[19]

Morituri
Salutamus

No, we do not really think we shall be engulfed by the great deep (as of next July - and not by virtue of the brass hats thinking we won't). Neither did the Sodomites lapped in sensuality, 'think' upon fire from heaven, nor did Lot 'think' the Angels meant business, until they ran him out of his own house, to be saved by force majeure. We don't 'think' the world's end can come in our own foolish days, but a dozen times in the past many folk have 'thought' Gabriel's trumpet was already at his lips. So, neither their 'thinking' nor ours is any good at all, not being an intellectual process, but only wishing-believing. "The older a man gets," wrote George Eliot, "the less he believes in the possibility of his own death." And so too with communities, nations, civilizations - the habit-of-living is habit-of-thinking, not to be argued with. From certain pregnant grains of fact (in the granary of the universe), some scientists try really to think, and say this Dies Irae, grand popsoff for scores of millions of us, is likely-probable. Others, equally sincere (let us hope!) say Pooh-Bah! Well, with such choice offered us we naturally 'think' Pollyana must be right - but also, that we are a jackass for thinking so.

And without sequaciousness (word beloved by DeQuincy) we go on to say, this 6th day of May (A.D. for anno Diaboli?) is the 2nd anniversary of "D Day", of sad and triumphant memory. With it comes a word from ex-President Hoover, that the nations face "the worst famine in world history." And other things we face also. "It is time to be afraid," writes Booth Tarkington. "God give us grace to be cowardly enough to save ourselves by common sense." - to which we say Amen, tho with small conviction, for the reason that it is mankind whom men fear, and not Nature or God. Nature may be subjected to us, and God may perhaps be kind - but He does not constrain the acts of men, in which every folly and cruelty find birth. Or so it seems to us. And this pessimism (if that is the word for it) is also deep-rooted in these facts; that our new wisdom (if any) has come too late, that surely no great change in human psychology, morality, insight, conduct can take place in months, years, or even decades - and that for this very reason no world state or organization of nations can be affected, in time to prevent the "D-Day which is doomsday," the war of the ato-bombs. We say these things in cold blood and common sense, according to our under standing of things as they are.

But we do not presume to reckon with the Lords of Destiny. Some great disaster may forestall a greater. If earthquake and tidal wave (brought about, perhaps, by foolish fumblings of our own in cosmic fire) engulf a continent, shake down the mountains - then perhaps man the destroyer will be for the nonce too numbed for war, too crushed for new cruelties, or will once again do all his murdering with stone axes, and no atom bombs at all.

No, we do not 'think' we shall see the decennial of "D-Day" - nor will you and you, my brothers! But of the worth of all such thoughts we have already spoken. But every morning Life surprises us (if indeed we come half awake), and every night, the little Death overcomes us, with the blessing and the mystery of sleep. The Lords of Karma move behind the Veil!

[20]

DIONYSUS ENDENDROS

Endendros is "the God in the tree" - and Artemis Dendritis was a Goddess dwelling in trees - and in the peepul or bo tree dwell the little Gods of the villages of India. The lore of tree worship is age-old and world-wide, but it is not the tree itself that is worshipped, but the life which dwells within it. "The great redwoods," says Geoffrey Hodgson somewhere, "tremble on the borders of consciousness; they have a dim awareness of our presence."

But perhaps there is something more here, than a dim partaking of the cosmic life. Perhaps there is an affinity between them, the trees, and the nature spirits, the elementals, the non-human orders of evolving forms. At any rate, mankind has always believed so.

In occultism there are trees which are of bad repute - particularly a species of the beech. As one descends the grades to primitive magic, the role of the trees becomes more formidable. From Patna, India, July 15, 1932, comes an A.P. dispatch:

Passengers one Bengal train annoyed by magic. Running at full speed, the train came to a sudden halt at the side of a pipal tree, in which there were uncanny movements. But the line was clear, no one had pulled the signal. Without the aid of the engineer the train suddenly started again . . . The pipal was said to be haunted by the spirit of a juggler. A villager who tried to exercise the spirit was said to have been knocked senseless.

In Australia there is a Tree of Tragedy, from which nineteen men were hanged more than 300 years ago. Since then this unhappy tree has hovered between life and death - it is of the world of the un-dead, and can neither live nor die.

In 1935 the Weeping Tree of Mobile (Ala.) was in tears again. Overlooking two vaults in a local cemetery, it constantly sprinkles down a shower of water - for which science can as yet offer no explanation.

And for tree weeks rain fell in a little ten-foot square around a tree in Alexandria, Va. The tree and the rain were photographed by Wide World Photos, and the Forestry Bureau investigated, but had no explanation.

To tree worship, tree magic, superstition, myth, and strange yet well verified facts - to tree lore generally there is no end. India, Tibet, Africa would supply a volume, or volumes each. The hard-headed sceptical spirit of the West (so intensely gullible in its own way), rejects all this, consigns it to the childhood of the race. But not all of us go so far. Nine-tenths, perhaps, of all tree lore is folly - but in all this chaff there are also grains of a strange wheat . . . As for artists, and poets in particular, never will you persuade them against magic, for they are all magicians themselves. And perhaps the finest lines in English poetry are the tree-metaphors of Keats:

As when upon a tranced summer night
Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,
Save from some gradual solitary gust,
That comes upon the silence and dies off -

(For the four instances quoted, our thanks to Mr Vincent Gaddis)

[21]

VARIORUM

The Stars Are Still There
by Stewart Edward White.
Review Notes by Mary Judith Hyde

This book has just been published by Dutton, and perhaps one enjoys it more if one has read the Unobstructed Universe - but regardless of that, it has something about it right up the alley for this reviewer. The book deals with questions asked about the other book just mentioned, and S.E.W. refers most of them to Betty or the Invisibles who work with her. But on other subjects such as new organizations and folk who feel that they must burst into print, the author expresses his own views clearly and emphatically  . . . and elsewhere, "There is no physical aspect of life but has a spiritual complement which its use or indulgence alone can release"  . . . "The task of the world is to find out and grow into these correspondences."  . . . The orthodox will not understand this book, and I'm finding out that the 'New Thoughters' don't, either. But those who have been really up against it in life experience will read it with ready comprehension.

Mysterious Explosion
Talking Horses

Round Robin is indebted to Mrs Helen Lotreck (Northampton, Mass.) for clips on these two subjects. The explosion occurred "in the skies" over or near Bradford, Pa., rocked buildings in a 10-mile radius, left gray smoke and an odour of sulphur, also what seemed to be fine particles of fused metal. No natural explanation has yet been offered. The other account covers the English Shetland Black Bear, the Russian stallion Hans (Berlin), the Arabian stallions owned by Karl Krell (made famous by Maeterlinck), and the mare Lady (Virginia); (Dr. Rhine said she had ESP but couldn't reason.) [Concealed gibe of a woman-hater??] One hardly knows which is the stranger, the performances of these remarkable equines, or those of the experts, soi-disant and otherwise, who came, saw, tested, studied, wrote articles, books, argued with everybody, abused each other, vilified the owners, did about everything except agree on anything. The horses continued to meet all comers amiably, conversed fluently, worked mathematics expertly, displayed a better than average teen-age I.Q., and gave the horse-laugh to the humans. Sic transit mysterium! But some people, including the RR editor, are badly gravelled, sometimes a bit terrified by happenings of this sort.

Periodicals Received
(too late for review)

Occult Review (68 Fleet St., London E.C.4.; Quarterly, 4/6 per annum, about $1.00). As we have said before, this is a must publication for people with 'esoteric' interests. It's getting back to its pre-war size, 60 pages. Contents of April issue: Time and Telepathy (Jane Sherwood); Maeterlinck and His Message (W.N. Brown); Astro-Logic (L. Furze Morrish); The Fire Bird (F.Clayton); The Tradition of Elementary Spirits (Lewis Spence); The Banshee at First Hand (F.S. Cornwall); Eldorado, the Golden Man (Dr. Bromley); Atomic Energy (Vera Alder); The Faust Theme (Rev. Micklewright); Tycho Brahe (Druce) - and Reviews.

Light

(L.S.A. Publications, Ltd. 16 Queensberry Place, South Kensington, Lon., S.W.7. Monthly, one yr. 13/6, about $2.75, 30 pp). Contents for April: Sidelights (spiritualism and psychics); Complexities of Psychic Research; A North Country Circle; Thomas Was Not There; A Meditation on Motion; Freud and Spiritualism; Correspondence. (We repeat an item from Light's account of the Hunter Selkirk circle. Small [22] boy Jimmy, killed in a street accident, tells of joining his parents on the 'other side' - "And what did your mother say when she saw you, Jimmy? -- "She said, 'What! have you turned up again?' But she was darned pleased to see me."

Journal of Parapsychology

Quarterly; Duke Univ. Press, Durham, N.C., $4.00 a yr., copy $1.00. 69 pp. Contents: Editorial (J.B. Rhine) on Telepathy; The Psycho-Kinetic Effect (Rhine); GESP Experiments with the Free Response Method (C.E. Stuart); Digest and Discussion on Telepathy and Clairvoyance (Rhine); Position Effect in PK Tests (Nash); Book Reviews; Letters and Comments; Glossary. (The editorial notes that "the telepathy hypothesis is up for reexamination, this time to exclude both precognition and clairvoyance". Since all the facts on which telepathy has been based remain just as factual as before, many people regard the work at Duke as a kind of juggling with verbal distinctions; but as a matter of fact it's an attempt at psychological analysis. And if we ever get a clear picture of the working capacities of the human mind in the body, maybe we can distinguish the operations of minds out of the body - which would be a scientific proof of survival; this principle is well understood and vital to all PR work.)

-- -- -- --

Old-fashion Thoughts

The potency of the crucifix, the Cross, even the talisman, lies largely (one cannot say wholly) in the fact that it constantly recalls the mind to superior thoughts - not memento mori, necessarily, but memento Dei. -- For this same reason grace before food is in every way commendable, and, to pour a libation to the Gods before drinking was a decent and righteous custom. Before our grossness and self-consciousness these graces of conduct have vanished. -- And besides, who can imagine banker Fatte or Congressman Flatte interrupting an important conference for a three-minute prayer at noonday, bobbing a venerable head toward Mecca (or Wall Street or White House) with a muttering of supplications, while Important People stood waiting? No, no, no, and again no! That sort of thing simply isn't done by sane civilized folk! But it is done habitually throughout the Moslem world and much of the Orient, and to more than half the human race prayer is a natural and public rite - not self-conscious mumbling, sometimes on Sunday, or a wail of indignant entreaty when springs of circumstance jerks us heels up . . . Well, if East and West are the twain that never shall meet, one can see some reasons why the East is not wholly displeased with that decree.

-- -- -- --

Moschus -
225 B.C.

"Would that my father had taught me
The craft of the keeper of sheep,
For so in the shade of the elm tree
Or under the rocks on the steep,
Piping on reeds I had sat, and so
Lulled my sorrow to sleep."

-----------

And Anon.,
famous name,
has written

How enormous must be the conceit of any man,
who imagines that he can sin against God!

[23]

NOT-FAMOUS LAST WORDS

Of late we have been smitten like the Philistines, hip and thigh, by the Editor of Amazing Stories Magazine - and we almost said, with the same weapon (id est, maxilla). Trouble seems to be, our critic finds it despicably inconsistent that a spirit communicator should admit that Deros exist, then advise letting them alone (since he thinks all spirits are as much alike as peas in pod, in mind, morals, personalities). Yet the wise and good contend against evil works, on both sides the Veil. If a communicator thinks Deros are dangerous, should not even be exploited in sensational fiction, we report his words sans comment of our own. Well, we won't insult the intelligence of RR readers with further reply - but we really supposed it impossible for anyone to know as little about spiritualism as does our critic - armed with his Sampson weapon tho he be.

-- - --

Letters to a Soldier. Mimeographed pamphlet (32 pp) by the RR Editor. Basic ideas of spiritualism and occultism, and reading list. $1.00.

Geomancy. Mimeographed booklet by RR Editor. The only separate treatise in print on this ancient and curious mode of divination, still used by modern occultists and often remarkably effective. $2.00.

Used Books, excellent condition: Drama of Love and Death, Edward Carpenter, $1.00 -- Whence, Whither, Why? Augusta Gaskell. $1.50. -- Life's Riddle Solved (Metempsychosis). John H. Manas. $1.50 -- Personality Survives Death (Messages from Sir Wm. Barrett, ed. by Lady Barrett). $1.50. -- The Unfolding Universe. Findlay, $1.50 -- Houdini and Conan Doyle. Ernst and Carrington. $1.00.

To contributors who have sent us interesting and useful material and which we have not printed, YET. We are very appreciative of your interest and cooperation, always have a struggle to know what to select, sometimes have to toss up a quarter if we have one. Some day we'll meet up with an Angel, double the size of RR, advertise it a little, maybe do justice to you-all instead of holding back your material for months on end. We receive data now and then which make our hypothetical hair stand on end; Amazing Stories has nothing on us, except that their stuff isn't so. And these facts ought to be known, tho not for hair-raising or circulation building. But a 24-page Bulletin is about our limit, especially when we are only two jumps ahead of the Wolf. But maybe June will be the last issue anyway, if most of us go Poof! in July, a sacrifice to brass-hattism, ato-bombism. So, until June  . . .

_______

Address contributors in care of the RR -- always send us your Zone number, please -- The price of Flying Roll is .50. Because of the nature of the FR, the Editor likes to know a little about the occult background of inquirers -- we want addresses of foreign publications in psychic research and parapsychology, and of PR organizations.

[24]

"IT IS TIME TO BE AFRAID"

We take our title from Booth Tarkington, whom we quote briefly elsewhere. What we have to say under this head concerns two issues, which are at bottom really only one. They are:-

(1) The general menace of atomic energy.

and (2) The iron determination of those in authority to invite disaster with open arms. By this latter, we refer to the proposed water-level experiments at Bikini Atoll.

The Editor of this Bulletin does not assert, as of his own knowledge and authority, that the experiments will lead to a great disaster. He merely repeats, again and again, that there are competent scientists who do fear disaster of the greatest magnitude - and that so long as this division of opinion exists, the experiments are no less than criminal folly. They will remain such, even if all goes well - since by our present knowledge they are a vast and unnecessary risk.

Readers of the ROUND ROBIN know also, that it represents no cult or clique or special interest of any kind. We merely add our own to the voices that cry out against this enormous stupidity - and it is some of these other voices that we here re-echo, that they may not be called inventions of our imagination.

FROM THE OFFICIAL WAR DEPARTMENT
Report on the First ATOMIC TEST
in New Mexico.

"The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous and terrifying. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred before. The lighting effects beggared description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun. It was golden, purple, violet, gray and blue  . . . Thirty seconds after, the explosion came first, the air blast pressing hard  . . . to be followed by the strong sustained roar that warned of doomsday  . . ." -- Atomic Energy for Military Purposes, p. 254.

John J. O'Neill, SCIENCE Editor,
New York Herald-Tribune: quoted
by Reader's Digest, Oct. 1945.

"The energy released in an uranian explosion is quoted beyond imagination. The blast of flying neutrons comes out as wind with a velocity of millions of miles per hour. About a half a mile away in every direction the blast has been slowed down to 750 miles per hour, five times the speed of the most violent hurricane winds. The air forms a compression wave of hurricane violence for a few hundred feet or more, leveling every structure. Everything within a mile of the explosion is vaporized. The temperatures generated are comparable to those of the sun. No wonder aviators 100 miles away from Hiroshima saw light 'brighter than the Sun'!"

We are aware that the specific effects of these enormous energies upon the open waters, or even the atoll lagoons of the Pacific, are not to be settled by an appeal to the imagination, but only (if at all) by the calculations of physicists. Scientist-advisers of the Navy Department are no doubt confident of their estimates; but other physicists (once again) disagree sharply. A Yale physicist has predicted a Tidal Wave a mile in height, physicist Graham of Los Angeles predicts a 1,000 ft. wave; [25] other estimates range between these. Have we any assurance that only the advisers of the Navy Department are competent mathematicians?

The enormous heat of an explosion near the water surface must inevitably vaporize and disintegrate millions of tons of water in an instant, and these vast masses will be thrown high into the upper air. The hydrogen and oxygen of the disintegrated molecules may then recombine with great violence; a series of enormous explosions may follow the original blast. These in turn may be succeeded by torrential downpours over wide areas. The reaction of salt water to such heats and pressures is even more conjectural than where fresh water is concerned.

As for the action of the 'Tidal' wave, this too is highly uncertain; the 100 foot wave which lately originated by earthquake action travelled at some 500 miles per hour and did not diminish with distance in some directions. Our point here is the extreme uncertainty of the effects, and the grave doubts entertained by certain physicists. At the least there is risk of the loss of the entire task force, at the other extreme a disaster which may submerge the United States to the Rocky Mountains, devastate the coasts of Asia, destroy Japan, the East Indies, the Philippines and the Hawaiian islands, and the Malay Peninsula.

The High Command of our Navy and their scientific advisers are doubtless competent as any in the world, nevertheless one cannot forget that their combined wisdom over years of planning led us only to the most disastrous defeats in American history; our patriotism does not lead us new to any height of supreme faith in their wisdom.

Though the public, as a whole, is not, unfortunately, greatly perturbed over the proposed tests, alarm over the possibilities of Atomic Energy is wide spread and by no means confined to religionists or scare-mongers: we make the point that, possibly, the worst of these fears may be realized through our own folly in these experiments :

[26]

We here take not of these few voices only, amid literally thousands of others whom we might quote - and also of the wide-spread recognition of the possibility that 'the end' may come with lightening-like suddenness. We do not confuse our issues, nor condemn the ato-bomb experiments simply because of this universal fear of atomic energy. Yet if there be anything at all in human prescience, then the wings of disaster hover close.

We say that these experiments may themselves be the form which disaster may take - and what could be more suitable than some act of our own stupidity, to ring down the curtain on the life of half of the world  . . . We hold no brief for prophecies, yet Malachi the Messenger wrote, "The Day cometh that shall burn as an oven" - and Peter, of the melting of elements with fervent heat. As a thief in the night that day cometh.

*****

Further copies of this complete article (3 pages) may be had at 3¢ per copy. Mail your requests direct to the ROUND ROBIN, 3615 Alexia Place, San Diego 4, California.

References

1. White, Stewart Edward. The Stars Are Still There. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, 1946. Print. <http://amzn.to/10fdIUt>
2. White, Stewart Edward. The Unobstructed Universe. 1st. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, 1940. Print. <http://amzn.to/1cPRDAH>