Expanded Universe (66 page)

"What sign were you born under?"—I don't recall having heard that question until sometime after World War Two. Today it is almost impossible to attend a social gathering (including parties made up almost solely of university staff and spouses) without being asked that question or hearing it asked of someone else.

Today natal horological astrology is so widely accepted that those who believe in it take it for granted that anyone they meet believes in it, too—if you don't, you're some sort of a nut. I don't know what percentage of the population believe in natal horological astrology (sorry about that clumsy expression but I wish to limit this precisely to the notion that the exact time, date, latitude, and longitude of your birth and the pattern of the Sun, Moon, and planets with respect to the Zodiac at that exact time all constitute a factor affecting your life comparable in importance to your genetic inheritance and your rearing and education)—I don't know the percentage of True Believers but it is high enough that newspaper editors will omit any feature or secondary news rather than leave out the daily horoscope.

Or possibly
more
important than heredity and environment in the minds of True Believers since it is seriously alleged that this natal heavenly pattern
affects every day of your life
—good days for new business ventures—a bad day to start a trip—and so forth, endlessly.

The test of a science is its capacity to make correct predictions. Possibly the most respected astrologer in America is a lady who not only has her daily column in most of the largest newspapers but also annually publishes predictions for the coming year.

For ten years I clipped her annual predictions, filed them. She is highly recommended and I think she is sincere; I intended to give her every possible benefit of doubt.

I hold in my hand her predictions for 1974 dated Sunday January 13, 1974:

Here are some highlights: ". . . Nixon . . . will ride out the Watergate storm . . . will survive both the impeachment ordeal and the pressures to resign . . . will go down in history as a great president . . . will fix the responsibility for Pearl Harbor" (vindicating Kimmel and Short) . . . "in . . . 1978 . . . the cure for cancer will be acknowledged by the medical world . . . end the long search." (1974) "The dollar will be enormously strengthened as the balance of payments reflects the self-sufficiency in oil production." "The trouble in Ireland will continue to be a tragic situation
until 1978.
" (Italics added—R.A.H.) "Willy Brandt" (will be reelected) "and be in office for quite some time to come. He will go on to fantastic recognition about the middle of 1978." (On 6 May 1974 Brandt resigned during a spy scandal.) She makes many other predictions either too far in the future to check or too vaguely worded. I have omitted her many predictions about Gerald Ford because they all depend on his serving out the term as vice president.

You can check the above in the files of most large newspapers.

e) & f)—no comment needed.

g) & h) need no comment except to note that they are overlapping but not identical categories—and I should add "People who allow their children to watch television several hours a day." (Television, like the automobile, is a development widely predicted . . . but its major consequences
never
predicted.)

i)
The return of creationism
—If it suits you to believe that Yahweh created the universe in the fashion related in Genesis, I won't argue it. But I don't have to respect your belief and I do not think that legislation requiring that the Biblical version be included in public school textbooks is either constitutional or fair. How about Ormuzd? Ouranos? Odin? There is an unnumbered throng of religions, each with its creation myth—all different. Shall one of them be taught as having the status of a scientific hypothesis merely because the members of the religion subscribing to it can drum up a majority at the polls, or organize a pressure group at a state capital? This is tyranny by the mob inflicted on minorities in defiance of the Bill of Rights.

Revelation has no place in a science textbook; it belongs under religious studies. Cosmogony is the most difficult and least satisfactory branch of astronomy; cosmologists would be the first to agree. But, damn it; they're
trying
!—on the evidence as it becomes available, by logical methodology, and their hypotheses are constantly subjected to pitiless criticism by their informed equals.

They should not have to surrender time on their platform, space in their textbooks, to purveyors of ancient myths supported only by a claim of "divine revelation."

If almost everyone believed in Yahweh and Genesis, and less than one in a million U.S. citizens believe in Brahma the Creator, it would not change the constitutional aspect.
Neither
belongs in a science textbook in a tax-supported school. But if Yahweh is there, Brahma should be. And how about that Eskimo Creator with the unusually unsavory methods? We have a large number of Eskimo citizens.

j)
The return of witchcraft
—It used to be assumed that Southern California had almost a monopoly on cults. No longer. (Cult vs. religion—I am indebted to L. Sprague de Camp for this definition of the difference. A "religion" is a faith one is born into; a "cult" is a faith an adult joins voluntarily. "Cult" is often used as a slur by a member of an older faith to disparage a newer faith. But this quickly leads to contradictions. In the 1st century A.D. the Christians were an upstart cult both to the Sanhedrin and to the Roman priests. "Cult" is also used as a slur on a faith with "weird ideas" and "weird practices." But this can cause you to bite your tail even more quickly than the other. "Weird" by whose standards?

(Mr. de Camp's distinction implies something about a mature and presumably sane adult becoming a proselyte in a major and long-established faith, such as Islam or Shintoism or the Church of England . . . but the important thing it implies is that a person born into, let us say, the Presbyterian Church is not being odd or unreasonable if he remains in it all his life despite having lost all faith; he's merely being pragmatic. His wife and kids are there; he feels that church is a good influence on the kids, many of his friends are there. It's a comfortable habit, one carrying with it a degree of prestige in the community.

(But if he changes into a saffron robe and shaves his pate, then goes dancing down the street, shouting, "Hare Krishna!" he won't keep his Chevrolet dealership very long. Theology has nothing to do with it.)

One of the symptoms of this Age of Unreason, anti-science and anti-intellect, in the United States is the very prominent increase in new cults. We've never been without them. 19th Century New England used to breed them like flies. Then it was Southern California's turn. Now they seem to spring up anywhere and also are readily imported from abroad. Zen Buddhism has been here so long that it is usually treated with respect . . . but still so short a time (1950) that few American adults not of Japanese ancestry can claim to have been born into it. Ancient in Japan, it is still a cult
here
—e.g., Alan Watts (1915–1973), who moved from Roman Catholic priest to Episcopal priest to Zen priest. I doubt that there is any count on American Zen Buddhists but it is significant that both "satori" and "koan" were assimilated words in all four standard U.S. dictionaries only 16 years after Zen Buddhism penetrated the non-Japanese population.

And there are the Moonies and the Church of Scientology and that strange group that went to South America and committed suicide en masse and the followers of that fat boy from India and—look around you. Check your telephone book.
I express no opinion on the tenets of any of these;
I simply note that, since World War Two, Americans have been leaving their "orthodox" churches in droves and joining churches new in this country.

Witchcraft is not new and never quite died out. But it is effectively new to most of its adherents here today because of the enormous increase in numbers of witches. ("Warlock" is insulting, "Wizard" barely acceptable and considered gauche, "Witch" is the correct term both male and female. The religion is usually called either "the Old Religion" or "the Craft" rather than witchcraft.)

The Craft is by its nature underground; witches cannot forget the hangings in Salem, the burnings in Germany, the fact that the injunction, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus XXII, 18) has usually been carried out whenever the Old Religion surfaced. Even during this resurgence only four covens have come to my attention and, not being a witch myself, I have never attended an esbat (easier to enter a tyled lodge!).

The Craft is
not
Devil worship and it is
not
Black Mass but both of the latter have enjoyed some increase in recent years.

If witchcraft has not come to your attention, search any large book store; note how very many new titles concern witchcraft. Most of these books are phony, not written by witches, mere exploitation books—but their very existence shows the change. Continue to show interest and a witch just might halfway reveal himself by saying, "Don't bother with that one. Try this one." Treat him with warm politeness and you may learn much more.

To my great surprise when I learned of it, there are over a dozen (how much over a dozen I have no way to guess) periodicals in this country devoted solely to
the Old Religion.

Will Rogers told us that we were lucky in that we didn't get as much government as we pay for. He was (and is) emphatically right . . . but he died 15 August 1935. The Federal government spent $6,400,000,000 in the last 12 months of his tragically short life. The year he was born (1879) the Federal government spent $274,000,000—an expensive year, as we resumed paying specie for the Greenback Inflation, $346,700,000 of fiat money.

What would Will Rogers think of a budget of $300 billion and up?

(Figures quoted from THE STATISTICAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES,
 

Prepared by the U.S. Bureau of the Census)
 

(1980 figures are extrapolations = wild guesses) (Too timid?)
Much
too timid!—as you knew when you read them, as I knew when I prepared them. I plotted all of the above figures on graph paper, faired the curves,
suppressed what I knew by memory
(even refrained from consulting World Almanacs to bridge the 9 years since the close of compilation of
The Statistical History
) and extrapolated to 1980 by the curves—
not
tangent, but on the indicated curve.

By the best figures I can get from Washington today (20 Nov 1979) the budget is $547,600,000,000; the expected deficit is $29,800,000,000; and our current Federal Public Debt is estimated at $886,480,000,000.(!!!)

The end of the Federal fiscal year, September 30, is still over ten months away. In ten months a lot of things can happen. Unexpected events always cause unexpected expense . . . but with great good luck the deficit will not increase much and the National Public Debt will stay under $900,000,000,000.

In case of war, all bets are off. 

What is happening is what always happens in fiat-currency inflation: After a certain point, unpredictable as to date because of uncountable human variables, it becomes uncontrollable and the currency becomes worthless. Dictatorship usually follows. From there on anything can happen—all bad.

The Greenback Inflation did
not
result in collapse of the dollar and of constitutional government because gold backing was not disavowed, simply postponed for a relatively short time. The Greenback Party wanted to go on printing paper money, never resume specie payment—but eventually we toughed it out and paid hard money for the Greenbacks that had financed the Union side of the war. From 1862 to 1879 gold and silver were not used internally. Our unfavorable balance of trade for 1861–65, which
had
to be met in gold, was $296,000,000. Hard times and high taxes—but we made it.

The French Revolution inflation was unsecured. Between April 1790 and February 1796, 40 billion livres or francs were issued. New paper money (Mandats) replaced them that year; the following year both sorts were declared no longer legal tender (waste paper!)—and 2 years later Napoleon took over "to save the Republic."(!)

We could still keep from going utterly bankrupt by going back on some hard standard (gold, silver, uranium, mercury, bushels of wheat—
something).
But it would not be easy, it would not be popular; it would mean hard times for everyone while we recovered from an almighty hangover. Do you think a Congress and a President can be elected on any such platform?

One chink in the armor of any democracy is that, when the Plebs discover that they can vote themselves Bread & Circuses, they usually do . . . right up to the day there is neither bread nor circuses. At that point they often start lynching the senators, congressmen, bankers, tax collectors, Jews, grocers, foreigners, any minority—take your choice. For they know that
they
didn't do it. The citizen is sovereign until it comes to accepting blame for his sovereign acts—then he demands a scapegoat.