Magic

Apologies to my many readers (all three or four of you!) for not having written for weeks. I'm treating this blog more like an irregular newspaper column than a daily journal. "Choose the middle way, Grasshopper!" So, a moderate essay on a big, though occult subject. Remember, "occult" means hidden. There's a good reason for this, from a Christian viewpoint. First, a quote from James Blish (approximate): All magic, without exception, is performed by fallen angels (demons). No lesser class will serve. I am going to illustrate this with several examples, chief of which is a fascinating book, Fire From Heaven, by Michael Harrison. By magic, I mean all preternatural, supernatural, and paranormal manifestations that seemingly originate from human beings. The only exception to this is any and all acts of Yeshua bar El, i.e., Jesus Christ. If you are God, You do what You will. All other acts of this nature are done by angels, fallen or otherwise, sometimes with express impetus from God.

In The Devil's Day ("Black Easter" + "The Day After Judgment") Blish deals with ceremonial magic in a serious manner, neither playful nor romantic, but rather as a species of engineering, almost. Why demons would make bargains with humans is a good question, but beyond the scope of this essay (later, Grasshopper). Remember, all angels are created beings, just like us. Some may be much older and wiser than most of us, but they were still created by God. One Creator, many created. Satan (whose name is probably Samael) was an archangel in Heaven, leading the Worship of God, until he rebelled. He is a powerful being, very knowledgeable, and is to be respected. He also hates God and us passionately, and must be opposed at every turn. Satan and his demons cannot create or destroy; they can only change and distort. God's angels, led by Michael and Gabriel, implement His plans and creations.

Michael Harrison (Maurice Desmond Rohan) was an English writer who wrote fiction and non-fiction. He wrote a "biography" of Sherlock Holmes as influential as William S. Baring-Gould's. His book, Fire From Heaven, deals with spontaneous human combustion (SHC) most intelligently. He also includes sections on Kirlian or aura viewing and "slow vaulting", or control of gravity. The great Russian danseur, Nijinsky, is reported to have been able to prolong his leaps greatly, and to land as lightly as a thistle. This last ability is similar, perhaps identical, to one of the siddhis, or paranormal abilities, developed by yogic masters in India. Garima and laghima confer the abilities to increase or decrease gravity. SHC seems to involve intense heat (2000 degrees C. +) localized or controled so tightly that sometimes clothes are not burned. Often chairs, floors, and other nearby objects are scorched but not burned or melted. There is no tenable natural explanation. To me it smacks of demonic interference--that is, all the molecules within a circumscribed area are accelerated terribly.

Other "psionic" abilities, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, telekinesis, and teleportation, seem to exist, at least sporadically, in people. I don't believe it. I don't believe these "gifts" are inherent in us, at least not in God's present plan. I believe that any miraculous manifestations, whether levitation or healing, are performed by angels, by spirit beings, either God's or Satan's. We are warned in the Bible about trafficking with witches and sorcerers: it is an abomination to God. These "powers" exist, people. So does Hell.--Dan Moore

Rock of Ages

How old id the Earth? To many, this is a frivolous or meaningless question. The Earth is under our feet: it was there yesterday; it'll be there tomorrow (we hope). . . . I think it is the pivotal, central question about our origins. The scientific and educational establishments have made it the centerpiece of their religion of uniformitarianism. This ill-gotten jawcracker simply means the Earth formed billions of years ago and gradually changed into the form we see now. Bible-believing Christians and others (Muslims included) believe our planet was created by God thousands of years ago and that the Great Flood killed almost all life, re-arranged the surface features, and created the strata, complete with "fossils", the uniformitarians (Lyell-Agassiz-Darwinists or LAD's) call the "geological column". Young-Earth creationists (YEC's) are also, of course, catastrophists, although not out of the Velikovsky mold. Dr. V. was a brilliant man and a careful observer of the effects of our catastrophic past, but his causative hypotheses of the Deluge were too wild to believe. Simply put, YEC's believe Earth was created 6,000+ years ago and all the life at the same time. This included dinosaurs and us. Many species (or kinds) did not survive the Flood.

What about carbon-14 dating? Radiometric dating has been shown (RATE Project, etc.) to be alarmingly inconsistent. Some objects have been dated by different labs at anywhere from 50 to 50 million years old. "Erratics", dates out of sequence, are routinely discarded. Catastrophic events have been shown to affect the balance of isotopes (C-14 to C-16 ratios, for instance). The traditional YEC's, on the other hand, adhere rigidly to dating established by Bishop Ussher from Biblical genealogies. They think (see ICR.org) the linkages in "Genesis" from Adam to Abraham are inclusive and admit of less than 2,000 years. Abraham was born about 2,100 B.C. Thus they date creation at about 4,004 B.C. I believe it to thave been at least ten-thousand years before that date. I cannot logically defend that hypothesis; the traditionalists might accuse me of ignoring the Bible's authority. I still strongly believe in young-earth creation by God. Ex nihilo!--Daniel Moore

Algis Budrys

I just heard about Budrys' death (June 8 or 9?), three months after the fact. He started writing in the early Fifties. He had been been praised by Blish and Knight early in his career and by many others later. His style was clean and flexible, poetic when necessary; his dialogue was great; and his characterization and plotting beyond reproach. He made you think about what he wrote; he made you ponder the ideas and situations he showed you. Not all writers have this reflective quality. Many writers are evocative, operating at an emotional level (if that). A few convey images and feelings and make you wonder about their convictions. Budrys' signature novels, such as The Death Machine (aka Rogue Moon), Who?, and Some Will Not Die have this quality: they get under your skin and stay there. He wrote many excellent stories and was also a perceptive and influential critic. His short fiction and criticism cry out for comprehensive collections. He wrote ten novels, mostly published in paperback; several have never been reprinted. An omnibus of his best novels would be nice. I remember one of his critical columns in a sceince-fiction magazine from the Eighties. He was discussing one of the middle novels in Gene Wolfe's magnum opus The Book of the New Sun. He said he could usually look behind the scenes and see how the author was getting the effects the reader perceived. In Wolfe's case, Budrys said he had no idea how Wolfe was doing it! He called Wolfe a magician.

Budrys was Lithuanian, from an important political family. They fled to the U.S. after the Soviets took over, and Algirdas Jonas Budrys (his name translates approximately as "Gordon John Sentinel"--Damon Knight says it was adopted) was raised and educated in America. He worked in magazine and book publishing and advertising and taught writing. He was largely unknown outside the speculative fiction genre, and unsung. He deserves at least a symphony.--Dan Moore

Probable cause

It's been a few days since I've posted. . . . Hope you junkies aren't yelling, "I'll be danned, where is he?" Ha ha. Neal Adams' ideas on our expanding planet have given me pause (to follow the debate, go to the s8int.com blog). His premise is that Earth has expanded, forcing the original land mass apart and forming continents and crustal plates. Apparently gravity has also increased. My question is: where did the additional mass come from? Adams invokes "pair production", which, if I understand it at all, involves photons hitting nuclei and producing electron-positron pairs, which annihilate to release energy. Conservation applies. I don't buy it. God creates; man converts.

What I want to discuss is the cause of the Deluge event. This event and its aftermath is the most important thing that has ever happened to us and our planet. The ultimate cause, of course, is God. His dismay at the depravity of man and the fallen angels led Him to initiate our destruction. His love for us gave Noah and his family a chance to try again. The question is: was the mechanism of the cataclysm internal or external? That is, did God activate something on or in the Earth or did the impetus for destruction come from outside? Traditional creationist models, some of them quite ingenious, center on an internal cause. I cannot accept these. Overhead oceans collapsing onto the surface ("vapor canopy") and other absurdities would seem to invoke such special circumstances that we might as well quit and just say, "God did it." Allan and Delair and many others agree that an external cause makes much more sense. As I said in a previous post, why would God create a damaged, chaotic Solar System and call it good? I believe God made Planet Five--Phaeton--explode, thus bombarding many of the planets, specifically Earth. The remnants of Phaeton are the Asteroid Belt; the rest hit the other planets or escaped into space. A fifty-mile-diameter chunk of Phaeton hitting the ocean with sufficient force could penetrate the crust and raise tsunamis up to 10,000 feet high. A number of bolides this big or bigger would break the crust and swanp the continents, at the least. Allan, Delair, and others think that a supernova explosion relatively close to the Solar System blew super-dense chunks through our system and adversely affected the Earth and other planets. Tom Van Flandern's exploding planet hypothesis (EPH) makes more sense to me. Occam's Razor applies, I think. God does as He pleases, but He doesn't seem to complicate things unnecessarily.--Dan Moore

Terra ex nihilo

Genesis is the first book of the Bible. It details God's creation of the Earth and all the life on it. A literal understanding of this book is essential for Christians; I am also convinced that a correct understanding of the book is necessary to understand our planet and its history. After God finished creation, He is reported to have said, "It is good." I take this to mean that the Earth--and the Solar System--were created in a relative state of perfection, at least before the Fall of Man and, later, the Deluge event. What I have to say now will probably alienate half of my readers (both of them). I believe God made the Earth with an un-fractured crust (no tectonic plates) and no vulcanism or seismic activity; with an upright axis (no inclination) and a circular orbit; and, therefore, with a climate defined mostly by latitude. Man lived with all the animals and plants ever created, including the dinosaurs. Though it was a golden age in one sense, man's increasing wickedness and the direct involvement of fallen angels caused God to initiate the Cataclysm, which altered the face of the planet and nearly killed all living things.

Much of the rest of the Solar System was damaged at the same time. Mars and Venus were heavily damaged and nearly destroyed. Both were, I believe, habitable--and, indeed, were inhabited by us. Why would God create a planetary system so damaged and disrupted? What we see now is the result of our sin, our turning away from God. It's not what He made for us originally. Why would He?--Dan Moore

As I Please

Hello, my name is Dan. I'm a reading junkie. I get panicky if I don't have books around me. I read constantly. My wife tells me I would rather read than talk to her. . . . My office has two desks, a filing cabinet, a daybed, eleven bookshelves, and over a thousand books, not to mention the books in other parts of the house. To his credit, our ABCD (American Border Collie dog), Corey, prefers my office. When I travel, even to the store, I take a book. I had trouble learning to read when I was young. My mother would sit with me after school and we would practice with the latest issue of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. The adventures of Donald Duck and his nephews and Uncle Scrooge always used new words in every story and didn't talk down to kids. I still love the Disney characters. When I was 11 I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs and my lifelong infatuation with fantasy began. When I was 12 I started buying Ace "Doubles" and reading Andre Norton and John Brunner. Reading is nearly as essential to me as breathing.

When I was 13 my parents bought Merriam Webster's Second International Dictionary (like Nero Wolfe, I prefer it over the third edition), and my addiction blossomed on this heady fertilizer. I began reading this great tome like a novel, page by page. I was permanently drunk on words. I discovered I could manipulate them in a way that pleased others. When I was 15 I began writing poems. My family was musical and I sublimated any musical talent I had into poetry. My Celtic genes were expressing themselves. Reality for me became a series of imaginary worlds punctuated by epiphanies. Now in my maturity I am tasked with sharing theophanies with others.

Catastrophe!

The Bible tells us that a catastrophe altered the Earth greatly, at least until the second coming of the Lord. Many other traditions speak of this event. The first book of the Bible, Genesis, says, ". . . the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened . . ." (7:11, NAS). It then rained for 40 days. Before I deal with the cause of the Deluge, its existence must be posited. Aside from the various accounts recorded around the world, which skeptics classify as myth, legend, and folklore (MLF--or, to the establishment, "mostly ludicrous fiction"), physical evidence exists which indicates a worldwide disturbance in the recent past. This includes many deposits of shattered animal and vegetal matter mixed indiscriminately and often forced into caves, fissures, and ravines. Broken skeletons of whales are found on mountaintops; other unlikely scenes abound. Evidence of enormous wave action is everywhere. Temperate and tropical remains found near the poles and the remains of buildings found under water demonstrate a great derangement of the crust of the Earth. Allan and Delair, in their heavily documented book Cataclysm!, provide copious reports of an event that altered the surface of the Earth, extinguished almost all life, inclined the axis of our planet, and fractured its crust. A "nuclear winter" scenario followed unprecedented, worldwide vulcanism, and the first (and only) ice age was born. These "Oxbridge" authors claim that almost all evidence of widespread glaciation could have been caused by titanic tsunamis and super-hurricane winds.