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CHAPTER TEN

ABC'S OF ASTROPHYSICS

In his journal of January 12, 1968, Deg writes of a conversation
with Professor Lloyd Motz of Columbia University, the same who
had called the attention of scientists to Velikovsky's successful
predictions of Jupiter's radio noises and Venus' high heat:

Motz turned out to be a cheerful sort, full of admiration for
Velikovsky, but of course entirely convinced that the laws of
gravitation and thermodynamics are much more positive proof
against Velikovsky than are some historical events of which
Velikovsky may have proof positive. (...)

Motz is going, obviously, by deduction from laws that he
regards as immutable. He feels simply that, whatever the
historical evidence may be, it would be impossible for enough
energy to the generated on Jupiter to launch Venus by eruption
into the heavens. He wonders whether there might not be some
third body that had appeared in space and constituted a counter
force that have drawn off or helped draw off Venus from Jupiter
or whether Venus had come from somewhere else in space. I
pointed out that Velikovsky is firm at this time that Venus must
have come out of Jupiter by eruption (But not volcanic eruption
-- rather from disequilibrium owing to Saturn) and that we have
no knowledge of a strange third body that may have been in
space at that time within the planetary system, else we might
have heard the name given this body in the records of the times.
Still it is worth keeping an eye out for such an intruder. Motz
says the same problem besets those who think of quasars as a
high-intensity explosion, an eruption from larger bodies. Where
can the energy come from, he says, and how could it gather
together?

With Director of Antiquities Spiridon Marinatos in 1968, Deg met
astronomer Constantinos Chassapis who had studied the Orphic

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Hymns and derived certain conclusions about Greek astronomy in
the second millennium B.C. The Hymns, he asserted, had
originated between -1841 and -1382, but probably in the 17th
century. They showed the Greeks to understand heliocentricity and
the sphericity and rotation of the Earth, and spoke of the attraction
of the Sun as the source of orbital movement, and named the
planets, the seasons, the atmosphere, and the ether beyond. Their
calendar was of twelve lunar months; they identified Saturn with
time; and they referred to a universal law that regulated the universe
and stabilized the Earth.

Stecchini, Santillana, and Von Dechend, among historians of
science known to Deg, were quite persuaded of the advanced state
of the most ancient known science, so Deg was rather more
impressed by the indications of modernity in Orphism, which
Chassapis was exhibiting at the same time. If the hymns had
originated so early, though, they went to prove a uniformitarian
history of the heavens. Incompetent to challenge Chassapis'
readings, Deg could but question the definitiveness of the poetic
lines, which seemed indeed vague, and the technique of retrojecting
the present celestial motions unjustifiably.

The Orphic Hymns, Chassapis also maintained, evidenced an early
knowledge to lenses. This, too, rankled with Deg. He had worried
over a mention of a lens-like object found in Ninevah's earliest
levels, and had discussed the general question with Stecchini. If the
Bronze Age peoples had been able to magnify the stars, meteors,
planets, sun and moon, they might also have derived proportions
and distances among the planets, this making Jupiter the King and
Saturn the retired king. Too they might thus have perceived the
rings of Saturn and bands of Jupiter. They might then for religious
reasons, and because humans are anxious animals, have created a
body of legends ascribing to the heavenly bodies the various
adventures, including approaches to the Earth, that the
revolutionaries said were historical occurrences.

Stecchini believed that the ancients had lenses, or at least would
have built concave disks of copper alloys polished to a high
reflectivity. He wavered often in his basic position about cosmic
encounters. Always quite happy to play the game of catastrophic

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models, he might still be readily influenced by Santillana or another
colleague to believe that other solutions might be found in the
messages sent down through the ages by the earliest voices.

Deg, on the other hand, even when he postulated ancient
telescopes, could not explain away the concordance among ancient
voices; did they have telescopes everywhere? Moreover the
explosive speech of the modern skies and terrestrial crust were
seeming to make a point. Not until 1980 did a space vehicle
confirm the great and incessant electrical discharges of Jupiter, but
then he had for fifteen years been persuaded that the legendary
electrical behavior was real, and on a much large scale than
anything that might be observed today. The same concordance on
many other matters was consistent, too, with ancient legend. If the
ancients had telescopes, they would have previewed the
catastrophes but could only have modestly exaggerated them in
their mythology.

A possibility existed, he thought, that the theocratic elites, here and
there, using telescopes, would purvey to the masses distorted
history, where legends survive and where are perpetuated some
happenings and forecasts; but there would be no compelling reason
for widely divergent cultures to achieve consensus on these. Why,
let us ask, would the priests of the Jupiter (Yahweh, Zeus) age,
using telescopes upon calm heavens, invent catastrophic heavens of
the time of the birth of Jupiter, and of the earlier times of Saturn?

For that matter, the great telescopes of the past century have not
induced uniformitarian astronomers to alter their dogma of a calm
celestial history. However, they have made an increasing number of
observers proto-catastrophists. So telescopes, even if the ancients
possessed them, could not impress catastrophes upon men who had
not experienced such. If Venus simply seemed big and beautiful
enlarged 50 times, why would men go berserk, catatonic, orgiastic
at her regular, safe, distant approach? Fossil telescopes could not
affect quantavolutionary theory. They might even support the
notion of cultural hologenesis that Deg espoused.

The great Book of Venus was of course Velikovsky's Worlds in
Collision. In Deg's long acquaintanceship with the book there

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developed practically no significant errors of astronomy or geology,
errors or omission of sources, or misreporting of legends. There is
some exaggeration and "purple prose", as in the title that suggests
explosive impacts between the planets Venus, Mars, Earth, and
Moon, which he does not claim in the book itself. The style is less
timid, hesitant, than might be deemed appropriate. There are hints
of arrogance as he warns of the dire fate awaiting the theses of
Darwin and Newton (less unseemly today than in 1950, however).
There are no appeals to religion, only rare confusions of "ought"
and "must" with the factual "is". A certain repetitiveness occurs
that may be impossible to avoid, but which nevertheless tends to
overstress and amplify some catastrophic occurrences. He avoids
scientific and pseudoscientific jargon and the coinage of terms.

I cannot here defend all of this, of which the first statement is
already shocking: that "there are practically no errors of
astronomy?" How can a book that enraged many astronomers
commit no errors of astronomy? Apart from the main reasons,
which are sociological and psychological, there occur two
substantive reasons: Velikovsky established his natural history by
assertions of fact; certain events either happened or did not happen
and we weigh the evidence tending to the one and the other to
arrive at a judgment about planetary behavior. Second, after this is
done, Velikovsky asks how can the laws of astronomy permit such
happenings. He understands the laws. But when the behavior of the
heavens does not conform to the demands of the laws, he offers
briefly some ideas as to what may improve the laws, such as the
introduction of a larger measure of electrical transactions into solar
system behavior. He reasons the same in respect to geology.

In legendary matters, he follows Euphemeris the Sicilian (fl. 300
B.C.) who established the scientific canon that a myth is to be
explained by natural causes. And when Dorothy Vitaliano years
later attacked Velikovsky while espousing euphemerism herself,
she failed to realize that she was merely reducing Velikovsky, not
supplanting his method, which was the same as her own.

By the standards that Cook, Bruce, Juergens, Milton and Deg came
to set for sky-body conduct, Velikovsky was actually conservative
and conciliatory to the establishment. He was heretical but not a

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full-scale quantavolutionary. Deg came to feel almost perfunctory
when he argued for the middle-road quantavolutionaries like
Velikovsky.

If a mini-microphone had been implanted in one of Deg's large
ears, we would be entertained by a litany of quantavolution over the
years, emerging from an analysis of his stream of discourse
whenever the subject occurred, whether it would be in Greece,
Manhattan, or Washington, Princeton, London, Thailand, or India.
What happens is this: most educated people are unaware of the
case for quantavolution; the subject is perennially interesting; it is
impossible to state or argue a full case; certain sloganized
propositions are proven over time to have an enlightening and
convincing effect; these slogans are packaged and delivered in
personal and group conversations, with a couple left out where
unnecessary or deemed inappropriate.

I have not had the advantage of an elaborate study, but I notice the
frequency of these statements, prefaced by something like: "more
has happened to change the world by catastrophe than by gradual
evolution."

"Religions are obsessed with primeval disasters."
"Mankind has always been fearful of the skies, such that terrible
events must have happened there."
"Venus is hellishly hot and locked to the Earth."
"Mercury now is believed to have been recently relocated."
"Cosmic disasters destroy time measurements."
"Big changes in the biosphere are connected with general
catastrophes."
"Ancient legends from around the world confirm each other."
"The surfaces of Earth and its neighbors have been torn up
recently."
"The world is electrified from universe to atom with potentials
that can overwhelm gravitational forces when exercised."
"You can't determine what happened in natural history by
natural processes nowadays."
"Science is as non-rational as any other kind of behavior."

And other such simplicities occur more or less frequently. Whether
tossed out in defense or in exposition, the expressions collide with a
variety of phrases with which the well-educated person is equipped,

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such as:

"Gravitation accounts for the solar system."
"All methods of chronology give very old ages."
"The solar system has been functioning as it is for billions of
years."
"You can't trust legends: they say everything and nothing."
"Evolution is a fact: it look millions of years to change the
horse's foot to a hoof."
"The oldest features on Earth are hundreds of millions of years
old."
"No imaginable force can move the Earth without exploding
it."
"Venus' thick clouds work to make it like a greenhouse."
"First came myths, then religion, then magic, then rational
science."
"Any local disaster can be exaggerated to huge proportions."

After the clash of these sets of slogans is amplified somewhat, the
discussion is usually turned off or diverted. Book reviews and
scientific table-talk infrequently go even as far. Once in a while a
foray in strength is launched by one or the other side. Even so,
rational discussion or exposition does not ensue, but rather an
elaboration of one of these slogans with the citation of authorities,
or with dogmas more elegantly stated.

Rarely does the exposition break out of the brush into the clearing.
It would not be an exaggeration to state that in the two decades
about which this book talks, no more than a dozen public
presentations have occurred in which a systematic attempt has been
made by a practiced and specialized scientist in the face of
opposition to destroy and bury one or another facet of
quantavolution, such as the capacity of moving the Earth without
destroying it.

If this condition appears incredible, it is because so few people
understand the sociology of scientific communication, or human
discourse of any kind. Scientists can answer questions that they
pose for themselves, and spend most of their time doing so, and
encourage their "stooges" to ask these questions; but they cannot
well answer questions that are asked by others, true others, who
come out of a different mentality and have different purposes in

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mind.

Take an example from Deg's experience in these years from a
quite distant field, political science, where in parts of three different
books he proposed a single equal tax on every living soul: that the
annual budget be divided by the population to figure the tax of each
one. The shocks, reverberations, incomprehension, suspicions,
reservations, indignation and flustered unmediated ejaculations
assailing the idea make it practically impossible to present or
discuss, even to the point of starting up research in the subject. Yet
when he captured an honors seminar at New York University and
forced the students to expel all their preconceptions and prejudices,
and to dig up fresh facts, the single equal tax was not only
understood by the small group, but was also preferred by them, as
one after another of the terms were defined, the data researched, a
sample of people interrogated, and the idea drafted into the
common and understandable form of a legislative bill.

On the proposition: "Venus is a young planet," first reactions tend
to be equally obstreperous and incredulous. The attack builds up
rapidly:

"The solar system is very old and stable, Venus included."
"The heat of Venus is an effect of its great cloud banks."
"A planet cannot be moved by any force without exploding."
"No force capable of moving a planet exists actively or
potentially."
"Existing records reveal at least 4000 years of Venus
observations."
"Bode's law of planetary spacing forbids its moving from
elsewhere or being elsewhere."
"Planets cannot move from ellipses to circles, and to move they
must take up elliptical orbits for a time."

Against these, the quantavolutionary argument, as it was developed
by Velikovsky and his friends, asserts:

"The arrangement of the solar system is only stable by our
recent historical observations."

"Venus is an exceptional planet in its dense atmosphere and
with its great heat of 900 degrees F."

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"The heat of Venus is an interior heat moving upwards to the
surface and into the clouds."

"The hot planet Jupiter could have contained Venus, expelled it
by fission (nova), and given it its great heat."

"Venus rotates retrogradely, unlike the other planets."

"Venus is locked to the Earth (not to the 104 times larger
Sun's tidal force) in two ways: each inferior conjunction
(243.16 days) finds it presenting the same hemisphere to Earth;
and its axis of rotation is perpendicular (within one degree) to
the Earth's orbital plane (even while 3 degrees off its own
orbital plane)."

"The postulation of historically active electrical forces allows a
planet-sized body to move orbitally, axially, and rotationally
without destruction, as an effect of the distribution of charges
throughout the solar system and of the near passage of a large
body."

"Sacred and secular legends from around the world allude to
the deviant behavior of Venus in vicinity of Earth."

"The Venusian atmosphere, compared with the Earth's,
contains 300 to 500 times more Argon-36, a gas thought to
have been dissipated from the planets shortly after they were
formed."

"Venus practically lacks a magnetic field, it being 10-4 of
Earth's."

"Venus possesses a comet-like blowing away from the Sun that
is much longer than the Earth's relative to their respective
magnetosphere radii."

"The Venusian surface is heavily featured, despite its great
eroding heat and eroding wind turbulence, but has no ocean
basins."

"Fires seem to be burning on the surface of Venus, which may
be caused by burning methane or hydrocarbons."

"Chemical composition of the clouds indicates no
hydrocarbons (or components) yet, but the question is not

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closed."

"Slight indications are present that Venus may be cooling off."

***

The idea of a double sun, the system of Solaria Binaria, as Deg
named it, came with shocking suddenness. It was a monster that
came leaping at him even before he had a name for it, and before he
conceived of a dynamic for it. On April 28, 1963, shortly after
becoming concerned with cosmogony, his journal reads:

Discussions with Velikovsky and Livio have not cleared up the
phenomenon of the similar planes of the planets in solar
revolution (maximum of 7% off) or even of why they rotate.
Velikovsky and Stecchini are not very concerned, since
Velikovsky's theories hold anyway. But I wonder whether the
nebular hypothesis that has the sun throwing off the planets in
an initial series of explosions is true and ask:

Could the Sun have cast off the planets at different times, or
more importantly, could the planets be created on their
common plane by the pull between the Sun and a second sun or
planet revolving around and near (a twin). Then from time to
time a planet would be released from one or the other...

While the people of his camp were arguing with conventional
scientists over the origins of the heat of Venus and the chronology
of Egypt, he took the time to wander about the cosmogonical fields
and ponder what his friends might have known better than he, that
is that changed motions of large celestial bodies signified not
aberrations but somewhere back in time a basically different order.

The old order must have functioned on some basic principle,
probably a simple principle. What could it have been? He knew
next to nothing about formal astronomy or palaeontology or
chemistry. What he was picking up might be scornfully and
legitimately called static, a buzzing of voices, weak signals from
many directions, from alleys and haunted houses of science,
disreputable astrologies, occult references, stern and orgiastic
religious cults and sects, ancient poetry, restless cemeteries of
legends, the rage for science fiction, anomalies, contradictions

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overlooked and brushed aside.

Probably if he had not experienced the hubbub of politics and
warfare, where all is said and done and almost nothing is true, he
would have avoided all of this, shut his eyes, clapped his hands
over his ears. Even earlier, the presumptuous liberal education at
the University of Chicago, which combined in a nettlesome but
hardfast marriage with skeptical sociological pragmatism, had
irrevocably attuned him to ideological quarrels.

Perhaps, too, had he not been pummeled by contradictory and
obstreperous personalities among his friends and family, his
neighborhood and his schools, he would have been quick to settle
upon a regular line of thought. And, to be sure, the din was pierced
by his immoderate ambition, which clamored louder than all else
for solutions. He did not wait upon his betters.

He asked himself what he could contribute, and in line with his
character it had to be "the bigger, the better." It had to avoid
competition with superior heretics, not to mention superior
conventional scholars, whenever there appeared a well-worn path -
solar chemistry, celestial mechanics, the fossil record, and so on.
His head contained a large quantity of whispers and scratches
telling him what to avoid and what might be chosen. He disagreed
with most of Teilhard de Chardin's work, for instance but in
reading The Appearance of Man, he caught a fine phrase that
would describe his own mental set: "On the cosmic scale (as all
modern Physics teaches us) only the fantastic has a chance of being
true." Chardin followed this course by continuing as a Catholic
priest; Deg followed it more specifically.

It was strange that an old, different order of the heavens did not
suggest itself much earlier. However, going through the hundreds of
titles that Earl Milton and he had compiled for the research on
Solaria Binaria, Deg could find no statement that the solar system
had been anything but a great sun which had cast off its planets in
its early history. The history had been stretched greatly over the
past century, from some millions of years to several billion years. A
rotating hot ball of gases, interrupted by its own violence, perhaps,
had operated as a centrifuge. An alternative theory had predicted a

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passing body which by gravitational attraction had pulled off the
planets and gone its own way.

Perhaps somewhere in the literature, as there always seems to be
precedents, an obscure passage or writing would suggest that the
Sun had a companion that had withered away, or, who knows, even
Jupiter may have somewhere been called such a companion. If so,
it remained hidden to contemporary discussion.

How did it happen that a few minds adventured in new directions?
Let us extract some of the ideas that seem to have influenced the
turning of thought.

Legends were gaining respect. After two centuries of general
neglect, the idea of Giambattista Vico that behind legends stood a
substantial truth began once more to pick up support. It is not
without significance that Giorgio Tagliacozzo, an economist and
employee of the Voice of America conceived a lush Tree of
Knowledge whose fruit was of all the sciences and schools of
philosophy and brought it to Deg publication in the 1950's. Then
Tagliacozzo went on a one-man crusade to resurrect the figure of
Vico and Deg became the recipient of a continuous flow of
material, which, however irrelevant to Solaria Binaria, carried a
message of the validity of ancient materials. There were others to
come, the historians of science, Stecchini, de Santillana, von
Dechend, and of course V.

But, going back, too, some twenty-five years, there were the
anthropologists and sociologists whom Deg knew at Chicago, who
respected the customs and ideas of so-called primitive peoples. By
his simple and radical logic, it seemed always that if these people
were so smart about the present, what they said about the past
could not be more stupid than what the great religions said. And, if
the two -- the "civilized" and "primitive" -- agreed that a great god
blew a great wind over the Earth, burned it and flooded it, here
might be the beginning of a historical truth.
Perhaps this was not all so easy. The anthropologists hardly went
farther. Nor did the historians of religion: Mircea Eliade went a
great distance to establish the obsession of peoples everywhere
with their traumatic beginnings, and the beginnings generally

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correlated; Eliade just failed to take the step, enveloped as he was
in the uniformitarian song of science, to say that these earliest
peoples spoke some universal truths.

Nor was it a simple matter to detour around Sigmund Freud, Carl
Jung, and other psycho-historians. Freud had his own basis for
reality, a primeval cultural event establishing the oedipal complex,
guilt, obsession, recapitulation and, for the cosmogonies and
catastrophes, nothing but uniformitarian principles. Jung had
archetypes, primeval to be sure, cosmic also, but purely psychic in
origin.

Velikovsky's was a different story. He generated a formidable
sometimes caricatured obsession out of ancient catastrophes, and,
further, had attached to the beliefs-cum-faith of mankind an original
series of skies that carried two explosive bodies the Sun, Jupiter
and Saturn, then later Venus that looked like a Sun in its
approaches to Earth.

To my mind, there is but little doubt that if Velikovsky had been
able to focus upon the general cosmological problem of the solar
system, in the last decades of his life, he would have provided an
ingenious explanation of the behavior of Saturn and Jupiter within a
dynamic system. He understood that Jupiter's behavior was akin to
a "dark star" it being "cold" (i.e. non-luminous) but with turbulent
gases, and suggested that it sends out radio noises; his unpublished
talk on the subject preceded by less than a year the actual
announcement of the detection of the radio signals by Burke and
Franklin (1955). In the same paper containing the bold surmise, he
had been arguing on the solar system and, just before mentioning
Jupiter's radio noises, he had used the analogy of a close binary or
double star to illustrate the presence of electromagnetic effects
between stars. He had also brought forward late studies
demonstrating a correlation between the positions of the planets and
electrical effect detected upon Earth.

He had argued in Pensée  and in conversations that Saturn must
have gone nova to eject immense waters some of which flooded the
Earth during the Noachian Deluge. Then X-ray emissions were
discovered to emanate from Saturn, a possible sign of recent nova.

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On 4 November 1976, Milton was asking Deg's advice about
mentioning this in a Foreword to Recollections of a Fallen Sky.
"Ransom suggests that I not draw attention to this claim until Sagan
et al. make some claims about Saturn's heat, magnetosphere, and
X-ray emission. The point is relevant to Velikovsky's talks, but
Ransom may be right, 'don't give them any points to avoid, let
them commit themselves first.'"

In no case, however, did Velikovsky venture the concept of the
solar system having a full binary history. In several passages here
and there he broaches the idea that Jupiter and Saturn may have
encountered the solar system and wreaked havoc from a distance,
and he appears to have favored the idea that collisions between
Jupiter and Saturn may have caused the Deluge and later on made
Venus erupt from Jupiter. It was difficult to try to discuss such
matters with him, and when, in his last years, Deg mentioned to him
working upon a theory of Solaria Binaria he let the subject pass
like a report on the local weather.

Meanwhile, most cosmic heretics who followed Velikovsky were
devising schemes by which the major encounters among the planets
occurred incidental to their clustering as satellites around the two
giant planets, a kind of independent Olympian system interacting at
a great distance from the Sun. They believed that the present solar
system was occasioned by the forcible ejection of the planets into
their present positions in consequence of disruptive encounters of
Saturn and Jupiter, after which these large planets spaced out. What
may exist in the way of specific scenarios for these occurrences
rests still in private files unpublished. When Deg and then Deg and
Milton came out with the model of Solaria Binaria in detail, they
met with an initial refusal within V.'s circle to consider it; it was
lamented that these two had "made up their minds;" the existence
of Ouranos as a sky god was denied and other key assertions were
denigrated.

***

The respect and patience of Ralph Juergens towards Velikovsky
assumed proverbial proportions. Juergens devoted most of his
professional life to establishing a fully electrical theory of the solar

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system, including especially the explanation of solar radiance as the
reflection of an accumulation and dissipation of electric charge from
the galaxies. When Deg asked Velikovsky, more than once,
whether he could accept Juergens' theory, he would reply with a
definite negative. He adhered to internal thermo-nuclear fusion as
the secret of the Sun's radiation. Because Deg respected Juergens,
and then came upon Melvin Cook and then Bruce and Milton, he
was never of this opinion. And now, looking backwards, one must
wonder whether Velikovsky should have spent with Juergens the
many hours that he spent instead, and writes a book about, with
Einstein.

In introducing a posthumous paper of Juergens, a "pioneer in the
study of electric stars," in 1982, Milton comments that Juergens
perceived the astronomical bodies as inherently charged objects
immersed in a universe which could be described as an electrified
fabric.

"The Sun," writes Juergens, "is the anode end of a cathodeless
discharge extending from the perimeter of the solar system." The
solar photosphere is comparable to the "tufted anode glow" in an
electric discharge tube. The Sun gathers electrons from galactic
bodies and plasma, and sends out an ion current, the solar wind, to
the galaxy.

Juergens dismissed the thermonuclear explanation of the Sun's
heat in favor of a galaxy-solar electric exchange. The thermonuclear
theory, recently developed, sought to explain the Sun's properties
of luminosity, temperature and stability by its essential chemical
composition, mass and size, assuming that the Sun and its behavior
are effects of the conditions in galactic space, not in its interior. So,
much of his time went into seeking ways of detecting and
measuring the suspected inflow, capable of reflecting a continuous
output of electrical power amounting to 4 x 1026 watts, or 6.5 x 10 7
watts per square meter; this, it happens, registers 0.137 watts per
square centimeter at the Earth's position in space. The searched
for input must amount to 4 x 1026 watts as well.

Now whereas scientists have for a long time accepted the invisible
source of power known as gravitation, they have largely ignored

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and disdained the possibility of an invisible source known as
electrical discharge in a gas. "Electric discharge is a known and
observable phenomenon, yet we might live immersed in a cosmic
discharge and know nothing its existence."

V.A. Bailey of Australia published in Nature (1961) his
calculations, based on the data of Pioneer space probes, that the
Sun must possess a net negative charge with the potential of the
order of 1019 volts. Bailey visited Princeton to meet V. and there
Juergens and Deg became acquainted with him as well.

V. was always excited by indications of unforeseen electrical forces
playing about the universe. Still he never accepted Juergens'
theory, possibly, as he told Deg, because the thermonuclear theory
seemed solid to him, and it is indeed regarded as fact by physicists,
astronomers, science publicists, and of course the educated public.
Since V. never read or discussed Deg's theory of Solaria Binaria,
which accepted Juergens' theory and satisfied so many
requirements of V.'s own reading of natural and astronomical
history, it can be surmised that Juergens' theory was not working
for him, V., and should be tolerated because of the usefulness of
Juergen's ideas and work, whether as an ever-respectful historian
of the V. Affair or as indefatigable discoverer of electrical forces
and effects on Earth, Moon. Mars, Venus, and in planetary
encounters. Long after Juergens pulled up stakes from the Princeton
area to find a new life in Flagstaff, Arizona, partly to be "his own
man," V. tried to coax him into returning to collaborate on one or
another of his books.

Juergens persisted in developing his theory, while repeatedly
coming to V.'s aid in the astrophysical exchanges in which V.
engaged. Never was the issue of the origins and prior shape of the
solar system introduced to systematic discussion. V. generally
reacted negatively, even harshly, when material which he objected
to or deemed irrelevant sought its way into the magazine Pensée. 
Ultimately the magazine was discontinued in part because of a
disagreement between V. and the Talbott brothers on the question
of broadening the magazine's scope. However, he behaved gently
towards Juergen's material, and Juergens' ideas did receive their
initial publication in Pensée  where Deg could study them, along

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with the rebuttal of them by Princeton Physicist Martin Kruskal, to
learn something about the Sun. The date was 1972. Juergens had
already moved from Hightstown, New Jersey, to Flagstaff, Arizona.

Deg was by now knocking the planets around like billiard balls,
looking for the right pockets. He came to realize in the legendary
succession of Greek gods, which might be afforded backup from
divine successions in other parts of the world, a possible sequence
of real cosmic events. His basic god became Ouranos (Uranus),
generally ignored by V. and the other heretics. And, reading in the
century-old esoteric papers of Isaac Vail, and elsewhere, he found
an original divine Heaven, which eventually produced a Sun-like
figure which was still called by the name of Heaven. Thence the
succession, of events took shape: Ouranos-Heaven, Ouranos- Sun,
Kronos (Saturn) Sun, Zeus (Jupiter) Sun, and the antics of the
Olympian family of planets -- Earth, Ares (Mars), Hermes
(Mercury), Apollo, Poseidon (Neptune), Uranus-Minor and Venus.
Each and every one of these had been a principal in catastrophes
upon Earth, and victim of catastrophes itself.

Deg thought that these might be interacting meaningfully and in a
series or succession, ending at the beginning of the present
historical period, when Greek philosophy was born, which could be
regarded as the Solarian Age. From that time onwards, the Sun (and
Moon) seem to have been the dominating bodies of the sky and no
intruder -- planetary, cometary, or meteoroidal -- appears to have
played a major role in the sight of mankind, excepting always in the
beliefs of astrologers that carry down to us their fossil memories.

Deg speculated as follows: there were three legendary Fathers -
Ouranos, Kronos, and Zeus. Hence only these three major bodies
had to be accounted for as the basis of the earlier solar system. But,
since Zeus was the son of Kronos, and Kronos was the Son of
Ouranos, only one body had to be accounted for, that is, Ouranos.
Now, since Ouranos was originally a thick cloud enveloping the
Earth when mankind's legends began and was the first subject of
creation legends, this canopy-sky must have been an atmosphere
thicker than any in historical experience, thicker even than those
provoked by known catastrophes such as the temporary darknesses
of Exodus and other legendary or pre-historic episodes and the

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recent volcanic explosion of Krakatoa. But finally Ouranos
emerged and exposed himself, enveloped in clouds. To some, he
was the Cosmic Egg.

The birth of Kronos and his revolt against his father was readily
pictured as successive explosions of a super-Uranus and the
establishment of the new body, Kronos. The birth of Zeus out of
Saturn was analogous. The planetary children of Zeus, of different
mothers, remained under his nudging regime until the settled skies
eroded his rule and, indeed, all planetary rulership, except in myth
and astrology.

Deg imagined that electricity might do what seemed impossible for
gravitation, although he clung to both powers until Earl Milton
persuaded him that all the problems could be solved without
gravitation, letting Deg cling only to the inertia which he had
cherished all along as the vital element in "gravitational" behavior.
In 1976, he was in touch with Milton, who was coaxing a key
paper from V. for his book, Recollections of a Fallen Sky. He was
also in correspondence with Juergens, and he told both of them
what he was up to in Chaos and Creation. Both were sympathetic.

On April 22, 1976 he wrote to Milton a memorandum of
"Alternate scenarios for the shift of planets, including Earth, from a
proposed binary system to the unitary solar system." He conceived
of the planetary system as strung out between Sun and Super
Uranus and rotating around the common electrical axis while the
axis, carrying the whole set, wheeled in revolution around the Sun.
He is becoming enthusiastic:

I am beginning to feel my oats, Earl. I can visualize as neat and
elegant a model as anyone might wish, replete with formulas.
What great blooper have I made, cher colleague? Are you still
holding to your generous offer to collaborate? Is scenario II
our preferred kick-off? We are having a thunderstorm with
lightning.
Perhaps Jupiter knows!

Further exchanges took place: then came a week's discussions in
New York in 1977, ten days together in Washington, D.C. in early
1978, the same in Princeton in early Fall of 1978, the months on the

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lonely promontory at Stylida, Naxos, by the Aegean Sea in the
Spring of 1980, where most of Solaria Binaria was written in its
final from. On May 26 1980, Deg notes in his journal 'Finished
1st draft of chaps II and III of Solaria Binaria with Earl Milton
1230 hours.' He tells how they would discuss heatedly from early
morning until early afternoon, sometimes arguing stridently, their
voices echoing over the rocks of Stylida, putting their only
competitors, the crows and seagulls, to flight. Afternoons and
evenings they would write in their separate rooms. In the early
summer of 1981 they met again in Princeton and New York, and
again in late 1981, spending a strenuous ten days at Edward de
Grazia's beach house at Rehoboth, Delaware to complete a
manuscript of the full work. Leroy Ellenberger, not far away, called
repeatedly but was not invited to come, for a visitor would have
disrupted the relentless pace through the manuscript. (This incident
may have triggered Leroy's animosity, who before had been
deferential and complaisant.) Pages of notes and reprints lay in piles
about the large room, on the floor, the chairs, the tables. Upstairs
Ami worked quietly at her novel. Outside the low sun beat weakly
upon the great beach and roaring waves. They drove to Annapolis
to visit St. John's College where Bill Mullen and Joe de Grazia
were now teaching. Deg and Ami dropped Milton off at the
Washington Airport amidst a howling blizzard for his long flight
back to Alberta.

The notes and manuscripts had traversed the continent and the
Atlantic Ocean several times, punctuated by messages and phone
calls, and by "Did you receive....?" letters, with chapters and
cassettes chasing the men like heat-homing missiles. By the Spring
of 1982 the book was completed and stood in line for publication.

So ambitious a work should have been created under ideal
conditions, with at least a solid year of side-by-side collaboration
and next to a giant library. If they had waited for this setting, the
book would never have been written. Milton had been troubled by
asthma most of his life. He was placed under great pressure in the
writing of Solaria Binaria. The discussions were heated, the
environment often strange, yet he was less troubled by poor health
when they were exerting themselves upon their creation to the point
of exhaustion.

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Milton worked steadily over the years to make a respected place
for V. and quantavolution in Canadian thought. He was a popular
teacher and, at some risks to his career, he systematically
introduced the new ideas into his courses. Canadian higher
education employs outside evaluators whose word goes far on
matters of curriculum and promotion. He was able successfully to
fight off professional criticism of his innovations in teaching and
writing, and ultimately achieved an influential role as spokesman
for quantavolution.

He was a principal agent in persuading his faculty to offer an
honorary doctorate to V., the only one ever given him, and within a
decade he was once more agitating at the University for the same
honor on behalf of Deg. He held meetings, journeyed to contact
potential supporters, wrote reviews, spoke on the radio, and was an
organizer of the Canadian Society for Interdisciplinary Studies. He
was the principal Canadian representative in England and the
United States. Only Irving Wolfe, at the University of Montreal,
and Dwardu Cardona, living in Vancouver, approached him in
effectiveness and productivity. Two papers of Milton, written at the
turn of the decade, one erasing gravitation as a necessary concept in
celestial mechanics, the second dealing with Earth-Venus close
transactions, are among the classic expositions of astronomical
quantavolution.

Ralph Juergens was struck down by a heart attack in 1979, a few
weeks after Stecchini expired, and a few weeks before V. died. He
was gearing up to participate in the writing of Solaria Binaria. I
doubt that the final manuscript would have been much changed if
Juergens had taken an active hand. Milton thinks not. He had gone
over the general theory with him, and Juergens had received in
1976 and 1977 Deg's skeleton of the book and chapters from
Chaos and Creation. In Juergens' home, Deg's accumulated
manuscripts were used as a raised seating facility for Milton's little
son Davin, when they were visiting.

Afterwards Milton examined Juergens' rigorously organized
archive of materials and manuscripts; Solaria Binaria would have
been improved, but no contradiction would have ensued, given

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Juergens' outlook. Deg and Milton dedicated the work to
Juergens, for his electromagnetic theory was deeply implicated in it.
To the dedication the ancient fragment 64 of Heraclitus was
appended: "Lighting steers the universe." Deg wrote a poem to his
memory and sent it to his widow. It was printed in The Burning of
Troy, along with an oratorio to Stecchini and a memorial to V.

On December 8, 1980, Deg writes to Milton:

My Chaos and Creation is due for March 1 publication,
already outdated in certain respects by what you and I are
doing in Solaria Binaria. It makes me uncomfortable to know
this, but then it helps to recall that Galileo had already
committed worse "crimes" in science and philosophy by the
time he was brought to trial for heliocentrism. It will bring
pleasure to admit errors in Chaos and Creation if the truth is
measured by what appears in Solaria Binaria.

I don't think that we need to fear competent appraisal and
criticism. Apathy is a more real problem. Physicists and
astronomers are ordinarily paid to go about their work without
making waves. They are not philosophers, or even interested in
philosophy. Nor are they competent in more than their
specialized areas; it doesn't pay them to be so. That is why
remarks like, "It isn't physics," or "If that's astronomy, then
I'm King Tut," often carry weight. Phrases like these are the
shock troops of reaction in science. If they fail, then somebody
-- hopefully someone else -- is awaited, to bring up the heavy
artillery. But then maybe the heavy artillery is not there; maybe
it is rusted from disease; or maybe there is mutiny among the
cannoneers. We shall see.

In 1979 he was beginning a friendship with geology Professor
Frank Dachille at Pennsylvania State University to whom he sent
Chaos and Creation, and who engaged himself in the new
astrophysics. Dachille wrote to Deg:

...In the earlier letter I indicated that I have browsed through
your mss; since then I have read it completely through, but not
with hypercritical attention. I expect to read it again, but I
doubt this will be done before we leave for Africa. Frankly, I
am quite shaken and taken by the intensive physical processes
described, generally fitting well the human recordings of the
time. However, I still feel that I would have to understand the

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processes analytically before I could accept them without
reservation. Shaken, too, I was by the views that the Moon
was not always up there; also Venus. So, I went back to
Velikovsky, am now reading Worlds in Collision -- really the
first time. My first contact with V. was in a magazine article
about 1950, when I browsed through Worlds in Collision, but
was turned away by what I felt was his cavalier treatment of I.
Donnelly, and the too easy flip-flopping of planets. Kelly and I
were already working on Target: Earth -- that is, I was going
over his original manuscript, started by him about 1947 or so. I
was deeply involved trying to quantify the mechanics of the
collision process, including axis change, orbit changes, figure of
rotation, inertial response of water, slippage of shells,
atmosphere...My contributions were just intended as
suggestions to Kelly, but he asked me to come aboard as co
author. I think you can identify my work by the diagrams,
calculations, chemistry, white bills, dry points, epilogue. In all
this time, while I was, or we were aware of V., his work did
not contribute to ours in any way. I did feel however that his
work strongly supported Kelly's historical presentation, that is,
the ancient records were, in fact, describing horrendous events
touched off by what Kelly called Cosmic Collisions. As I said
before, I quantified the collisions, based on impact processes,
and found that sub- planetary, or small asteroid bodies would
be necessary agents. I did not consider electric fields between
bodies at a distance. To me the very clear evidence of impacts
on the moon provided the simplest, continuous, mechanically
sufficient process or mechanism -- collisions involving objects
up to 600 miles in diameter. Combining the size-frequency
distribution of collisions with the erratic records in the geologic
and evolutionary columns, I found support for the impact
processes; it was not necessary to involve planetary
approaches.

However, after reading your book, and going into V., I think
that occasional close passages of large (but not quite planetary)
bodies will have left their marks on the Earth. So, it appears to
me now, massive collisions by the hundreds of thousands have
forged the earth in its ca 4 1/2 BY history; by the tens or
hundreds close passes by generally larger bodies will also have
left their marks. As you know, Kelly has been suggesting close
passes as a process operative on the geology of Mars, perhaps
even Venus. It seems that Bob Stephanos has a fly-by process.
Beaumont too. And, of course, Donnelly. It was Donnelly's
work (Ragnarok, Atlantis) that got me thinking in this area,
plus my activity as an amateur astronomer....thinking about

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electrical charging of the "spheres." I do not know enough
EM theory at this time to quantify the mutual interactions of
two oppositely or identically charged planetary bodies. Then
there is the problem of conservation of momentum and the
scale of energies involved. The energy in the earth's magnetic
field is many, many orders of magnitude less than that of its
rotation and orbiting. How a flip-flop can be affected by
magnetic or electric coupling I cannot understand at this time.

Well, you can see that I am thinking along with you. The
Cosmic Collision, in all its variants, must be of utmost
importance in the history of the earth and life. Last winter term
I introduced the subject to my students in the Geology of the
Solar System. The coming winter term I intend to intensify my
presentation...

On August 3, Deg replied from Naxos:

"Dear Frank,

Thanks for the excerpts and clippings. Io is full of surprises.
Purely sulphur volcanoes, someone writes now. But note the
pulsing electric arc between Jupiter and Io. It compares with
my postulated arc between the Sun and its binary partner,
Super-uranus.

Your work on collision-electricity interests me. Also sphere
charging, and passby-electricity. Regarding the last, you should
certainly know Ralph Juergens. Eric Crew has done some
thinking, and an article on the funneling effect in meteoroid and
lighting strikes. I hope to get a chance to read your full articles
when they are available. I can give you the Juergens and Crew
stuff when I return. Juergens, you know, would say, in reply to
your query as to how a million craters could strike the moon in
a few thousand years, that a great many of these are the marks
of lightning bolts, not of meteoroid falls. Further I imagine that
after the major passbys, and a couple of collisions ("Apollo")
and fissions (novas) as conceived in Chaos and Creation, the
space would be jammed with a great many millions of pieces of
debris. Ovenden sees the asteroid belt as remnants of an
exploded planet many times the size of Earth, not too many
millions of years ago. I call it Apollo, set it in human times, and
can readily imagine the debris of Apollo and its Destroyer. We
have a big gap to close between our solar system time scales; if
you grant the conceivability of what I say in my chapter on the

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subject, I'd like very much to discuss with you the seemingly
impossible obstacles to it. I guess you won't see Olduvai
George; there's a fine place (the African Rift) to test the
theories of chronology given the hominid and hominid finds on
various levels..."

***

It is depressing to many to think that the planets may have once
undergone displacement; it is much more depressing to think that
they may have changed motions recently. Of course we must admit
that displacements must have occurred to bring the planets into
existence, and to place them where they are now. But very few
astronomers and philosophers have let the planets shift thereafter,
and practically none allowed this within the time span allotted to
mankind.

Malcolm Lowery, in a letter to the London Times Literary
Supplement August 27, 1976, named several latter-day movers.

In 1960 W.H. MacCrea -- then president of the Royal
Astronomical Society -- calculated that no planet could have
formed inside the orbit of Jupiter. In 1965 T. Gold concluded
that the planet Mercury could not have been in its present orbit
for more than 400,000 years, as it is still rotating with respect
to the sun. J.G. Hill's 1969 model indicated that Jupiter and
Saturn were originally the outermost planets to form, and that
Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were displaced into their present
orbits by planetary encounters.

Robert Bass in 1974 exposed the prevailing common
misunderstanding of the mathematics describing planetary stability,
even when based upon present recorded behaviors, such that
planetary orbits could not be proven stable for more than a few
centuries or millennia. W.M. Smart, wrote Bass, "demonstrated
unquestionably that the interval of assured reliability of the La
Place-Lagrange perturbation equations is at most some interval
'small' relative to 300 years; Prof. W.M. Smart's exact words are
'one or two centuries."

Bass went on to apply to astronomers the kind of pragmatic critique
that impresses experts in propaganda analysis: "...Whenever these

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authoritative statements about time intervals of validity have been
made, they are without exception accompanied by words like
'supposed,' 'appeared,' 'hope,' 'seems' 'might,' and
'think,' revealing clearly that the writer was relying on his
personal intuition rather than quantitative evidence."

Bass repeated his findings at a Glasgow (Scotland) conference held
by the S.I.S. in April 1978, where there appeared to speak also
Astronomy Professor A.E. Roy. Roy agreed with Bass, saying that
"even under Newton's law of gravitation, we have not changed by
more than 1 or 2 percent over a period of more than, say, 50,000
years." This figure allows humanly witnessed perturbations, but is
not enough for the wilder of the cosmic heretics, who want to bring
changing planetary orbits within memory of myth-making man and
even historical mankind.

Thus it occurred that when Melvin Cook, Ralph Juergens, Earl
Milton, Eric Crew, Deg and others -- and V. in principle -- wanted
to move the planets more, and recently, they turned to
electromagnetics, and Bass once more, now in 1978, applauded
their heretical stance, affirming that "if planets approached closely,
there would be electrostatic and electromagnetic interactions not
predicted on the basis of orthodox theory."

This was not enough. The solar system had to operate as a
electromagnetic system, and, though Bass produced an awareness
of the sources of such theory, in Juergens and Cook, it was Milton
who, with Deg cheering from the sidelines, took the fatal leap onto
the plane of non-gravitational fully electromagnetic operation of the
solar system.

In a paper circulated in 1979, called "10-36 =0" to connote the
vastly superior forces at the disposal of electricity by contrast with
gravitation, Milton wrote that the phenomenon of gravitation
implies "an interaction of slightly unequal strong electrical
repulsions between distantly separable objects (or centers) that
yield a weak net attraction." Thus masses vary when determined
gravitationally insofar as they represent an electrical transaction
between two bodies of unequal negative charges. In close
encounter masses undergo polarization and transact strongly as

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dipolar bodies. Rapid and forceful exchange of charge then occurs
which can modify motions significantly and suddenly. Hence the
absolute level of electric charge on a body is indeterminate, as is,
for example, absolute motion under relativity theory.

Deg's image of the whole solar system as consisting of bodies
lined up between Super-Uranus and Sun within a tube of gases and
rotating with the gases around a discharging electrical current, with
the whole system falling apart recently into its present
configuration, proved to be just the mechanism to display a non
gravitational system, and Deg, who had never quite understood
gravitational mechanics in the first place was happy to observe his
model work nicely within the systems of permissions and restraints
belonging to electromagnetic theory. He was doubly pleased
because he had been so fond of Juergens and found Milton so
congenial: one should not dismiss compatibility in scientific
achievement; any scientific (or social group) manager will be glad
to elaborate the proposition: compatibility is as important as
computability. An eloquent instance of this proposition suffuses
James Watson's autobiographical account of the construction of
the DNA molecule in his book, The Double Helix (1968).

V. was the Great Hostess, in the earlier time, of this whole
business; he took no active part at all in it, and the heretics dutifully
thanked him at every opportunity in their writings. It will be
remembered that Juergens left the Princeton area in flight from the
domineering proximity of V. Milton was too far away to be
captured intellectually, though he was continually active in
defending V.'s views. What Deg received from V. in the theory of
Solaria Binaria was nil; all he got from V. was the useful dogma
that electricity had been neglected by scientists and was an essential
factor in cosmic encounters. Whether V. discussed much of
importance with Einstein will not be known until the manuscript
devoted to this subject is made available. My hunch is that Einstein
retarded V.'s growth in electromagnetics just as V. retarded the
growth of some heretics in this regard.

V. made no attempt to relate his work to that of Charles E.R. Bruce
of the Electrical Research Association of England, whose seminal
work of 1944 on electrical discharges in astrophysics had been the

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basis for correspondence initiated by Juergens in 1965, and whose
work was introduced by Juergens in Pensée  in 1973. Bruce was a
cosmic heretic whose ideas made little or no impression upon
British astronomy. They were carried into the British
quantavolutionary circle by Eric Crew when it was organized. To
this day his one hundred and more articles and notes have not been
published in assembled form. Milton caught on to Bruce in the early
seventies, Deg after his meeting with Crew in London in 1976.

Bruce observed the first identity between the velocity of
propagation of a solar prominence and an electrical discharge in
1941, when at a lecture he heard of Evershed's photograph of a
solar prominence that had reached a height of a million miles in an
hour. He writes, "I thought, 'If that isn't about 3 x 107 cm sec-1,
I'll eat my hat.' It was, as a little mental arithmetic, confirmed on
an envelope when the lights went up, established -- and I was in
business as an astrophysicist." He thereupon published privately A
New Approach in Astrophysics and Cosmogony, copies of which
several cosmic heretics came ultimately to possess.

Galaxies were seen by him to be structurally determined as
electrical fields. Magnetic fields spring up around cosmic flares and
bolts. In cosmic discharges, matter aggregates along the discharge
channel, and in this process of electrical breakdown "one can
forget about the force of gravitation, as every arc welder knows."
This discovery Bruce attributed to Bellaschi of the American
Westinghouse Company in 1937. Jets and balls of hot gases are
formed in the process. Bruce also applied the notion of pinched-off
discharges under extreme pressures to the extinction of novas.
Juergens and Milton pushed Bruce's electrical interactions
between stars and atmospheres into stellar interiors, the greatest
step in obviating the need for gravitational theory.

V. lacked the capacity to give and take; he would disrupt any on
going thought processes to call all hands to shoo the chickens out of
his backyard. Those heretics, like Rose and Vaughan, who opted to
exercise their intellects in his garden, found themselves becoming
over-specialized in certain crops, interpreting Venus tablets and
calculating conceivable orbits under conventional restraints. This is
only to say that such heretics became unfortunately limited despite

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their eminent suitability for larger tasks; they were also diligently
occupied, as was the solaria binaria trio, in developing the larger
network of heretics and playing firemen for V.'s fires (some of
which were arson).

The progress of quantavolution in the astrosphere required an
electrical model. Fortunately it could profit from a considerable
advance along the whole front of electromagnetic studies which
was occurring in conventional science, as well as from the work of
the heretics themselves. But one ought not forget that the theory of
quantavolution in the atmosphere was sustained too by heavy inputs
from faraway field: myth analysis, paleontology, and critical
geochronology.

Deg's assurances that the fossil voices of myth and legend were
speaking truths of the skies kept the theory from flying off to join
the conventional dogma that change could only happen hundreds of
millions of year ago. They also blocked the hopeful theory that
comets and meteors could take the place of the planets.

In paleontology we have this remarkable logical position, perhaps
exposed for the first time by Professor Roy in explaining why
astronomers should prefer a longer rather than a shorter period of
celestial stability:

Most celestial mechanics -- orthodox and informed -- would
say that we suspect (it's probably no more than a hunch) that
the solar system is stable over hundreds if not thousands of
millions of years, but we cannot prove it by the methods of
celestial mechanics that are available to us today. We have to
go to geophysical, astrophysical and selenological evidence -
and there, of course, we are again on ground which has been
disputed by those who advocate the very short time scale. The
fossil record would appear to have been laid down in the rocks
over the past two thousand million years, and in those fossils
we have very complicated animals. If the orbit of the Earth had
changed drastically in that time, then conditions on the orbit of
the Earth would, it seems to me, have been such that those
creatures could not have existed. In addition, one could say
that, even if the orbit of the Earth had not changed in that time,
but the Sun's output of radiation had changed dramatically,
then again the fossil record as we know it could appear to be 4

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1/2 thousand million years; similar methods appear to make the
oldest lunar samples of that order of magnitude in age.
Theories of the energy output of the Sun make it appear, from
a consideration of the helium/hydrogen ratio, that the Sun has
been operating with much the same output as it does today for
something like five thousand million years. And so on..

What Roy is saying here is that, for no other reason, a long term
stability of the solar system is acceptable because it has taken so
long, according to the fossil record, to evolve life and its peculiar,
complex structures. Further the rocks are datable by
radiochronometry and the Sun is datable by its self-burnup rate.
This is nice: here we have the queen of sciences, to which the other
sciences had looked for their assurance, abandoning its throne and
asking for refuge among the fossils of the rocks and the furnaces of
the Sun.

Effectively, however, the quantavolutionists had spotted this cross
disciplinary mutual rescue society, and had begun to launch assaults
against the positions of the other disciplines as well. Juergens had
fully disestablished the thermonuclear theory of the Sun, so far as
some heretics were concerned, and substituted (with Cook) a
galactic electric- collecting model.

So far as the fossil record is concerned, Bass in 1978 accords Cook
the honor of having achieved the main victory over
radiochronometry. (The old catastrophists, such as Price and V.,
had done the job on conventional stratigraphy and erosional
gradualism in geology.)

In a footnote that should be a placard Bass writes:

... If I believed those long-term radioactive dates in the fossil
record and elsewhere, I probably would also believe that the
Earth has not changed its position for thousands of millions of
years. However, in another book, Prehistory and Earth
Models (London, Marx Parrish, 1966), Dr. Cook has had the
audacity and temerity to take on the entire historical, geological
and geophysical establishments, and has reviewed in great
depth and detail every radioactive dating method, short-term
and long-term. After several years making up my mind, I have
come to the conclusion that Melvin Cook is right and has

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established that there are enormous and inescapable fallacies in
the uranium, thorium and lead dating methods; and I don't
think it can be maintained that the surface features of the Earth
have been in their present form for more than 30,000 years.

Deg had supported Juergens in several works, and had relied
heavily upon Cook in attacking the full range of dating tests offered
in support of great ages of time. I have not yet introduced the
several other contributors to the demolition of time measures. They
appeared in the pages of Pensée, the Creation Research Society
Quarterly and the SISR for the most part. The attack requires
hundreds, not a dozen, writers, however.

But still there must be a elite, leaders of the republic of science, like
Robert Bass. Everyone got a lift in spirits with his appearance upon
the scene, a stocky dark man, bespectacled, a convert to
Mormonism it appeared, with a weakness for women which, Deg
reflected, was in keeping with history and not incompatible with his
experiences of Mormon friends who came out of the West to the
University of Chicago in the 1930's. Bass was associated with
Brigham Young University, where, paradoxically, catastrophists
were unwelcome in the sciences; a story goes that Bass forgot to
sign and return his contract, lost his tenure, and, in order to retrieve
it, was asked to agree to submit to pre- censorship of his
publications, which he refused. Bass was covered with the medals
of scholarships and degrees and when he showed up, it was like a
troop pinned down by continuous fire greeting a marksman with
just the right gun.

Bass took aim at the brain center of the opposition, the reliability of
planetary motions, and fired. The shot was on target. Blasted was
the astrophysics of orderliness. His troops cheered. The opposing
line continued firm; hardly a surrender or desertion. It seemed that
the facing army lacked a brain center. It operated just as well by
rote.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

CLOCKWORK

Deg's Journal, Naxos, July 3, 1973

The animation of the night skies is both poetic and heuristic.
Each meaning enhances the other and creates a third set of
meanings that are beliefs. These beliefs join the stream of myth,
color, and shape it, change its direction somewhat, make its
fundamentals more difficult to understand. Cosmopoeia is the
imagined form of stars, a guide for students and navigators by
sea and land, the astrologer's subject of story, the marking of
the passage of bodies and the occasion for anniversaries of
related events, be they births, deaths, or disasters. All of these
functions are important to humanity. But that they flourish
should not be pretext for diminishing or denying the occurrence
and greater importance of erratic for diminishing or denying the
occurrence and greater importance of erratic and special
heavenly changes.

Similarly, the world as we see it in the "normal" processes of
constancy and incremental change is a true and real world. The
tides flow, the sea suddenly beats the shore, the rains wash
down soil and the winds abrade rocks. This everyday vision
lulls us into somnolence about natural forces, or when aroused,
to a discrete excitement about tornados, volcanoes and
earthquakes. Like the animation of the skies, the ordinary
experience of nature is a reality that is also a screen and a
censor, concealing and prohibiting the colossal, historical and
potential behavior of nature.

As it is with the skies and earth, so it is with life. The recent
fixation of species, based ultimately upon an operational
definition involving interreproducibility, gives a truth that must
always have been real: gradual changes occur; species can
develop in isolation, by occasional mutation. But all the time
that biology can beg, borrow, or steal is not nearly enough to
present us with the fantastically organized and behaving
conglomeration of animals and plants of 1973. The validity of

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received evolutionary theory must become minor, while the
heavier reality of catastrophic change and origin of species by
potentiation comes forward.

It was inevitable that Deg should end up in defiance of billions of
years of time. He could hardly lie on a beach unless he was
exhausted from swimming and diving. He knew and disliked the
stereotype of the American as restless and impatient, so he
cultivated various devices and appearances that would let him seem
to be casual and unconcerned with waiting upon the world. Since
he was raised without the time-consuming liturgies of religion,
religious routines were not a common means for stopping his time
or feeling it. Sports, smoking, drinking, eating time. More than all
of this, he played games against time. He wanted quick results in
everything he did; but the world is not constructed to provide
results, much less to provide them quickly.

The same urge to quick results inclines one toward intellectualism,
because so much can be solved in the mind and the world of the
imagination can be rich and malleable; fat gobs of time can be
reduced to frizzled specks, and one can leap over far spaces and
epochs. However, intellectualism is also opposed to both
physiological and mental time-control in that it forces one to be
physically inactive over long stretches of time; research and writing
are termite mounds of time and a single footnote, a single bad line,
can drive one to despair.

Sometimes I think that Deg was one of Alfred Adler's pure
compensatory characters, who set himself very often to do precisely
what he was unfit to do because of his unfitness. If under such
circumstances he was not destroyed by the contradiction, it was
because he often escaped into the activities already noted but also
into sex, travel, brief adventures, commitments to thing extraneous.
Most of all, and too important to call an escape, was his taking on
two or more large tasks at the same time, so that while to the
outside world he appeared to be proceeding carefully along one
line, at a measured pace, he was in fact speeding along other lines
and then doubling back to the first line of engagement.

Paradoxically, the intellectual who is so fretful of time's arrow

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hastens but to sit and stare upon dead written pages, to pitch his
nervous system and organs upon his several moving digits, gaze at
the stars, watch the rats run, listen, observe, and discuss only that
world that his mind will accept for consideration -- all of this
consuming such enormous amounts of time that those who in turn
observe the intellectual cannot be blamed for thinking him mad for
his dissociation and hatred of reality, his obsession, his wrestling
with details, his fear and guarding of his own thoughts, his ruthless
hunting down of words and meanings, amounting in the end to the
squandering of the very object of his anxiety, time itself, time in the
thousands of hours of which every minute, he insists, counts dear,
and if this lunacy is not sufficiently oxymoronic, the time-saving
time-waster can dedicate himself to time-studies.

Perhaps one-fourth of all Deg's work on quantavolution over the
year dealt with time. Perhaps a quarter of the three thousand pages
that he wrote were concerned with or governed by calculations of
time. Before he had entered the field he had been possessed by
problems of time and had written but not finished what was
supposed to be a lengthy philosophical and psychological poem on
the subject. By virtue of the tricks I have already alluded to, he
would escape the psychiatrist's verdict of obsession, but in fact he
was obsessed and his impatient and striving character often led to
pitched battles against time; it was the most uncontrollable element
in life.

He beat time as a child by being precocious, stripping off three
years of schooling, and he became the youngest member of his
graduating class at the University. But then time reacted smartly at
war and he felt the full poignant irony of "Hurry up and wait" the
life of the soldier. He nosed his jeep into many destroyed towns
where clocks were stopped; hanging crazily, sober and still, or
startled faces starting from the rubble -- they were all wrong. Are
all clocks wrong? Madness about time was a disease of the poets,
literati and humanists; turn to scientists, and 99 out of 100 are
perfectly satisfied that they are measuring an absolute, an ever-so
old process; they are like the bureaucrat who is content to keep the
entrepreneur waiting, because his check comes in regularly no
matter what, while for the businessman time is money. For these
scientists, there was something called the relativity of time, which

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was reserved for their Sunday outings.

All of this joins in with Deg's anti-authoritarianism and
republicanism (which goes back to sibling rivalry) and gave him his
ideological stance confronting time . If authorities would say time
was long, well then he would be pleased to discover time to be
short, and thus more containable and controllable. There was a
contradiction here, however, but it can be explained away. Deg had
always been a darwinian, but might this not have been because
Darwin was anti-authoritarian, anti-theologian, too, while trying to
be nice to the traditional believers? Deg was exactly like this,
against the scriptures as authority, against church authority as such,
but then respectful and even loving towards the many "nice" and
"gentle" believers he met. How could he join the theologians, the
short-time creationists? Well, he didn't really. He found them to be
the most active critics of macrochronism. They were experienced
microchronists, who knew the history of the defeat of
microchronism well because it was their history.

The problems of time came in two batches. First there was the
historical batch, epitomized in V.'s Ages in Chaos. Second, there
was the geological batch, which could also be epitomized in V.'s
Earth in Upheaval. Let us see what V. did with time in both
regards.

V. aligned and connected Jewish and Egyptian history which had
hitherto gone along on separate tracks. The alignment settled upon
the Exodus at about 1450 B.C., the Biblical date tied it into the end
of the 13th Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt with Hyksos
invaders as the Amalekite enemies of the Biblical Hebrews. He
begins the splendid 18th Dynasty of Egypt at the time of Saul and
David. King Solomon he places alongside Queen Hatshepsut of
Egypt, and has her, as Queen of Sheba, visiting his court. And so
on.

The reconstruction attempted in his volumes on later time, as I have
already indicated, fell victim to the scholars of the "British
Connection."

Dropping by 500 years the accepted chronology of Egypt after the

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Exodus, and holding the Exodus at -1450 meant that all dates
elsewhere, whether of the Near East, Greece, or finally Italy, which
had been set by coordination with Egyptian artefacts and
occurrences, required resetting by 500 years as well. In Greece, a
gap which had been closed only by creating a barbaric "five
hundred years of the Dark Ages," was promptly nominated for
elimination. A grateful rush of scholars to profit from the new
chronology did not occur; the Greek scholars were frozen to their
Positions until the Egyptologists (all 30 of them) would admit the
loss of the five centuries. Then they would follow suit. Similar
scientific lags continued in the other ages affected by V.'s
reconstruction of Egyptian chronology.

When did the mistaken chronology begin? V. traced the major error
to Manetho of the third century, B.C. as reported and adopted later
by scholars. Manetho was eager to prove to the Greeks and Asians
the superior antiquity of Egyptian civilization. Berosus followed
suit, exaggerating for his Assyro-Babylonian country by tens of
thousands of years. Eratosthenes, soon afterwards, took up the
cudgels for his Greek compatriots and moved Greek dates
backwards by approximately the length of the "Dark Age." The
motive of ethnocentrism thus played a large part in the beginnings
of modern chronology, as it did in V.'s stupendous reconstruction
itself. But it was not at all clear that the ancient chronographers
following Manetho were wrong, for their errors were covered up by
a heavy burden of refinements and rationalizations up to the present
time. If V. had written nothing else in his life he would have
deserved the highest accolades for his essay on "Astronomy and
Chronology."

Soon after his first attack upon Egyptian chronology was published,
V. sent a copy to Etienne Drioton, Director General of the Service
for Antiquities of Egypt and received shortly one of the most nearly
prefect replies an author could wish for, and, for that reason alone,
as a model for my readers, I reprint it here. (My translation is from
the French original.)

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Cairo, May 29, 1952

Dear Doctor,

You were kind to have had me sent your beautiful book, Ages
in Chaos, which I received this morning, and which I have read
nearly in entirely, so exciting and interesting is it.

You have certainly jostled -- and with what vigor! -- many
historical tenets of ours which we regarded as firmly
established. But you do it with a total absence of prejudice and
with an impartial and complete documentation, which is most
sympathetic. Your conclusions might be argued at every step:
whether they are allowed or not, they will have posed anew the
problems and compelled a fundamental discussion of them in
the light of your new hypotheses. Your beautiful book will
have been, in every way, very useful to science.

I thank you warmly for having sent it to me and I pray you
accept, Dear Doctor, the assurance of my sentiments of cordial
devotion.

Etienne Drioton

V. received few such letters concerning Age in Chaos. Actually, a
number of archaeological discoveries were made in the years
following Ages in Chaos which tended to corroborate V.'s
reconstruction of time. One of the most important of his priorities
for testing was at the town of El-Arish, between Egypt and Israel,
where he believed might be uncovered the capital of the Hyksos,
Avaris, and, if so, then there might be demonstrated the further
correspondence of Biblical and Egyptian history in revealing that
the city fell to a join Egyptian-Judean army, one led by an Egyptian
Prince (Ahmose?) and the other by King Saul. This excavation has
not been accomplished.

V. paid attention closely to developments in carbondating, for here
was one of the places which he thought might give him a quick and
decisive victory. He corresponded with experts, beginning with
Libby, founder of the C14 system of dating. His pathetic and
persistent efforts to achieve a dating of 18th dynasty objects were
put into a manuscript called "Ash," selections from which were
published in 1974. To Libby he writes (October 7, 1953), "I also

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assume that if analyses of organic objects dating from the time of
Hatshepsut, Thutmose II, III, or Amenhotep II, Akhnaton were
made, the results will indicate a reduction by as much as 500 years
from the conventional figures; and over 650 years for objects of
Seti or Ramses II or Merneptah." At the same time, he suggests the
dating of Pleistocene fossil beds and petroleum deposits, predicting
a late date. Libby was unhelpful, but said petroleum datings by Cl4
had shown "great antiquity."

Now V. begins a circuit of frustration. Finally a German admirer,
Ilse Fuhr, who was later to publish a fine work dealing with comets
in early times, with courage and persistence obtained 25 grams of
three different bits of wood from the tomb of Tutankhamen. V. was
delighted and expected the results to show -820, not the
conventional -1350. In another letter he did worry over the effects
of original atmospheric contamination of the samples owing to a
catastrophe. The University of Pennsylvania laboratory performed
the tests and came up on the middle, between the conventional and
heretical dating. Bruce Mainwaring had used his strong ties with
the University to help arrange the tests.

Seven years later the British Museum tested reed and palm nut
kernels of Tutankhamen's tomb and emerged with dates of about
846 and 899 B.C., both of which dates were never published and
then seemingly lost or misplaced them. Other dates of the 18th
Dynasty appeared in time, not so definite and reliable as to dismiss
V.'s claims, but not such as to please him.

By this time, Deg had read Melvin Cook's article of 1970 in
which, retrocalculating the Cl4 in the atmosphere, using the rates of
Libby, Cook figured that the atmosphere would have had to have
been constituted (or reconstituted) some 13,000 years ago. Deg's
deduction was that a series of catastrophes would have created the
same effect. Further, Deg observed increasingly wild fluctuations as
well as a secular swing of the C14 dates from "known" dating and
bristlecone pine dates as time marched backwards, and, without
straining the discrepancies overly much, he could conclude that
carbonating would be both invalid and unreliable before 3000 years
ago, which ushered in the Venusian Age (in his terminology).

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Deg was further impressed by the studies of John Lynde Anderson
and George Spangler, which he read in 1974, not long after their
publication, that challenged the very constancy of the radiocarbon
component of the atmosphere. Thenceforth he paid small heed to
earlier radiocarbon readings, whether they seemed to support or
oppose his theories. On the other hand, V. who had expected
salvation in Cl4, could not readily denounce the system afterwards,
and played on occasion the game of using Cl4 dates when
convenient to do so, nor did he ever renounce Cl4 in principle.

To this day, Deg has not been able to understand how V., having
succeeded in restructuring the chronology of Egypt to the end of the
18th Dynasty, could then have made further drastic changes
needlessly, displacing forwards the great Kings Ramses II and III.
Deg had so much confidence in V.'s ability and so little knowledge
of later Egyptian history that he accepted the new chronology in
toto as it came to him by word of mouth, by hasty readings of
manuscript pages, and by the published volume of Peoples of the
Sea when it appeared in 1977, after many years in manuscript and
printer' proofs. Very soon thereafter doubts were heard coming out
of the "British Connection," from persons whom Deg had come to
respect. None of the Americans around V., nor V. himself, had met
any of the British and were inclined to put on airs or to rant against
them.

Deg did not try to follow the controversy, which was based upon
close historical analysis. He thought to wait until the dust would
settle. He was made uneasy by a lurking contradiction in V.'s
position. The great catastrophist seemed to be putting aside
catastrophism in ordering the centuries. In early 1972, William
Mullen had written in Pensée that

Two assumptions from Worlds in Collision are taken as
fundamental: first that no chronology using retrograde
calculation of the positions of heavenly bodies is reliable earlier
than -687; second, that the principle clue for synchronizing
histories of ancient nations should be the break caused in all of
them by the catastrophic events.

The second point is at issue here. Deg agreed with Mullen. For
example, he made the following note :

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It is interesting that in one of his articles Isaacson, doubtful
perhaps of the strong basis for celestial connection, ventures
that V.'s reconstruction of chronology can be separated from
catastrophism. This I think not to be so. First, V. would never
had revised chronology so boldly if he had not discovered the
key to chronology in two parallel accounts of the same disaster
-- one in the papyrus Ipuwer at the end of the Middle Bronze
Age of Egypt, the other in Exodus. Second, the evidence of
catastrophe is what explains the end of the Mycenaean
civilization and ties it directly into the Archaic Greek culture
that succeeds it, both in the 8th-7th centuries, and then ties
both of these into the Biblical accounts and many other
accounts of the same disaster at the same time. In short, it is
catastrophic theory that sired the revised chronology of V. and
if the genius of that reconstruction is extraordinary, it is the
effect of hereditary genius, a "fall-out" of genius from a single
elemental key idea, as Juergens has written. I say this while
reminding myself that the Exodus disaster was the key, but the
motive came in the desire to reverse the order of Moses and
Akhnaton: to recapture Moses and monotheism for Israel. Not
that V. cared for monotheism in itself. But since the world
regarded it as an invention of paramount importance, he was
ready to fight for it.

Not until 22 December 1981, do we find Deg at the denouement of
his doubts; writing to Derek Shelley-Pearce (S.I.S.) in England,
Deg says:

The Glasgow Chronology is in full swing, it appears, with John
Bimson (SISR 5:1) and Martin Sieff (Workshop 4:2) pushing it
mightily. And the readers, no doubt, a bit giddy.(....)

I am glad to see that Claude Schaeffer's work has come into
its own with Geoffrey Gammon's article in SISR 4:4. It is one
of only several general studies of value in cultural
quantavolution. Gammon approached two points that he might
have developed more fully. First, the best benchmarks of past
ages are catastrophes: cultural quantavolutions coincide with
natural quantavolutions. For a century scholars have been
playing at quantavolutionary theory unwittingly by using
catastrophic age-breakers. It reminds me of how some early
geologists tried to dismiss the word "strata" because that
implied discontinuities, and discontinuities implied you know
what...

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The other point to stress is that the end of so many settlements
around -1200 (conventional dating) indicates that this date
actually falls between -780 and -680, that is, the Martian
period. Gammon seems to shunt aside this evidence when, with
his mind perhaps upon Egypt, he says, regarding the
destructions that ended the Late Bronze Age, "the evidence
that these may have been due to natural causes rather than the
agency of man remains scanty." (p. 107)

Perhaps Velikovsky did the same, in order to progress with his
idea of further shortening Egyptian chronology; that is, he
abandoned his fix on the Martian episodes. To me, the term
"Peoples of the Sea" is a euphemism for the Martian-Moon
Venus disturbances, a kind of reductionism. Wars, movements
of people, and social turmoil are expectable in natural disasters
and are a concomitant and effect of them. To show that they
happened certainly does not prove that extraterrestrial events
and general catastrophes did not happen, but the contrary.
Applying the term "Peoples of the Sea" to a construction of a
fourth century Ramses III is already a warning sign of trouble
ahead; one cannot move Martian events to the fourth century;
one may not give Ramses III a special "Peoples of the Sea" of
his own. The Glasgow chronology may find its clincher by
research of Martian period disasters in Egypt, possibly finding
the evidence around the time of Merneptah or Ramses III (...)

He goes on to write:

As Sieff says, "By placing the 19th Dynasty so late,
Velikovsky ironically obscured the cause for these destructions
which he himself had found." The reasons why he did so are
also obscure. Granted that my offhand remarks should carry
little weight, surely some scholar who understood the
catastrophe-culture-history interfaces must have read and
disputed this part of the reconstruction of history. When
Velikovsky was writing this book with the others still to
appear, was he by-passing his own catastrophic benchmarks to
complete a descriptive history postulated on different grounds?
When the Glasgow Chronology began to surface after his
relevant book, soon two books, were in print, I heard
recriminations and ducked out. I should have given more
attention to this breakup of the consensus around him, but
there were too many intimations of the "Love me, love my
dog." kind, for which science has no place. I am going to have

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trouble with this matter when I come to it in the course of
writing "The Cosmic Heretics."

There were to be four volumes of Ages in Chaos. The first scored a
large success with a group of competent heretics. The second and
third volumes, not treating of catastrophe, but of chronology and
archaeology, failed to persuade most of the heretics and their dates
were soon replaced by a new reconstruction that tied into the first
volume very well.

The reviews in the orthodox media were bad, usually attacking V.
for the wrong reasons. The fourth volume was held up indefinitely
by Elisheva and her daughters. Deg advised that it be printed, even
if it held a basic flaw, because V., though increasingly doubtful,
intended that it be ultimately published, and because V., though
increasingly doubtful, intended that it be ultimately published, and
because V., even when he was wrong, was more instructive than
most people when right.

None, among the anti-heretics, seemed to notice that V.'s
supporters, supposedly so slavish, had quickly and thoroughly
analysed and rejected two thirds of his general theory of Egyptian
chronology. Indeed the opponents would still proceed as before,
talking of his cult and his claque. There was restraint among the
heretics in attacking V.'s newer books, and Kronos hardly
attended to them at all. Evidently, the heretics could also ignore
books that they didn't like. Or is this what one ought to do with
books that are neither catastrophic nor correct?

***

For a catastrophist to limit his concerns is difficult. Once you have
the planets misbehaving, you must acknowledge that it may have
been their wont in earlier times as well. V. decided that he had
better investigate the earthly effects of prior cosmic disasters; if
prehistoric catastrophes could be demonstrated to have occurred,
then historical ones might become more believable. So he wrote
Earth in Upheaval. V. did not set up a timetable of catastrophes.
However, he adduced more evidence that the -1450 to -687 periods
suffered grand natural disasters, and he introduced doubts ranging

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backwards. He paid little attention to the burgeoning science of
radiochronometry aside from carbonating, nor did he ever exert his
powers in this area. To strengthen the case for late catastrophism,
he brought forward instead the studies of others on glacial melting
rates, sudden ocean level drops, very recent alpine orogeny, rapidly
drying lakes, waterfall cutbacks, late fossil assemblages,
surprisingly recent Cl4 datings, the simultaneous devastations of
civilization (using Schaeffer), excavations of warm-weather life
forms and human settlements in impossibly cold zones of today,
Indian traditions of orogeny and other quantavolutionary events,
changes in magnetic orientations, and the large-scale ash levels on
ocean bottoms.

He did not know Otto Schindewolf's work, then appearing, which
tied the great periods of biosphere destruction to cosmic events and
consequent radiation storms. He followed Dunbar's Historical
Geology in examples of very early disastrous effects. He advanced
the idea that coal was formed from biosphere masses propelled and
dumped by huge tidal waves, without specifying which waves and
when, and used Heribert Nilsson's studies of German coals to
prove his case. He relied heavily, too, upon the early English
catastrophists. He used also the work of American creationists.

In a few lines, he expressed his feeling that the uneven lengths
given to the ages were "basically wrong;" The remark is strange,
cryptic, confused. He "does not suggest either a lengthening or a
shortening of the estimated age of the earth or the universe," and
then adds irrelevantly and naively that a religious mind should not
be upset by great ages. It was all rather humanistic and old
fashioned.

Deg found that the accretion of evidence of catastrophes was much
easier than the application of a time scale to them. V. had not set
himself to demolishing the new techniques of radiochronometry,
possibly because he believed them valid, possibly, too, because he
felt that he could obtain the right to his catastrophes down to Noah
(6000-9000 years ago) without contending with radiochronometry,
which does not begin to operate, except for Cl4 and certain tests
still in the realm of the exotic, until 100,000 years back.

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Also V. had done practically all of his writing before the issues of
radiochronometry came forward, before several of his supporters
engaged in its study on their own accord, and before the creationists
had worked to discredit it.

Deg set himself two tasks. One was to set up a model of past
catastrophes, hence of the ages. The second was to classify and
survey all existing techniques of measuring geological time, and to
state the grounds for believing them invalid. He had always to bear
in mind that one of them -- he ultimately included over fifty
measures -- might be valid, even if grossly valid, and thereupon
would seriously damage his model of natural history and at the
worst render the model only an intriguing metaphor. He was
surprised repeatedly as he went from one test to another to discover
that none existed without a flaw or a question, either of which
might be fatal to its validity or reliability.

His major teacher was a man he had not met, Melvin Cook, who
went on a rampage among the uranium-lead, potassium-argon, and 
other tests, pointing out inconsistencies, contradictions,
incompatibilities, and arbitrary assumptions. Cook was not an
exoterrestrialist. His attacks are almost all from the materials of
geology and chemistry. His exoterrestrialism, such as it is, comes in
estimating intakes and outputs of gaseous elements from the
earth's atmosphere.

Perhaps the valuable critics of radiochronometry number no more
than a score. Deg could name a half-dozen besides Cook whose
work he regarded as heroic and essential to establishing and
maintaining his perilous stance. I mentioned Anderson and Spangler
on Cl4. There was reliable Juergens who showed theoretically that
the electrical environment could effect enormous changes in
radiation rates, such as to annihilate time. There was N.J.G. Sykes
who, in a simple test published in the S.I.S.R., gave grounds for
believing that a changing magnetic field would augment or diminish
radioactive decay rates. Then, too, there came Roy Mckinnon, also
writing in the S.I.S.R, and Thomas G. Barnes, writing in 1977 on
the recent origin and decay of the earth's magnetic field.

R.V. Gentry and his team repeatedly showed, to everyone's

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astonishment, that extremely short-lived polonium halos occur in
the absence of parent uranium, evidencing that the host rock was
formed very quickly. Coal was examined that seemed to have
formed in days instead of millions of years.

Deg began to treat the longer-range radioclocks as he did
radiocarbon dating, an indicator at best of relative time, and
vulnerable to the kind of electro-chemical turbulence that is inherent
in natural catastrophes that begin with disorders in the sky.
Essentially this freed him to consider together all factors that could
have left some indicator of time upon or around a specimen rock or
site. Since no technique appeared by itself to be a tamper-proof,
independently set, and auto-operative clock, every technique or test
had to take its place in the group of indicators of time, some of
which were carried into the setting to measure its time and others of
which were inherent in the geology and circumstance of the setting.
All too often, geophysicists came to believe that there is scientific
validity in what is a purely administrative and industrial axiom -
that tools and products should be standardized in as few forms as
possible -- and therefore they assumed that there must be some true
superiority in a tool like potassium 40- argon 40 radiochronometry
because it can physically be applied to any strange igneous (and
now metamorphic) rock that is carried into the laboratory.

Deg came to rely, too, upon some very general ideas in concluding
that the time of the world and of the ages may have been very short.
These had an air of philosophy or, worse, homespun reasoning
about them that is infuriating to technicians intercepted on their way
to their laboratories and machines. For example, Woodmorappe's
painstaking survey, published in the Creation Research Quarterly,
of the successive occurrences of the earth's several eras, as
denoted by its surface rocks, shows a preponderance of
discontinuities through the series of eras. Also, the macrogeography
of the Earth seems to call for a giant micro-chronic integrated
episode.

Inevitably, then, the mind was jostled to close up time radically in
the period between hominid and man in the face of evidence that
the hominids were human-like, and very little time was required to
achieve a culture. Thus, microchronism lent itself to Deg's theory

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of Homo Schizo.

Then, upon arriving at the notion that the earth had been recently
ravaged, Deg began to wonder how the earth could have survived
for very long if it had begun to suffer one after another disaster
through four billion years; this led two ways; first, to shorten time in
order to admit the fact that the earth still exists and has a biosphere
even if, like the old grey mare of the song, "she ain't what she
used to be," and, second, to postulate, even then, some backward
limit in earth history to a beginning of the period of disasters, and
thereupon he asked himself what might have been the first great
catastrophe to threaten the world, and what started it -- giving him
Super-Uranus, and a binary system in throes of disintegration, a
baseline of perhaps 14,000 years for the first great destruction, and
an initial electrical explosion arising naturally from a pre-existing
electromagnetic system.

When Milton and he sat down to discuss the system before the age
of catastrophes (now compressed into the Holocene of 14,000
years), they found no need in their binary system, with its highly
productive, enormous, magnetic tube, for more than a million years
to accomplish all that was new under the sun. Their model of the
solar system probably included errors of great magnitude; it might
have major system failures; and it might even be basically wrong:
both he and Milton freely acknowledged this; but they were ready
to race it against any other model in the field.

Having spent much of his life in building (not inheriting) a science,
that of the study of political behavior, Deg did not take kindly to
inference or statements that he did not know what science was all
about. He replied sarcastically on occasion that indeed he did know
what science was about and it was up to no good.

When Chaos and Creation appeared, he sent a copy of it to the
University of California physicist, Walter Alvarez, in appreciation
of the study his team had published, exhibiting the existence of an
iridium layer that might have fallen out from a meteoroid explosion,
contributing to the demise of the dinosaurs. He took the occasion to
ask "whether you remain convinced of the validity of radiometric
dating, granted the possibility of catastrophic radiation and heavy

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subterranean heating."

Alvarez replied, "In answer to your question: I consider
radiometric dating to be an excellent tool that gives reliable dates.
The systematics are well understood in all except the current
frontier areas, and serious practitioners are well aware of the
possible sources of problems and how to avoid them."

From which answer, we may all take heart. In accepting kindly the
book, Alvarez wrote "It helped me appreciate clearly the
difference between the basically anti-scientific, Velikovskian
approach and the way a scientist would seek to understand nature."
Need I say more?

260

PART FOUR

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CHAPTER TWELVE

THE THIRD WORLD OF SCIENCE

For a decade from the appearance of Worlds in Collision, no
quantavolutionary circle existed in the world. V.'s correspondence
with his readers was voluminous. Immanuel and Elisheva were
socially active for several years, but no scholar who could be said
to be of catastrophist persuasion was a frequent correspondent or
friend. In July 1956, Claude Schaeffer, author of the monumental
comparative study of archaeological levels of destruction wrote
Velikovsky his appreciation of receiving from him a copy of Earth
in Upheaval. V. had used Schaeffer's work in preparing the book.
In 1957, Immanuel and Elisheva visited with the Schaeffers for a
week at Lake Lucerne, in Switzerland. Schaeffer did not agree with
any part of Velikovsky's ideas except what Schaeffer himself had
printed before V.'s work had appeared, that periods of sudden
destruction had befallen Bronze Age Civilizations.

Two decades later, Deg and Anne-Marie Hueber visited Schaeffer
at his home near Paris. Deg wanted to update Schaeffer's
inventory of sites, and they had corresponded briefly on the matter.
Schaeffer had offered Deg the materials of his files about which he
had written to V. many years before. Then he had spoken of "new
confirmations of the reality of these crises on a continental scale
which I have tried to analyze. I would be glad if I could write now
immediately the contemplated second edition of Stratigraphie
Comparée in two volumes, for with the new confirmations these
Crises could no longer be questioned...so striking are proofs and so
accurate the dates established by the new discoveries..." V. had not
told Deg of his correspondence or of Schaeffer's intention of
moving forward. V. had passed up a rare chance at statistically
demonstrating his theses. Nor had he exhorted others to undertake
work with Schaeffer. Deg had to suggest the idea to Schaeffer as if
Schaeffer had never been aware of the possibility.

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Schaeffer was ready to collaborate. It was clear to both men that
V.'s reconstructed chronology was not be at issue. Their aim was
to confirm the ubiquity and internal cohesion of Schaeffer's set of
catastrophes. Deg was made aware of Schaeffer's doubts of V.'s
chronology, especially that coming after the 18th Dynasty of Egypt,
doubts that were even stronger with Madame Schaeffer, who at one
moment was with the group and at the next was out of the room
tending to her visiting family. Deg conveyed his belief that the
catastrophic sequence of Schaefer could slip forward nicely, using
the same intervals, to fit the scale that he had drawn back to the
neolithic age, which included V.'s fifteenth and eight century
disasters. Thus Schaeffer's sequence could serve both the
conventional and the quantavolutionary calendar.

Deg sought funds for the research from the American Geographical
society, without success. [The proposal is carried in The Burning of
Troy.] He tried to reach Schaeffer in Paris in 1983. Schaeffer had
just died.

With the appearance of Stargazers and Gravediggers in 1983, a
reader might see how barren was Velikovsky's personal and
scholarly life during the 1950's of the very people who were
capable of or were independently pursuing studies in
quantavolution. The characters in the book are mostly his
opponents; few friends and supporters appear. The only persons of
catastrophist persuasion mentioned were Alan Kelly (but on
nothing to do with his catastrophism) and Claude Schaeffer. Alan
Kelly, and Frank Dachille who was his collaborator in Target Earth
(1953), lived far apart and they worked alone.

In American biology, Goldschmidt and Simpson knew there had
been quantum jumps in paleontology and presumably their students
acquired some inkling of the anomalies. In circles espousing
Biblical literalism, the work of Price and others was discussed.
There must have been other catastrophist scientists of the 1950's in
America and England, but to this day Deg has not been able to
name any. The existence of perhaps half a million readers of V.'s
books meant little so far as research and writing were concerned.
Some bootleg teaching of catastrophism was occurring, especially

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among fundamentalist Christians. In Germany there were
Schindewolf and Nilssen in paleontology, as I noted elsewhere in
these pages.

Significant differences came with the sixties. The civil engineer
Ralph Juergens left his business in the Midwest and moved to
Hightstown, near Princeton, so as to be near Velikovsky and to use
the libraries of the University. Warner Sizemore, a minister and
graduate student of philosophy appeared on the scene at the same
time. Stecchini, historian of science and unemployed professor, was
already there, indulged by his wife Catherine, a star teacher of
young writers at Princeton High school. While teaching at the
University of Chicago in 1950, Stecchini had signed a letter of
protest to Macmillan against the treatment given Velikovsky's
book.

When Deg met V. and decided to publish his story, there was none
else in sight. They thought of Eric Larrabee, but none would be
paid to write, and Larrabee was busy with unrelated affairs. Since
Deg could not do the whole job himself, Velikovsky recommended
Juergens, then working for McGraw-Hill as a scientific editor, and
Deg and V. persuaded Stecchini to do an historical portion. Thus,
all the effective resources of V. amounted to three men who could
and would write about his case in depth. This was the first time any
cooperative group had engaged itself in the study of V.'s problems.
It was also the first time that V. realized the values and capacities
of voluntarism in America. He was, however, cunning about the
media. For instance, as soon as the American Behavioral Scientist
was in the mill, V. could persuade Larrabee to write an article for
Harper's Magazine. Larrabee was spurred into action and the
article came out two months before he ABS issue appeared.

V. was inspired and a new outlook, that of a movement, of helpers,
even of collaborators, dawned upon him. Before then he had been a
lone wolf in his field of study. Now he had friends who talked his
language. Sizemore began to organize locally and to suggest that
others organize in other places clubs or study circles under the
name of "Cosmos and Chronos." V. referred often to these ghost
legions. Sometimes they sprang to life to extend invitations to V. to
speak at various places, or they were used as a letterhead

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denomination when rebuking critics. It was, for example, on
'Cosmos and Chronos' stationery that the Philadelphia disciple
and high school teacher of psychology, Robert Stephanos,
addressed the Franklin Society in seeking to arrange a lecture
invitation to Velikovsky. When the Society reconsidered and
hastily closed its gates to V., it brought a certain public disgrace
upon itself.

Inspired though he was by his association with new and competent
men, V. himself could not be organized by them; he could seek
only to determine all of their activity, without becoming controlled
by them. Time and time again, spurts of organization occurred, with
excellent initial results, but thereafter the efforts would slump and
expire. The most successful organizing and activity was done out of
his reach, in Canada, England, and in Oregon, He was too immense
to allow himself even to be the leader; for a leader implies followers
who are assigned responsibilities, are allowed judgment, employ
initiative, and can be trusted. V. allowed none of these. There was
to be no control over this leader; he was superman, distinct from the
following, distinct even from a field of science for he refused to call
it by a name, such as catastrophism. He would deny such
allegations and not even perceive the distinctions. Nor would
others, because it was unbelievable. It was nonetheless true of him.
Among the types of activists of a movement there may be
distinguished: the theorist, the researcher, the publicist, the agitator,
the organizer, and the fund-raiser. A movement is oligarchic to the
degree that the functions are concentrated in a few hands; it is
bureaucratic to the degree to which the oligarchy assigns and
restricts these tasks to specialists; it is democratic to the degree to
which anyone can do whatever one pleases. Pensée  was an
oligarchy, Kronos developed beyond oligarchy into autocracy. The
S.I.S. was an oligarchy with high turnover and open access. The
cosmic heretics as a total aggregate were anarchic, and formed and
transformed plastically, so that one could perceive the aforesaid
stable organizations, then glimpse pairs, trios, bands, circles, and
groups in process of becoming (such as C. Marx's small Basel
group that embraced Professor Gunnar Heinsohn of the University
of Bremen, and Milton Zysman's Toronto band, and Luckerman's
small Los Angeles operation). The attentive public shaped itself
over the period into ad hoc opponents and task forces (such as the

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AAAS panel), into members, supportive audiences, subscribers,
book buyers, gossipers, fund-donors, materials-copiers-and
circulators -- reflections indeed of the several functions,
anarchically undertaken.

An instance of the highest type of voluntarism came with Alice
Miller, a San Francisco librarian, who put to herself uninvited and
uncompensated the task of indexing intensively the works of V.,
and V. made the necessary arrangements to publish the book. The
few scholars who obtained this work could now search to their
heart's content for the fullest play and nuances of ideas (where
such fullness existed) and for contradictions and errors. The first
operation to be performed in serious criticism in as index; the
memory of a reading or two rarely sets up written material
adequately for analysis. Would that every high school student who
today is being hastily introduced to a computer would be instructed
in the philosophical logic underlying the indexing of content. Deg
longed for an Alice Miller for his Q Series; his indexes were
inadequate, even more than V.'s, because his work contained a
larger proportion of abstract materials, which are harder to index.
He found, for instance, that searching for "monotheism" in V.'s
own indexes was useless; in Alice Miller's the idea came forth
nicely, even beyond what V. might have wished to expose.

We return to Deg's favorite pastime of counting, listing, and
categorizing, and to his figures of the numbers involved. They are
impressive for they may be exponential. Despite the casualties, the
deaths, the desertions, the languishing, and the waywardness, and
counting parallel little groupings and isolated active scholars, by the
end of the decade of the sixties there were perhaps thirty true
scientific catastrophists who had come up by the non-establishment
route into the field of quantavolution, and by the end of another
decade, there were fifty more creative workers in the field.
Shadowing these, watching intently, and supporting them were
several hundreds of others, close in.

Shadowing the cosmic heretics, too, were a new group, union-card
holders of the establishment, who are distinguished most readily by
their denial that they are or ever were sympathetic to Velikovsky or
any other quantavolutionist, or that they have ever sought or do

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now seek any ties with cosmic heretics. And these were equal and
greater in numbers, carrying out the revolution by partial
incorporation, the process whereby a revolutionary movements, as
it advances, meets an opposition that has already been infected by
and has adopted in part the principles of the revolution. It is at this
point that most successful movements subside or are destroyed;
their heirs are their enemies.

As one can see, if workers number, say, 15 in 1 decade, 30 in
another, and 80 in the next, a doubling process may be occurring,
against all predictions that might be based upon resources available,
unchanged state of the opposition, and so on. At this rate, with 150
to 200 in the 80's and 400 in the 90's taken with the activists who
lend support to their views, the quantavolution viewpoint should
enter the millennium primed for a large role in scientific thought. At
the same time, it should be borne in mind, there will be attrition and
desertions, doubling, and trebling the numbers of quantavolutionists
outside of (but beginning to merge with) the establishment. But the
threat of nuclear warfare to all civilization overshadows projections
of science. One is tempted, in all of this speculation, to recite
Keynes' ironic words, not about short-term economic policy but
about short-sighted world politics: "In the long term, we'll all be
dead."

***

Be it admitted that Deg, publishing a special issue of the American
Behavioral Scientist, had a perfect subject and extraordinary
materials in the Velikovsky affair. But why should he stick with
Velikovsky? Let Velikovsky say his piece and then be done with it.
What of next month's issue of the magazine, and the month after?
The journal needed continuous attention. What of the state of
political science, and of higher education, if which he had always
been so critical? What of the state of the nation, ibid? What of his
family staggering into adolescence in the disturbed and unruly
Princeton atmosphere? What of his meager fortune, skating on a
thin monthly bank balance and a home mortgage? And his friends,
the women and men who had been no more conversant with
Velikovsky than he himself? And his book contracts: especially the
American Way of Government, a good textbook in need of

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revision, whose care would lift his finances from year to year and
carry his name around to hundreds of college communities. And the
radical book on behalf of congressional supremacy that he was
writing?

What of his reputation, that, in line with the customary in academic
careers, should now begin to rise to a peak, abetted by the constant
"mending of fences" and "nursing of the constituency" ordinarily
pursued among scholars in his circumstances? Or should he not
now throw in his fortunes with a political party, Democrat or
Republican, it mattered not, for in both he had "friends in high
places." Close friends welcomed his participation in Barry
Goldwater's camp and in Hubert Humphrey's; this would appear
strange unless one understood that subjectively Deg was confident
that he was his own man, and that he could find equal opportunities
in both camps to exercise his skills and ideals, which, to put them in
several words, were: decentralization, basic income guarantees,
voluntarism, legislative rule at home, and representative
government for the world. The American party system, however,
no wise shared his bent for change.

In all of this and through it all, why did Deg continue to involve
himself with Velikovsky's problems? Did not he have enough
problems of his own -- larger and more serious and worse? Did he
not have as grand and earth-shaking ideas himself? Most of all, if
he was to spend a great deal of time in promoting somebody, and it
was not to be "the next President of the United States" then why
didn't he build up his own reputation?

He had had mean reviewers, scornful ones, too. His books had not
sold very well, he had not yet won any considerable prize, no
Pulitzer, no National Book Award. Still he could drum up
audiences at colleges around the world. Bill Baroody wished that
he might tour the country on behalf of the reconceptualized
American Enterprise Institute, addressing public issues and
garnering funds in the end. He was in mind as a political campaign
manager here and there in the nation. He was offered the job of
heading the social sciences division of UNESCO in Paris (and
refused).

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Why should he waste his time on a political campaign in science,
especially one that had already been victorious in principle
(Jastrow, Polanyi, Sagan, Motz, Neugebauer, Kurtz, Hadas, and
dozens of other personages had sooner or later pronounced
themselves against the ill treatment of Velikovsky). Did not
Elisheva insist to the end that he had opened up the final phase of
Velikovsky's public appreciation? Was the establishment of the
motions of Venus so important? Or the evidence of ancient
catastrophes on Earth? Or the likelihood of collective amnesia, a
common enough idea of wise men of all ages? Must the world of
science sign line by line in agreement with Velikovsky's book -
the ultimate wish of a cult? No, none of this was so important.
Well, what then? Was he sexually deprived? Did he identify
Velikovsky with his own father? Many more motives offer
themselves. Can one ever know? Why bother to ask, too? Yet it is a
question that was asked at scores of lectures, receptions, meeting,
and in personal discussions, a question that came out of the interest
that people felt in their own motives, out of curiosity about what
might be construed as altruism or some other form of abnormal
behavior. It's Alfred's halva, Nina would say, meaning the joke
about the man who loved sweet "Turkish Delight" and would turn
the conversation to it at the slightest cue.

Deg behaved as he did partly because he had enjoyed enough
successes in other matters and success bored him. Deg did not
attend to promoting his academic career because he was already a
tenured professor, "heavily published" as they say, and where was
there anything further to be gained; universities and colleges
seemed ready to succumb to stupidity or insane revolts, but not to
total self-evaluation and reform. They were, with governmental
help, becoming ever more bureaucratized and inane.

Besides he found self-promotion an embarrassment, all the more as
he watched his acquaintances climb the rows of ladders inclined
against decrepit edifices where committees and trustees held sway,
and important research was kept in a corner like a bastard. He was
not adverse to fame. To the contrary, he expected it to be "handed
to him on a silver platter," to use one of his mother's expressions.
Subjectively, he desired glory; objectively, externally, he had to
scorn it.

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He was having his last words on Congress and the executive force,
an appeal for the preservation of republican government that went
against every major political and economic interest in America (and
that communists and socialist when in power also and even more
rampantly suppressed). He was, as I said, uninspired by the
political movements of the moment, and even more so as they
developed through the sixties and seventies of the century. The
kindling problems of his family would burst into flame but he had
no intention of becoming party to a decade of adolescent rebellion
of the kind that ruins the best years of many Americans' lives.
Besides, did he not have such splendid plans for going en masse to
Europe for a year to teach the children foreign languages and
escape the menacing youth and drug culture of Princeton?

But look particularly to the controversy surrounding the Velikovsky
matter: was it not exciting? The ideas at stake were of the highest
order. Not only in sociology: for what sociology is more important
than the sociology of knowledge (Sozialwissenschaft) that he had
cut his eyes teeth on with Mannheim, Wirth, Shils, and Leites, and
which was really the theme underlying his first book, Public and
Republic, where ideas of representation were shown to be
unconsciously operative and externally effective over hundreds of
years and many different political generations?

Also there was excitement in the substance of this strange new kind
of science. Scattered about but eager to stay in touch were dozens
of intelligent people interested in one or more of the hundred fields
upon which quantavolution impinged. More exciting and elevating
than yachting, the horseraces, gambling, cocktail parties, tourist
travel, religious routines, better than the eviscerated or
wrongheaded politics of the times. In the final analysis it was the
unlimited firing of sky rockets in all directions that held Deg to the
course of quantavolution and bound him to his friend Velikovsky.

There was the intransigent personality of Velikovsky. Even some
opponents, Robert Jastrow, Walter Sullivan and Motz, for instance,
found him fascinating. He was always there, the tallest mountain in
Princeton and anywhere else, so far as Deg could observe.

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A series of entries from Deg's Journal, most of them from the year
1968, show what I mean. But first a letter from Velikovsky to Deg,
before the ABS issue of September 1963 had made its impact, to
show that V. had no intention of letting his new friend escape his
camp by crossing the ocean:

August 16, 1963

Dear Professor de Grazia:

It was very good to have a letter from you in Paris. I like to
hear that you may come to the States in October. No old
castles here, no ancient arenas, but you will be most certainly
engaged in some skirmishes in the tournament for which the
scene is being set. Larrabee's article produced certain effect (I
assume it was mailed to you) and the foundations of the
establishment are being loosened. (...) A few papers started to
comment on the issue, one or two colleges invited me to speak
before their students, much discussions going on without
reaching the printed page, and I am emerging from the
"shadow of darkness." (...)

I wish I could bring to our side a few prominent scholars and
scientists. I write to de Madariaga about Lord Russell whom he
knows. You may say again, 'Cabot', but visualize the effect
on the closed scientific ring of one such renegade.

I wish to think that Mrs. de Grazia and your children are
enjoying their many new impressions, and the old villa makes
them feel that theirs is part of an old heritage. Turgeniev wrote
someplace that two urges live in a human soul -- a striving for
far away lands and a longing for the homeland and home. Mrs.
Velikovsky joins me in wishing all of you good health and
animated months ahead.

Cordially Yours,
Immanuel Velikovsky

PS The mail brings an envelope with copies of letters received
by Harper's. Menzel of Harvard Observatory writes a 17
pages letter, unfair, emotional: he exposes himself to
embarrassing statements of fact. A battle of letters started. At
the present, the response runs 50% against 50%. Therefore any
articulate supporter -- or opponent -- should enter the fracas,
the earlier the better. Mobilize your friends!           -- I. V.

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A year later, Deg was not only still in the camp, no matter where he
was, but he was suffering privately the annoyances of the camp. His
journal of September 1st, 1964 from London is relevant. He is on
his way to the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, to lecture on
American politics and will from there go to Marina di Massa where
his daughter Catherine will be wedded to the best-looking boy on
the beach, Dante Matelli.

Left for London at 10 AM. On way to airport penciled a crude
note to Velikovsky, finally telling him bluntly of my feelings
towards him. I said, "Dear Immanuel, I am writing this on the
bus to the plane. Last night I went again over the letters and
material for Rabinovitch, to the detriment of many pressing
affairs. I finally decided to send out nothing at the moment.

"You will receive the page proofs on the Margolis critique.
Please make only absolutely necessary corrections (I do not
care if you offer to pay for them.) Issue is already late.

Please do not call my office or the printers. Your inability to let
go of anything will be the ruin of our friendship and of the
magazine. Sincerely, Alfred".

I handed the letter to a passenger agent just before stepping
aboard the PanAm Clipper. It culminated a day of annoyance
and desperation that began when I courteously called
Velikovsky to say goodbye. To those who know him well, the
history of the next 24 hours was to be clear. He wanted to
rewrite letters, call lawyers, discuss imbroglios, in short, utterly
and without conscience disrupt my carefully measured out and
urgent last hours before departure. And worse, he succeeded.

This hardly matters. The friendship, the campaign, continues, and
V. is still the mastermind. When Deg goes abroad in 1966, V. has
ideas of how he should spend his time in Israel and Egypt:

Feb. 14, 1966

Dear Mrs. de Grazia: Please do not send this letter to Alfred if
he already left Italy. Im. Velikovsky.

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Dear Alfred:

I received your note written before leaving for airport. Should
you visit Jerusalem you may wish to give personal regards to
President Zaluccan Shazar -- our friend, especially of Elisheva,
of many years. He will be glad to hear that Elsheva is active as
sculptor and as a chamber-musician (as good as ever); and
Elisheva wishes him to know of the change in the attitude of
the scientific world to my book with many discoveries of the
Space Age; the fact that I am invited to speak at Yale,
Princeton, Duke, Pittsburgh, Wisconsin, Oberlin, Brandeis,
etc., is an indication.

I wish you good weather (pleasant driving, good new friends,
and many invigorating experience).

Regards from Elisheva and my regards for Paul and John.

Yours,
Immanuel.

[P.S.] It would be good if at the Cairo Museum you could
obtain some organic object of the time of Ramses II or Ramses
II (or of both) for radiocarbon test(better seed, mummy
swathing, leather, papyrus, linen -- and not wood, if possible) at
the lab of the University of Pennsylvania (Dr. Elizabeth Ralph.)
To apply to Dr. Isnander Hanna (Director at the Lab at the
Museum). The material needs to be sent from museum to
museum with all the precautions. By far better not to mention
my name.

If any difficulty, I shall try to obtain the samples by asking Dr.
Ralph to write to Dr. Hanna.

Deg's Journal, January 18, 1967

Phoned Velikovsky tonight. Elisheva came on the wire too, at
his request. I told them what I was doing to institute a
Foundation. He was quite subdued. He is not used to having
anything taken out of his hands. Both were happy, I could tell,
at the thought of something they had talked so much about
moving so quickly to a climax.

Anti-Velikovskianism's first line of defense is the impossibility
of his theories. Then, I suppose, if proved right, it will be said
that he was a simple scribe: he read an inscription which told

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what happened. That position will not endure, either, for he
worked in a superhuman way to piece together the shattered
mosaic.

Deg's Journal, November 15, 1967 9 P.M.

Immanuel called met at twilight to tell me Stephanos had called
his attention to the Nov. 3 issue of Science magazine wherein
Professor R. Eshleman of Stanford University, Electrical
Engineer and Co-Director of the Stanford Center for Radar
Astronomy had raised briefly the question whether the baffling
puzzle of Venus being 'locked-in' to Earth might be
answered by the Velikovskian hypothesis of an historical
collision of the two bodies. A year ago Science refused to
accept an advertisement for one of his books. "who knows,
Alfred, whether the Nobel prize, which has had a poor record
very often, might not come." I said, "Immanuel, your
biography is your triumph. You do not need these foolish
prizes."

Deg's Journal, 1/4/68 [Providence]

At 2:30 I left the ribald company of Mike N., N., Jim Kane, Al
Saglio, Tom Yatman, and Edwin Safford at the Spaghetti
House to visit Prof. Otto Neugebauer at Brown University. His
office is in an old red brick house next to the new Library and
has an entrancing scholarly air to it, closed into the basement,
holding several tables, everything with a century old
appearance that I too should find a perfect atmosphere for
quiet study and work. O.N. was somewhat suspicious of me, as
well he might be, knowing that I sponsored a special defense of
Velikovsky's work. However, like most true intellectuals,
once engaged, his defenses were down and he spoke
vociferously, indignantly, said he couldn't waste time on the
foolishness and trickery of V. but proceeded to amplify at great
length, his little blue eyes peering directly into mine and his
slight but determined German voice carrying effectively, even
colloquially, his arguments. He disputed hotly the idea that
there had been or was any conspiracy against V., (I stated that
I too disagreed with V. on this point), and he felt that V. was
employing the tools of propaganda and sophistry against him
and others. Who can deny this, too? But there seemed to be
little reason to go into the political aspects of the controversy,
inasmuch as O.N. could not know, more than V., the dynamics
of this process, and I essayed questioning him upon several
critical issues concerning Babylonian tablets.

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He declared twice that he had "no investment" in the words of
the tablets and could take or refuse any interpretation,
depending only upon its truth. They were only a minor interest
with him, not even "minor," less than minor.

He said he had not read Stecchini's interpretations of
Kugler's work (and declared offhandedly but vigorously that
much had been learned since Kugler's time anyhow). He
declared that the observations in the Venusian tablets of
Ammizaduga came from erroneous reportings of lunar
movements that, in turn, had been used by the Babylonians to
measure the movement of Venus. An amateur, he said, would
transfer his ignorance of the ancient reports into a wrong
interpretation that it was Venus, not the Moon, that was
moving erratically. He declared emphatically that from their
beginnings around 700 B.C. there were no unexplainable
irregularities. (He kept reasserting, and I had to stave off as not
relevant to the argument, which was the empirical facts re the
tablets, that the whole V. thesis was mechanically impossible,
that any 10-year old schoolboy would know how the Earth
would be destroyed by anything approaching a collision with
Venus, and so forth). He said further that there was little or no
reporting of any planetary behavior in a scientific way priot to
about 700 B.C. ( I didn't press for the exact date) that, for
instance, there was no reporting of Saturn before 400 B.C.
Earlier records are largely the oracles which deal with sun,
moon, and a bright star (which could have been Venus, since it
is the brightest and hence would oppose V.'s theories of the
non-existence of Venus before ca. 1500 B.C. ) He asserted
further that Egyptian chronology was perfectly established, on
the basis of the Egyptian lunar calendar (based on a thirty-year
cycle) that carried back to the very earliest times. He claimed
that the whole V. affair showed the basically anti-intellectual
atmosphere of the population.

I asked whether it did not show also the failing of the
establishment of science to perceive its "public problems," and
offered the opinion that if he, and others such as Harrison
Brown, had dealt with V.'s work more seriously, there would
have been no prolonged vicious aftermath, to which he
grudgingly acceded.

Then he added that there should not be such an accent on
"going to the moon" so that billions were being largely wasted,
for which sums the whole of Mesopotamia could be dug up

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down to its virgin soil. Then said he, we should have all of
these problem solved. To which I agreed.

I asked whether someone should not set forth the thirty or sixty
principal factual theses of V. and find specialists on each topic
to criticize V. He had mixed feelings about the idea (first taking
it personally, of course, "I don't have time for that!") holding
that V.'s ideas were too vague to discuss, that this would
prove that the "conspiracy" actually did exist: that there would
be too few to undertake the job in certain areas (such as his
own of Assyriology and Babylonia); but that it might be a
proper way to get to the heart of the matter. He was, on the
whole, quite negative re the general problem and hostile to V.
As I was leaving, he said: "I just received a letter from
Chandrasekhar of the University of Chicago. He is the
physicist. He asks whether we shouldn't do something about
the Yale Scientific Magazine issue of V. I replied that there
was no use to it."

I walked out into the winter snow-threatening afternoon and
down the streets of exquisite old structures of Providence's
East Side to Mike's house, thinking of what I had learned and
of the beauties of this old part of town.

1.      N [eugebauer] is convinced V. plays a tricky game:
"He couldn't answer my colleague's questions at a Brown
University meeting, but said he would reply to them the next
day. Then he didn't appear."

2.      He believes V. to be a foolish and wicked amateur.

3.      His direct assertions concerning the Venusian tablets
should be worked into a direct encounter with V.'s words (...)

4.      N appeared uncertain about Kugler, and
unconvincingly dismissed him.

5.      N is persuaded that V. is arguing in a great circle, using
established theories as grounds for criticizing deviations and
unknowns and for proving the deviations accord with his
theories, then destroying the established framework without
perceiving that his interpretation of the deviations is itself
dependent upon and sponsored by the established theories. N.
did not say so, but this kind of problem is fundamental to all
theoretical change: man is dependent for what he sees on what

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he has been taught to perceive, so how can be prove wrong
what he has been taught, if his new vision is wholly dependent
upon being preceded by the old one ?

6.      I feel the need to organize an 'Anti-Velikovsky'
symposium where highly reputed scholars are asked to address
themselves to a meaningful segment of a carefully prepared set
of questions that test the whole fabric of V.'s theories.
Logically V. cannot dispute this procedure. It would, I think,
cause him to be angry with me. So be it.

Deg's Journal, January 20,1968

I have been visiting with Velikovsky once or twice a week
since November, and have reread Earth in Upheaval and Ages
in Chaos. Since I have been heavily occupied with the theory
of activities of the federal government, the American
Government text revision, a plan for a business company
should I decide to leave the academic world, and so forth, I
indicated to V. ten days ago that I could not organize the
magazine that we had always talked of publishing. Then, for
some reason, a week ago, I thought "We must start a
foundation for V. and his work." I asked Richard Kramer to
initiate the papers for organization of a corporation not-for
profit in N.J... settled on PO Box 294 and my home as the
address, and decided to ask Juergens, Stecchini, Kramer, and
Herb Neuman to join me in the first Board of Directors. I
called each man to invite them aboard and received their
prompt acceptances.

Deg's Journal, March 2, 1968

This morning I am resolving to withdraw myself as much as
possible from Immanuel's campaign for honors and
recognition. A full eight hours went to him yesterday; it is too
much, considering what I must, do for my own work. In its
way, it deserves the same kind of attention V. gives to his and I
give to his. My intellectual children may be scrawnier but I
cannot turn them out to starve in the cold. I give up lectures
that, just like his, might explain my ideas and bring me income,
as for example one that I turned down today for $100 and
expenses before an audience of civil service officials in
Washington. My ideas go undefended, many aspects of them
go unexpressed. I do not give them the tender, fierce, loving
care that every man's respectable notions deserve. Let's see
whether I can behave by this resolve.

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Deg's Journal, March 3, 1968

March is come cold and blustering. Jill and I rode our bikes to
Mom's where Ed and his young friend, Margaret C... were
visiting. We arrived frozen. M.C. has just returned from 2
weeks in Boston, under the tutelage of a Yoga guru. I say to
Ed, in greeting, 'Ah, here is the "slim, elegant Sicilian!"',
quoting Norman Mailer's autobiographical novella of the
"March on the Pentagon" that is printed in the current
Harper's Magazine. [Edward organized the legal defense of
the arrested protesters.]

Jill says, of Margaret, 'Girls who have had trouble with their
fathers work it off well. Girls who have had difficulties with
their mothers do not.' She cites Jung on the point. And we
string out many examples. It is probably true, even as an
unrefined statement. I ruminate: so important, so simple are
basic truths. What conceals it and them? Great truths and
discoveries are not hidden by their complexity but by jamming
of our ideological cognitive, and perceptive machinery.

Velikovsky, the other night, quoted me Butterfield's comment
that the very young can understand principles of science and
nature that have baffled the greatest minds of history. I think
V., who is in essence a philosophical realist, uses this idea in
only a limited way. He means that the young haven't had their
tender minds distorted by unfact. It is more importantly to be
understood that the mind is structured in each generation to
receive some truths and reject others, or better, some half
truths. Both V. and perhaps Butterfield unjustifiably abstract
the mind from its context. It has, for instance, been pointed out
by numerous defenders of classicism, such as neo-Thomists,
that we believe the ancients foolish or unperceptive of truth
because of our partial and current truth-idolatry; freed from
contemporary ideology, we can understand truth as the
ancients discovered it and agree with them.

Deg's Journal, April 30, 1968 A.M., en route to NYC

Half of this past warm flowering weekend in Princeton has
been spent with Velikovsky or on matters related to him. We
spent Saturday afternoon going over materials that might be
suited for the proposed book "V. and his Critics" that I am
discussing with Kluger of Simon and Schuster. We spoke also

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of the foundation for Studies in Modern Science, which I have
organized. He named eight major problems that are critical to
his theories, and I am taking them into consideration in the
memorandum which I am preparing on the program of the
Foundation. Bob Stephanos called me on Friday night upon my
return from NY to tell me that Mr. Mainwaring of Philadelphia,
an admirer of V., intended to help financially. Both V. and I
had written letters to M., who runs a family manufacturing firm
and is, I hear, a person of some intellectual stature. V. was
naturally pleased. He talked on and on, I edging him back to a
subject from time to time.

Sunday evening, V seized the initiative and called Prof. Philip
Hammond of Brandeis U. to ask about his possible interest in
excavating at El Arish for signs of the siege of the Hyksos
fortress by the allied armies of Saul and Thutmose, about 1050
B.C. in V.'s chronology. The digging would be a crucial test
of the V. theory of ancient history. Hammond, who had given
indications of sympathy years ago, appeared enthusiastic. He
offered to go El Arish with two assistants if we could organize
the expedition.

After learning this from V., I called David Dietz to ask whether
he would still be interested in taking part in the expedition. He
was. Yesterday, Monday, I asked Harry Hess of Princeton
University Geological Department to serve on the Board of
Trustees of the Foundation. After some demurral (later, V.
would be mystified by his hesitation since 'Hess definitely
agreed to join.' but I was not mystified.) Poor Hess who is one
of the busiest man alive with his Space Board, Mohole and
other activities, couldn't take the leap into the cold water
without encouragement. So I purred gently, sympathetically,
and finally he said with a hopeless smile "Aw hell, OK, put me
on"! (...)

Deg's Journal, May, 1968

N [ina] and I met at the Museum of Modern Art at six
yesterday after discussion with Kluger, of Simon and Schuster.
A surrealist exhibition was on. Max Ernst, Nadelman, Matisse,
Ram bear up very well. Picasso rarely becomes human enough
to excite me. His lines are cold and cruel. De Chirico's colors
seem shabby now. It was a brave moment and said a lot.

We drank beer and ate cheese and crackers in the garden of the
Museum, which filled with grey rosy lights as the sun set.

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Rodin's Balzac, seen from above, is stern and emotionally
stirring. A Picasso She-goat is my great love.

Back at Washington Square, N. prepared a light supper at her
place and accompanied me to my work. I talked to Velikovsky
at length, recounting my conversation with Richard Kluger and
explaining my plans and hopes for the expedition. As usual, he
was difficult to converse with but excited more than I've ever
felt him to be before. I told him that I thought we should film
the El Arish episode from beginning to end. and he was fully
agreed. I wonder, or course, continuously, whether we shall
find what we are after beneath the town -- the siege evidence
and artifacts of Saul's army, the Egyptians, the Hyksos.

I hung up the phone and went to work sorting out materials to
be used in my Reader on American Government N. said
"Velikovsky can never finish his work." "Nor can I!" I replied.
"He has thirteen books to go, when we last counted them. I am
as badly off." She asked me what I had to finish: "You have
done so much." "Not at all," I said, impatiently. "We do not
measure ourselves by other men, but by an absolute criterion of
what we might conceivably do." And then I ticked off what I
imagined I might yet do:

the publication of my collected papers of the past
the American Government books
another book of poetry
several novels, mostly autobiographical
a philosophy of science
"the new political order"

and whatever would intervene, such as the El Arish story and
the government operations study, and who knows what else:
editing the Velikovsky and His Critics book, for example (...)

I spoke to Sebastian about other matters on the telephone
during the day. We are concerned about the troubles that Eddie
is having over the custody of the children in divorcing Ellen (...)

Bus told me of a quarrel between Renzo Sereno and his wife
one time over a lady, possibly a mistress, of Renzo. "The only
reason you like her is because she thinks you're great,"
declared the wife. Bus and I breathed reverently over this gem
for a minute of ATT long-distance time and charges. What has
come over womankind? What do they imagine to be the
foundation for a man's love and devotion, even charm, even

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presence?

After a day of labor selecting readings for my American
Government Reader in the company of Eric Weise and John
Appel, I entrained for Princeton, snoozing aboard, and arriving
happily into the fresh air of the countryside. John, Carl, and
Chris were all in excellent mood, the one fixing things on the
old Cadillac, Carl playing his Beethoven pieces, and Chris
shooting baskets. Mom came to dinner, bringing some freshly
picked and cooked wild cardoons.

At nine I biked to Velikovsky's home, Francie loping
alongside and for two hours, while she stretched comfortably in
the middle of his parlor, we talked and argued over who should
do what about books, magazines, and the ever-growing
prospect of the expedition to El Arish. Prof. Philip Hammond
caught me by telephone soon after I arrived from N.Y.C. to
reaffirm his interest. I asked him whether he would, in addition
to his usual excavation reports, accept co-authoring of a
popular book on El Arish that I was proposing to Simon and
Schuster and he accepted promptly. I like the sound of him,
though we have not yet met.

V. was difficult. He holds out things and then pulls them back.
He wants to do too much himself. I try to take responsibilities
off his shoulders and he fights to keep them and even to take
new ones. He wishes to discuss every small decision, to control
every document. He is elated over our plans but becomes more
demanding and even a little more paranoid as events speed up.
He has a poor sense of organization and scheduling where
other human beings are involved. His own immense mental
world can grab and hold everything and shake it out in
marvelous patterns, but the world of affairs has its own ruthless
laws, that treat all men equally, and that make their own
patterns.

Now came time for the Foundation to form and the incorporators
met to elect themselves and additional members to the Board of
Trustees, and to transact business. R.P. Kramer, L. Stecchini, R.
Juergens and Deg coopted Horace Kallen, Harry H. Hess, A. Bruce
Mainwaring, John Holbrook Jr., Robert C. Stephanos, and Warner
Sizemore. The date was June 2, 1968, a day that would not go
down in history.

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Deg was chosen President and other preliminaries were disposed
of. Then the ill-fated excursion to El Arish, where the capital of the
Hyksos supposedly lay buried, was taken up. Everyone knew
already that Mainwaring and Holbrook had put up some funds, that
a Dr. Hammond had been approached to lead the group, and a
contract had been drawn up. Deg set forth a budget, even the
minimal costs of which were well beyond the pledged resources of
group. Besides the preliminary soundings at El Arish, papers on the
"hydrocarbons" of Venus and its temperature changes were to be
commissioned, a publication was to be prepared, preparations to
receive and use V.'s archives were in order, a magazine was to be
inaugurated, and besides there were provisions for work on
collective amnesia, dating systems, magnetic polarity, evolutionary
theory, the psychology of catastrophe, electromagnetic cosmic
models, and the reception system of science. A happy set of
prospects indeed, every one of which the foundation was to fail to
inaugurate, much less carry on to any extent. The case of El Arish
will suffice as an exemplum horribilis.

In June, A. Biran of the Israeli Department of Antiquities wrote to
Deg saying:

Indeed there is much interest in the archaeology and history of
the area but unfortunately it is not always possible to satisfy this
curiosity. Even I with all my interest and curiosity have not yet
been either to Kadesh Barbea, Mons Cassius, or Qantara...

July found Deg in Naxos, ready to go to Israel if needed, and John
Holbrook had gone to Israel to seek permission to begin a site
survey at El Arish. Deg is getting a variety of inputs from his
assistant:

July 10, 1968

...I spoke with Velikovsky today. He told me that
Holbrook had arrived here yesterday. A copy of all
the correspondence is on its way to us. The gist of it is
that Holbrook saw Biran and Dotan, the chief
archaeologist, and that the Israelis would like to see
more solid support from Americans. Biran said that
FOSMOS seems a bit fly-by-night to them. Another

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problem is that they don't want to grant foreigners
the right to dig in occupied territory. But apparently
they have softened a little, and if they could see
something more established in support of the dig, well
then... So Holbrook is going to ask somebody at Yale
about it, a Professor Popo.

I read your report of the Natural Museum with
interest. I will probably get to the Met sometime this
week. The figure you described on the one vase are
usually interpreted as Amazons, and I am going to
compare the costumes with those of the Busiris vase,
out of curiosity. I think there is also a book on Greek
arms, with should have something in it about helmets.

I am sure you are enjoying Greece -- it's so wild,
beautiful, clean and clear...

Meanwhile John Holbrook is grinding his gears in Israel and is
addressing a set of marvelously detailed letters to V., a copy of
which he then sent to Deg.

Holbrook writes to V. on July 10, 1968:

Now I am in a bit of a quandry. First, I have no reason to doubt
Biran's word that the military situation in the Sinai area
prohibits any extended work at El Arish at this time. Second,
although I shall certainly see Dothan when he returns from the
field at the end of the week, I cannot pledge the support of the
foundation to the extent of $50,000. Although we have great
hopes for it, the treasury of the foundation is still a bit empty.
That being the case, I can only explore the possibility of
organizing an expedition to El Arish at some indefinite time in
the future (when military situation permits) on the most
tentative basis. Much will depend upon what I learn from
Dothan. At the very least, I hope that I shall be able to get a
look at the site before I leave.

One other matter deserves mention. There is no way of telling
the extent to which opposition to your work played a role in
the rejection of our proposal. There were other reasons for
rejecting it.

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Latter Holbrook ventures an opinion on the actual site:

Quite frankly, although I am sure that a complete
archaeological survey of the Wadi El Arish and its vicinity
might be extremely useful, I am willing to bet that the first
trench which is dug in the area which I have described above,
the northern quarter of town, will not be found empty or
unrewarding.

Little could be done with the El Arish party, upon which V. had set
the highest priority (and did for the rest of his life and rightly so,
says Deg). The failure was bad enough, but to Deg the most
disagreeable part of the episode was the way in which V. began to
find grounds for opposing Hammond after he had agreed on his
competence and leadership qualities, and had invited him to lead
the operation. V. soon convinced himself, and then Holbrook, that
Hammond was pro-Arab and would be persona non grata to the
Israeli authorities, until they were actually approaching the Israeli
saying in effect "We know how you must feel about Hammond,
but we are aware of this situation and are taking care of it,"
whereupon the Israeli, in the case of President Shazar, said, "What
are you talking about, who is Hammond?"

Deg's Journal, October 20,1968

Velikovsky and I talked for the first time in a week yesterday
afternoon and again last night. He leaves for a grand lecture
tour of Texas today. We have counseled him not to go to
California to talk, a little later on, because he would become
tired and he absolutely should finish Peoples of the Sea. He
continues to add new data to the work, which is slender still
though, like a stick of dynamite.

We argued over the final contract details of Velikovsky and His
Critics, which I am not keen to do anyway, given my poor
financial state and other projects of greater personal
importance. He wanted us to guarantee mutually that we
would not submit the final manuscript without his approval, in
effect. It is of course a perilous idea, for he hangs onto
everything and cannot suffer any criticism. I drew up an
appropriate missive, but added words to the effect that we
would also be jointly responsible if Simon & Schuster
publishers sought damages from us for non-delivery of the

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manuscript. As I suspected, he balked, and talked of legal
formalism. I laughed and expostulated "But you want
everything, complete authority and no responsibility!" It is the
same with the Foundation we are creating: he wants it to
follow his every wish, but does not think that he should be
identified with it.

He then said, "All right, Alfred, we will agree just among
ourselves, without a paper. You will not submit it without my
approval."

"O.K."

And then we went on to argue over the student strike
movement, which he fears will undermine authority and disrupt
education. "A tiny minority has no right to interfere with the
majority who want to study." I told him that minorities are the
media of change in any field. I asked whether, if the French
students had not rioted in May, there ever would have been the
Faure reforms of last week, "No matter!" He would change
his mind. I can always win a argument with him on politics, by
citing his own case and the history of modern Israel. On these
two great contradictions of order, stability, and authority, much
of his life is built; they make all of his defenses of authority and
majorities vulnerable.

"What do you think of Onassis?" I asked to change the subject.
"Who?" Onassis, and Jackie Kennedy. "Oh! I tell you that I
think it is a second assassination of Kennedy." Beautiful, I
thought, either way. His idea is the same as that of all the
maudlin sentimentalists, Kennedy-dead worshippers, the
sanctimonious, the suttee-ists. My way, it is revenge for a not
too great love, followed by the maddening experience of
suffering all of this cant and sick reverence. All of these mass
media addicts were hoping she would end up with a crew-cut
college sophomore from Princeton. So she picks the ugly old
Greek pirate, and I am personally pleased. The Hollywood and
Madison Avenue brainwashed crowds have their fairy tale
exploded once again. I know that people live off of these fairy
tales; that is what makes valid history and rational politics
impossible for them. Perhaps I should feel sorry for the great
boobery, but I am diabolically pleased with Jackie's revenge
upon them. And upon JFK too, with his harrowing political life
and difficult character and mistresses. What is there to insult in
his memory, I ask myself, and what business is it of old ladies
and shopgirls to define her husband. "Onassis, I don't know

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the gentleman. Probably they like each other. I wish them
happiness." Basta.

We returned to majorities and here is how he defined the
Jewish majority in Palestine. "Over history, the dead of the
Jews are a majority in that country. They live in that tradition
wherever they are," Voting the dead to make a majority, like
the Confederate southerners do, or the bosses of "rotten
boroughs" in the northern cities. Grussgott! What would V. say
to these majorities and so many others that are alive, as well.
But Israel is the idée fixe; facts are the dependent variable.
Indeed, as I have known for as long as I have known him, the
idée fixe, the highly conventional, traditional literal
interpretation of and respect for the Biblical passages: from this
conservative position spewed forth in all directions the most
radical theories.

Deg's Journal, October 25, 1968

Reflecting upon the failure of our infant foundation to launch
an archaeological expedition at El Arish last summer, I think it
may be well to set down my view, which contrasts somwhat
with that of Velikovsky and Holbrook. V. was too willing to
accept rumors about Prof. Philip Hammond and placed too
strong a weight upon adverse facts. V. had no right, as I told
him bluntly, to destroy Hammond's possible role as leader of
the expedition on grounds that Hammond was pro-Arab and
that he had a mistress who would accompany him. Holbrook,
whom I regard highly and even warmly, with all his youthful
arrogance, was too ready to accept V.'s evaluations and then
afterwards the position expressed by the Israeli authorities, to
wit, that we could not afford to support the diggings and that
the political situation was dangerous. I felt that we had gone so
far in our adventure that we ought to have let Hammond
himself battle with the Israeli. He might, I think, have outfaced
them and dragged in his crew and equipment over their grumpy
dispositions. I doubt that we would have uncovered anything
of great significance in a few weeks, but we would have
planted our flag. We would have moved on from there.

Deg's Journal, November 2, 1968

Met with Velikovsky this afternoon. He is back from a
triumphal tour of lectures in Texas. We argued over plans for
the foundation. Juergens was present. I asked him pointblank
to pull out any materials he might have that others had sent him

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and might be used as articles for the proposed journal. He did
so. [There was almost nothing.] I asked him also to pull
together all his address lists and to let us place a man in his
house to built up a list of friends with whom we might
communicate. He agreed. I was most pleased. I borrowed V.'s
manuscript on Peoples of the Sea to read again, and left with
everyone in cordial spirits. What a difficult man but what an
enormous grasp of everything, intellectually and physically!

I must set some probability theorist to work on some of V.'s
proofs. They are strong as they stand in their conventional
historiographical form. But an application of mathematics
would do much more, e.g. the chances that the Greek letter on
the backs of Ramses III's tiles might be some 'flowing' or
shorthand hieroglyphics.

The Foundation spent the fall of the year, following the El Arish
fiasco, in some small constructive matters and in self-destructive
self-appraisals prompted by V.'s misgivings, Ralph Juergens
addressed the Board of Trustees extensively on November 13,
writing inter alia:

1. ...He [Velikovsky] is concerned that funds collected, as it
were, in his name, as gifts intended to further his own
researches, will be diverted to other purposes. Among such
other purposes he includes such FOSMOS projects as the
Institute in Connecticut, the journal Cosmology (...) To the
doctor's way of thinking, only two projects thus far discussed
would be legitimate applications of such donated funds: a) the
El Arish dig, and b) the hiring of Princeton graduate students to
carry out library and/or laboratory research under his direction.

2. Dr. Velikovsky is aware of our plans to launch a direct-mail
campaign early in January and he is offended at not having been
consulted in the preparation of mailing pieces. (...) He insists, at
the very least, that literature sent out make absolutely clear to
the reader that he is not the power behind the foundation and
that he will not be a recipient, direct or indirect, of any funds
collected by the foundation.(...)

It seems to me... that some rather fundamental
misunderstandings remain to be cleared up, not only between
Dr. Velikovsky and the Board of Directors, but perhaps also
among members of the Board. In the first place, there is
confusion as to the purposes of the foundation. It may be that

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Dr. Velikovsky has never seen a copy of our by-laws, which
seem to make the point that the foundation is to serve as a
clearinghouse for a variety of information, not all of it
necessarily related in any obvious way to Dr. Velikovsky's
work. This would appear to leave us free to tread ways not yet
probed by the Doctor. And of course we thus face the danger
of becoming what Dr. Velikovsky would call a clearinghouse
for cranks. But our statement of purpose at least broadens our
horizons to the extent that we cannot think of our organization
as a 'Velikovsky' foundation.

Or can we? The confusion seem rooted in the fact that we
members of the Board, almost to a man, have been brought
together through our common desire to see his work get a fair
hearing. Do we really intend to operate a "Velikovsky"
foundation in spite of our more abstractly stated purpose? If so,
we must accept certain consequences, e.g., foregoing a tax
exempt status and placing absolute veto-power-quite properly 
- in the hands of the Doctor. If not, I suggest that we make
haste to disillusion ourselves and Dr. Velikovsky.

On November 22, Deg writes a harsh letter to V.:

November 22, 1968

Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky
78 Hartley Avenue
Princeton, New Jersey 08540

Dear Immanuel,

As you have no doubt expected, your succession of favorable
and unfavorable comments concerning the progress of the
Foundation has created a crisis of morale among the Trustees.
For years you longed for just such an organization to dedicate
itself to the testing and propagation of your theories, and now
that we have constructed it you are undermining it.

You trust nobody, delegate nothing, and have, partly therefore,
no capacity for administration. You also do not wish anyone to
speak in your name but wish help to drift down like manna to
dispose of as you desire. Actually, we shall be trying to do both
things -- administration and help in spite of you, if you do not
disrupt the process.

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The Board of Trustees has unanimously pledged itself to an
independent course. Whatever the Board of Trustees believes
to be useful to the advancement of science, it will seek to
foster. It cannot bargain with anybody. If it chooses to do one
thing rather than another, it does so, not out of friendship to
you but out of respect for the work that you and others like
you have done.

In order to make demands of others, both inside and outside of
the Foundation, I have to make demands of you. You should
cease making accusations against the Board, even if only
among the inner circle. You should cease bargaining over your
Archive and the materials that you do not intend to personally
use, and let the Foundation work with a copy of them as soon
as it can arrange to do so. You should accept what we can
offer you (or reject it) in good spirits, knowing that we are
doing our best in a complicated setting over which we do not
have complete control and that some times we must obtain
indirectly what we cannot gain directly.

The men on the Board are your friends. If you have better
ones, let them step forward and we shall welcome them. The
men on the Board are not the best scientists in the world and, if
you know better ones, we shall welcome them too. The Board
has to finance the Foundation's activities in whatever ways it
deems appropriate. If you have the names of persons who, you
believe, might contribute to its work, we shall be happy to
receive them. If you wish to reserve the names of certain
individuals or groups for your personal solicitations, please let
us have their names and we shall not approach them, whether
in your name or in the name of the Foundation. If you disagree
with the policies of the Foundation, we would value your
opinions. But you cannot have a veto over anything that the
Foundation does.

If you do not wish to relate to the Foundation in all of these
ways and want to dissociate yourself from the Foundation, I
believe that you should do so, either by a personal
advertisement in a journal or by letter to all those of your
acquaintances who matter. I shall then put a resolution to the
Board to the effect that the Foundation will go ahead with its
philosophy and plans. If the vote is positive, we shall go ahead
with its philosophy and plans. If the vote is positive, we shall
go ahead; if not, we shall dissolve the Foundation, an action
which will disappoint me and give me immense relief at the
same time.

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Of course, if you do not desire to take any such measures, I
would assume that you are basically pleased with our work and
will work in tandem with us.

With warm personal regards, as always,

Sincerely,
Alfred de Grazia

V., Deg learned from Elisheva and Ruth, was upset. Then he
proceeded to put some of the blame upon Juergens, where it most
certainly did not belong.

Dear Ralph:

Yesterday morning, as you know, I received a rude letter from
de Grazia with unfounded accusations and it shocked me.
Suspecting some provocation, I called you. You disclosed to
me that already on November 13 you have sent a memo to him
and to the members of the Board of FOSMOS. Next I was
surprised to read the memo and its content being your
interpretation of a discussion we had at one of our meetings. I
wonder why you have not checked with me on the correct
presentation of my views or at least mailed me a copy of the
memo. Giving it yesterday to me, you gave me also a covering
letter. Your intent was good -- you must have suffered
observing that I am under wrong impression based on oral
declarations made to me, whereas the Board assumes a
different policy; and it is good that you brought the situation
into the open.

Your memo, however, is full of inexactitudes; knowing you for
pedantically accurate, I wonder at your rendition of our
conversation. The only explanation I would know, is
psychological: your opposition to the idea of the Foundation -
or only to the dichotomy (you use the term 'duplicity'), and
that can be a subconscious urge during your writing. (...)

The sentence in your memo that obviously outraged de Grazia
who repeats it is "veto power." Nothing of the kind was
spoken between us or between anybody else. There is a wide
gulf between a "veto power" and being kept in the darkness,
as several instances in this letter testify. (...)

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If time permits, I shall also put in writing what I exactly expect
from the Foundation. As to yourself, you know how I value
you; you are also at this time the closest. To you I always
opened all my files. I wish you would be the one to organize
my archive. I never promised Alfred anything concerning the
disposition of it, though we discussed its lodging at Princeton
University. Most offensive to me is his reference to my
"bargaining" I never responded to his many approaches...

Juergens then writes to Deg and passes along a never-sent but
typed letter to Deg from V. with the hand-written notation "This
transcript of a letter drafted was not mailed nor typed -- it dates
from probably 1967. I.V. November 26, 1968."

Dear Alfred:

Yesterday evening when I was already preparing for sleep I had
your telephone call. Elisheva listened too. You told us of your
plan to incorporate a foundation for studies in modern science.
At your last visit about a week ago you first mentioned of some
step taken by a partner of yours to charter a search along the
lines pioneered in my books, thus to exploit possibilities now
neglected because of the inertia or ever opposition of scientific
groups or the entire scientific establishment to new approaches
and especially those embodied in my work. You told me
yesterday of the founding committee that you intend to
convoke in a few days -- two names out of the business world,
unknown to me, but also Livio and Ralph, and a few more.
You indicated that I should at some point assume honorary
presidency of the new venture. A new publication should be
one of the projected activities. Organizing of my archive,
another project.

I was through with my sleep at 3 a.m. when Elisheva that did
not yet fall asleep came to discuss the project. Her thoughts
and mine (crystallized by the sleep) were very similar.

The positive in your plan needs not be recapitulated by me for
you. But here are the adverse conditions.

For over a quarter century, since 1939, when I came to this
country and dedicated my time to research in ancient history, I
carried the material load of existence and study and writing
with their concurrent expenses entirely by myself. This, at the
end, gave me great satisfaction since alone and a stranger in the

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land facing since 1950 the concerted opposition of faculties,
scientific societies, and scientific publications, I now find myself
in a changing climate, even though animosity in some circles, or
among some individual is even more vitriolic than before, but
this can be recognized as defense mechanism.

Should your Foundation and money drives be instituted, the
following will occur:

1.      My adversaries who tried to present me as a charlatan
but could not point to any unproper action on my part, would
be supplied with ammunition -- a money collection [sentence
unfinished]

2.      Scientific organization like American Philosophical
Society or scientific publications, like Science of AAAS show
recently some change of heart; this mimosa-like attitude would
be very sensitive to any activities [sentence unfinished]

3.      Also many of my friends and followers would
experience some shock if they should feel that a monetary
pursuit under whatever guise accompanies my work and I
would feel embarrassed.

4.      I am most averse, even afraid of being made affiliated
with other, so numerous, unorthodoxies. Through these years I
am under an incessant barrage of such proposals to study the
works of others, and in some instances what is known as
lunatic fringe. The Yale Scientific issue caused a flow of letters
to the editors from various individuals with appeals to have
their theories given similar handing to that given to mine. I
found often in letters given claims that the writer is in the
possession [of ways] to prove me right (as if I failed in this) or
to improve my work by modifying it.

There are, no question, other worthy unorthodoxies. But I wish
to continue my progress not burdened with the defense of
others, like say, the organon theory of the late W. Reich. A
foundation for studies in new [word missing] cannot close door
to new ideas; I, however, cannot and wish not to become a
pope all malcontent.

5.      Organizations, like foundations, from the start or after
a while, institute salaries, incur liabilities, oblige itself [sic] for
grants etc., and should the organization be intimately connected
with my name, it may disband under conditions of insolvency,

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after a promising start, causing an irreparable damage to my
cause.

6.        The small organization of Cosmos and Chronos groups
is given to my close supervision and I fell quite comfortable in
separating my scholarly pursuits from the work assigned to
Cosmos and Chronos extending it to [sentence unfinished].

I know that S. Freud and to even greater extent C. Jung made
use of donations, usually by their ex-patients, to establish
schools of their respective modes of psychoanalysis or for
publishing magazines. But their activities were not in the form
of solicitation of funds.

In the morning after your call I drafted this letter to let you
know how I feel.

Deg's Journal, November, 30 1968

Yesterday was one of those fine mornings when most things
seems to go wrong, but I didn't much mind. The mail brought
a batch of documents from Ralph Juergens -- the gist of which
was that Velikovsky was deeply perturbed by my ascerbic letter
to him of ten days ago. V. had promptly asked to see Ralph's
memo describing V.'s thoughts. Then V. wrote a letter
indirectly answering mine, and implying that Ralph has
misstated his position, etc. V. added a newly typed version of a
letter that he said he had once written me but never mailed, full
of forebodings concerning my establishment of the foundation,
together with a letter from Arens of Gimbel's of Philadelphia,
also full of doubts about the wisdom of proceeding with a
foundation. All of this was to justify V. in the face of my attack.
I know V.'s pattern of responses so well now that I could tell
there was nothing new about the whole business. He writes
everything down to have it on paper for some future strategm.
He warns against everything to be ready to be proven a
prophet should things go badly. He cannot let go of any power
over things or people, but plays upon every means of
entrapping and embroiling them, sucking them in and pushing
them off as he feels the one way or the other in his succession
of mobilizing-for-action and trust-nobody moods.

I phoned him and visited him in the afternoon. I brought him
the copy of Etruscan Tombs at Sesto Fiorentino which Prof.
Nicola Rilli had inscribed to him, and he surlily carped at every
point of Rilli's development that I brought out. 'Very risky,'

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'I don't think much of him from what you tell me.' 'He
does not seem to be a scholar.' 'He has very little evidence
for what he is saying.' We finally got to the sensitive subjects
of the flurry of documents. He claims his position has never
changed. I said, 'Very well, you need not have anything to do
with the Foundation, but if you wish to write articles for it or
refer people to it, or receive support from it, you are
welcome.' He agreed. (He will of course not keep his
agreement, but will intervene at every opportunity.) I offered
also to turn the Foundation over to him completely and let him
designate someone to carry it on, but he refused that. I said,
'Please name those men and foundations whom you do now
wish us to approach for support.' He would not do that. I
promised that his name would not be used in support of the
Foundation, which satisfied him. I know what he would like to
see happen: the Foundation helping him in every possible way,
but he criticizing it constantly for its faults. And provided it
does not demoralize others, I do not mind. I have from my first
meeting with him concluded that I should do what I thought he
basically would want and weather as best as possible the
glooms, the negativism, the wounded shouts, the suspicions,
and the ingratitude.

We drank a glass of dry white wine (the Israeli wines are
becoming excellent), and he showed me a few late letters, as he
usually does. With some emotion he declared that, for all I have
done for him he was going to give me sooner or later the whole
history of the case -- the reception of his ideas by science and
the public. I didn't fell as grateful as I should, for I need
nothing so little as another pile of documents and a book to
write, though it be the richest such case archive in history, and I
thanked him. I prepared to leave, bidding Elisheva goodbye,
and he stepped into the next room to get something. When he
came out. I stepped close to him and said 'You know, there is
nothing that you can do that will drive me away.' He said 'I
will read you a line of poetry that you wrote' and quoted "the
most opposed I will most believing be." 'Not a bad line,' I
said, smiling, and bid them goodbye again.

Deg's Journal, December 1, 1968

The Foundation Trustees met today and perused the volume of
recent correspondence relating Dr. V. to FOSMOS. They
agreed that his conduct was sick. Still Juergens and Stephanos
are under his thumb. I pointed this out and questioned whether

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the Foundation should not slow down its program for a year
until everyone clarified their position, especially Dr. V. But we
decided to move ahead anyhow, and suffer V.'s conduct as
well as possible.

The more I think of his behavior, the more indignant I become.
Every kind of evidence comes out in his letters, actions, and the
experiences of others. Today he told Juergens that the
Foundation should get another box number, because he wishes
to go ahead with his absurd, presumptions, and self-glorifying
Cosmos and Chronos 'Clubs' (of which, in truth, none exist).
Day before yesterday, he tried to buy my loyalty by the gift of
his papers and documents on how science received his work.
'only for you, not for the Foundation.' A great collection, but
I wish it for others to use, not myself. He is incredibly obtuse
on some matters, I try to love him for his faults, but they are
too numerous and large to embrace.

On Dec. I, the Board of Trustees met in Princeton at Deg's home,
without the important presence of Mainwaring and Holbrook. Nor
were Kallen and Hess, who played no part in these proceedings
anyhow, present. Juergens carried a new letter from V, to the
Board, divorcing himself from the Foundation, which, as he asserts,
he had never been married to in the first place but with which he is
hoping for good relations nevertheless.

I repeat the following from the Minutes of the Meeting:

"An extensive discussion developed around the subject of the
Foundation's relations with Dr. Velikovsky. Juergens reported
that Dr. Velikovsky was of the opinion that FOSMOS' aims
and activity were to deal only with such work as concerned him
directly and as he might approve, and that FOSMOS was
changing its direction since its inception.

The President moved that, after examining the record, the
Board resolve that the Foundation had not deviated from its
original aims, which remain unchanged and are reflected in the
following description offered by Stecchini, plus the subjects of
'Communications of Science' and  `Science of Science':

The Foundation is concerned with conducting and aiding in the
investigation of theories

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A.      That the geophysical and astronomical history of the
planet Earth has been characterized by sudden changes;

B.      That these changes have taken place in historical times
and, as such are documented by historical records,
archaeological findings, mythological traditions, religious
practices, and scriptures; and

D.      That these changes have affected the human psyche
and Affect contemporary social behavior."

Afterward, Deg addresses V. once more, to tell him that the
Foundation agreed with him and had always pursued the course that
he now was advocating.

And then Deg receives a rather surprising letter from Stephanos
who now becomes the instrument of V. in a new way; he lists his
benefactions from V. as if he were under hypnosis, and declares:

...I must state that I find your letter to him [Velikovsky]
misdirected (it should, perhaps, have been addressed to
another), and in its tone, totally unjust and unwarranted. I
believe it could be damaging to the interest we all claim to
share, the acceptance of Dr. Velikovsky's work, and capable
of great personal harm to him and to his good name.

Since I was privileged to receive a copy of that letter (...) I
want and do here deny its content as my experiences allow, and
respectfully request, as a member of the Board, that you write a
retraction to Dr. Velikovsky as soon as possible...

Deg replies to him:

Dear Bob:

I am afraid that your letter to me of December 5 and the
circumstances of its preparation tend to confirm the contents of
my letter of November 22 to Dr. Velikovsky.

It also indicates that Dr. Velikovsky should probably not have
circulated a personal letter.

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But thank you for your concern. I am sure that all will end well.

Sincerely yours,

Alfred de Grazia

It did end well enough, except for poor Stephanos. The Foundation
moved along cautiously, doing only small projects such as
disseminating materials on the Velikovsky Affair, supporting Eddie
Schorr's work on the Greek Dark Ages, and soliciting
memberships. It was disturbed by a new attitude that V. had taken
toward Stephanos, hitherto his most faithful and welcome disciple.
He seemed to believe that Stephanos had encouraged persons from
the lunatic fringe to become followers of V. and was giving them
inside information of V.'s activities and archives. V. wished to
dissociate himself from Stephanos and expected the Foundation to
do so, too. Sizemore stuck up for Stephanos in private conversation
with Deg, who sensed no great loss should Stephanos resign. Then
he saw Sizemore's point -- Stephanos should not be sacrificed to
V. -- and did nothing. Stephanos resigned anyhow. By the
following Spring, Deg was withdrawing, too, as this Journal entry
of April 19 seems to indicate.

On occasion Dr. V and I have discussed a biography in
dialogue form. But the three occasions on which we went to
work with a tape recorder were disappointing to me. He
becomes stiff, even more aware of his role and audience, and
though I try to break through with my informal comment, he
remains fixed like a peasant before a camera.

I have not seem him in several weeks. My own problems with
women and children are many and my book Kalos cries for
completion. Immanuel's magnificent self-centering is not
consoling or even rational, under the circumstance. I have
ceased completely to work on FOSMOS, in part because of the
foregoing, but also because the members of the Board were not
up to editing a Bulletin, or raising funds. Bill Dix [Director of
the Princeton University Libraries] told me, too, that the
Velikovsky's during V.'s illness of December, had sought to
give (with tax deductions well in mind) V.'s archive to
Princeton University. Yet FOSMOS was to have been the
beneficiary.

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Holbrook took over active management of the Foundation, working
out of his new office in Washington. He did not succeed in
developing it well, and, by general agreement, it was dissolved
several years later.

V. was doing well enough as his own majordomo as we discover
when we read Deg's Journal of October 7, 1972 in Princeton:

I borrowed Jill's bicycle and rode it to the Velikovsky's.
Francie, whose memory of me hardly dims with my long
absence, loped alongside. Velikovsky was issuing directions to
a University representative on how to set up the stage for a
forthcoming lecture to the Graduate School Residence Hall
Club. He spared the man no detail, prescribing publicity
releases, and his desire to have his full first name spelled out
rather than I. Velikovsky (is there a wish here to conceal the I,
egoist, or the normal desire to spread out one's own name, as
he said?). He requested that all his books and even a copy of
Pensée  dedicated to his work be on sale at the University
Store beforehand; asked that two parking spaces be kept for his
car and that of his daughter; wondered, since the British
Broadcasting Company would be video-taping the show,
whether the President of Princeton might not come if invited;
denied a suggestion that a local radio station broadcast the
speech but insisted that provisions for a televised relay into an
adjoining hall be provided for people who could not crowd into
the banquet hall. He stipulated that some announcements reach
New York and Philadelphia so that disciples might come from
those places to hear him. The young bald impresario left the
Presence dizzy with details V. is many things but he is also a
master impresario. He has had to be; his overwhelming need to
be recognized for what he is can only be satisfied by mobs of
admirers under instructions which, given his detachment from
the Establishment machinery,only he can provide, or by some
wonderful stroke of recognition, a great prize like the Nobel
Prize, the Fermi Prize, or an invitation from a head of state to
deliver a series of lectures. I believe that he would then retire
from his promotional labors and give himself over to finishing
several important books.

I thought so yesterday as I watched him masterfully, but yet
exhaustingly, promoting himself and his work, and later
privately conveyed this thought to Sheva, when he had gone up
to nap. For when the door closed on the graduate club
representatives, he sat back, listened to me for a few minutes,

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ate an apple, and began to doze. I enjoyed the chance to talk to
Sheva; she can tell me less flamboyantly all that has happened
on their trips and where all the characters of the drama of
recognition are at the moment -- Mullen and Schorr and
Bucaloe and so on. I borrowed a book and biked home to
Mom. After dinner, Immanuel called to apologize for falling
away from our conversation and I assured him that I was
delighted that he could sleep well and hoped that he would
always behave in exactly the same way. I had mentioned to him
that I contemplated a little book of forays into myth, science
and our adventures over the past decade of our friendship; he
wondered how I could write it without his archives. I can
imagine how I might, but if he would dig into them a little, my
work would be greatly improved; I did not, however, suggest
that he give me materials. I shall show him the table of contents
when it is sufficiently elaborated. Then, if he wishes, he may
find some material that would help me.

Deg is living in New York City, and only visits Princeton on
occasion now.

Deg's Journal, October 23, 1972

I telephoned Velikovsky at 10 PM to see how he was. He was
well. We talked of the book I intended to write. When I said
that I was investigating Hermes he warned me against starting
to repeat his work of 20 years. I guess he'd like me to ask for
his files and then trap me into an endless affair. I said, don't
worry: I have only in mind making several penetrations in
depth, at widespread points, to show the method that should be
followed to mine the ore. He said that he couldn't "approve"
my book unless he read it. Of course. And no doubt there are
some bouts ahead. In general, he likes the idea that I will write
the book.

Then I gave him some firm advice. I said "you must finish
Peoples of the Sea and the Ramses II volume promptly and
publish them. You must not lecture and run around. Ten
people can go around lecturing about you but only you can
finish these books. Furthermore, you must not work on the
Einstein book, or Stargazers and Gravediggers, or Ash. These
can be finished by someone else. You must write something, if
only 30 pages, on your theories of what happened in the skies
before Venus in 1500 B.C." He agreed, "You are right!" He
added, however, that he must write his autobiography because

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nobody knows him really or how he did his work. He only let
out a few facts here and there. Alright, I responded, add that to
your required list, following the ante-Venusian article. But
that's all. "You're right!" he said again, with unusual accord.
And so we left the matter, saying good-night.

P.S. V. told me that Harlow Shapley had just died at a nursing
home in Colorado. After reading the extensive obituary in the
New York Times, V. concludes that Shapley, always a great
self-promoter, had seen to it that the Times possessed his own
account of his life. Thus Shapley hurls his last insult to V. from
the grave.

Again on November 9. Deg exhorts him:

Had long telephone conversation with Velikovsky. He was in a
grim mood, I tried to cheer him up. I also read him the list of
chapter titles for my projected book. He said a few approving
things but generally he was critical, full of admonitions. careful
of his own sources of information, making no generous or even
modest offer of assistance, wondering how I could have any
new idea (though he did not say this explicitly) when he had
them all, and in some manner had published them all.

I don't know how he expects ever to encourage serious efforts
to follow or parallel him. He beseeches this from the world but
then denies in advance that they can either be original or
important.

I tell him to move rapidly on his theory of the pre-1500
catastrophes -- to publish at least a synopsis of it, lest he accuse
even his supporters of plagiarizing him. All I know of this work
are a few remarks of John Holbrook relating essentially the
truth of the Greek theogony -- Uranus, Chronos (Saturn)
Jupiter.

I am telling V. that if he doesn't do something soon here
instead of parading around the country he will become a
successor instead of a predecessor of someone else, Further,
his predecessor will probably do a poor job because V. has
withheld his information and assistance.

And he is concerned whether V. will be elected to greatness:

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Deg's Journal, November 72

I.V. is running for election. The office he wishes to achieve is
premier of 20th Century Science. I believe that he has as good
a chance as anyone up to this time of winning the election.

However, I am not a campaign manager. And though an
election in science is unfortunately like a political election -- in
that a campaign biography should be written that will show the
candidate in gorgeous lights -- I feel I must pass up the chance
to win glory as a publicist. My interest in biography is as
Conant [President of Harvard University and chemist] once put
it: to find the full meaning of science through its means of
creation.

Immanuel V. as I see and know him is here, and you must
understand to begin with the fact that no person can fully know
another one.

Problems of health depressed V.:

Deg's Journal, December 22, 1972

Called V. He is gloomy, The doctors told him that he must go
away to rest. His days are full of calls, visits, correspondence -
too much to handle; his writing lags. I invited him and Elisheva
to New York for a day of rest and walking around the
museums. Maybe. I also suggested he might go to Yucatan and
see the ruins there. He doesn't "want to be carried around by
the tour buses." "Let the buses go without you. Stay at hotels.
Then provide and make your own daytime itinerary." He
wondered when I would be in Princeton. I didn't know, I told
him I would think of what he should do and would call him
back .

The "Apollo" Program suffers severe cutbacks;

Deg's Journal, December 23, 1972

Called Stecchini. He is feeling better after a gradual six
months' recovery from an old back injury. He said V. may be
depressed by the closing down of the Apollo Moon project
which, whatever its premises and procedures, had brought
forward some support of his views. The signs of volcanic
activity are still being reported, though their time of occurrence

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is naturally placed conveniently far away -- 100,00 years,
500,000 years, their freshness suggesting "recency," but
recency being defined arbitrarily on the lengthy geographical
scale. If 100,000, why not 3000? No answer. No question, in
fact, by anybody, save the Velikovskians. Cape Canaveral
(Kennedy) is already being dismantled. The scientific
community did not rise to the occasion, said S. "I didn't rise,
either," I said. "It was a great waste of world resources." He
half agreed.

Deg worries both about V.'s health and his attitude towards a
friend:

Deg's Journal, December 26, 1972

Called V. again yesterday. He is more cheerful, but says his
diabetes is moderate, not light. He is grumpy over the stricter
diet he must follow. He asked me about all my children and I
recited their whereabouts and conditions of life. He asked
whether he could help me. I should have said, "Yes, let me
read your pre-Venus notes and correspondence." I didn't. He
wouldn't; not now. He would ask me to show that him all of
my ideas. I would do so, but he might well not reciprocate and
even though his materials must be better than mine on the
whole, he might very well absorb them and simply look the
gate on me by putting me onto this or that matter stretching on
endlessly. He cannot help himself. He is authoritarian. And he
finds it difficult to think that anyone in the world but himself
can supply anything but a few details nor indeed should until he
has breathed his last word. This kind of game seems bizarre
between friends, but the reason I am perhaps vulnerable to
shock by its exposition. As certainly as the sun shines (sic!) he
would reject my work repeatedly, absorb all that he had not
known, and accuse me in the end of plagiarism.

V. begins to exhibit alarming symptoms:

Deg's Journal, February 10, 1973

Velikovsky Visit-V. not well at all. Extremely nervous, thin,
paranoid cryptic references, taciturn jerky movements from
time to time. Is diabetic. Asked him whether 10 years of good
work might reconstruct 10,000-600 B.C. He didn't have an
opinion. He said he doesn't know whether deluge was 4000 or
9000 BCE.

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Deg's Journal, February 1973

Called Velikovsky at 5 P.M. Says he is felling better, but is
having troubles with "people." Has matter of importance
(ominous tone) to talk over with me. If I want to hear it, I must
come to Princeton tonight. I tell him it is difficult. Won't
tomorrow night do. Maybe. "Who is it?" I ask. "Can't I
help." "You come." etc. All remote, intimations of disaster,
confusion of personal and the world and of all past with the
present. I try to talk of article about Mars. 'The author
believes in all miracles except yours.' He's not sure he read it.
But uninterested really. He is involved in his personal huge
caravan of suspicions, lawsuits on his house in Israel (so Ruth
tells me to make clear his references), forebodings of
catastrophes, possible suicidal impulses (my enemies wanted
their martyr; now they have it.) Nina hands me a note as she
overhears me. "Do not try to get abstract conversation. He is
trying to talk about himself." But he is uncommunicative.
Finally, I leave it that I may come tonight or in the next couple
of days. He is reluctant to close but finally I end the call.

Called Ruth Sharon. Father not feeling well. Diabetes out of
control. She tells me not to go to Princeton. He will be better
and there is nothing I can do. I tell her I fear he will regress
irretrievably. She cannot answer to that. She says he may even
resent me later if see him in weakness. I tell her I am more
concerned with whether he will be helped now if his situation is
serious. Maybe she and her mother cannot suffice to pull him
out. I ask her to call her mother and if they want me to come to
call me.

8. p.m. Ruth calls me back. She has talked to her mother but
her father hung onto another phone throughout the
conversation. She says, however, that he was feeling a little
better and was thinking of driving out to purchase several
articles. So I should call and give my regrets for not coming.

8.15 I called V. Sheva came on the extension phone. I said I
had not finished my proofs that had to go to India and asked
him to excuse me if I did not come this night. He assented. I
said further that I did not wish to see him before I could show
him an outline of my work on pre-history. He replied that he
would have no time to read it, for he was so behind in his
reading. Sheva interrupted gracefully to say that it was short
piece and I hastily agreed, saying that it was only a page or so.

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He said nothing then; I uttered a few additional inanities and
hung up with the promise to see him soon. He sounded at a bit
stronger of voice.

V. then recovers:

Deg's Journal, April 4, 1973

I phoned V. this morning and found him much improved since
my last call before leaving the country. Three weeks in the
hospital had somehow restored him. I said, "Life without a
telephone to bother you was good for you." "No I had
telephone. I took my calls."

Anyway, he is better and will drive perhaps to Youngstown,
Ohio, for a speech next week. He is working of Ramses II
again. He is pleased that Carl Sagan is writing an article for
Pensée on Venus. He agrees that I shouldn't bother with book
reviews for Pensée  but should present a significant paper.
Maybe I shall get down to preparing one.

He is hopeful. He speaks of Particular tasks. He has even
begun rearranging some files. It is a great relief.

Bill Mullen is getting ready to move from Princeton University to a
new appointment at Boston University. He is glad to be away from
V.'s moods. He writes to Deg:

August 12, 1974

...The summer has been curiously unproductive and jammed as
far as Velikovsky is concerned. He has spent virtually all his
hours talking about what he is not accomplishing and bewailing
the magnitude of the battle against his enemies on all sides.
I've contributed only bits of help here and there, otherwise
being forced to concentrate on preparation of this fall's course.
Eddie [Shorr] has been of tremendous help, spending day after
day in the library going through The People of the Sea with a
fine-tooth comb. But here too the result has not been of the
kind to cheer Velikovsky up since Eddie has found many minor
errors which need correction. Nothing that shakes the
reconstruction, just a lot more nitpicking work that really has
to be done if the book is to be spared the dismissals by
Egyptologists on the grounds of inaccuracy which are feared.
In short, be thankful for the serenity of Naxos. Al, since little

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would have been gained by being close to Princeton this
particular summer (...)

***

But V. reorganizes his forces and this time calls upon Irving Wolfe,
who graciously responds by addressing Mullen, C.J. Ransom,
Juergens, Rose, Steve Talbott and Milton:

Dear Alfred,

I visited Velikovsky last week, along with Lynn Rose and Earl
Milton. We discussed several matters with him, among which
were

-the number of books he's working on at once
-his archives and related issues
-he wants people to submit and keep submitting articles on or
arising from his work to scientific journals, whether they will be
accepted or not -- setting up a Newsletter, about which several
steps are being taken -- public recognition for advance claims
and theories.

You will be familiar with most of these matters already, but
I've drawn your attention to them because I think we need to
get a number of people thinking about them and coming up
with solutions because Velikovsky can use help in all these
areas.

With regard to the last item above, here is an example -- the
recent discovery of substantial quantities of argon and neon on
Mars seem to puzzle scientists, as an article in Science, June
21, 1975 indicates. Yet Velikovsky predicted argon and neon
on Mars as far back as 1946. Key scientists must be given the
facts -- dates of original advance claims, letters, confirmations,
etc. -- and urged to write the major scientific journals.
Velikovsky feels he's too busy to do this himself each time,
and so I've offered to handle it for him, telling him, telling him
that, wherever a case like this arises, he's to send the relevant
document to me and I'll compose a covering letter and send it
all out to the right people.

This is where I need your help -- I want to make up a master
list of key people, perhaps divided into two or three categories,
to whom such things can be sent as each occasion arises...

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Deg could imagine the huddle at 78 Hartley Avenue, planning the
counterpropaganda campaign, the "truth squads" as the
Republicans and Democrats had come to call their
counterpropaganda teams. Next year, Wolfe was calling for an
"alarm system" which he had worked out with Milton in Canada. It
was to be a network, highly sophisticated, with members divided
into generalists and specialists, with squad leaders who would call
upon their assignees to respond to the alarm. Wolfe had been called
by V. to activate the system, as he had promised the year before,
and V. nominated as a test alarm the publication by Doubleday of
Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered, which should exercise the
network to produce reviews, letters, and public discussion.

This meant helping the Talbotts who were otherwise blacklisted by
V. and several of his circle. "Regardless of what any of us feel
about the Talbotts," wrote Wolfe, "I agreed because Velikovsky
asked." (Actually, I doubt that Wolfe ever felt antagonistic towards
the Talbotts himself; the plea was for others.) "He (V.) may feel
that he wants to aid the success of that book because it will affect
his own case." So the Talbotts and the inner circle were
momentarily in bed together again, an event that had not occurred
since the Talbotts' Pensée had collapsed. The results were not
remarkable, and after a time they got out of bed.

There came a lull in attempts at general organization; V. continued
to turn his attention and the minds of his several collaborating
followers to the AAAS affair, a story to be told later. It is
noteworthy how much time was taken up with all the maneuvering,
research, writing, and wrangling connected with a single sitting of
an AAAS panel in San Francisco, much of five years of V.'s time
and of the time of several others, the time too of Elisheva, but who
counted that? -- more hundreds of hours blanked out; there the
tragedy is marked, for she was a sculptress and musician of
consequence.

She never complained, so I am reporting Deg's complaints on her
behalf, unsolicited. Moses would have been pleased with her self
sacrifice; Deg was no Mosaist. When she lay dying after a long
illness, and he had not seen her for months, he thought to write a

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poem for her.

Then came the infatuation of V. with Christoph Marx, and
following upon Marx' return to Switzerland, V. addressed Lynn
Rose, who was perhaps feeling both grumpy about the affair and
pleased that suddenly V.'s attention was turned elsewhere.
However, V. was writing in a euphoric mood, and one could see
the alarm bells ringing around the world.

The letter to Lynn Rose is dated May 11, 1977, and I summarize it.

Marx was to be "a central figure" on the European continent:
Isenberg sends a paper he gave to a conference of science editors
and V. urges him to send it to the major hostile magazines -
Nature, Science, New Scientist and the Bulletin of the Atomic

Scientist, "as coming from the convention" ... A letter from
Langenbach, a supporting attorney working in the Harvard scene...
A call to William Safire of the New York Times, a self-designated
"great fan" to get advice... An announcement that Juergens has
resigned his engineering job and would probably now work for
him, V... A hope to teach a course in Egyptology at Princeton
University... A report of Deg's taking issue with Lustig of the
Encyclopedia Britanica Yearbook... Last minute changes to the
English edition of Ramses II...A carpenter-mason is building a
room for guests and Elisheva's music... A letter from the widow of
maligned Harvard supporter, Professor Pfeiffer... Mainwaring will
be sending a complete file of all C14 communications with the
British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania museum... A
conversation with Holbrook, once more in Washington... A gift of
Czech rights to Jan Sammer who helped so well with Ramses II...
Some minor foreign rights also to his early copy editor Marion
Kuhn, now ailing... Reporting plans to sponsor publication of Alice
Miller's Index to his works... Detailing the distribution of 1000
free copies of Kronos to College libraries, financed by Jerry
Rosenthal... Denouncing Steve Talbott for recommending in a
pamphlet that all subscribe to The Zetetic Scholar which has
recently defamed V...Urges that the five former associate editors of
the now defunct Pensée  "should make a common statement and
try to teach the subscribers of Network (Talbott's serial pamphlet),
deluded into believing that the Network is an organ to defend and

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protect my work... Dr. Gowans of the University of Victoria
"comes back to the fold" after consorting with the likes of Dietrich
Muller of Lethbridge... An exchange of letters with Jacques
Barzun... Reports that Peoples of the Sea just released had already
outsold Earth in Upheaval (11 printings since 1955) and Oedipus
and Akhnaton (12 printings since 1960)... He resists Doubleday's
efforts at putting Peoples into a book club as an alternate
selection... Ramses II is to be delayed once more, this time by the
publishers... He is happy that his British publishers, Sidgwick and
Jackson, have given full prominence to his Peoples while
somewhere in the nether pages "Patrick Moore is modestly
displayed for his '1978 Yearbook of Astronomy,' and has to take
this pecking order, he being the author of 'Do you speak
Venusian?' presenting me as a King of Fools"... More letter
exchanges... He doesn't want Rose to be distracted from their plan
to write together "The Grand Ballroom" dealing with the AAAS
affair which was already the subject of several books and many
articles... "....The hammer of the builder sounds like a song... do
you know that my real vocation is in architecture, and the years that
I visited the Library on 42nd street, I regularly visited also the room
with architectural journals, watching for a chance to compete for a
plan and construct a public building?"... "Keep well, act strong,
Lynn."

V. was obviously in fine fettle. The Mastermind was back. He had
a great deal going for him on two continents now, it seemed.

The euphoria subsided. The resistance to all of his ideas continued
unabated. It seems that he could say nothing that would be right in
the eyes of his opponents. His growing disenchantment with
Christoph Marx was not compensated by new faces. (New ideas
were out of the question; proofs were wanted, and defense.) He had
now close to himself principally Greenberg and Sizemore; for them
Kronos was not fun and games anymore. On June 3, 1979,
Sizemore writes Deg, "This issue is going through hell -- trying to
get V.'s approval on Lew's article about the latest probes."

***

By now I believe that you and I Know enough of the principal

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308

characters here to venture a more fundamental answer to the
question which I dealt with unsatisfactorily at the beginning of the
chapter: why did Deg stick with V.? It appears that the two men
were close to each other even when separated and out of touch. I
conclude that there was a familial relationship being reenacted
between V. and Deg. It was not father to son, but older to younger
brother. In significant ways V. was of the character of Deg's older
brother Sebastian, and Deg was relating to him as he had to his
brother throughout life but especially from two years to twenty
years of age.

It was as Lasswell somehow discovered, a sibling rivalry between
Deg and Sebastian, more intensely activating for the younger than
the elder. No matter what Sebastian did, he couldn't put down his
younger brother; and his younger brother, while trying to outdo
him, was absolutely fond of him and set him up as a model for
others, to be surpassed only by himself, and he was determined all
the while that none was going to put down Sebastian so that there
was a strong protective impulse going incongruously upwards -
material and demanding -- rather than downwards as one might
expect.

V. had two older brothers, neither of whom he saw after 1921 and
with whom communication was rare, if only because the "Iron
Curtain" barred East from West and he said once to Deg, speaking
of his scientist brother, Alexander, I would not want to jeopardize
his position over there by reintroducing myself into his life.

And Sebastian and V. were of the same rawboned, tall and
handsome physique, unlike Deg's more compacted from and
features, both were umbrageous, too Both felt that Deg could do
anything he set his hand to, but that he was always off on some
wild goose chase when you needed him.

There were of course differences. However the song goes: "I want
a girl -- just like the girl -- who married dear old Dad," no girl is
ever quite like mother: and so with siblings, no two sibling
relationships are quite a like. The major differences were two: like
Deg, V. was fantasmogenic: he day-dreamed much and often and
duelled with the universe of nature and men in his mind. Sebastian

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was not a dreamer. And, further, V. was there, in place, at home;
for seventeen years Deg knew where to find him at Hartley Street
whose number he could never remember, and that he would be
welcomed like a brother, which, no offense intended, he could not
always count on from Sebastian.

I think that the crux of the relationship, that which proved its
psychogenesis, was the fact that Deg, unlike so many of the cosmic
heretics, could be constantly critical of V. without risk to his
affection for V. Then, too, while V. would never let Deg take away
his toys, nor admit that he was equal, he would not stop him, short
of outright usurpation of his position and place, which Deg in any
event would never wish to do. Indeed, one of Deg's main virtues
and weaknesses in human affairs, if it can be called that, was that
he would often win a contest, but could never administer the coup
de grace, Neither V. nor Sebastian lacked this capacity except in
the case of their younger brother.

Sebastian never became friendly with V. but supported him quietly,
just as he never committed himself to Deg's efforts on behalf to V.
nor to Deg's quantavolutionary ideas. He engaged himself mildly
one time in their futile effort to obtain an honorary doctorate for V.
at Rutgers University. Another time, when Deg was abroad,
Sebastian perhaps prompted by his wife Lucia, thought of getting
V. and Elisheva together with the Director of the Institute for
Advanced Study, Carl Kaysen, Ambassador George Kennan, and
their wives. Perhaps V. should be invited to join the Institute (which
would in fact have been an ideal place for him and ideally in
keeping, too, with the Institute's professed aims). Elisheva and
Immanuel were irritatingly preoccupied with the menu for dinner,
however, and settled finally for a visit during the cocktail hour,
which went off nicely.

***

Deg's communication lines generally thinned out in the years 1976
to 1983. Even his lateral communications in quantavolution
dwindled as he pressed to break through with the several large
studies underway. Here he is writing from Naxos to Professor Ernst
Wreschner in Haifa on December 21, 1976:

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310

"I am returning from three weeks in Mexico as a guest of the
government. I attended the inauguration of Jose Portillo as
President, gave a paper at a special conference on the 400th
anniversary of Jean Bodin's Six Books of the Republic (author
of my least favorite doctrine -- absolute sovereignty), and
visited a number of Olmec, Maya and Aztec ruins and sites. It
has been a good trip and I found a considerable interest in
translating my political works and even some surprised
involvement in my questions about mythology and
catastrophes. I did not find the lost tribes of Israel but perhaps
learned something of pre- "Atlantean" survivals. I also had a
car wreck (I was not driving), had my wallet stolen by a large
fat Indian lady with an overpowering smell that put me to sleep
on the bus alongside her, and then later on my little camera as
well -- before I could turn around, the pickpocket had dived
into the marketplace mass.) C'est la vie.

With luck, by late spring I shall have a general manuscript
ready on the holocene destructions and human development
and will send you a copy. I hope that my present letter finds
Ella and yourself very well and in good spirits. I have resigned
all teaching at NYU and am now free to give my time to
research and perhaps sometime to a visit to Israel, unless you
meanwhile visit here. (...)"

Deg showed his materials on Homo Schizo to Harold Lasswell who
approved their significance. Deg wished he might get the famed
polymath involved in seeking the origins of the human mind, even
in contemplating quantavolution, for Lasswell was as much a
fantasmogene as Deg. But not long afterwards, Harold Lasswell
climbed into the bathtub of his apartment overlooking Lincoln
Center, suffered a stroke, and spent two helpless days in the tub
before his apartment was entered. His friends rallied around and
attended the cheerful but addlepated great man until he died. Deg
hoped he had not been unkindly critical when they had last been
sitting at Lasswell's place, drinking whisky and looking down upon
Manhattan, for he had been suddenly seized with impatience when
Harold spoke of a great new understanding overcoming the medical
profession owing (by inference ) partly to the introduction of
techniques for better human relations in complex technical
situations (in which he was playing a part, as always) inasmuch as
Deg felt like raging -- not only against the system of medical care,

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311

but also against the world at large for its frightful bungling.

When I went back in time for Lasswellian material related to
quantavolution and the heretics, the latest was from November 4,
1972, when Deg's Journal reads:

I met Harold Lasswell at the University Club 7 and after two
Scotches and 'what have you been up to' and 'what are
families and friends doing,' we taxied to Washington Square,
where Nina prepared dinner. She pulled out all the stops of her
culinary organ and enthralled Harold with poached whitefish
and freshly made mayonnaise, stewed hare, spinach and egg
salad, Port-Salut, stewed pears in brandy, and a variety of
wines and cognac. We talked until after midnight.

He is looking as he has for thirty years. Still grey and pink, still
ranging all over the world and talking upon every subject; the
chasms of unintelligibility when he swings into Lasswellian
sentences from time to time still enchant me. It was Nina's first
exposure to them and she couldn't decode them.

He described his unexpected walk many years ago up a set of
18-inch spikes hammered into the walls of Santa Sophia in
Istanbul. He had a hangover from a night of drinking sweet
Turkish liquor and could barely save himself from nausea,
vertigo and panic. How I know the feeling. He talked too of a
ride in a military plane from Paris to Vienna after World War
II, where he sat on a metal bucket seat with two other men and
watched a cargo of coffins creep through their bonds toward
the freedom amidships.

We talked of economists and he expressed his pleasure that the
social sciences were being recognized for Nobel Prizes,
particularly Ken Arrow and Samuelson, but his subtle manner
of speaking, which one must watch carefully, indicated he was
a little hurt that he who had achieved so much for the social
sciences had not been recognized with such a prize. I agreed
with him, without mentioning the matter; what a corrupting
influence the Nobel Prizes are; they pretended to omniscience,
in whose name, on what grounds; what presumptuousness.

He is now working on a Policy Sciences Center, promotes a
world university, heads a Rand Corporation Board, etc. He
was delighted with my stories of the University in Switzerland
and would have gone the whole evening on the subject.

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His mentioning Arrow and Samuelson came when I reflected
upon the betrayal of human economics by the economists. I
explained my struggle with Scott-Foresman over publishing a
chapter on economic policy and especially on a guaranteed
income. Harold says that A. & S. and others just published a
statement indicating their adherence to such in principle. I
should use it to back up my attack on the subject.

I mentioned my advice to Velikovsky to publish now instead of
awaiting the `no mistake' nirvana; H.L., who feels a certain
competition, insisted that I was right, that V. wanted to be
God, that it was unscientific, that no man could expect his
work to stand free of error indefinitely, that the courage to err
was the glory of a true scientist.

Lasswell spoke of a book called Chariots of the Gods by a
Swiss, who apparently believed in the depositing of inventions
upon Earth by superterrestrial beings. I thought this was a
modern version of the gods of the Greeks descending at will
upon earth bringing discoveries as well as evil. I added that I
am pursuing a theory that the flowering of certain early metal
ages came in consequence of the showering of metals upon
earth from comets and meteorites.

Probably I should add a chapter to my book on the descent of
the Metals. If the metals are heavy, they should have sunk to
the core of the Earth's molten mass, never to surface again.
Why should in theory the earth's crust contain them? For none
says that the turbulence of the crust descends to greater depth.

Before our last cognacs had been finished, we spoke of the
family system, Nina presenting the nostalgic view of the
extended family, Harold asserting that the blood family has
little to offer any longer, while admitting her argument. He
described his early family -- he an only child, but with
numerous relatives, now scattered from the Midwest to
California and Florida, those graveyards of American families. I
had been urging him earlier to write his Autobiography; he is
silent about his past to an abnormal degree. He is
noncommittal. Perhaps he prefers to remain a Great Man of
Mysterious Origins. Very well, but a good autobiography is
worth more than a large question mark.

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313

Washington, 1979

In Memoriam

HAROLD D. LASSWELL
(1902-1978)

Harold! Greetings!

Snifting bubbles, are you, this season,

in the land of the tall drinks?

Are they pouring you doubles?

Come back to Chicago, Vienna, Nanking.

Sounding like we know it all,

in tones serene as your very own,

We slump in low divans

and hunch over brown tables

Spilling smoothly the news about how

you walked upon the Earth once.

Welcome back to Washington, New York and New Haven;

your train is set to run on time.

You said straight what you saw

Without hee-haws, oinks, or meows

No winks, curtsies, or knotted fists

No cow-eyes, or stony gaze.

Viel Blitzen, kein Donor,

No "Ho-ho-ho."

Pleasant, agreeable Hero of our times,

"if-then" propositions cornucopiously emitted.

Two pounds of value-sharing for all men alive.

Mix one pound of deference, a dash of income,

well-being and safety added to taste,

Be generous with enlightenment.

Now that you're not in it.

More Seasoning is needed.

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314

some of the gusto is gone.

In-put, out-go.

Hearing the world's secrets and ours nevermore,

You heard them all, and those to come

that we must explicate ourselves.

Thanks for configurating the North pole

under your gray hair, behind your glasses,

in your midnight coat. You gloves are too thin.

Come home again, if you get the chance

The New Year is here.

So long, Saturn!

***

Deg's Journal, November 18, 1980

It's cold outside. I received a letter from Gilbert Davidowitz'
sister telling me that my letter to him arrived but that he had
died 'of a heart attack' last July. Poor lonely mad scholar. He
was only fortyish. He must have committed suicide. Never an
academic appointment. Nothing published. Brilliant worker in
the origins of languages. I immediately wrote Charles Lee
[Director of the State Archives of South Carolina, one time
President of the American Society of Archivists] who will be
startled to hear from me after 38 years, explaining my
memorandum on the archives of the dying and their total loss
to our culture. I feel extra sad about Gilbert, because he was so
alone and so incapacitated for everything except the history of
languages. But what a fine capacity. If he might only have
known when dying how I like and admired him. He must have
known. But he needed just then to be told so.

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