen with a great light. It
9 minute read
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24
24
We shall have an outcry of silences. If a single instance of anything be disregarded by a System—our own attitude is that a single instance is a powerless thing. Of course our own method of agreement of many instances is not a real method. In Continuity, all things must have resemblances with all other things. Anything has any quasi-identity you please. Some time ago conscription was assimilated with either autocracy or democracy with equal facility. Note the need for a dominant to correlate to.
7 minute read
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25
25
"A formation having the shape of a dirigible." It was reported from Huntington, West Virginia ( Sci. Amer. , 115-241). Luminous object that was seen July 19, 1916, at about 11 P.M. Observed through "rather powerful field glasses," it looked to be about two degrees long and half a degree wide. It gradually dimmed, disappeared, reappeared, and then faded out of sight. Another person—as we say: it would be too inconvenient to hold to our intermediatist recognitions—another person who observed this
6 minute read
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26
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Notes and Queries , 5-3-306: About 8 lights that were seen in Wales, over an area of about 8 miles, all keeping their own ground, whether moving together perpendicularly, horizontally, or over a zigzag course. They looked like electric lights—disappearing, reappearing dimly, then shining as bright as ever. "We have seen them three or four at a time afterward, on four or five occasions." London Times , Oct. 5, 1877: "From time to time the west coast of Wales seems to have been the scene of myster
7 minute read
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27
27
Vast and black. The thing that was poised, like a crow over the moon. Round and smooth. Cannon balls. Things that have fallen from the sky to this earth. Our slippery brains. Things like cannon balls have fallen, in storms, upon this earth. Like cannon balls are things that, in storms, have fallen to this earth. Showers of blood. Whatever it may have been, something like red-brick dust, or a red substance in a dried state, fell at Piedmont, Italy, Oct. 27, 1814 ( Electric Magazine , 68-437). A r
9 minute read
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28
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Notes and Queries , 7-8-508: A correspondent who had been to Devonshire writes for information as to a story that he had heard there: of an occurrence of about thirty-five years before the date of writing: Of snow upon the ground—of all South Devonshire waking up one morning to find such tracks in the snow as had never before been heard of—"clawed footmarks" of "an unclassifiable form"—alternating at huge but regular intervals with what seemed to be the impression of the point of a stick—but the
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