Theosophical Society,
Wrexham,
Volunteers form up at the Police Station
Theosophy and the Great
War
Spiritualism and Theosophy
SCIENTIFICALLY
EXAMINED AND CAREFULLY DESCRIBED
BY
C. W.
LEADBEATER
The
slaughter of World War 1 (1914 -18) lead to an upsurge in interest in Spritualism and the Occult in general which lasted through
the 1920s. This piece written in 1928 cites many of examples of communication
between soldiers killed in the War and their loved ones.
Chapter I
SPIRITUALISTIC PHENOMENA
A quarter of a century ago I wrote a book called The Other Side of Death,
in which I described the condition of the next world, quoting many illustrative
stories. This book has been out of print for some years, so I have just issued
a new edition, much enlarged and brought up to date. Some of its chapters deal
with spiritualism; in them I recount many of my own experiences, and offer my
readers such explanation of the phenomena as has been suggested to me by my
forty-five years' study of Theosophy. I am now publishing these chapters
separately as a smaller book, hoping that it may be of interest to my
spiritualistic brethren, and may perhaps even help a little towards bringing
about a better understanding between the two camps of Theosophists and
Spiritualists, who have so much in common that they surely ought to co-operate
and never to waste their time in disputation.
THE PHENOMENA NATURAL
The investigation of the phenomena which take place at
spiritualistic seances is one of the lines along
which information with regard to man's survival after death might have been obtained.
Just as many of the facts so clearly stated for us by Theosophy might have been
deduced from careful observation and comparison of the records of apparitions,
so also many of them might have been inferred from equally careful examination
and comparison of the accounts given in spiritualistic literature. They were
not so inferred, however, except by the spiritualists themselves, and not
usually clearly expressed as a coherent system even by them. But just as, now
that we know the facts from Theosophical sources, we can see how all the
various types of apparitions fall into place and are explained by them, so we
may also see how spiritualistic manifestations can be classified and
comprehended by means of the same knowledge.
It has always seemed to me that our spiritualistic friends ought to
welcome the Theosophical system, for much of the difficulty which they find in
obtaining acceptance for their phenomena arises from the belief that their
claims are in opposition to science, and not in harmony with any reasonable
scheme. This idea is an entirely mistaken one, yet spiritualism does little to
dispel it; it continues (quite rightly) to insist upon its facts, but does not
usually attempt to harmonize them with science. There is, it seems to me, rather
a tendency to cry: "How marvellous! how wonderful! how beautiful!"
and to be lost in admiration and awe, instead of realizing how entirely
natural it all is, and more beautiful because it is so natural. For all that is
really natural is beautiful; it is only we, reduced to pessimism by our own
corruption of and interference with Nature's methods, who fall back in doubt,
and say hesitatingly that certain things are too good, too beautiful to be
true - not yet understanding that it is precisely because a thing is good and
beautiful that it must also be true, and that a far more accurate expression
would be: "It is too good not to be true". For God is Truth, and He
is good.
How theosophy explains them
The Theosophical explanation as to the planes of nature, and the
existence of many varieties of more finely subdivided matter, with their
appropriate forces playing through them, at once opens the way to a
comprehension of many of the phenomena of the seance-room.
When we further come to understand the possession by man of vehicles
corresponding to each of these planes, in each of which he has new and extended
powers, much that was before difficult becomes clear as noonday. I have written
fully of these capacities in my little book on Clairvoyance, so I need not
repeat that account here. It will be sufficient to remark that when we grasp
their nature we see at once how it is possible for the dead man, if he is so
disposed, to find a passage in a closed book, to read a letter inside a locked
box, to see and report what is happening at any distance, or to read the
thoughts of any person, present or absent.
All that the dead man does along any of these lines can be done
with equal facility by the living man who has developed his latent powers of
astral vision, and we thus realize that for a man residing in and functioning
through an astral body, these actions which to us appear phenomenal and
marvellous must bear a different aspect, for to him they are simply his
ordinary everyday methods of procedure. The man who has not studied such
matters is unused to these manifestations, and cannot comprehend how they are
produced; he feels toward them just as a savage might towards our use of the
electric light or the telephone. But the intelligent and cultured man is familiar
to some extent with the mechanism in each of these cases, and so he regards the
results obtained no longer as magical, but as natural; he looks upon the matter
in an entirely different light.
A classification
By the light of Theosophical knowledge of the astral plane and its
possibilities, then, we may proceed to attempt some sort of classification of
the phenomena of the seance-room. Perhaps we shall
find it easiest to arrange them according to the powers employed in their
production, and in this way they fall readily into five divisions:
Those which involve simply the use of the medium's body -
trance-speaking, automatic writing, drawing or painting, and personation; and sometimes the working of the planchette.
Those which are dependent upon the possession of the ordinary
astral sight, such as the finding of a passage in a closed book, the reading of
writing enclosed within a locked box, the answering of mental questions, or the
finding of something or some person that is missing.
Those which involve partial materialization - usually not carried
to the point of visibility. Under this head would come raps, the tilting or
turning of tables, the moving and floating of objects, slate-writing, or any
kind of writing or drawing done directly by the hand of the dead man, and not
through the agency of the medium; the touches by the hand of the dead, or the
sound of their voices - "the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a
voice that is still," for which the poet yearned. Almost all of the minor
activities of the seance come in under this head, for
to it we must assign the playing of various musical instruments, the winding up
and floating about of the musical box, and even the cold wind which is so
constant a phenomenon in the earlier stages of the sittings. Probably the
working of the planchette or the message-board called
the "ouija" usually comes under this
category.
Those miscellaneous activities which demand a somewhat greater
knowledge of the laws of astral physics, such as the precipitation of writing
or of a picture, the intentional production of the various kinds of lights, the
duplication of objects, their apport from a distance
or their production in a closed room, the passage of matter through matter, or
the handling or the production of fire.
Visible materialization.
I propose to take up each of these classes, and endeavour
to illustrate and explain them as far as I can, drawing examples sometimes from
recognized books upon the subject, and sometimes from my own experience. I
spent much time during a good many years in patient investigation of
spiritualism, and there is scarcely a phenomenon of any sort of which I read in
the books which I have not repeatedly seen under test conditions, so that this
is a subject upon which I feel myself able to speak with a certain amount of
confidence. It may perhaps be useful for me, as an introduction to our detailed
consideration of the subject, to describe how I came to make my first feeble
experiments along this line.
Chapter II
PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
the silk hat experiment
The first time that, so far as I can recollect, I ever heard
spiritualism mentioned was in connection with the seances
held by Mr. D. D. Home with the Emperor Napoleon III. The statements made with
reference to those seemed to me at that time quite incredible, and when reading
the account of them aloud to my mother one evening I expressed strong doubts as
to whether the description could possibly be accurate. The article ended, however,
with the remark that anyone who felt unable to credit the story might readily
convince himself of its possibility by bringing together a few of his friends,
and inducing them to sit quietly round a small table either in darkness or in
dim light, with the palms of their hands resting lightly upon the surface of
the table. It was stated that a still easier plan was to place an ordinary silk
hat upon the table brim upwards, and let two or three people rest their hands
lightly upon the brim. It was asserted that the hat or table would presently
begin to turn, and in this way the existence of a force not under the control
of any one present would be demonstrated.
This sounded fairly simple, and my mother suggested that, as it was
just growing dusk and the time seemed appropriate, we should make the experiment
forthwith. Accordingly I took a small round table with a central leg, the
normal vocation of which was to support a flower-pot containing a great arum
lily. I brought in my own silk hat from the stand in the hall and placed it on
the table, and we put our hands upon its brim as prescribed. The only person
present besides my mother and myself was a small boy of twelve, who, as we
afterwards discovered, was a powerful physical medium; but I knew nothing about
mediums then. I do not think that any of us expected any result whatever, and I
know that I was immensely surprised when the hat gave a gentle but decided
half-turn on the polished surface of the table.
Each of us thought the other must have moved it unconsciously, but
it soon settled that question for us, for it twirled and gyrated so vigorously
that it was difficult for us to keep our hands upon it. At my suggestion we
raised our hands; the hat came up under them, as though attached to them, and
remained suspended a couple of inches from the table for a few moments before
falling back upon it. This new development astonished me still more, and I endeavoured to obtain the same result again. For a few minutes
the hat declined to respond, but when at last it did come up as before, it
brought the table with it! Here was my own familiar silk bat, which I had never
before suspected of any occult qualities, suspending itself mysteriously in air
from the tips of our fingers, and, not content with that defiance of the laws
of gravity on its own account, attaching a table to its crown and lifting that
also! I looked down to the feet of the table; they were about six inches from
the carpet, and no human foot was touching them or near them! I passed my own
foot underneath, but there was certainly nothing there - nothing physically perceptible,
at any rate.
Of course when the hat first moved it had crossed my mind that the
small boy must somehow be playing a trick upon us; but in the first place he
obviously was not doing so, and in the second he could not possibly have
produced this result unobserved. After about two minutes the table dropped
away from the hat, and almost immediately the latter fell back to its companion,
but the experiment was repeated several times at intervals of a few minutes.
Then the table began to rock violently, and threw the hat off - a plain hint
to us, if any of us had known enough to take it. But none of us had any idea of
what to do next, though we were keenly interested in these extraordinary
movements. I was not myself thinking of the phenomenon in the least as a
manifestation from the dead, but only as the discovery of some strange new
force.
I spoke of these curious
occurrences next day to some friends, and found one among them who had once or
twice seen something of the sort, and was familiar with the rudiments of
spiritualistic procedure. I promptly invited him to join us on the following
evening, and to assist in our experiments. The same phenomena were reproduced,
but this time, by our friend's aid, we asked questions and found that the table
would tilt intelligently in response to them. The communicating entity, however,
could not have been a man of any great knowledge, for nothing of any
importance was said, either then or afterwards, and the manifestations were
always rather of the nature of horse-play. Their most remarkable feature was
the enormous physical strength displayed on several occasions. Heavy furniture
was frequently dashed violently about, and sometimes considerably damaged, yet
none of us was really hurt. Once, later on, an especially sceptical
friend had the end of a heavy brass fender dropped upon his foot, but I think
he distinctly brought it upon himself by his impolite remarks!
violent demonstrations
The silk hat was ruined at
the second seance, so thereafter we placed our hands
directly upon the table - or at least we commenced by doing so, for after a few
minutes it was usually waltzing about so wildly that we could only occasionally
touch it. At the third sitting (if that term be not a misnomer as applied to an
evening spent mainly in jumping about to avoid the charges of various articles
of furniture) our little table suffered considerably. During a moment of
comparative rest, when we were able to keep our hands on it, we beard a curious
whirring sound underneath it, and some small object fell to the floor. Picking
it up we found it to be a screw, and wondered where the "spirits" had
obtained such a thing, and why they had brought it. Twice more the same whirring
sound was heard, and two more screws were presented to us, but even yet we did
not realize what was being done.
Suddenly we were startled
by what I can only describe as an exceedingly heavy kick on the under side of
the table, which dashed it upwards against our hands and all but threw us over.
The effect precisely resembled that of a vigorous kick from a heavy boot, and
it was repeated three or four times in rapid succession until the top of the
table was broken away from the leg. The leg waltzed off by itself, while the
top fell to the floor, but by no means to lie quiet there. If a coin be set
spinning with the thumb and fingers upon a smooth surface it displays a
peculiar wobbling rotation just as it is in the act of settling down to rest.
That was exactly the motion of this table upon the floor, and two strong men,
kneeling upon it, and exerting all their force to hold it down, were unable to
do so, but were thrown off apparently with the utmost ease.
As we were holding it as
nearly down upon the carpet as we could, the same prodigious kicks came
underneath it as before, so that whoever kicked could evidently do so through
the carpet and the floor of the room without the slightest hindrance. It was
only after the performance was over, and we came to examine our table, that we
understood what had happened. The entity who was playing with us had apparently
wished to separate the top of the table from the lower part, and had somehow
contrived to extract three of the screws as though with a screw-driver; but the
fourth had been rusted in and could not be removed-hence apparently the kicks
which broke it out and accomplished the separation.
This exhibition of
prodigious strength at a seance is by no means
unusual. In describing one which took place on
"Then - probably
intensified by the darkness - commenced a demonstration exhibiting more
physical force than I had ever before witnessed. I do not believe that the
strongest man living could, without a handle fixed to pull by, have jerked the
table with anything like the violence with which it was now, as it seemed,
driven from side to side. We all felt it to be a power, a single stroke from
which would have killed any one of us on the spot." (The Debatable Land,
p. .)
evidence of unknown power
These phenomena, which
thus came so unexpectedly into my life, would no doubt have been despised as
frivolous by the veteran spiritualist, but to me they were exceedingly
interesting. They took place in my own house, they were entirely unconnected
with any professional medium, and they were incontrovertibly free from any
suspicion of trickery. Consequently here were certain indubitable facts,
absolutely new to me, and needing investigation. I had no knowledge then that
there was a considerable literature upon the subject, and I was not expecting
from this study any proof of the life after death. So far, I had had evidence
only of the existence of some unseen intelligence, capable of wielding enormous
power of a kind quite different from any recognized by science. But it was
precisely that power which interested me, and I was anxious to discover whether
there was any method by which it could be utilized for the general benefit.
We never advanced much
further in these home investigations. My mother feared the destruction of her
furniture, and in deference to her objections we simply suspended operations
when the forces became too boisterous, resuming our sitting only when things
quieted down. We had no raps, and no direct voices; any communications which
came were always given by the tilting or rising of the table. The entity
concerned seemed willing enough to give tests along its own peculiar lines. For
example, it occurred to us one evening to ask whether the table could rise in
the air without our hands resting upon it; it promptly responded that it could
and would, so we all drew back hastily, and watched that table rise till its
feet were about a yard from the ground, while it was entirely out of the reach
of every member of the party. It remained suspended for perhaps a minute or
rather more, and then sank gently to the carpet.
lights
Lights of various kinds
frequently appeared, but usually they gave us the impression not so much of
being intentionally shown as of manifesting incidentally in the course of
other phenomena. They were of three varieties: (a) little sparkling lights like
those of fireflies, which used to play over and about our hands, while they
rested on the table; (b) large pale luminous bodies, several inches in diameter
and often crescent-shaped; (c) a vivid flash resembling lightning, which on one
occasion crossed the room and struck and overthrew a large plant in a pot,
leaving upon it distinct marks of scorching, much as I suppose lightning might
have done. The first and third varieties gave us the impression of being
electrical, while the second appeared to be rather phosphorescent in nature.
Nothing occurred that we could definitely call materialization, though dark
bodies of some sort occasionally passed between us. These phenomena usually
took place by firelight, though on one occasion we obtained a few much modified
manifestations in full daylight. The room appeared to become charged with some
kind of force, as though with electricity; for at least an hour after the seance was closed the furniture continued to creak
mysteriously, and the table on several occasions moved out two or three feet
from its corner after its flowerpot had been replaced upon it.
The messages were quite a
subordinate feature, and it seemed difficult for the entity, whatever it may
have been, to curb its exuberant spirits long enough to go through the tedious
process of spelling out a message by tilts. We made many attempts to obtain
definite information in this way, but met with no success. It always gave us
the impression of being in a condition of wild rollicking enjoyment, too much
excited to be patient or coherent. Frequently the table would dance vigorously
and untiringly, keeping time with any music that we played or sang. Its
favorite tune appeared to be the well-known spiritualistic hymn, "Shall we
gather at the river?" and if at any time the power seemed deficient or the
manifestations lethargic, we had only to sing that air to rouse it at once into
a condition of the wildest enthusiasm and agility. Sometimes it was decidedly
mischievous, and when it could be induced to deliver a message it was by no
means always consistent or truthful. It appeared to be capable of annoyance;
certainly on one occasion when I denounced one of its statements as false, the
table leaped straight at me, and would apparently have struck me severely in the
face, if I had not caught it on its way. Even so, as I held it in the air, it
made violent efforts to get at me, and had to be dragged away forcibly by my
friends, just as though it had been an infuriated animal. But in a few moments
its strength or its passion seemed to give out, and it was harmless once more.
Prominent in my memory is
one occasion on which the forces engaged in these demonstrations actually drove
us out of the room. From the beginning of the seance
the control of the proceedings was taken entirely out of our hands. Chairs
rushed about like living creatures, a heavy sofa swung out from its place by
the wall into the middle of the floor, and a tall piano, of the obsolete type
which used to be called an upright grand, leaned over me at a dangerous angle.
Trying to save it from a heavy fall, I braced myself against it and called one
of my friends to assist me. He struck a match and lit a candle, which he placed
on a table, hoping that the light would check the manifestations. The table, however,
gave a kind of leap which threw the candle on to the floor and extinguished it,
and at once pandemonium reigned all round us, heavy articles of furniture
crashing together.
It was manifest that our
lives were in danger, so, holding back the piano with all my strength, I
shouted to my friend to open the door. After frenzied efforts he succeeded in
tearing it open, I sprang back from the toppling piano, and we all fled
ignominiously into the hall. The door banged behind us, and for a minute or more
the crashes inside continued; then silence ensued. After five minutes or so we
opened the door and entered with lights, and found all the massive furniture
piled in a vast heap in the middle of the room - some of it badly broken, of
course; and yet on the whole there was far less damage than one would have
expected from the tremendous noise made. After this demonstration my mother
banished us and our experiments to an outhouse!
professional mediums
Stimulated by these
experiences, I began to make further enquiries, and soon found that there were
books and periodicals devoted to this subject, and that I might carry my
investigations much further by coming into connection with regular mediums. I
attended a large number of public seances, and saw many
interesting things at them, but the most remarkable and satisfactory results, I
soon found, were obtainable only when the circles were small and harmonious. I
therefore frequently had private seances, and often
invited mediums to my own house, where I could be perfectly certain that there
existed no machinery by means of which trickery could be practiced. In this way
I soon acquired a good deal of experience, and was able to satisfy myself
beyond all doubt that some at least of the manifestations were due to the
action of those whom we call the dead.
I found mediums of all
sorts, good, bad and indifferent. There were some who were earnest and
enthusiastic, and honestly anxious to aid the enquirer to understand the
phenomena. Others were incredibly ignorant and illiterate, though probably
honest enough; others again impressed me as sanctimonious, oleaginous and
untrustworthy. A little experience, however, soon taught me upon whom I could
depend, and I restricted my experiments accordingly. I pursued them for a good
many years, and during that time saw many strange things - many which would
probably be deemed incredible by those unfamiliar with these studies, if I
should endeavour to describe them. Such of them as
aptly illustrate our various classes I may perhaps cite as we go on; but to
give the whole of those experiences would need a much larger book than this.
Let us turn now to our
classification.
Chapter III
UTILIZATION OF THE MEDIUM'S
BODY
what mediumship
is
It seems obvious that the
easiest course for a dead man who wishes to communicate with the physical plane
is to utilize a physical body, if he is able to find one which it is within his
power to manage. This method does not involve the learning of unfamiliar and
difficult processes, as materialization does; he simply enters into the body
provided for him and uses it precisely as he was in the habit of using his own.
One of the characteristics of a medium is that his principles are readily
separable, arid therefore he is able and usually willing thus to yield up his
body for the temporary use of another when required. Such resignation of his
vehicle may be either partial or total; that is to say, the medium may retain
his consciousness as usual, and yet permit his hand to be employed by another
for the purposes of automatic writing; or in some cases his vocal organs may
also be thus employed by another while he is still in possession of his body,
and understands fully what is being said. On the other hand he may retire from
his body just as he would do in deep sleep, allowing the dead man to enter and
make the fullest possible use of the deserted tenement. In this latter case the
medium himself is quite unconscious of all that is said or done; or at least,
if he is able to observe to some extent by means of his astral senses, he does
not usually retain any recollection of it when he resumes control of his
physical brain.
trance-speaking
A certain type of
spiritualism - one which has a large number of adherents - is almost entirely
occupied with this phase of mediumship. There are
many groups to whom spiritualism is a religion, and they attend a Sunday
evening meeting and listen to a trance-address just as people of other
denominations go to church and hear a sermon. Nor does the average
trance-address in any way differ from the average sermon in intellectual
ability; its tone is commonly vaguer, though somewhat more charitable; but its
exhortations follow the same general lines. Broadly speaking, there is never
anything new in either of them, and they both continue to offer us the advice
which our copy-book headings used to give us at school - "Be good and you
will be happy," "Evil communications corrupt good manners," and
so on. But the reason that these maxims are eternally repeated is simply that
they are eternally true; and if people who pay no attention to them when they
find them in a copy-book will believe them and act upon them when they are
spoken by a dead man or rapped out through a table, then it is emphatically
well that they should have their pabulum in the form in which they can
assimilate it.
Trance-speaking of the
ordinary type is naturally less convincing as a phenomenon than many others,
for it is undeniable that a slight acquaintance with the histrionic art would
enable a person of average intelligence to simulate the trance-condition and
deliver a mediocre sermon. I have heard some cases in which the change of voice
and manner was so entire as to be of itself convincing; I have seen cases where
speech in a language unknown to the medium, or reference to matters entirely
outside his knowledge, assured one of the genuineness of the phenomenon. But on
the other hand I have heard many a trance address in which all the vulgarities,
the solecisms in grammar and the hideous mispronunciations of an illiterate
medium were so closely reproduced that it was difficult indeed to believe that
the man was not shamming. Such cases as this last have no evidential value, yet
even in them I have learnt that it is well to be charitable, and to allow the
medium as far as possible the benefit of the doubt; for I know, first, that a
medium attracts round him dead men of his own type, not differing much from his
level of advancement or culture; and secondly, that any communication which
comes through a medium is inevitably coloured to a
large extent by that medium's personality, and might easily be expressed in his
style and by means of such language as he would normally use.
automatic writing
The same remarks apply in
the case of automatic writing. Sometimes the dead man controls the medium's
organism sufficiently to write clearly, characteristically, unmistakably; but
more often the handwriting is a compromise between his own and that of the medium,
and frequently it degenerates into an almost illegible scrawl. Here again I
have seen cases which carried their own proof on the face of them, either by
the language in which they were written or by internal evidence. Sometimes also
curious tricks are attempted which make any theory of fraud exceedingly
improbable. For example, I have seen a whole page of writing dashed off in a
few minutes, but written backward, so that one had to hold it before a mirror
in order to be able to read it. In another case, before a sitting with Mrs. Jencken (better known by her maiden-name of Kate Fox, as
the little girl who first discovered in
that raps would answer questions intelligently, and so founded modern
spiritualism), her little baby-in-arms, perhaps twelve months old, took a
pencil in its tiny hand and wrote - wrote firmly and rapidly a message
purporting to come from a dead man. What intelligence guided that baby hand I
am not prepared to say, but it certainly could not have been that of its
legitimate owner, and it was equally certainly not that of its mother, for she
held the child away from her while it wrote.
the private archangel
Frequently people who are
not mediums in any other sense of the word appear to be open to influence along
this line. A large number of persons are in the habit of receiving private
communications written through their own hands; and the vast majority of them
attach quite undue importance to them. Again and again I have been assured by
worthy ladies that the whole Theosophical teaching contained nothing new for
them, since it had all been previously revealed to them by their own special
private teacher, who was of course a person of entirely superhuman glory,
knowledge and power - an Archangel at least! When I come to investigate I
usually find the Archangel to be some worthy departed gentleman who has either
been taught, or has discovered for himself, some portion of the facts with
regard to astral life and evolution, and is deeply impressed with the idea that
if he can only make this known to the world at large it will necessarily effect
a radical change and reform in the entire life of humanity. So he seeks and
finds some impressible lady, and urges upon her the conviction that she is a
chosen vessel for the regeneration of mankind, that she has a mighty work to do
to which her life must be devoted, that future ages will bless her name, and so
on.
In all this the worthy
gentleman is usually quite serious; he has now realized a few of the elementary
facts of life, and he cannot but feel what a difference it would have made in
his conduct and his attitude if he had realized them while still on the
physical plane. He rightly concludes that if he could induce the whole world
really to believe this, a great change would ensue; but he forgets that
practically all that he has to say has been taught in the world for thousands
of years, and that while he was in earth-life he paid no more attention to it
than others are now likely to pay to his lucubrations.
It is the old story over again: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead".
Of course a little common
sense and a little acquaintance with the literature of this subject would save
these worthy ladies from their delusion of a mission from on high; but
self-conceit is subtle and deeply-rooted, and the idea of being specially
chosen out of all the world for a divine inspiration is, I suppose, pleasurable
to a certain type of people. Usually the communications are infinitely far from
"containing all the Theosophical teaching"; they contain perhaps a
few fragments of it, or more often a few nebulous generalizations tending somewhat
in the Theosophical direction.
Occasionally also the
instructor is a living man in the astral body - usually an Oriental; and in
that case it is perfectly natural that his information should have a
Theosophical flavour. It must be recollected that
Theosophy is in no sense new, but is the oldest teaching in the world, and that
the broad outlines of its system are perfectly well known everywhere outside of
the limits of the extraordinary cloud of ignorance on philosophical subjects
which Christianity appears to bring in its train. It is therefore small wonder
that any glimpse of a wider and more sensible theory should seem to have
something of Theosophy about it; but naturally it will rarely be found to have
either the precision or the fullness of the scheme as given to us by the
Masters of Wisdom through Their pupil Madame Blavatsky.
It appears to make the
process of writing through the hand of the medium even easier for the dead man
when that hand is rested upon the little board called planchette.
This form of manifestation, however, does not always belong to our present
category. Sometimes it seems that the hand of the medium moves the planchette, though it is not by his intelligence that it is
directed, for it often writes in languages or about matters of which he is
ignorant. But on other occasions it appears to move rather under his hand than
with it, suggesting that it is charged with the vital force from his hand,
just as the hat or the table was in the experiments previously described. In
that case the movement of the board would probably be directed by another
partially materialized hand, and so the phenomenon would belong to our third
class.
drawing or painting
The phenomenon of
automatic drawing or painting is of exactly the same nature as that of writing,
though it is not nearly so common, because the art of drawing is much less
widely diffused than is that of writing. Still it sometimes happens that a dead
man has a talent for rapid drawing, and can quickly produce a pretty little
landscape or a passable portrait through the hand of a readily-impressible
medium. There are certain mediums who make a speciality
of this obtaining of portraits of the dead, and they apparently find that it
pays them exceedingly well. I have myself seen passable work produced in this
way, though not equal to that done directly by the hand of the dead man, or by
precipitation. There are also cases in which such portraits are drawn by a
living person who is himself clairvoyant; but that is obviously not an example
of mediumship at all, and so does not come into our
present category.
It must be remembered that
for the production of a portrait of a dead person by any of these methods it is
not in the least necessary that he should be present, though of course he may
be. But when surviving friends come to a seance
expecting and earnestly hoping for a portrait of some dead man, their thought
of him, so strongly tinged with desire, makes an effective image of him in
astral matter, and this is naturally clearly visible to any other dead man, so
that the portrait can be drawn quite easily from it. It is, however, also true
that this same strong thought about the dead man is certain to attract his
attention, and he is therefore likely to come and see what is being done. So it
is always possible that he may be present, but the portrait is not proof of it.
personation
I am employing this term
in a technical sense which is well known to those who have studied these
phenomena. I am aware that it has also been employed to describe those cases in
which a dishonest medium has presented himself before his audience as a
"spirit-form", but I am dealing with occurrences of a type quite
different from that. All who have seen good examples of trance-speaking will
have noticed how the entire expression of the medium's face changes, and how
he adopts all kinds of little tricks of manner and speech, which are really
those of the man who is speaking through his organism.
There are instances in
which this process of change and adaptation goes much further than this - in
which a distinct temporary alteration actually takes place in the features of
the medium. Sometimes this change is only apparent and not real, the fact
being that the earnest effort of the ensouling
personality to express himself through the medium acts mesmerically
upon his friend, and deludes him into thinking that he really sees the features
of the dead man before him. When that is so the phenomenon is of course purely
subjective, and a photograph taken of the medium at that moment would show his
face just as it always is.
Sometimes, however, the
change is real and can be shown to be so by means of the camera. When this is
so, there are still two methods by which the effect may be produced. I have
seen at least one case of apparent change of feature in which what really took
place may best be described as the partial materialization of a mask; that is
to say, such parts of the medium's face as corresponded fairly well with that
to be represented were left untouched, whereas other parts which were entirely
unsuitable were covered with a thin mask of materialized matter which made
them up into an almost perfect imitation, though slightly larger than the
original. But I have also seen other cases in which the face to be represented
was much smaller than that of the medium, and the exact imitation secured
undoubtedly involved an alteration in the form of the medium's features. This
will naturally seem an absolute impossibility to one who has not made a special
study of these things, for the majority of us little recognize the extreme fluidity
and impermanence of the physical body, and have no conception how readily it
may be modified under certain conditions.
impressibility of the
physical body
There is plenty of
evidence to show this, though the circumstances which call into operation
forces capable of producing such a result are fortunately rare. In Isis
Unveiled, vol. i, p. , Madame Blavatsky gives us a
series of ghastly examples of the way in which the thought or feeling of a
mother can change the physical body of her unborn child. Cornelius Gemma tells of a child that was born with his forehead
wounded and running with blood, the result of his father's threats towards his
mother with a drawn sword which he directed towards her forehead. In Van Helmont's De Injectis Materialibus it is reported that the wife of a tailor at Mechlin saw a soldier's hand cut off in a quarrel, which so
impressed her that her child was born with only one hand, the other arm
bleeding. The wife of a merchant of Antwerp, seeing a soldier who had just lost
his arm, brought forth a daughter with one arm struck off and bleeding. Another
woman witnessed the beheading of thirteen men by order of the Duc d'Alva. In her case also the
child, quite perfect in other respects, was born without a head and with bleeding
neck.
The whole question of the
appearance of stigmata on the human body, which seems so thoroughly well
authenticated, is only another instance of the influence of mind upon physical
matter; for just as the mind of the mother acts upon the foetus,
so do the minds of various saints, or of women like Catherine Emmerich, act upon their own organism. On p. of The Night Side of Nature we find another
rather horrible example of the action of violent emotion upon the physical
body.
A letter from Moscow,
addressed to Dr. Kerner in consequence of reading the
account of the Nun of Dulmen, relates a still more
extraordinary case. At the time of the French invasion, a Cossack having
pursued a Frenchman into a cul de sac, an alley
without an outlet, there ensued a terrible conflict
between them, in which the latter was severely wounded. A person who had taken
refuge in this close, and could not get away, was so dreadfully frightened that
when he reached home there broke out on his body the very same wounds that the
Cossack had inflicted on his enemy.
We shall have to refer to
this question when dealing with materializations; but in the meantime, and as
far as personation is concerned, I can myself testify
that it is possible for the physical features of a medium to be completely
changed for a time into the exact resemblance of those of the dead man who is
speaking through him. This phenomenon is not common, so far as I have seen or
heard, and we may presume that the reason for its rarity is that ordinary
materialization would probably be easier to produce. The personation,
however, took place in full daylight on each occasion when I witnessed it;
whereas materialization is usually performed by artificial light, and there
must not be too much even of that, for reasons which will be explained when we
come to deal with that side of the question.
using force thbough the medium
Speaking, writing and
drawing are by no means the only actions performed through the body of the
medium. Sometimes it is used for more extensive and even violent activities. M.
Flammarion records a striking case of the kind (After
Death, p. ) in which the "spirit" took possession of the medium in
order to attempt to revenge himself. The case first appeared in Luce e Ombra (
Today I can speak of it in
the general interest of metaphysical research, omitting, however, the name of
the person chiefly concerned.
Seance
held on April , . - The following were present: Dr. Guiseppe Venzano, Ernesto Bozzano, the Cavaliere Carlo Perefcti, Signore
X-, Signora Guidetta Peretti,
and the medium L. P. The seance was begun at
From the beginning we
noted that the medium was troubled, for some unknown reason. The spirit-guide
Luigi, the medium's father, did not manifest himself, and L. P. gazed with
terror toward the left corner of the room. Shortly afterward he freed himself
from his "spirit-controls", rose to his feet, and began a singularly
realistic and impressive struggle against some invisible enemy. Soon he uttered
cries of terror, drew back, threw himself to the floor, gazed toward the corner
as though terrified, then fled to the other corner of the room, shouting:
"Back! Go away. No, I don't want to. Help me! Save me!" Not knowing
what to do, the witnesses of these scenes concentrated their thoughts with
intensity upon Luigi, the spirit-guide, and called upon him to aid. The
expedient proved effective, for little by little the medium grew calmer, gazed
with less anxiety toward the corner of the apartment; then his eyes took on the
expression of someone who looks at a distant spectacle, then a spectacle still
more distant. At last he gave vent to a long sigh of relief and murmured:
"He's gone! What a bestial face!"
Soon afterwards, the
spirit-guide Luigi manifested himself. Expressing himself through the medium,
he told us that in the room in which the seance was
being held there was a spirit of the basest nature, against which it was
impossible for him to struggle; that the intruder bore an implacable hatred for
one of the persons of the group. Then the medium exclaimed in a frightened
voice: "There he is again! I can't defend you any longer. Stop the
..."
It is certain that Luigi
wished to say, "stop the seance", but it
was already too late. The evil spirit had taken possession of our medium. He
shouted; his eyes shot glances of fury; his hands, lifted as though to seize
something, moved like the claws of a wild beast, eager to clutch his prey. And
the prey was Signore X-, at whom the medium's furious looks were cast. A
rattling and a sort of concentrated roaring issued from our medium's
foam-covered lips, and suddenly these words burst from him: "I've found
you again at last, you coward! I was a Royal Marine. Don't you remember the
quarrel in
These distracted words
were uttered as the hands of the medium, L. P., seized the victim's throat, and
tightened on it like steel pincers. It was a fearful sight. The whole of Signore
X-'s tongue hung from his wide-open mouth, his eyes bulged. We had gone to the
unfortunate man's assistance. Uniting our efforts with all the energy which
this desperate situation lent us, we succeeded, after a terrible hand-to-hand
struggle, in freeing him from the desperate grip. At once we pulled him away,
and thrust him outside, locking the door. We barred the medium's access to the
door; exasperated, he tried to break through this barrier and run after his
enemy. He roared like a tiger. It took all four of us to hold him. At last, he
suffered a total collapse and sank down upon the floor.
On the following day we
prepared to clear up this affair - to seek information which might enable us to
confirm what "the
The words uttered by the
furious spirit served me as a means for arriving at the truth. He had said,
"I was a Royal Marine". And I knew vaguely that Signore X- had,
himself, in his youth, been an officer of marines; that he had witnessed the
battle of Lissa, and that after resigning his
commission he had devoted himself to commercial enterprises. With these facts
as a basis, I proceeded to ask a retired vice-admiral for other details; he,
too, had fought at Lissa. As for Dr. Venzano, he questioned a relative of Signore X-, with whom
the latter had broken off all relations years before. Between us we gathered
separate bits of information which tallied amazingly, and which, brought
together, led us to these conclusions:
Signore X- had indeed
served with the Royal Marines. One day, being upon a battle-ship on a training
cruise, he had landed for some hours at
Those are the facts; it
follows from them that the disturbing spirit had not lied. He had exactly
stated his rank as a Royal Italian Marine. He had remembered that Signore X-
had killed him. He had, moreover - and this was a particularly remarkable
statement-indicated the place where he had died, the setting for the drama,
A painstaking enquiry
confirmed the authenticity of all this. By what hypothesis could one explain occurrences
so strikingly in agreement - those which were revealed to us at the seance of April , , and those
which had taken place in
Chapter IV
CLAIRVOYANCE IN SPIRITUALISM
clairvoyant faculties
Many of the phenomena
commonly displayed at a spiritualistic gathering are simply the manifestation
of the ordinary powers and faculties natural to the astral plane, such as are
possessed by every dead man. I have already explained in my little work on
Clairvoyance what these powers are, and any one who will take the trouble to
read that will see how clearly the possession of such senses accounts for the
faculty so often exhibited by the dead of reading a closed book or a sealed
letter, or describing the contents of a locked box. I have had repeated
evidence through many different mediums of the possession of this power;
sometimes the knowledge obtained by its means was given out through the
medium's body in trance-speaking, and at other times it was expressed directly by
the dead man, either in his own voice or by slate-writing.
These astral faculties
sometimes include a certain amount of prevision, though this is possessed in
varying degrees; and they also frequently give the power of psychometry
and of looking back to some extent into events of the past. The way in which
this is sometimes done is shown in the following story, given to us by Dr.
Lee, in his Glimpses of the Supernatural, vol. ii, p. .
the missing papers
A commercial firm at
The clerk went to the
bank, directed the cashier where to look for the money, and it was found; the
cashier afterwards remembering that in the hurry of business he had there
deposited it. A relation of mine saw this story in a newspaper at the time, and
wrote to the firm in question, the name of which was given, asking whether the
facts were as stated. He was told in reply that they were. The gentleman who
was applied to, having corrected one or two unimportant details in the above
narration, wrote on November , : "Your account is correct. I have the
answer of the firm to my enquiry at home now."
The description given does
not make it absolutely clear whether this was a case of clairvoyance on the
part of the medium, or of the use of ordinary faculty by a dead man; but since
the medium passed into a trance-condition the latter supposition seems the more
probable. The dead man could easily gather from the clerk's mind the earlier
part of his story, and thus put himself en rapport with the scene; and then by
following it to its close he was able to supply the information required. Here
is the authenticated record of another good example of such a case, in which
the power of thought-reading is much more prominently exhibited, since all the
questions were mental. It is extracted from the Report on Spiritualism, published
by Longman,
A lost will
A friend of mine was very anxious
to find the will of his grandmother, who had been dead forty years, but could
not even find the certificate of her death. I went with him to the Marshalls', and we had a seance;
we sat at a table, and soon the raps came; my friend then asked his questions
mentally; he went over the alphabet himself, or sometimes I did so, not knowing
the question. We were told (that) the will had been drawn by a man named
William Walter, who lived at Whitechapel; the name of
the street and the number of the house were given. We went to Whitechapel, found the man, and subsequently, through his
aid, obtained a copy of the draft; he was quite unknown to us, and had not
always lived in that locality, for he had once seen better days. The medium
could not possibly have known anything about the matter, and even if she had,
her knowledge would have been of no avail, as all the questions were mental.
As I have already said,
the faculty of clairvoyance is often possessed by living persons, as well as by
the dead. Even in this case, in which the information was communicated by means
of raps, it is still within the bounds of possibility that it may have been
acquired by the living and transmitted to the physical-plane consciousness by
this external means. There is an ever-increasing volume of testimony to the
fact of this clairvoyance; Dr. Geley has done
splendid service by giving much that is new and valuable in his recent work
Clairvoyance and Materialization. In his account of the clairvoyance of Mr. Ossowiecki, which includes many tests of his ability to
read sentences enclosed in sealed opaque envelopes, he tells us that this seer
has from time to time been able to discover articles which have been lost or
stolen. In contact with the loser he was able after brief concentration to say
where the object was lost, and sometimes also where it could be found.
the lost brooch
He gives the following
account of one such case which was sent to him by Mme Aline
de Glass, wife of a Judge of the Supreme Court of Poland. The account is also
attested by her brother, M. Arthur de Bondy:
warsaw,
wspolna,
July ,
Sir,
I have the honour to
inform you of an actual miracle that Mr. Ossowiecki
has worked here. I lost my brooch on Monday morning, June th.
In the afternoon of the same day I visited the wife of General Krieger, Mr. Ossowiecki's mother, with my brother, Mr. de Bondy, an engineer, who witnessed the event.
Mr. Ossowiecki came in, my brother
introduced me to his friend, and I said that I was delighted to make
acquaintance with one so gifted with occult powers. All
"I have lost my brooch today. Could you tell me anything about
it? But if you are tired or it is troublesome, do not put yourself out."
"On the contrary, madame, I will
tell you. The brooch is at your house in a box; it is a metal brooch, round,
with a stone in the middle. You wore it three days ago, and you value it."
"No," I said, "not that one." (He had given a
good description of a brooch kept in the same box with that which I had lost.)
Then he said:
"I am sorry not to have guessed right; I feel tired ... "
"Let us say no more about it."
"Oh no, madame, I will try to
concentrate. I should like to have some material thing that concerns the brooch
..."
"Sir, the brooch was fastened here, on this dress."
He placed his fingers on the place indicated, and after a few
seconds said: "Yes, I see it well. It is oval, of gold, very light, an
antique which is dear to you as a family souvenir; I could draw it, so clearly
do I see it. It has ears, as it were, and it is two parts interpenetrating,
like fingers clasped together . . ."
"What you say, sir, is most extraordinary. It could not be
better described. Miraculous."
He went on: "You lost it a long way from here." (This was
actually about two and a half miles.)
"Yes, in
"Yes," I said, "I went there today."
"Then," he said, "a poorly dressed man, with black
moustache, stoops down and picks it up. It will be very difficult to get it
back. Try an advertisement in the papers."
I was dazzled by the minute description, which left me no doubt
that he could see the ornament. I thanked him warmly for the rare pleasure of
meeting a real clairvoyant, and went home.
On the following evening my brother came to see me and exclaimed:
"What a miracle! Your brooch has been found. Mr. Ossowiecki telephones to me that you have only to go
tomorrow at about o'clock to Mme. Jacyna (Mr. Ossowiecki's sister),
and he will give it to you."
The next day, June th, I went with my
brother to the lady's house, where there was company. I asked to see Mr. Ossowiecki, and asked him: "Have you my brooch?"
I was much upset.
"Compose yourself, madame; we shall
see." And he handed me my brooch. It was a real miracle. I turned pale and
could not speak for a few minutes.
He told me the story very simply: "The day after our meeting I
went to the bank in the morning. In the vestibule I saw a man I remembered to
have met somewhere or other, and it struck me that this was the man whom I had
seen mentally to have picked up your brooch. I took his hand gently, and
said: 'Sir, yesterday you found a brooch
at the corner of Mokotowska and Koszykowa
Streets . . .' 'Yes,' he said, very much astonished. 'Where is it?' 'At home.
But how do you know?' I described the brooch and told him all that had taken
place. He turned pale and was much upset, like you, madame.
He brought me the brooch, saying that he had intended to advertise its finding.
That is the whole story."
I was much moved. I thanked Mr. Ossowiecki
warmly, not so much for the recovery of the brooch as for meeting such a
diviner, and having a small part in this miracle. Now this fine old brooch is
worn by me constantly and considered as a talisman. The incident has gone all
over
I am, Yours,
aline de glass,
née de Bondy
As an example of the test conditions under which Mr. Ossowiecki has done many readings, I may mention the case
of the letter which was written for the purpose by Mme. Sarah Bernhardt, which
we reproduce below from Clairvoyance and Materialization (p. ).
.
.
This letter was delivered to Dr. Geley,
who handed it unopened to the clairvoyant. His reading of this was not perfect,
but nevertheless striking and evidential. Dr. Geley
says:
"His description of the letter was, however, very precise: La
vie, la vie, la vie, . . . (three times). There are four or five lines, and
below them Sarah Bernhardt's signature, sloping upwards." That is correct,
but he might have seen her signature in some magazine article. He continued:
"La vie semble humble." He repeated
'humble' two or three times. "There is reference to humanity, but the word
'humanity' is not written. There is an idea conjoining life and humanity. Parcequ'il ? ? b??????? de haine.
Non, il n'y a pas 'haine'; il ? a seulement seulement . . . It is a
very difficult word of eight letters! There is an exclamation mark."
Then before opening the letter, which I had previously examined by
reflected, direct and transmitted light and found absolutely opaque, I wrote
down the following, which may be taken as Ossowiecki's
final answer: "La vie semble humble parcequ'il ? ? b??????? de haine,
(pas haine, mais un mot qui
n'est pas compris et qui est de huit lettres);
signature Sarah Bernhardt." The word éphémère
was not known to Ossowiecki, as he told us after the
letter had been opened. We asked several Poles who spoke French well if they
knew this word: they did not.
The fact that Mr. Ossowiecki does see the
actual form in some manner sometimes is confirmed by his vision on occasion of
drawings enclosed along with the letters. Judging by the third experiment of
September st, , at Prince Lubomirski's
(p. ), when the test letter contained four written items, and also the drawing
of a fish, the picture seemed to impress him more than the written portion of
the test, and he not only spoke about it, but said that he would draw it, which
he did, though he reversed the picture, putting the head on the left whereas in
the original it was on the right.
clairvoyant "readings"
This power of clairvoyance is also frequently displayed in a minor
way at the weekly meetings of which I have spoken. After the trance address is
over, the medium usually expresses her readiness to give descriptions, or
"readings", as they are often called, of the surroundings of various
members of the audience. Where the circle is a small one, something is said to
each of its members in turn; if there be a large number gathered together,
individuals are selected and called up for special attention.