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Fort, Charles - The Book of the Damned - Falls of ashes
Identifier
015733
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Charles Fort
I suppose that one of our main motives is to show that there is, in quasi-existence, nothing but the preposterous--or something intermediate to absolute preposterousness and final reasonableness--that the new is the obviously preposterous; that it becomes the established and disguisedly preposterous; that it is displaced, after a while, and is again seen to be the preposterous. Or that all progress is from the outrageous to the academic or sanctified, and back to the outrageous--modified, however, by a trend of higher and higher approximation to the impreposterous. Sometimes I feel a little more uninspired than at other times, but I think we're pretty well accustomed now to the oneness of allness; or that the methods of science in maintaining its system are as outrageous as the attempts of the damned to break in.
A description of the experience
The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort
Slag and cinders and ashes, and you won't believe, and neither will I, that they came from the furnaces of vast aerial super-constructions. As to ashes, the difficulties are great, because we'd expect many falls of terrestrially derived ashes--volcanoes and forest fires.
In the_Annual Record of Science, 1875-241,
Prof. Daubrée is quoted: that ashes that had fallen in the Azores had come from the Chicago fire--However this especial outrage was challenged: the Editor of the Record returns to it, in the issue of 1876: considers it "in the highest degree improper to say that the ashes of Chicago were landed in the Azores."
Bull. Soc. Astro. de France, 22-245:
Account of a white substance, like ashes, that fell at Annoy, France, March 27, 1908: simply called a curious phenomenon; no attempt to trace to a terrestrial source.
Nature, Jan. 10, 1884, quotes a Kimberley newspaper:
That, toward the close of November, 1883, a thick shower of ashy matter fell at Queenstown, South Africa. The matter was in marble-sized balls, which were soft and pulpy, but which, upon drying, crumbled at touch. The shower was confined to one narrow streak of land. But, with the fall, loud noises were heard--
The source of the experience
Fort, CharlesConcepts, symbols and science items
Symbols
Science Items
Geomagnetic hot spotsGeomagnetic storms and space weather
Sun
Sun spot activity [high]