In an effort to do something about these debilitating clouds, Reich hit upon the idea
of trying to “draw off” energy from the clouds by means of long metal pipes, directed
toward the DOR-clouds and connected through cables to a deep well. Here Reich was mak-
ing use of an observation common to orgone energy and DOR: both were attracted to
water. And, indeed, when he aimed the pipes toward the clouds, they began to dissipate and
the oppressive atmosphere was alleviated.
Out of this initial work grew what Reich later called “cloud-busting,” an operation
not limited to DOR-clouds. (The interested reader can turn to the literature for more detail
on the subject.) Briefly, Reich became concerned with influencing the dispersal of orgone
energy in the atmosphere. By varying his method of drawing, he claimed to be able to influ-
ence the atmospheric potential either in the direction of concentration of energy (cloud for-
mation) or in the direction of dispersal of energy (cloud dissipation).
Reich likened the action of the “cloud-buster” (as he came to call his pipes ground-
ed in water) to the lightning rod. For Reich, the lightning rod, too, functioned according to
orgone energy principles, since “lightning” is a concentrated atmospheric energy discharge
in a very narrow space. The pointed rod, reaching into the atmosphere, attracted the light-
ning discharge and conducted it through heavy wires into the ground.
Let us jump ahead a little to see why this work may be ofreal significance. By July
6, 1953, or just over a year after his first experiments with weather modification, Reich felt
sufficiently confident to test his work outside the Orgonon area. At the invitation of two
Maine blueberry growers who wanted rain to save their crops from persistent drought, Reich
conducted an operation with his draw tubes, by now a rather elaborate device mounted on
a truck. The results were reported in the Bangor Daily Newsof July 24:
Dr. Reich and three assistants set up their “rain-making” device off the
shore of Grand Lake, near the 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.
The scientist and a small group of spectators then left the lake to await
results.
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 rain-
fall of0.24 inches was recorded in Ellsworth following morning.”352 Myron SharafFury On Earth
(...) itself.” Ruskin’s description of various kinds of clouds, including pollution clouds, merits attention because, in
my view, painters and art critics anticipated many of Reich’s descriptions of the atmosphere just as novelists and
poets anticipated his psychological findings. John Ruskin, “The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century,”Norton
Anthology of English Literature(New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), 445-454. For interested readers, my quotes give only
a suggestion ofthe wealth of this article, which should be read in its entirety.