{"collection":"fort","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/fort/damn/damn16.htm","path":"fort/damn/damn16.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/fort/damn/damn16.htm","text":"The Book of the Damned, by Charles Fort, [1919]\nAngels.\nHordes upon hordes of them.\nBeings massed like the clouds of souls, or the commingling whiffs of spirituality, or the exhalations of souls that Dor\u00e9 pictured so often.\nIt 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 detected in them are illusions. I think that the fixed stars are absolutes. Their twinkling is only the interpretation by an intermediatist state of them. I think that soon after Leverrier died, a new fixed star was discovered\u2014that, if Dr. Gray had stuck to his story of the thousands of fishes from one pail of water, had written upon it, lectured upon it, taken to street corners, to convince the world that, whether conceivable or not, his explanation was the only true explanation: had thought of nothing but this last thing at night and first thing in the morning\u2014his obituary\u2014another \"nova\" reported in Monthly Notices.\nI think that Milky Ways, of an inferior, or dynamic, order, have often been seen by astronomers. Of course it may be that the phenomena that we shall now consider are not angels at all. We are simply feeling around, trying to find out what we can accept. Some of our data indicate hosts of rotund and complacent tourists in inter-planetary space\u2014but then data of long, lean, hungry ones. I think that there are, out in inter-planetary space, Super Tamerlanes at the head of hosts of celestial ravagers\u2014which have come here and pounced upon civilizations of the past, cleaning them up all but their bones, or temples and monuments\u2014for which later historians have invented exclusionist histories. But if something\nnow has a legal right to us, and can enforce its proprietorship, they've been warned off. It's the way of all exploitation. I should say that we're now under cultivation: that we're conscious of it, but have the impertinence to attribute it all to our own nobler and higher instincts.\nAgainst these notions is the same sense of finality that opposes all advance. It's why we rate acceptance as a better adaptation than belief. Opposing us is the strong belief that, as to interplanetary phenomena, virtually everything has been found out. Sense of finality and illusion of homogeneity. But that what is called advancing knowledge is violation of the sense of blankness.\nA drop of water. Once upon a time water was considered so homogeneous that it was thought of as an element. The microscope\u2014and not only that the supposititiously elementary was seen to be of infinite diversity, but that in its protoplasmic life there were new orders of beings.\nOr the year 1491\u2014and a European looking westward over the ocean\u2014his feeling that that suave western droop was unbreakable; that gods of regularity would not permit that smooth horizon to be disturbed by coasts or spotted with islands. The unpleasantness of even contemplating such a state\u2014wide, smooth west, so clean against the sky\u2014spotted with islands\u2014geographic leprosy.\nBut coasts and islands and Indians and bison, in the seemingly vacant west: lakes, mountains, rivers\u2014\nOne looks up at the sky: the relative homogeneity of the relatively unexplored: one thinks of only a few kinds of phenomena. But the acceptance is forced upon me that there are modes and modes and modes of inter-planetary existence: things as different from planets and comets and meteors as Indians are from bison and prairie dogs: a super-geography\u2014or celestiography\u2014of vast stagnant regions, but also of Super-Niagaras and Ultra-Mississippis: and a super-sociology\u2014voyagers and tourists and ravagers: the hunted and the hunting: the super-mercantile, the super-piratic, the super-evangelical.\nSense of homogeneity, or our positivist illusion of the unknown\u2014and the fate of all positivism.\nAstronomy and the academic.\nEthics and the abstract.\nThe universal attempt to formulate or to regularize\u2014an attempt that can be made only by disregarding or denying.\nOr all things disregard or deny that which will eventually invade and destroy them\u2014\nUntil comes the day when some one thing shall say, and enforce upon Infinitude:\n\"Thus far shalt thou go: here is absolute demarcation.\"\nThe final utterance:\n\"There is only I.\"\nIn the Monthly Notices of the R.A.S., 11-48, there is a letter from the Rev. W. Read:\nThat, upon the 4th of September, 1851, at 9:30 A.M., he had seen a host of self-luminous bodies, passing the field of his telescope, some slowly and some rapidly. They appeared to occupy a zone several degrees in breadth. The direction of most of them was due east to west, but some moved from north to south. The numbers were tremendous. They were observed for six hours.\nEditor's note:\n\"May not these appearances be attributed to an abnormal state of the optic nerves of the observer?\"\nIn Monthly Notices, 12-38, Mr. Read answers that he had been a diligent observer, with instruments. of a superior order, for about 28 years\u2014\"but I have never witnessed such an appearance before.\" As to illusion he says that two other members of his family had seen the objects.\nThe Editor withdraws his suggestion.\nWe know what to expect. Almost absolutely\u2014in an existence that is essentially Hibernian\u2014we can predict the past\u2014that is, look over something of this kind, written in 1851, and know what to expect from the Exclusionists later. If Mr. Read saw a migration of dissatisfied angels, numbering millions, they must merge away, at least subjectively, with commonplace terrestrial phenomena\u2014of course disregarding Mr. Read's probable familiarity, of 28 years\u2019 duration, with the commonplaces of terrestrial phenomena.\nMonthly Notices, 12-183:\nLetter from Rev. W. R. Dawes:\nThat he had seen similar objects\u2014and in the month of September\u2014that they were nothing but seeds floating in the air.\nIn the Report of the British Association, 1852-235, there is a communication from Mr. Read to Prof. Baden-Powell:\nThat the objects that had been seen by him and by Mr. Dawes were not similar. He denies that he had seen seeds floating in the air. There had been little wind, and that had come from the sea, where seeds would not be likely to have origin. The objects that he had seen were round and sharply defined, and with none of the feathery appearance of thistledown. He then quotes from a letter from C. B. Chalmers, F.R.A.S., who had seen a similar stream, a procession, or migration, except that some of the bodies were more elongated\u2014or lean and hungry\u2014than globular.\nHe might have argued for sixty-five years. He'd have impressed nobody\u2014of importance. The super-motif, or dominant, of his era, was Exclusionism, and the notion of seeds in the air assimilates\u2014with due disregards\u2014with that dominant.\nOr pageantries here upon our earth, and things looking down upon us\u2014and the Crusades were only dust clouds, and glints of the sun on shining armor were only particles of mica in dust clouds. I think it was a Crusade that Read saw\u2014but that it was right, relatively to the year 1851, to say that it was only seeds in the wind, whether the wind blew from the sea or not. I think of things that were luminous with religious zeal, mixed up, like everything else in Intermediateness, with black marauders and from gray to brown beings of little personal ambitions. There may have been a Richard Coeur de Lion, on his way to right wrongs in Jupiter. It was right, relatively to 1851, to say that he was a seed of a cabbage.\nProf. Coffin, U.S.N. (Jour. Frank. Inst., 88-151):\nThat, during the eclipse of August, 1869, he had noted the passage, across his telescope, of several bright flakes resembling thistleblows, floating in the sunlight. But the telescope was so focused that, if these things were distinct, they must have been so far away from this earth that the difficulties of orthodoxy remain as great. one way or another, no matter what we think they were\u2014\nThey were \"well-defined,\" says Prof. Coffin.\nHenry Waldner (Nature, 5-304):\nThat, April 27, 1863, he had seen great numbers of small, shining bodies passing from west to east. He had notified Dr. Wolf, of the Observatory of Zurich, who \"had convinced himself of this strange phenomenon.\" Dr. Wolf had told him that similar bodies had been seen by Sig. Capocci, of the Capodimonte Observatory, at Naples, May 11, 1845.\nThe shapes were of great diversity\u2014or different aspects of similar shapes?\nAppendages were seen upon some of them.\nWe are told that some were star-shaped, with transparent appendages.\nI think, myself, it was a Mohammed and his Hegira. May have been only his harem. Astonishing sensation: afloat in space with ten million wives around one. Anyway, it would seem that we have considerable advantage here, inasmuch as seeds are not in season in April\u2014but the pulling back to earth, the bedraggling by those sincere but dull ones of some time ago. We have the same stupidity\u2014necessary, functioning stupidity\u2014of attribution of something that was so rare that an astronomer notes only one instance between 1845 and 1863, to an everyday occurrence\u2014\nOr Mr. Waldner's assimilative opinion that he had seen only ice crystals.\nWhether they were not very exclusive veils of a super-harem, or planes of a very light material, we have an impression of star-shaped things with transparent appendages that have been seen in the sky.\nHosts of small bodies\u2014black, this time\u2014that were seen by the astronomers Herrick, Buys-Ballot, and De Cuppis (L\u2019Ann\u00e9e Scientifique, 1860-25); vast numbers of bodies that were seen by M. Lamey, to cross the moon (L\u2019Ann\u00e9e Scientifique, 1874-62); another instance of dark ones; prodigious number of dark, spherical bodies reported by Messier, June 17, 1777 (Arago, \u0152uvres, 9-38); considerable number of luminous bodies which appeared to move out from the sun, in diverse directions; seen at Havana, during eclipse of the sun, May 15, 1836, by Prof. Auber (Poey); M. Poey cites\na similar instance, of Aug. 3, 1886; M. Lotard's opinion that they were birds (L\u2019Astronomie, 1886-391); large number of small bodies crossing disk of the sun, some swiftly, some slowly; most of them globular, but some seemingly triangular, and some of more complicated structure; seen by M. Trouvelet, who, whether seeds, insects, birds, or other commonplace things, had never seen anything resembling these forms (L\u2019Ann\u00e9e Scientifique, 1885-8); report from the Rio de Janeiro Observatory, of vast numbers of bodies crossing the sun, some of them luminous and some of them dark, from some time in December, 1875, until Jan. 22, 1876 (La Nature, 1876-384).\nOf course, at a distance, any form is likely to look round or roundish: but we point out that we have notes upon the seeming of more complex forms. In L\u2019Astronomie, 1886-70, is recorded M. Briguiere's observation, at Marseilles, April 15 and April 25, 1883, upon the crossing of the sun by bodies that were irregular in form. Some of them moved as if in alignment.\nLetter from Sir Robert Inglis to Col. Sabine (Rept. Brit. Assoc., 1849-17)\nThat, at 3 P.M., Aug. 8, 1849, at Gais, Switzerland, Inglis had seen thousands and thousands of brilliant white objects, like snowflakes in a cloudless sky. Though this display lasted about twenty-five minutes, not one of these seeming snowflakes was seen to fall. Inglis says that his servant \"fancied\" that he had seen something like wings on these\u2014whatever they were. Upon page 18, of the Report, Sir John Herschel says that, in 1845 or 1846, his attention had been attracted by objects of considerable size, in the air, seemingly not far away. He had looked at them through a telescope. He says that they were masses of hay, not less than a yard or two in diameter. Still there are some circumstances that interest me. He says that, though no less than a whirlwind could have sustained these masses, the air about him was calm. \"No doubt wind prevailed at the spot, but there was no roaring noise.\" None of these masses fell within his observation or knowledge. To walk a few fields away and find out more would seem not much to expect from a man of science, but it is one of our superstitions, that such a seeming trifle is just what\u2014by the Spirit of an Era,\nwe'll call it\u2014one is not permitted to do. If those things were not masses of hay, and if Herschel had walked a little and found out, and had reported that he had seen strange objects in the air\u2014that report, in 1846, would have been as misplaced as the appearance of a tail upon an embryo still in its gastrula era. I have noticed this inhibition in my own case many times. Looking back\u2014why didn't I do this or that little thing that would have cost so little and have meant so much? Didn't belong to that era of my own development.\nNature, 22-64:\nThat, at Kattenau, Germany, about half an hour before sunrise, March 22, 1880, \"an enormous number of luminous bodies rose from the horizon, and passed in a horizontal direction from east to west.\" They are described as having appeared in a zone or belt. \"They shone with a remarkably brilliant light.\"\nSo they've thrown lassos over our data to bring them back to earth. But they're lassos that cannot tighten. We can't pull out of them: we may step out of them, or lift them off. Some of us used to have an impression of Science sitting in calm, just judgment: some of us now feel that a good many of our data have been lynched. If a Crusade, perhaps from Mars to Jupiter, occur in the autumn\u2014\"seeds.\" If a Crusade or outpouring of celestial vandals is seen from this earth in the spring\u2014\"ice crystals.\" If we have record of a race of aerial beings, perhaps with no substantial habitat, seen by someone in India\u2014\"locusts.\"\nThis will be disregarded:\nIf locusts fly high, they freeze and fall in thousands.\nNature, 47-581:\nLocusts that were seen in the mountains of India, at a height of 12,750 feet\u2014\"in swarms and dying by thousands.\"\nBut no matter whether they fly high or fly low, no one ever wonders what's in the air when locusts are passing overhead, because of the falling of stragglers. I have especially looked this matter up\u2014no mystery when locusts are flying overhead\u2014constant falling of stragglers.\nMonthly Notices, 30-135:\n\"An unusual phenomenon noticed by Lieut. Herschel, Oct. 17 and 18, 1870, while observing the sun, at Bangalore, India.\"\nLieut. Herschel had noticed dark shadows crossing the sun\u2014but away from the sun there were luminous, moving images. For two days bodies passed in a continuous stream, varying in size and velocity.\nThe Lieutenant tries to explain, as we shall see, but he says:\n\"As it was, the continuous flight, for two whole days, in such numbers, in the upper regions of the air, of beasts that left no stragglers, is a wonder of natural history, if not of astronomy.\"\nHe tried different focusing\u2014he saw wings\u2014perhaps he saw planes. He says that he saw upon the objects either wings or phantom-like appendages.\nThen he saw something that was so bizarre that, in the fullness of his nineteenth-centuriness, he writes:\n\"There was no longer doubt: they were locusts or flies of some sort.\"\nOne of them had paused.\nIt had hovered.\nThen it had whisked off.\nThe Editor says that at that time \"countless locusts had descended upon certain parts of India.\"\nWe now have an instance that is extraordinary in several respects\u2014super-voyagers or super-ravagers; angels, ragamuffins, crusaders, emigrants, aeronauts, or aerial elephants, or bison or dinosaurs\u2014except that I think the thing had planes or wings\u2014one of them has been photographed. It may be that in the history of photography no more extraordinary picture than this has ever been taken.\nL\u2019Astronomie, 1885-347:\nThat, at the Observatory of Zacatecas, Mexico, Aug. 12, 1883, about 2,500 meters above sea level, were seen a large number of small luminous bodies, entering upon the disk of the sun. M. Bonilla telegraphed to the Observatories of the City of Mexico and of Puebla. Word came back that the bodies were not visible there. Because of this parallax, M. Bonilla placed the bodies \"relatively near the earth.\" But when we find out what he called \"relatively\nnear the earth\"\u2014birds or bugs or hosts of a Super-Tamerlane or army of a celestial Richard Coeur de Lion\u2014our heresies rejoice anyway. His estimate is \"less distance than the moon.\"\nOne of them was photographed. See L\u2019Astronomie, 1885-349. The photograph shows a long body surrounded by indefinite structures, or by the haze of wings or planes in motion.\nL\u2019Astronomie, 1887-66;\nSignor Ricco, of the Observatory of Palermo, writes that, Nov. 30, 1880, at 8:30 o'clock in the morning, he was watching the sun, when he saw, slowly traversing its disk, bodies in two long, parallel lines, and a shorter, parallel line. The bodies looked winged to him. But so large were they that he had to think of large birds. He thought of cranes.\nHe consulted ornithologists, and learned that the configuration of parallel lines agrees with the flight-formation of cranes. This was in 1880: anybody now living in New York City, for instance, would tell him that also it is a familiar formation of aeroplanes. But, because of data of focus and subtended angles, these beings or objects must have been high.\nSig. Ricco argues that condors have been known to fly three or four miles high, and that heights reached by other birds have been estimated at two or three miles. He says that cranes have been known to fly so high that they have been lost to view.\nOur own acceptance, in conventional terms, is that there is not a bird of this earth that would not freeze to death at a height of more than four miles: that if condors fly three or four miles high, they are birds that are especially adapted to such altitudes.\nSig. Ricco's estimate is that these objects or beings or cranes must have been at least five and a half miles high.","title":"The Book of the Damned: 16","type":"page"}