The Children of Men

I have been thinking a lot about fertility.

Fertility, of course, is important to a farmer—fertility of the soil made possible through the use of compost and green manures, fertility of the animals on the farm, of honeybees and other pollinators, and of the plants which the farmer grows. Clean water also supports fertility, as does clean air. This is not hard to figure out.

The fertility of Creation, some might say “of the ecology” or “of the environment,” is also important to human fertility and procreation. Procreation, that is, is very Pro-Creation: it fulfills the terms of the contract for living in the Kingdom: “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth’”(Gen 1:28). And the means to this end follow: “Then the Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it” (Gen 2:15).

Many commentators have read the language of Genesis—“subdue it; and have dominion over it”—as a kind of protocapitalist formula for exploitation. But ancient Hebraic culture was hardly a capitalist enterprise, as if this needs to be explained. Margaret Barker, for one, has suggested that the word “subdue” used here does not exactly capture the import of the Hebrew word kbš which also implies a bond, as in “being bound to” [1]. What’s important here is that Adam and the earth were bound to each other in a reciprocity of flourishing and fertility: for flourishing and fertility are spiritually, biologically, and economically enmeshed. Without the one, you cannot have the other.

But we live in a world hostile to fertility, and therefore hostile to flourishing.

This came to mind this week when I caught part of New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s remarks this week that the United States needs to allow as many immigrants (illegal or legal) into the country as possible because “we’re short of workers and we have a population that is not reproducing on its own.” I will pass over that the good senator supports abortion up until the moment of birth, which clearly would contribute to a population decline. I will also pass over that all-cause mortality is up drastically over the last two years and that thousands upon thousands of healthy young people have either died or been incapacitated due to a “mysterious cause” (that we all know). I will also pass over that this was on the heels of Bill Gates promoting the idea of death panels at the Cop27 meeting. And I won't even mention the now widespread enactment of laws that allow juveniles to self-sterlize without parental consent, as happened recently in my home state of Michigan.

But I will not pass over that fertility rates have been plummeting for decades and that this decline is accelerating. According to this report, sperm counts have plunged over 62% in under fifty years. Add to that the mounting evidence that C0vid v@ccines are probably contributing to infertility, especially in women, not to mention an alarming increase in miscarriages in vaccinated pregnant women, then we have a recipe for demographic disaster.

Given these developments, I decided to take a nostalgic peek into P. D. James’s masterful apocalyptic novel, The Children of Men. Written in the early-1990s and set in 2021, James tells the story of a world in which human fertility is no longer possible. Fertility, worldwide, suddenly stops. As a result, the surviving population watches as the world becomes incrementally more empty of souls, older and older. One character in the book, the Oxford historian of the Victorian age Theodore Faron marks the antecedents of the fall:

“Much of this I can trace to the early 1990s: the search for alternative medicine, the perfumed oils, the massage, the smoking and anointing, the crystal-holding, the non-penetrative sex. Pornography and sexual violence in film, on television, in books, in life, had increased and become more explicit but less and less in the West we made love and bred children. It seemed a welcome development in a world grossly polluted by over-population. As a historian I see it as the beginning of the end.” [2]

First a drastic drop in birthrate (not unlike we’re seeing at the moment) was followed by a zero birthrate:

“Overnight, it seemed, the human race had lost its power to breed. The discovery in July 1994 that even the frozen sperm stored for experiment and artificial insemination had lost its potency was a peculiar horror casting over Omega the pall of superstitious awe, of witchcraft, of divine intervention. The old gods reappeared, terrible in their power.” [3]

One of the eerier elements to The Children of Men is the post-Omega (the date fertility stopped) fad of women pushing prams bearing dolls instead of babies, a stunning psychological mechanism of the simulacra. The fad passes, as fads do, but makes a resurgence that Faron observes:

“It had been years since he had seen a doll thus paraded, but they had been common twenty years ago, had become something of a craze. Doll-making was the only section of the toy industry which, with the production of prams, had for a decade flourished; it had produced dolls for the whole range of frustrated maternal desire, some cheap and tawdry but some of remarkable craftsmanship and beauty which, but for the Omega which originated them, could have become cherished heirlooms….. At one time it wasn’t possible to walk down High Street without being encumbered by their prams, by groups of admiring quasi-mothers. He seemed to remember that there had been pseudo-births and that broken dolls were buried with ceremony in consecrated ground. Wasn’t it one of the minor ecclesiastical disputes of the early 2000s whether churches could legitimately be used for these charades and even whether ordained priests could take part?” [4]

I don’t exactly expect to witness anything like what James describes in her book; she was not a prophetess. She was, however, incredibly perceptive and, though she speaks in metaphor, hers is an apt metaphor for a culture rich in sex but impoverished in love and fertility. But this is what happens when sex and procreation are unmoored from marriage in the cultural imaginary.

I wish I could say I’ve been shocked by the general ennui with which our governmental and corporate institutions—including the media—have treated our falling fertility rates and the added pressures of possible, likely true, v@x-related infertility and miscarriages. But I’m not. They seem to welcome such a development. It may even be part of the plan, as many physicians and other experts have been been warning for over two years that infertility and miscarriage were very real possibilities for an unproven and rushed mRNA product. They weren’t prophets either, just people looking to the canons of their tradition and employing a little common sense. Anyway, the indifference of the usual gatekeepers is appalling.

In his very interesting book The Function of the Orgasm, the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich claimed to have found a kind of energy implicit to the orgasm that he also detected in various atmospheric conditions. He would come to call this phenomenon orgone energy, and it seems to have some resonances with the Vedic concept of prana or the classical Greek idea of zoë (life)—concepts materialist science dismisses. He ends his book with this observation:

“Having come at the conclusion of this book, the reader, like the author himself, will not be able to avoid the impression that the study of the orgasm, the stepchild of natural science, has led us deep into the secrets of nature. The investigation of living matter went beyond the confines of depth psychology and physiology and enter unexplored biological territory. Sexuality and the living process became identical, and a new avenue of approach to the problem of biogenesis was opened. What was psychology became biophysics and a part of genuine, experimental natural science. Its core remains, as always, the enigma of love, to which we owe our being.” [5]

Could it be that the energy Reich discovered (but that was always there) has been compromised in its functioning by the absolutely degraded diets to which the industrial west has subjected itself, and that, combined with the soup of toxins we breathe and ingest every day, we have primed our biology for collapse via the introduction of foreign and synthetic substances the repercussions of which we know not? There are certainly other conclusions to which one could arrive; but the apathy of the gatekeepers and their abdication of anything resembling concern for the commonweal suggests that the reality may be far more sinister than even imaginable.

Reich’s pronouncement, that the core remains in the enigma of love to which we owe our being, does give me some comfort. For I find it to be a truly sophiological insight congruent with one of the key utterances of sophiological truth:

When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth:

When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep:

When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth:

Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him;

Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the children of men. (Proverbs 8:27-31)

Michael’s latest book is Sophia in Exile. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: Flesh & Spirit. Twitter: @Sophiologist_

1. Margaret Barker, Creation: A Biblical Vision for the Environment (T&T Clark, 2010), 122.

2. P. D. James, The Children of Men (Knopf, 1992), 7-8.

3. Ibid., 8.

4. Ibid., 34-45.

5. Wilhelm Reich, The Function of the Orgasm (1942; Souvenir Press, 1973), 386.

Adventures in Cloudbusting

Wilhelm Reich and his cloudbuster

Soon after its release in 1985, I bought a cassette copy of Kate Bush’s album Hounds of Love, which, as far as I’m concerned, remains her finest work. Bush had not really gained all that much popularity in the United States in any way comparable to the phenom she had been in England, but I heard the track “Running up that Hill (A Deal with God)” and was so struck by the thundering drums, ethereal Fairlight keyboard sounds, and the drenchingly emotional vocal that I plunked down the cash for the full album. I was not disappointed.

A few years later, I was sharing my love for the album with my coworker at the bookstore where we worked and we started talking about the final track on side one (yes, boys and girls, there used to be things called “sides” before the digital revolution), a song called “Cloudbusting.” I loved the video and the story, but I was a bit dumbfounded when my friend told me it was based on a true story. She led me to the biography section of the store and pointed me to A Book of Dreams: A Memoir of Wilhelm Reich by Peter Reich, the son of the controversial psychoanalyst and scientist. I knew absolutely nothing about the elder Reich, but I bought the book. It relates the fascinating story of Wilhelm Reich’s relationship to his son and their adventures in cloudbusting and alternative scientific research in 1950s America. It’s also a very sad story, as Peter’s father ends his days in prison after falling afoul of government authority.

Wilhelm Reich invented what he called a “cloudbuster” after observing the behavior of water in a bucket when a pipe was held above its surface. He was even hired by blueberry farmers in Maine to end a deadly drought that threatened their harvest and livelihoods. As reported in the Bangor Daily News on 24 July 1953:

“Dr. Reich and three assistants set up their ‘rain-making’ device off the shores of Grand Lake, near Bangor hydro-electric dam, at 10:30 on Monday morning 6 July. The device, a set of hollow tubes, suspended over a small cylinder, connected by a cable, conducted a ‘drawing’ operation for about an hour and ten minutes….

“According to a reliable source in Ellsworth the following climactic changes took place in that city on the night of 6 July and the early morning of 7 July: ‘Rain began to fall shortly after ten o’clock Monday evening, first as a drizzle and then by midnight as a gentle, steady rain. Rain continued throughout the night, and a rainfall of 0.24 inches was recorded in Ellsworth following morning.

“A puzzled witness to the ‘rain-making’ process said: ‘The queerest looking clouds you ever saw began to form soon after they got the thing rolling.’ And later the same witness and the scientists were able to change the course of the wind by manipulation of the device.” [1]

Needless to say, I found this fascinating. Who wouldn’t? But, try as I might, I could find almost no information about Reich or cloudbusting. This was in the days before the internet, of course. Since then all kinds of things are available online, though I am often skeptical of the claims found there.

In about 1993 or so, I actually met someone who had a couple of cloudbusters. Let’s call him “Norman.” Norman lived in a quaint subdivision not far away from me. A friend of mine, a chiropractor, wanted me to meet him, since he knew both of us were interested in biodynamics and alternative farming (you can read about some of these things in the book Secrets of the Soil by Peter Thompson and Christopher Bird). Norman’s yard looked like something from a sci-fi novel. He let everything grow, planted every inch of it with vegetables, fruits, beneficial plants, and had even devised a creek that surrounded his property—replete with frogs and other wildlife. This in the middle of a neighborhood characterized by ugly landscaping and ChemLawn services! I don’t think he exactly got on with the neighbors. Norman’s garden boasted some amazing results—his tomatoes and carrots were impressive with their rich colors and tastes, and he even devised a gazebo within which he planted figs. I visited him few times to share ideas—though he was far more knowledgeable than I was. I learned a lot from him.

I asked Norman about his cloudbusters, and he told me that he primarily used them to “clean up the atmosphere” of pollution and other antagonistic substances. This was the first time I’d ever heard the term “chemtrail.” I found the idea kind of preposterous—why would evil geniuses, governmental or otherwise, risk poisoning their own families? Norman more or less blew-off my question. Instead, he told me some shady figures from the government stopped by his suburban abode to ask if he had a scalar weapon (I didn’t know what that was, either). He said he laughed and replied, “It’s just me and my little cloudbusters.”

I didn’t doubt all things Norman told me, I just didn’t know what to make of it all.

Years later, almost four years ago to be exact, I started thinking about cloudbusters again. That summer our farm and those around us were inundated with rain. Fields were flooded out, and our ability to make a living was under serious threat. The rain simply would not stop. I had read that not only could cloudbusters make rain, they could also stop it. Desperate for something to change, I figured it was worth a shot.

So, one afternoon, I assembled all the appropriate materials in my barn and put together some sort of cloudbuster. My wife thought I was wasting my time. But what did I have to lose with the exception of a few hours? I set the device out on an old deck near our pond and waited, making sure not to have it pointed anywhere.

Before long, another deluge arrived. I pointed the pipes at the thickest part of the cloud-cover and, sure enough, the rain stopped within a few minutes. As you might be thinking, this could have been a coincidence. That was certainly a possibility as far as I was concerned. So, in the true spirit of science, I experimented.

I am very hesitant to monkey around with the weather, so I am not at all cavalier in the way I use this device. Nevertheless, once during a drought, I was looking to pull some rain near the farm. Luckily, we have a tool in our pockets that would have cost a fortune in Reich’s day—weather radar! So, in my experimentation, I would look to see where the rain was, even just the tiniest of systems, and see if I could pull it over. Worked. I’ve done it more than a few times, so much so that my wife has asked me to turn the cloudbuster on when the garden needs watering. I’m hesitant to do so—“It’s not like the hose!” I tell her. But then I saw this image float across social media the other day (an image from the early 1950s).

So maybe it is like the hose.

Over the past few months, I have experimented with dispelling chemtrails/contrails. I’m not exactly 100% sold on chemtrail theory—but nothing governments do could surprise me—but, chemtrail or contrail, neither one could be good for the environment. It was odd that I saw very few of these—the kind that go from horizon to horizon—over the past half-year or so, but at the end of January/beginning of February they seemed to appear daily. In the spirit of experiment, I decided to see if I could get rid of them. It worked. Then, a few weeks ago, I was driving home from an errand and saw dozens of these trails striping the firmament. I wanted to get home in a hurry to turn the cloudbuster on them. However, not a few minutes later I noticed the trails starting to dissolve. I wondered if my wife had been playing with the cloudbuster (she’d never so much as touched it before, so it would be odd.) Sure enough, when I arrived home, the cloudbuster was pointed in the right direction. I asked my wife if she’d done it. She said she hadn’t—but that she’d told our youngest to do it.

This may all seem like strange talk. But is it really? That guy in the pastel sweaters has been banging on quite a bit about changing the weather though dimming the rays of the sun by use of mists of calcium carbonate spread via aircraft, and the Chinese government is at the moment planning to massively expand its weather-modification program. I have little faith in these actors. But that doesn’t mean what they’re planning isn’t possible. In fact, I’d be willing to say they and others like them have been at this project for a good long while.

When Wilhelm Reich was imprisoned, all of his scientific papers were confiscated and destroyed under the guise that his was the work of a charlatan and that the things he proposed didn’t work.

I’m not so sure about that.

Herself:

Michael’s latest books are an edition of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: The Garden.

1. In Myron Sharaf, Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich (St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 379-80.