The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-01-19
FIRE WALKING.

That men, have walked on burning
Goals unscathed and emerged from
molten furnaces without the smell of
fire on their garments is truth of
scriptural authority. Travellers in out
of-the-way places say that the gift Of
immunity from fire Is yet bestowed
upon mortal, flesh, and the people of
Honolulu, rifAthssa go. to see Papa tia
tonight. will have a chance to Judge
of that for themselves. Papa tia is a
Tahitian, and we have evidence, some
OF it consular, that fire walking is not
uncommon among his people. Further
more there are men of undoubted
Hindoos walk upon live Goals as non
chalantly as the cloven-hoofed devils
of the Pit are supposed to trudge the
wastes of burning mari.
There are more things in heaven
and earth Horatio than are dreamt
of in your philosophy" Earth hath
its bubbles as the water hath and
these are of them Strange powers
are all about US; science performs
greater miracles than did Aaron's rod;
there are desert red men who can
make themselves immune to the ven
om of serpents; the necromancers of
India have puzzled mankind for cen
turtles with their feats of hypnotism.
Does the truth about the fire walker
lie somewhere between the herbal dis
covery of the snake-petting Moqui and
the hypnotic prowess of the fakir of
India? Is it possible that Papa TIA will
mesmerize his audience into the belief
that he can defy the touch of flame
while, as a matter of fact he does not
go near the seethiug pyre upon which
he has promised to walk? Who knows?
Hypnotism is a power of unmeasured
force and area of influence. In it's
highest forms 1t might explain away
the Christian miracles and for that
reason millions of people feel it a duty
to question its very existence. Yet
other millions, from their personal ex
perience, know 1t to be a part of the
visible phenomena of the universe
What investigator of Far Eastern ex-
perience has not seen the Oriental jug
gler lay down his handkerchief pass
his hands lightly in the air above it
and produce, under the fairness of the
cloth, a germ of life that grows into
the dimpled infant? That is a familiar
trick of hypnotism among the necro-
mancers of China. But the adopts live
in India. Some years ago a group Of
English officers agreed to test the DOW
er of fakir who threw a rope into the
air, catching an invisible hook and
summoned from the abysms of the
clouds maiden who descended the
rope and sought the coin of the spec
tators. One officer was to sketch the
scene; the other was to photograph it:
and when the feat had been performed
the drawing showed the strange spec
tacle as all, including the photograph
er, thought they had seen it, but the
negative, which no hypnotism could
AFFECT, revealed only a gaping crowd
looking into the air at nothing at all
and the fakir smiling cynically in the
midst. Every officer had been hypno-
t1zed. Seeing was believing; yet their
very eyesight had been made TO de-
ceive them.
Hypnotism Is wrought very easilv
by colors In motion. The eve of a
snake, glittering and changeable like
diamond, will transfix the bird he
preys upon. When Rudyard Ktnline
told of the power of Kaa the Rock
Snake over the Bander-Log he wrote a
scientific fact into romantic fiction. In
France the poachers set going in the
bushes little machine which shakes
bits of colored glass and tin and when
the pheasant sees 1t he loses all control
of himself and stands immovable until