# Posthumous Humanity: A Study of Phantoms/Chapter 8

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CHAPTER VIII.
Of all the miracles taken from the lives of the saints that I heard related in boyhood, there was one which particularly impressed me. It is that of St. Francis Xavier, who appeared simultaneously upon two different vessels during a tempest, and encouraged his companions all the time that they were in danger. His biographers tell the tale thus:
"St. Francis Xavier went, in the month of November, 1571, from Japan to China, when, seven days after starting, the ship which carried him was assailed by a violent tempest. Fearing lest the long-boat might be swept away by the waves, the pilot ordered fifteen men of the crew to lash it to the ship. Night having fallen while they were still at this work, the sailors were surprised by a heavy swell, and washed away with the boat. The saint had been abstracted in prayer from the ​beginning of the storm, which grew worse and worse. The remainder of the ship's company still on board thought their comrades in the long-boat were lost. When the danger was past, Xavier urged them to keep up their courage, and promised that within three days the boat would come back to the ship. The next day he caused a look-out to be sent aloft, but they saw nothing. The saint then returned to his cabin and resumed his prayers. After having thus passed nearly the entire day, he came again on deck, and with full confidence announced that the boat would be saved. Nevertheless, as, the following day, there were no signs of the missing, and the danger was still imminent, the crew refused to wait about any longer for their companions, whom they had given up as lost. But Xavier again roused their courage, beseeching them, by the death of Christ, to be patient a little while longer. Then once more retiring to his cabin, he prayed again with double fervour. At last, after three more wearisome hours of waiting, they saw the long-boat, and the fifteen sailors whom they had supposed lost were soon on board again. According to the evidence of Mindès Pintus, they then saw happen a most singular fact. When the men in the boat had come aboard, and the pilot was about to shove her off to tow behind as usual, they cried out to first let Xavier come on board, as he was with them. It was useless to try to persuade them that he had never left the ship. They declared that he had ​stopped with them all through the tempest, encouraging them not to give up, and that it was himself who had steered them towards the ship. In face of such a prodigy, all the sailors were convinced that it was to the prayers of Xavier that they owed their escape from the tempest. It is more reasonable to attribute the safety of the ship to the skill and exertions of the officers and crew. Yet there is every appearance of probability that the long-boat would never have got back to the ship but for the pilotage of the saint himself, or rather of his Double."
This miracle of duplication, which I supposed to be unique, is not rare in the lives of the saints. The Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists teem with such stories. It is quite common in ecstasis. As a general proposition it may be affirmed that the more a person of mystical tendencies gives himself up to the contemplative life, the more he becomes the centre of strange phenomena, which, apparently transcending the laws of time and space, appear as so many prodigies. I shall demonstrate, by the analysis of some examples, that the miracles of the saints belong to the natural order, I mean to the modes of action of the mesmeric ether, or of the fluidic personality which it begets, and that all are caused by a lively faith united with the practice of the ascetic life.
With some ecstatics a phenomenon not less strange than that of duplication is to be observed. ​At the moment of their supreme rapture, there develops in them an inner force, a sort of electric impulse, which, acting upwards, neutralizes the effect of weight. The patient is then seen to rise from the ground, in the bodily position in which he chances to be at the ecstatic moment, and hovers motionless like a body without weight, that the lightest breath can make to change its place. Under the reign of Philip II., Dominique de Jésus-Marie, a monk of a monastery in Madrid, was the subject of such ecstasies. The report of this wonder having reached the king's ear, he wished to satisfy himself personally about so extraordinary a thing. One day the monk becoming ecstatic in his presence and floating in mid-air, the monarch drew near and blew his breath at him several times. Each time the body of the ecstatic yielded to the force of the breath. Marie d'Agréda frequently presented the same phenomenon in her religious ecstasies.
The ecstasis that I have just described is sometimes known as the flying ecstasis. It is when the saint, in becoming enraptured before a crucifix or some other pious image, so yearns to become united with the object of his contemplation, that he is suddenly transported towards it as though borne along by a sort of electrical attraction. An Italian monk, who lived in the first half of the seventeenth century, Joseph de Copertino, often exhibited this kind of phenomenon. He also possessed the gift of projecting the Double, and Gorres devotes to him many pages ​of his Mystique. It will suffice if I quote the following passage:
"Joseph, in his earliest youth and while still living at Grotella, had entered, on the feast-day of St. Francis, a little chapel surrounded by olive trees and situated a gunshot distance from his convent. The Brothers heard a ery coming from there which was repeated five times. They ran there, and saw Joseph up in the half-ruined dome of the chapel, holding in his embrace a cross, and raised some twenty palms high from the ground. Another time, in this same church, on Christmas night, having heard the sound of the pipes of some shepherds whom he had invited to come and honour the birth of the child Jesus, he was filled with such joy that he began to dance. Then he heaved a deep sigh, uttered a loud cry and flew like a bird from the centre of the church to the high altar, which was distant from him more than fifty feet; and in his rapture he clung embracing the tabernacle for a quarter of an hour, without upsetting one of the large number of wax lights that were burning upon the altar, and without one of his robes taking fire. The amazement of the shepherds was great, we may well imagine; but no less was that of the Brothers of his Order and the inhabitants of Copertino, when one day, at the feast of St. Francis, clothed in his cope to take part in the procession about forming, he suddenly flew up to the pulpit of the church, to a height of fifteen palms, and remained for a long time ​kneeling with arms extended, plunged in an ecstasy, upon the very edge of the desk."
Sometimes it is not the ecstatic who is levitated towards the image he is contemplating, but actually the latter which unhooks itself from the wall to come and place itself in his arms or glue itself to his lips. The magnetic attraction of which it is the seat, then, has a sort of reflex action. In the second volume of his Mystique, Gorres quotes numerous examples of crucifixes and holy images thus responding to the appeal of the monks or nuns who invoked them. I refer the reader to this work. We find in the same volume curious details about another class of miracles not less remarkable. I allude to locks and doors which open of themselves before certain ecstatics when the latter go to pray in a church. I shall in good time show that these various phenomena are the effects of the mesmeric aura (fluide) thrown off in ecstasis, for we see them repeated in the practice of magnetism.
The mysterious force which bears up the ecstatic towards the sacred objects he is contemplating, being comparable with electrical attraction, we may ask why the analogy is not complete; in other words, why, along with movements of attraction, it does not also present actions of the contrary sort—I mean motions of repulsion? Ecstasis does not lead to such effects. A monk, plunged into a deep contemplation of pious images, can only feel an attractive impulse. But mysticism has two poles—​ecstasis and obsession. Let a believer of timid and cowardly disposition. commit some fault which he dares not avow to his confessor, and under the weight of the remorse which tortures him, of the shame with which he covers himself, of the eternal damnation which awaits him, he is assailed by the blackest ideas. The aura (fluide) issuing from such a brain is of necessity the antithesis of that which disengages itself from an ecstatic. The love of holy things gives place then in the head and heart of the believer to a profound aversion. Instead of feeling himself as before drawn towards the altars, he is dragged away with irresistible power. If people try to constrain him, even though strong men try their best to hold him, he breaks away with a display of extraordinary vigour; and sometimes he is seen in his flight to climb to the top of a steeple, or of the highest trees, with the agility of a bird or a squirrel. I shall devote some pages of my last chapter to these marvels, the most surprising, perhaps, of mysticism. I shall add here a single fact worthy of remark and easy to foresee. If, in an ill-balanced brain, remorse for a fault and the fear of punishment come into conflict with a lively faith and the hope of pardon, the fluid which distils out of this cerebral amalgam changes in its nature each time that one of these contradictory tendencies becomes preponderant, and the patient shows himself by turns obsessed and ecstatic. A young Spanish novice of the monastery of Morerola, who ​lived in the second half of the twelfth century, presents a singular instance of this. His biographer tells us that he was simple-minded and extremely ignorant. Having run away from the convent, he soon felt a strong repentance, and returned to the brothers. But, the recollection of his fault constantly pursuing him, it was not long before he presented all the phenomena of obsession—grinding of teeth, foam on the lips, horrible blasphemies, dialogue of the obsessing spirit with the exorcist, &c. One day, as he was passing out of one of his crises, he fell in ecstasy. He saw himself in a church among a crowd of holy personages, among whom figured St. Bernard, patron of his Order. They soon began to celebrate the holy office according to the Cistercian rite. The young novice responded to the choir, each time that it was his turn to chant, with a pertinency and self-possession the more remarkable in that he knew neither the chant nor the Cistercian rite. The brothers, who watched all his movements, could not believe their ears. All the intervals were observed with mathematical precision. After the Mass, he assisted at Vespers in the same manner. When he was at the Magnificat, he intoned an anthem that no monk in the convent had ever heard. These ceremonies concluded, St. Bernard approached him, reproved him for his prank, for the apples that he had stolen in the garden, for the words exchanged without permission ​with another brother, and condemned him to receive discipline. They saw him then strip himself to the girdle, then kneel and beat his breast while saying, twenty-five times in succession:
"By my fault, I wish to correct myself."
Each Mea culpa was followed by a pause, which permitted the patient to receive flagellation. As soon as this vision had passed away, the symptoms of obsession returned; then the ecstasy commenced over again. During four days it was an alternation of obsession and ecstasy. Each vision finished, like the first, with the discipline. At the seventh he was so feeble that he fell exhausted. The brothers, believing that he was about to breathe his last sigh, repeated for him the prayers for the dying.
He revived; and after a final Mass, in which he performed the functions of under-deacon, he read aloud the Epistle, although he scarcely knew how to spell the letters: he slept, and upon awakening found himself completely cured. His faults having been expiated, as well by his repentance and prayers as by the imaginary flagellations he had received, he was delivered from obsession, and lost at the same time the faculty of ecstasis.
The different sorts of prodigies that I have been reviewing were frequent with the thaumaturgists of the early centuries of Christianity, and were continued throughout the whole of the middle ages. They decreased in number and renown in proportion as the faith which gave them birth ​grew lukewarm, and seem to have completely disappeared with the growth of the scientific spirit. The greater number are in such formal opposition with the laws of nature, so removed from what we see in the ordinary course of life, that they appear like legends that one ascribes to ignorance and superstition. I am far from discrediting the great part which it is necessary to ascribe to hallucination and the credulity of periods of simple faith. The agency of these two factors of the human brain is then so preponderant that the atmosphere of each convent becomes a sort of supernatural medium, which it is only necessary to breathe for the monks and nuns to break through terrestrial bonds and soar in the world of the marvellous. But one cannot deny certain miracles, for this would be to give a ridiculous and childish contradiction to the historians of all countries, as well as to a thousand persons who have been eye-witnesses. Such as declare them impossible take their stand upon the fact that they are never produced in their own experience. They forget that if they changed continents their denials would no longer have any reason, and that their scepticism would fall before the evidence of facts. Miracle, having for its primary essence faith, has disappeared from the countries which rationalism has penetrated with its breath; that is to say, the countries where the virile races of the West rule—races which belong, as we know, to the most noble ​branches of the Aryan family. But it still shows itself with surprising vigour wherever religious beliefs have preserved the fervour of their earliest ages. The Mussulman world, the Brahmanic and the Buddhist worlds, to cite but three examples, have also their Acta Sanctorum. Ecstasis is a thing of daily observation, and it is to be remarked that it sometimes reaches proportions unknown to our most celebrated thanmaturgists. In the chapter upon the Posthumous Vampires I shall relate one of the marvellous things done by certain Indian fakirs, and of which English officers have often been witnesses. The missionaries who overrun these countries, being unable to deny the miracles that they see produced under their eyes, try to get out of the difficulty by ascribing them to the devil, a childish euphemiam, revived by Zoroaster, and borrowed by him from the revelators of the first ages of the world. In reality there is no need of any occult intervention to explain these prodigies, for they are the natural consequence of the phenomena that the mesmeric fluid gives birth to in persons who devote themselves to the ascetic life. We have seen, in fact, in these later times, somnambules and mediums in their ignorance producing a host of marvels that were thought peculiar to ecstatics. St. Madeleine de Pazzi displayed, in her rapturous transports, the phenomena of modern somnambulism. The nuns bandaged her eyes or closed the shutters of her cell. She continued all the same, while in ​this state, the work that she had begun-work often of a very delicate kind, like the painting of holy images, and she did them with such accuracy that they have still preserved them in the convent. It is known that it is of daily occurrence for persona plunged in the magnetic sleep to repeat experiments of this sort. St. Frances, of Rome, became rigid whenever she fell in ecstasis. As it usually happens her limbs were then as rigid as a marble statue; nothing that they could de could straighten her arms, crossed on her breast, nor make her legs move. She heard none of the questions that were put to her. Her superiors themselves adjured her in vain in the name of her vow of obedience to speak to them or to follow them—she remained mute and impassible, despite the most formal injunctions; but the scene changed as soon as her confessor came near her; she heard all that he said, obeyed his slightest wish, rose or sat as he ordered her, but remained passive and motionless with every one else. She thus repeated in every particular that which takes place between a magnetizer and his somnambule. We know that the latter is under the ​exclusive and absolute power of her ruler; that she obeys the slightest gesture, the least wish of the latter; that she hears all he says, that she answers every one of his questions, but she is deaf and dumb for every other person with whom she has not been brought in rapport by the magnetizer. In the annals of mesmerism and sorcery, sciences which trench so nearly upon each other, there are numerous examples of men or women rising from the ground under the action of the magnetic fluid, and occasionally darting to a certain height. This phenomenon recalls the aërial travel of ecstatics and of the obsessed; it was known in antiquity. Damis, the companion of Apollonius of Tyana, relates that he has seen the Brahmans rise, in their ceremonies, two cubits from the ground, and he was so impressed by this sight that he recurs to it several times in his Memoirs. It is known that this prodigy was familiar to Simon Magus, who one day had a fall at Rome in one of his ascensions. Certain fakirs did the thing before some English army officers in India. In our times it has been repeated by various mediums, among others by the celebrated Home, who was levitated, with his chair, to the ceiling of the room where he held his spirit-séances. St. Theresa, who occasionally ​displayed this kind of phenomenon, has told us that she felt then, under the soles of her feet, a vertical push which forced her to rise in the air. If at this moment she happened to be in the presence of somebody, it was only with the greatest difficulty that she could resist such an impulse. This testimony, confirmed as well by other ecstaties as by mediums, puts us in the way to explain the prodigy. We have seen that one of the properties of the mesmeric ether is to render lighter bodies impregnated with its undulations. Hence it suffices for there to be an abnormal disengagement of this fluid in a person, for him or her to be able to rise from the ground like a balloon sufficiently inflated.
Let us pass on to another class of miracles. The doors and locks which they describe in the lives of saints as opening of themselves before certain monks, once more recall an effect of mesmerism, for these phenomena happen in the practice of magnetism. Du Potet confesses that he has several times witnessed these prodigies. "I have seen," says he, "doors open and close before me, without my being able to explain the cause of this mysterious action." These facts occurring in the course of his ​magnetic operations, it is fair to suppose that the invisible being who filled the office of door-keeper was none other than the fluidic personality of Du Potet himself. This view of the case is confirmed by the following anecdote, which I borrow from Louis Jacolliot (Voyage au Pays des Perles). The hero of the adventure was one of the most renowned fakirs of Mysore. In a meeting where the author of the story was present, the Hindu executed various prodigies, denoting in him an extraordinary magnetic power. A young boy fell into somnambulism without the fakir seeming to notice it, and the spectators, feeling sleep taking possession of them, were obliged to look in another direction to escape the fascinating influence of the charmer's eyes. With a simple gesture, or a single act of his will, he moved and displaced furniture at the extreme end of the hall. He opened a door in the same way, then reclosed it, then made it open again. There is no room for doubt in this case, and the mysterious action of which Du Potet speaks is really a mesmeric effect.
The miracles accomplished by the ecstatics of different religions cover so vast a field that it is impossible to travel over it as a whole. I am forced to ​limit myself to the analysis of a few examples. Brief as it may be, it will suffice to show in what order of ideas one must search for the rational explanation of these phenomena. Though mesmerism may not yet have emerged from its empirical stage, it has worked so many prodigies that one may predict what it will reveal on the day when the physicists, having decided to study it closer, will compel it to enter into the scientific domain by sub-mitting it to the investigation of the experimental method. To the numerous facts I have already cited I will add the following, which will once more demonstrate that the potentiality of this agent is limitless. One of its essential characteristics is to resist chemical action and even that of fire. This latter property, long known to magnetizers, was verified during the moral epidemic which ravaged Savoy, especially Morzine, in the years which preceded and followed the annexation of this province to France. A young girl having fallen into a crisis, they put a burning coal on her hand, and left it there several minutes, without its causing the ​least scar or burning. The fluid disengaged by the patient forming an atmosphere around her limbs, the action of the fire was arrested by the layer of magnetic aura interposed between the hand and the coal. This fact explains a phenomenon long incomprehensible; I allude to the incombustible man. It is known that certain individuals possess the singular faculty of being able to plunge their arms rapidly into melted bronze, or to pass an incandescent iron over their limbs, without experiencing the least hurt. Some years ago a learned physicist, M. Boutigny, offered an explanation of this prodigy, based upon the particular state of water, the spheroidal state. At the approach of incandescent matter, the liquids contained in the human body suddenly vaporizing, form on the epidermis a layer of aqueous vesicles, which, serving as a screen, arrest the action of the fire. This ingenious hypothesis, based upon the most certain observations of science, has taken rank among the discoveries of modern physics. But is it quite certain that it suffices to explain everything that is observed in these incombustible subjects? I have seen, for my own part, a Cape negress pass several times a red-hot iron over her arms, legs, tongue, &c., and after the exhibition I came away with the conviction that any other person, operating under identical circumstances, would have been horribly burned. ​Moreover, trickery was impossible: the bystanders themselves heated the iron in a brazier, kindled before us, and presented it to the savage. It was much worse in the trials for magic, where they subjected the accused to the ordeal by fire. Here doubt is impossible. Those who came off victorious from this terrible test owed their immunity simply to the fluid disengaged by the practices of sorcery, as I shall show in the next chapter. We must not forget that Simon Magus, who knew all the prodigies of modern mesmerism, lycanthropy, evocation of phantoms, air-walking, displacement of furniture and statues, cure of paralytics, &c., passed through the flames of a pyre without being touched.
The property possessed by animal magnetism to resist chemical action and that of fire has for corollary the almost indefinite persistence of its effluence in objects that have been impregnated with it. This is the key to various prodigies related in the lives of saints and the annals of sorcery. A missionary relates that when the diviners of the Indian tribes of North America wished to evoke the spirits, they commenced by turning out the Europeans from the locality where the ceremony was to take place. Without knowing mesmerism, they were aware that the presence of a single individual of foreign faith was enough to prevent the spirits from appearing.
​One day, when two or three of them had been spending several hours in prayer without the evoked spirit having shown himself, astonished at this delay, they thought that some intruder had hidden himself in their habitation, and thoroughly searched it. Having found in a corner the garment of a Spaniard, they threw it out of the window, and the spirit quickly responded to their appeal. The aura with which the garment of the European was impregnated had sufficed to neutralize that which the diviners set free in their chants and formulas of evocation. Analogous facts often occur among us under other forms: such are the effects observed in the possessed when taken to the tomb of some saint, or upon whom is laid an image or other object that had formerly belonged to him. They become infuriated as soon as they feel the proximity of these relics, or even when they approach them unwittingly. A child who was a somnambule ceased to be so every time they put, without his suspecting it, a piece of blessed box-wood in his cap.
The cures and other prodigies that took place at the cemetery of St. Médard, on the tomb of the Abbé Pâris, are included in the same order of phenomena. It is known that the celebrated ​Jansenist possessed the ardent faith of a thaumaturgist and the piety of an anchorite. He consecrated his whole life, as well as his patrimony, to good works and to the defence of his ideas. Having struggled up to the last moment, he died impregnated with the fluid which he had never ceased to disseminate in his controversies and in the practice of Christian virtues. Thus his tomb became soon the theatre of extraordinary occurrences. I will not recall the convulsionnaires of St. Médard: these are things known to the whole world. I will simply make one remark, which is not without importance. Some time after the pilgrimages to the tomb of the saint had commenced, it was noticed that the entire cemetery was mesmerized. It sufficed to gather a few grains of sand or earth, taken at random in this enclosure, to cause the appearance with certain persons of the prodigies which only showed themselves at first on the tomb of the deacon. Must we suppose that this enormous liberation of aura came from that with which the body and clothing of the thaumaturgist were impregnated? We do not think it. It is more rational to admit that this fluid was the overflow of that which escaped from the multitude of believers, plunged in prayer, ecstasis, cries, and contortions. This view of the case is confirmed by what passes daily in the miraculous wells and springs. This demands some explanation.
In all epochs and all countries, there have existed ​springs which have the reputation of working cures. They are met with even among the savage peoples of Polynesia. These springs become popular, then fall into discredit, and end by being abandoned for others. Nevertheless, people continue to gather there on certain days of the year. But this is only a remnant of tradition—a festival gathering, where amusements play a larger part than piety. I have met with several of this kind, both in Catalonia and in the French Pyrenees. What has occurred at La Salette and at Lourdes is the repetition of that which one sees everywhere else. We know the beginnings of these miraculous springs; I speak of the historical record, not the legendary. The debates which were held before the tribunal of Grenoble, with respect to La Salette, give in this matter the most circumstantial and least equivocal details. It would have been the same at Lourdes, if the law had pushed an inquiry. In face of beginnings having so little of the supernatural in them, the bishops of Grenoble and Tarbes tried to oppose the infatuation of the crowd, whom they knew were dupes of a mystification. But they had calculated without the believers and mesmerism. The impulse once given, there came a general rush. From the midst of a multitude ​transported by an ardent faith, falling on their knees, intoxicated by the atmosphere of incense, by music, by the lights which blaze in the pomp of worship, there is liberated a sort of aura magnetica, which, as at St. Médard, impregnates everything with its effluence. The sick man comes to obtain a cure, already half mesmerized by the preparations he has undergone, fastings, confessions, communions, fervent prayers, &c., and ends by becoming entirely so under the influence of the atmosphere into which he is plunged. He breathes a magnetized air, treads a magnetized soil, treats himself with a magnetized water. If it is a question of malady affecting the nervous system, such as a paralysis of the limbs, of sight, or of hearing, the moral com-motion caused in the patient may be strong enough to galvanize his entire being, provoke a salutary crisis, and effect a cure. Such a healing is not always persistent, the vital forces being too much weakened to respond to the impulse which has been given them. But occasionally, also, it is lasting, ​and miracle appears then in all its marvellous splendour. This is what has happened at Lourdes and at La Salette, and the prelates, conquered by facts, have been forced to raise their embargo and swim with the current.
Do we need a more direct proof, one that might almost be called tangible, of the magnetic action being due to a collective force? Among certain islanders of the South Seas the people assemble every year to hold a great ceremony, to which are bidden the protesting genii of the different villages. In the centre of an immense hall is a boat, around which gathers the multitude. Each divinity is called by his name in turn, and invited to show his power by making the canoe move. Then all eyes are turned towards this latter, especially those of the inhabitants of the village competing. Anxiety is manifested upon their faces, for they ardently desire that their patron divinity shall obtain the honours of the victory, and concentrate upon this object all the vital forces of their will. After some moments of waiting, the canoe is seen to advance or retreat. Then they pass on to the next. The one who has achieved the greatest displacement is proclaimed victor. The missionaries witnessing such prodigies explain them, according to their custom, as the action of the devil. They forget that what passes under their eyes is but the repetition, upon a larger scale, of what takes place daily in spiritualistic séances, where a massive table becomes animated ​and moves at the request of some of the sitters.
Let us recapitulate. In each of the examples that I have analyzed, we have recognized the direct action of the mesmeric ether, or of the mysterious personality to which it can give birth. In ecstatics this personality sometimes becomes double. The ascetic life and an ardent faith, exalting inordinately the sensitiveness of the nervous centres, cause a great liberation of aura, and become thus the veritable factors of the miracle. Let us add, as another predisposing cause, celibacy. All the great thaumaturgists, from Moses to Swedenborg, lived in continence. There was in them a plethora of vital electricity. We know that magnetists lose their fluidic power when they abandon themselves to the gratifications of sense, and that they recover it when they return to an austere life. This interpretation of miracle, confirmed by the effects of somnambulism and mediumship, which are daily repeating the prodigies of the ecstatics, can, we think, be generalized and be applied to all facts of the same kind. Permit me to cite a final example in support of the theory. Among the surprising stories that one meets with in reviewing the work of the Bollandists, there is one quite common in the early centuries of the Church which surpasses in some measure all others by its strangeness. It is the written correspondence between posthumous and incarnate beings. Some persons would go and pass the night in prayer ​by the tomb of a holy personage, after having placed there a letter containing a question, and the next morning the answer would be found written below the question. I should observe that they would go at the recommendation of another holy personage, a living one, who, guaranteeing the reply, played the part of medium; for this phenomenon has been repeated many times in spiritual séances. According to Allan Kardec, you have only to place in a corner of the room a paper containing the question that is propounded to the spirits, and to wait patiently. The answer will come after ten minutes, a quarter of an hour or more, according to the power of the evocator, whose fluidic personality quietly performs the function of scribe. It is not useless to add that this test succeeds with difficulty, wonder-workers being quite as rare among mediums as elsewhere.
* ↑ Not quite so common as that; but there is a noted medium at Glasgow, a Mr. Duguid, who has for years been in the constant practice of painting in pitch darkness, on marked cards and canvases, paintings in oil. Years ago I saw in New York such painting done upon paper laid upon the floor under the table, all persons present sitting with joined hands; and I have also seen them done in full light by Madame Blavatsky, by the conscious exercise of will-power, upon satin as well as paper, and have the specimens in my possession still.
* ↑ The common mistake is made by Western writers of applying the title, fakir, to religious ascetics of all Eastern religions, whereas it is the name of a Mussulman ascetic only. Such a thaumaturge among the Hindus is called a yogi.
* ↑ One Gordon was also thus levitated, and other modern mediums likewise. The demoralizing influence of professional mediumship is seen in the fact, among others, that some of these very air-floaters have been caught red-handed in gross trickery. The fault is, I think, not so much theirs as that of the blind and selfish public who demand phenomena, conditions or no conditions, with the alternative of leaving the wretched mediums to starve if they do not make them, or what looks like them, on call.
* ↑ Not a very credible witness, I fear. I have, since coming to India, made minute inquiries at Benares, in Mysore, and other places about this particular yogi, Govinda Swamy, but without getting any particulars about him. Among my personal acquaintance are the Maharajah of Benares and the living representative of the Peishwa, neither of whom had heard of him. Yet Jacolliot's story does not at all exaggerate what such holy men can and do do.
* ↑ A series of most interesting experiments, which support this assertion, are recorded by Du Potet in his Introduction to the Study of Animal Magnetism [London, 1838], pp. 214, 215, 216. They show that the mesmeric aura thoroughly impregnates and saturates organic and inorganic bodies through and through. Tests were made with glass, marble, wax, colophane, sulphur, tin, iron, and paper. The former retained the aura despite the action of boiling water, ammonia, fuming nitric acid and sulphuric acid; the paper was actually burnt, yet the ashes were found to be still mesmerized.
* ↑ Shadrach, Meshak, and Abednego also?
* ↑ The late Mr. Cromwell Varty, electrician of the Atlantic Cable Company, and, of course, a high authority, told Professor Tyndall that "his presence at a séance resembled that of a great magnet among a number of small ones." He threw all into confusion. (Report on Spiritualism of the Committee of the Dialectical Society, p. 265. Letter of Professor Tyndall.)
* ↑ I am happy to be able to say (and to prove) that I once prevented the carrying out of a priestly scheme of this sort. A certain ordinary well had been selected, near a large Asiatic town, and the false report was started that there had been a supernatural appearance, a blessing of the well, and a cure of a cripple miraculously by application of the water. Knowing what was likely to be the pernicious effect upon the sensitive Asiatic community if this humbug was permitted to get the initial impulse, I first exposed the false cure, and then, by simple mesmeric transfer of my own aura, made a number of genuine cures. The well was never subsequently used for other than its legitimate purposes.
* ↑ Author's Note.—It is known that water can be magnetized The practitioners obtain this result by blowing into a glass filled with this liquid. This drink is employed successfully in the treatment of certain diseases.