The Theosophical Society,
The Writings of C
Charles
Webster Leadbeater
(1858
– 1934)
Spiritualism and Theosophy
C
First Published 1928
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
Robert Dale Owen
remarks:
“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; © 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 1847 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. 368, 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
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. 384 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
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. 100) 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 5, . — 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
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
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, 7
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 6th. 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
The next day, June 7th,
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
all the more celebrated. He is besieged by people who
come to consult him on
lost property, on men missing during the war, etc. And
this modest and
extraordinary man devotes much time and trouble to them with good
grace and
complete disinterestedness. He is a true diviner, who does
much good by his
gift without any personal reward. I ask pardon for so long
an account, which I
wished to make as exact as possible,
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.
55).
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 у
а
bеаисоир
de haine. Non, il n’y a pas ‘haine’; il у 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
у а
bеаисоир
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 21st, 1921, at Prince Lubomirski’s
(p. 39), 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.
I have heard striking
fragments of private family history brought out in this way — cases which bore
every mark of genuineness; but in the majority of such meetings as I have
attended the descriptions were exceedingly vague, and had a rather suspicious
adaptability about them. The conversation usually ran somewhat along these
lines:
Medium (supposed to be
entranced, but speaking with exactly her normal contempt for aspirates and
grammatical rules). “There’s an old gent with white ‘air a-standin’ be’ind that
lady in the corner.”
Enthusiastic and
Credulous Sitter. “Lor! that must be my father!”
Medium. “Yes; he smiles, he nods his ‘ed, he’s so
pleased that you know him. I can see his white beard regularly shaking, he’s so
glad.”
Sitter. “Ain’t it wonderful! But father didn’t have no beard before he passed over;
p’raps he’s grown one since, or p’raps it’s my uncle Jim; he used to have a
beard.”
Medium. “Ah! yes, that’s who it is; he nods his ‘ed again, and smiles; he
wants to tell you ‘ow ‘appy he is.”
Sitter. “Well, now! just to
think of poor uncle Jim coming like this! Why, it’s more than thirty years ago
he was drowned at sea, when I was quite a girl;
‘an‘some
young chap he was, too! not more than five-and-twenty,
and to be drowned like that!”
Medium. “Um! yes—yes—ah! I
see him more clearly now — yes, you’re right. It’s not a white beard — it’s the
white undershirt what sailors wears — that’s what it is!”
Chorus. “How lovely! how
wonderful! Ain’t it beautiful to think they can come back like this!”
I have heard just
about that sort of conversation a score of times; and it is naturally not
calculated to produce a robust faith in that particular medium. Yet perhaps through the same illiterate woman
there would come on another occasion some message about a matter of which she
could by no possibility have known anything — a message which she could never
have evolved from her sordid consciousness by any amount of clumsy guess-work.
A private test
I remember on one such
occasion applying a little private test of my own to a medium in a poor
It occurred to me to
try whether she could see a thought-form, so as a change from all these
reverend white-haired spirits with flowing robes, I set myself to project as
strong a mental image as I could construct of two chubby boys in Eton jackets,
standing behind the chair of the member of the circle who was next in order for
examination. Sure enough, when that person’s turn came, the medium (or the dead
man speaking through her, if there was one) described my imaginary boys with
tolerable accuracy, and represented them as sons of the lady behind whom they
stood. The latter denied this, explaining that her sons were grown men, and the
medium then suggested grandchildren, which was also repudiated, so the mystery
remained unsolved. But from the incident I deduced two conclusions:
First, that either the
medium was genuinely clairvoyant, or there really was a dead person speaking
through her; and secondly, that whoever was concerned had not yet sufficient
discernment to distinguish a thought-form materialized on the astral plane from
a living astral body.
Chapter V
SOME RECENT TEST CASES
test conditions
The recent researches
of many learned doctors, and other investigators associated with the Societies
for Psychical Research in different countries, offer us increasing confirmation
of the facts announced by the earlier experimenters. The attitude of many of
these distinguished explorers into the domain of the occult inclines at the
beginning towards scepticism — a fact which renders their evidence all the
more valuable, though it makes the phenomena more difficult to obtain. It
constitutes a positive mental influence acting against
the manifestation of unusual psychic powers — powers which it is difficult
enough to use, even under the most favourable conditions. It is only fair to
add, however, that such scepticism is rarely a prejudice, but simply the scientific
attitude which declines to admit the existence of any facts which have not been
carefully observed, or the truth of any deductions which have not been
studiously and impartially considered.
The attitude and
method adopted by Dr. Gustave Geley, and described in his invaluable volume
Clairvoyance and Materialisation, is becoming more and more popular among
experimenters. He says that the best results for scientific purposes are not to
be obtained under conditions which cast suspicion upon the medium, and that the
end to be sought by observers is not to protect themselves with absolute
certainty at all times against any possible or conceivable fraud, but to obtain
phenomena so powerful and complex that they carry their own proof and
undeniable witness under the conditions demanded by the control.
I may add that my own
experience, extending over many years, fully confirms what Dr. Geley has
written. I have always found it best to make friends with both the medium and
the spirit-guide and to discuss the manifestations frankly with them.
Dr. Geley continues:
If experimenters waste
time on poor or elementary phenomena, they will find the greatest difficulty in
getting a control that will satisfy them at all points. If they are wise enough to consider elementary
phenomena, and such minor frauds as they may suspect, both negligible; if they
allow phenomena to develop without checking them at the outset by untimely
demands, they will certainly obtain facts so various and important, also
(sometimes) of such beauty, that their conviction will be complete, unshakable,
and conclusive (p. 25).
MOTHER MARIUS AND THE CONVICT
In the comparatively
recent general literature of spiritualism and psychical research there are many
cases which satisfy these conditions. There are examples in which the accuracy
of information communicated by these methods, and previously entirely unknown
to those who receive it, almost certainly announces the actual presence of the
entity who is claiming to communicate. I will select one typical case from M.
Flammarion’s book After Death (p. 21), relating to the death of a charwoman of
Every week I used to
leave
“You lived on earth?”
— “Yes” — “You knew me?” — “Yes” — “What was your name?” —
“Keryado”. At this odd name (I did not remember the charwoman’s family name) I was about to leave the table, thinking that the reply was pointless, when the young girl said to me: “That is the family name of the charwoman in the café”. “That is true,” I answered, and then I began a series of questions. I w