DOUBLE-DREAMING AND TRANCE.
Among the phenomena of the dream-life which we have to consider, that of double-dreaming forms a very curious department. A somewhat natural introduction to this subject may be found in the cases above-recorded, of Professor Herder and Mr. S——, of Edinburgh, who appear, in their sleep, to have received so lively an impression of those earnest wishes of their dying friends to see them, that they found themselves irresistibly impelled to obey the spiritual summons. These two cases occurred to men engaged in active daily life, and in normal physical conditions, on which account I particularly refer to them here, although many similar ones might be adduced.
With respect to this subject of double-dreaming, Dr. Ennemoser thinks that it is not so difficult to explain as might appear on a first view, since he considers that there exists an indisputable sympathy between certain organisms, especially where connected by relationship or by affection, which may be sufficient to account for the supervention of simultaneous thoughts, dreams, or presentiments; and I have met with some cases where the magnetiser and his patient have been the subjects of this phenomenon. With respect to the power asserted to have been frequently exercised by causing or suggesting dreams by an operator at a distance from the sleeper, Dr. E. considers the two parties to stand in a positive and negative relation to each other; the antagonistic power of the sleeper being = 0, he becomes a perfectly passive recipient of the influence exerted by his positive half, if I may use the expression; for, where such a polarity is established, the two beings seem to be almost blended into one; while Dr. Passavent observes, that we can not pronounce what may be the limits of the nervous force, which certainly is not bounded by the termination of its material conductors.
I have yet, myself, met with no instance of dream compelling by a person at a distance; but Dr. Ennemoser says that Agrippa von Nettesheim asserts that this can assuredly be done, and also that the abbot Trithemius and others possessed the power. In modern times, Wesermann, in Dusseldorf, pretended to the same faculty, and affirms that he had frequently exercised it.
All such phenomena, Dr. Passavent attributes to the interaction of imponderables—or of one universal imponderable under different manifestations—which acts not only within the organism, but beyond it, independently of all material obstacles; just as a sympathy appears between one organ and another, unobstructed by the intervening ones; and he instances the sympathy which exists between the mother and the fœtus, as an example of this sort of double life, and standing as midway between the sympathy between two organs in the same body and that between two separate bodies, each having its own life, and its life also in and for another, as parts of one whole. The sympathy between a bird and the eggs it sits upon, is of the same kind; many instances having been observed, wherein eggs, taken from one bird and placed under another, have produced a brood feathered like the foster instead of the real parent.
Thus, this vital force may extend dynamically the circle of its influence, till, under favorable circumstances, it may act on other organisms, making their organs its own.
I need scarcely remind my readers of the extraordinary sympathies manifested by the Siamese twins, Chang and Eng. I never saw them myself; and, for the benefit of others in the same situation, I quote the following particulars from Dr. Passavent: “They were united by a membrane which extended from the breast-bone to the navel; but, in other respects, were not different from their countrymen in general. They were exceedingly alike, only that Eng was rather the more robust of the two. Their pulsations were not always coincident. They were active and agile, and fond of bodily exercises; their intellects were well developed, and their tones of voice and accent were precisely the same. As they never conversed together, they had nearly forgotten their native tongue. If one was addressed, they both answered. They played some games of skill, but never with each other; as that, they said, would have been like the right hand playing with the left. They read the same book at the same time, and sang together in unison. In America they had a fever, which ran precisely a similar course with each. Their hunger, thirst, sleeping, and waking, were alway coincident, and their tastes and inclinations were identical. Their movements were so simultaneous, that it was impossible to distinguish with which the impulse had originated; they appeared to have but one will. The idea of being separated by an operation was abhorrent to them; and they consider themselves much happier in their duality than are the individuals who look upon them with pity.”
This admirable sympathy, although necessarily in an inferior degree, is generally manifested, more or less, between all persons twin-born. Dr. Passavent and other authorities mention several instances of this kind, in which, although at some distance from each other, the same malady appeared simultaneously in both, and ran precisely a similar course. A very affecting instance of this sort of sympathy was exhibited, not very long ago, by a young lady, twin-born, who was suddenly seized with an unaccountable horror, followed by a strange convulsion, which the doctor, who was hastily called in, said exactly resembled the struggles and sufferings of a person drowning. In process of time, the news arrived that her twin-brother, then abroad, had been drowned precisely at that period.
It is probably a link of the same kind that is established between the magnetiser and his patient, of which, besides those recorded in various works on the subject, some curious instances have come to my knowledge, such as uncontrollable impulses to go to sleep, or to perform certain actions, in subservience to the will of the distant operator. Mr. W—— W——, a gentleman well known in the north of England, related to me that he had been cured, by magnetism, of a very distressing malady. During part of the process of curé, after the rapport had been well established, the operations were carried on while he was at Malvern, and his magnetiser at Cheltenham, under which circumstances the existence of this extraordinary dependence was frequently exhibited in a manner that left no possibility of doubt. On one occasion, I remember that Mr. W—— W—— being in the magnetic sleep, he suddenly started from his seat, clasping his hands as if startled, and presently afterward burst into a violent fit of laughter. As, on waking, he could give no account of these impulses, his family wrote to the magnetiser to inquire if he had sought to excite any particular manifestations in his patient, as the sleep had been somewhat disturbed. The answer was, that no such intention had been entertained, but that the disturbance might possibly have arisen from one to which he had himself been subjected. “While my mind was concentrated on you,” said he, “I was suddenly so much startled by a violent knock at the door, that I actually jumped off my seat, clasping my hands with affright. I had a hearty laugh at my own folly, but am sorry if you were made uncomfortable by it.”
I have met with some accounts of a sympathy of this kind existing between young children and their parents, so that the former have exhibited great distress and terror at the moment that death or danger have supervened to the latter; but it would require a great number of instances to establish this particular fact, and separate it from cases of accidental coincidence. Dr. Passavent, however, admits the phenomena.
I shall return to these mysterious influences by-and-by; but to revert, in the meanwhile, to the subject of double dreams, I will relate one that occurred to two ladies, a mother and daughter, the latter of whom related it to me. They were sleeping in the same bed at Cheltenham, when the mother, Mrs. C——, dreamed that her brother-in-law, then in Ireland, had sent for her; that she entered his room, and saw him in bed, apparently dying. He requested her to kiss him, but, owing to his livid appearance, she shrank from doing so, and awoke with the horror of the scene upon her. The daughter awoke at the same moment, saying, “Oh, I have had such a frightful dream!” “Oh, so have I!” returned the mother; “I have been dreaming of my brother-in-law!”—“My dream was about him, too,” added Miss C——. “I thought I was sitting in the drawing-room, and that he came in wearing a shroud, trimmed with black ribands, and, approaching me, he said: ‘My dear niece, your mother has refused to kiss me, but I am sure you will not be so unkind!’ ”
As these ladies were not in habits of regular correspondence with their relative, they knew that the earliest intelligence likely to reach them, if he were actually dead, would be by means of the Irish papers; and they waited anxiously for the following Wednesday, which was the day these journals were received in Cheltenham. When that morning arrived, Miss C—— hastened at an early hour to the reading-room, and there she learned what the dreams had led them to expect: their friend was dead; and they afterward ascertained that his decease had taken place on that night. They moreover observed, that neither one nor the other of them had been speaking or thinking of this gentleman for some time previous to the occurrence of the dreams; nor had they any reason whatever for uneasiness with regard to him. It is a remarkable peculiarity in this case, that the dream of the daughter appears to be a continuation of that of the mother. In the one, he is seen alive; in the other, the shroud and black ribands seem to indicate that he is dead, and he complains of the refusal to give him a farewell kiss.
One is almost inevitably led here to the conclusion that the thoughts and wishes of the dying man were influencing the sleepers, or that the released spirit was hovering near them.
Pomponius Mela relates, that a certain people in the interior of Africa lay themselves down to sleep on the graves of their forefathers, and believe the dreams that ensue to be the unerring counsel of the dead.
The following dream, from St. Austin, is quoted by Dr. Binns: Præstantius desired from a certain philosopher the solution of a doubt, which the latter refused to give him; but, on the following night, the philosopher appeared at his bedside and told him what he desired to know. On being asked, the next day, why he had chosen that hour for his visit, he answered: ‘I came not to you truly, but in my dream I appeared to you to do so.’ In this case, however, only one of the parties seems to have been asleep, for Præstantius says that he was awake; and it is perhaps rather an example of another kind of phenomena, similar to the instance recorded of himself by the late Joseph Wilkins, a dissenting minister, who says that, being one night asleep, he dreamed that he was travelling to London, and that, as it would not be much out of his way, he would go by Gloucestershire and call upon his friends. Accordingly he arrived at his father’s house, but, finding the front door closed, he went round to the back and there entered. The family, however, being already in bed, he ascended the stairs and entered his father’s bed-chamber. Him he found asleep; but to his mother, who was awake, he said, as he walked round to her side of the bed, ‘Mother, I am going a long journey, and am come to bid you good-by;’ to which she answered, ‘Oh, dear son, thee art dead!’ Though struck with the distinctness of the dream, Mr. Wilkins attached no importance to it, till, to his surprise, a letter arrived from his father, addressed to himself, if alive—or, if not, to his surviving friends—begging earnestly for immediate intelligence, since they were under great apprehensions that their son was either dead, or in danger of death; for that, on such a night (naming that on which the above dream had occurred), he, the father, being asleep, and Mrs. Wilkins awake, she had distinctly heard somebody try to open the fore door, which being fast, the person had gone round to the back and there entered. She had perfectly recognised the footstep to be that of her son, who had ascended the stairs, and entering the bed-chamber, had said to her, ‘Mother, I am going a long journey, and am come to bid you good-by;’ whereupon she had answered, ‘Oh, dear son, thee art dead!’ Much alarmed, she had awakened her husband and related what had occurred, assuring him that it was not a dream, for that she had not been asleep at all. Mr. Wilkins mentions that this curious circumstance took place in the year 1754, when he was living at Ottery; and that he had frequently discussed the subject with his mother, on whom the impression made was even stronger than on himself. Neither death nor anything else remarkable ensued.
A somewhat similar instance to this, which I also quote from Dr. Binns, is that of a gentleman who dreamed that he was pushing violently against the door of a certain room, in a house with which he was well acquainted; while the people in that room were, at the same time, actually alarmed by a violent pushing against the door, which it required their utmost force effectually to resist. As soon as the attempt to burst open the door had ceased, the house was searched, but nothing discovered to account for the disturbance.
These examples are extremely curious, and they conduct us by a natural transition to another department of this mysterious subject.
There must be few persons who have not heard, among their friends and acquaintance, instances of what is called a wraith; that is, that in the moment of death, a person is seen in a place where bodily he is not. I believe the Scotch use this term also in the same sense as the Irish word fetch; which is a person’s double seen at some indefinite period previous to his death, of which such an appearance is generally supposed to be a prognostic. The Germans express the same thing by the word doppelgänger.
With respect to the appearance of wraiths, at the moment of death, the instances to be met with are so numerous and well-authenticated, that I generally find the most skeptical people unable to deny that some such phenomenon exists, although they evade, without I think, diminishing the difficulty, by pronouncing it to be of a subjective, and not of an objective, nature; that is, that the image of the dying person is, by some unknown operation, presented to the imagination of the seer, without the existence of any real outstanding figure, from which it is reflected; which reduces such instances so nearly to the class of mere sensuous illusion, that it seems difficult to draw the distinction. The distinction these theorists wish to imply, however, is that the latter are purely subjective and self-originating, while the others have an external cause, although not an external visible object—the image seen being protruded by the imagination of the seer, in consequence of an unconscious intuition of the death of the person whose wraith is perceived.
Instances of this kind of phenomenon have been common in all ages of the world, insomuch that Lucretius, who did not believe in the immortality of the soul, and was yet unable to deny the facts, suggested the strange theory that the superficial surfaces of all bodies were continually flying off, like the coats of an onion, which accounted for the appearance of wraiths, ghosts, doubles, &c.; and a more modern author, Gaffarillus, suggests that corrupting bodies send forth vapors, which being compressed by the cold night air, appear visible to the eye in the forms of men.
It will not be out of place, here, to mention the circumstance recorded in Professor Gregory’s “Abstract of Baron von Reichenbach’s Researches in Magnetism,” regarding a person called Billing, who acted in the capacity of amanuensis to the blind poet Pfeffel, at Colmar. Having treated of various experiments, by which it was ascertained that certain sensitive persons were not only able to detect electric influences of which others were unconscious, but could also perceive, emanating from the wires and magnets, flames which were invisible to people in general; “the baron,” according to Dr. Gregory, “proceeded to a useful application of the results, which is, he says, so much the more welcome, as it utterly eradicates one of the chief foundations of superstition, that worst enemy to the development of human enlightenment and liberty. A singular occurrence, which took place at Colmar, in the garden of the poet Pfeffel, has been made generally known by various writings. The following are the essential facts. The poet, being blind, had employed a young clergyman, of the evangelical church, as amanuensis. Pfeffel, when he walked out, was supported and led by this young man, whose name was Billing. As they walked in the garden, at some distance from the town, Pfeffel observed, that as often as they passed over a particular spot, the arm of Billing trembled, and he betrayed uneasiness. On being questioned, the young man reluctantly confessed, that as often as he passed over that spot, certain feelings attacked him, which he could not control, and which he knew well, as he always experienced the same, in passing over any place where human bodies lay buried. He added, that at night, when he came near such places, he saw supernatural appearances. Pfeffel, with the view of curing the youth of what he looked on as fancy, went that night with him to the garden. As they approached the spot in the dark, Billing perceived a feeble light, and when still nearer, he saw a luminous ghostlike figure floating over the spot. This he described as a female form, with one arm laid across the body, the other hanging down, floating in the upright posture, but tranquil, the feet only a hand-breadth or two above the soil. Pfeffel went alone, as the young man declined to follow him, up to the place where the figure was said to be, and struck about in all directions with his stick, besides running actually through the shadow; but the figure was not more affected than a flame would have been; the luminous form, according to Billing always returned to its original position after these experiments. Many things were tried during several months, and numerous companies of people were brought to the spot, but the matter remained the same, and the ghost-seer adhered to his serious assertion, and to the opinion founded on it, that some individual lay buried there. At last, Pfeffel had the place dug up. At a considerable depth was found a firm layer of white lime, of the length and breadth of a grave, and of considerable thickness, and when this had been broken into, there were found the bones of a human being. It was evident that some one had been buried in the place, and covered with a thick layer of lime (quicklime), as is generally done in times of pestilence, of earthquakes, and other similar events. The bones were removed, the pit filled up, the lime scattered abroad, and the surface again made smooth. When Billing was now brought back to the place, the phenomena did not return, and the nocturnal spirit had for ever disappeared.
“It is hardly necessary to point out to the reader what view the author takes of this story, which excited much attention in Germany, because it came from the most truthful man alive, and theologians and psychologists gave to it sundry terrific meanings. It obviously falls into the province of chemical action, and thus meets with a simple and clear explanation from natural and physical causes. A corpse is a field for abundant chemical changes, decompositions, fermentation, putrefaction, gasification, and general play of affinities. A stratum of quicklime, in a narrow pit, unites its powerful affinities to those of the organic matters, and gives rise to a long-continued working of the whole. Rain-water filters through and contributes to the action: the lime on the outside of the mass first falls to a fine powder, and afterward, with more water, forms lumps which are very slowly penetrated by the air. Slaked lime prepared for building, but not used, on account of some cause connected with a warlike state of society some centuries since, has been found in subterraneous holes or pits, in the ruins of old castles; and the mass, except on the outside, was so unaltered that it has been used for modern buildings. It is evident, therefore, that in such circumstances there must be a very slow and long-continued chemical action, partly owing to the slow penetration of the mass of lime by the external carbonic acid, partly to the change going on in the remains of animal matter, at all events as long as any is left. In the above case, this must have gone on in Pfeffel’s garden, and, as we know that chemical action is invariably associated with light, visible to the sensitive, this must have been the origin of the luminous appearance, which again must have continued until the mutual affinities of the organic remains, the lime, the air, and water, had finally come to a state of chemical rest or equilibrium. As soon, therefore, as a sensitive person, although otherwise quite healthy, came that way, and entered into the sphere of the force in action, he must feel, by day, like Mdlle. Maix, the sensations so often described, and see by night, like Mdlle. Reichel, the luminous appearance. Ignorance, fear, and superstition, would dress up the feebly shining, vaporous light into a human form, and furnish it with human limbs and members; just as we can at pleasure fancy every cloud in the sky to represent a man or a demon.
“The wish to strike a fatal blow at the monster superstition, which, at no distant period, poured out upon European society from a similar source, such inexpressible misery, when, in trials for witchcraft, not hundreds, not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings perished miserably, either on the scaffold, at the stake, or by the effects of torture—this desire induced the author to try the experiment of bringing, if possible, a highly-sensitive patient by night to a churchyard. It appeared possible that such a person might see, over graves in which mouldering bodies lie, something similar to that which Billing had seen. Mdlle. Reichel had the courage, rare in her sex, to gratify this wish of the author. On two very dark nights she allowed herself to be taken from the castle of Reisenberg, where she was living with the author’s family, to the neighboring churchyard of Grunzing. The result justified his anticipation in the most beautiful manner. She very soon saw a light, and observed on one of the graves, along its length, a delicate, breathing flame: she also saw the same thing, only weaker on the second grave. But she saw neither witches nor ghosts; she described the fiery appearances as a shining vapor, one to two spans high, extending as far as the grave, and floating near its surface. Some time afterward she was taken to two large cemeteries near Vienna, where several burials occur daily, and graves lie about by thousands. Here she saw numerous graves provided with similar lights. Wherever she looked, she saw luminous masses scattered about. But this appearance was most vivid over the newest graves, while in the oldest it could not be perceived. She described the appearance less as a clear flame than as a dense, vaporous mass of fire, intermediate between fog and flame. On many graves the flames were four feet high, so that when she stood on them, it surrounded her up to the neck. If she thrust her hand into it, it was like putting it into a dense, fiery cloud. She betrayed no uneasiness, because she had all her life been accustomed to such emanations, and had seen the same, in the author’s experiments, often produced by natural causes.
“Many ghost-stories will now find their natural explanation. We can also see that it was not altogether erroneous, when old women declared that all had not the gift to see the departed wandering about their graves; for it must have always been the sensitive alone who were able to perceive the light given out by the chemical action going on in the corpse. The author has thus, he hopes, succeeded in tearing down one of the most impenetrable barriers erected by dark ignorance and superstitious folly against the progress of natural truth.”
“(The reader will at once apply the above most remarkable experiments to the explanation of corpse-lights in churchyards, which were often visible to the gifted alone—to those who had the second-sight, for example. Many nervous or hysterical females must often have been alarmed by white, faintly-luminous objects in dark churchyards, to which objects fear has given a defined form. In this, as well as in numerous other points, which will force themselves on the attention of the careful reader of both works, Baron Reichenbach’s experiments illustrate the experiences of the Seeress of Prevorst.—W. G.)”[[1]]
That the flames here described may have originated in chemical action, is an opinion I have no intention of disputing; the fact may possibly be so; such a phenomenon has frequently been observed hovering over coffins and decomposing flesh: but I confess I can not perceive the slightest grounds for the assertion that it was the ignorance, fear, and superstition, of Billing, who was an evangelical clergyman, that caused him to dress up this vaporous light in a human form and supply it with members, &c. In the first place, I see no proof adduced that Billing was either ignorant or superstitious, or even afraid—the feelings he complained of appearing to be rather physical than moral; and it must be a weak person indeed, who, in company with another, could be excited to such a freak of the imagination. It is easily comprehensible that that which appeared only a luminous vapor by day, might, when reflected on a darker atmosphere, present a defined form; and the suggestion of this possibility might lead to some curious speculations with regard to a mystery called the palinganesia, said to have been practised by some of the chemists and alchemists of the sixteenth century.
Gaffarillus, in his book, entitled “Curiosités Inouies,” published in 1650, when speaking on the subject of talismans, signatures, &c., observes that, since in many instances the plants used for these purposes were reduced to ashes, and no longer retained their form, their efficacy, which depended on their figure, should inevitably be destroyed; but this, he says, is not the case, since, by an admirable potency existing in nature, the form, though invisible, is still retained in the ashes. This, he observes, may appear strange to those who have never attended to the subject; but he asserts that an account of the experiment will be found in the works of Mr. Du Chesne, one of the best chemists of the period, who had been shown, by a Polish physician at Cracow, certain vials containing ashes, which, when duly heated, exhibited the forms of various plants. A small obscure cloud was first observed, which gradually took on a defined form, and presented to the eye a rose, or whatever plant or flower the ashes consisted of. Mr. Du Chesne, however, had never been able to repeat the experiment, though he had made several unsuccessful attempts to do so; but at length he succeeded, by accident, in the following manner: Having for some purpose extracted the salts from some burnt nettles, and having left the ley outside the house all night, to cool, in the morning he found it frozen; and, to his surprise, the form and figure of the nettles were so exactly represented on the ice, that the living plant could not be more perfect. Delighted at this discovery, he summoned Mr. De Luynes, parliamentary councillor, to behold this curiosity; whence, he says, they both concluded that, when a body dies, its form or figure still resides in its ashes.
Kircher, Vallemont, Digby, and others, are said to have practised this art of resuscitating the forms of plants from their ashes and at the meeting of naturalists at Stuttgard, in 1834, a Swiss savant seems to have revived the subject, and given a receipt for the experiment, extracted from a work by Oetinger, called “Thoughts on the Birth and Generation of Things.”—“The earthly husk,” says Oetinger, “remains in the retort, while the volatile essence ascends, like a spirit, perfect in form, but void of substance.”
But Oetinger also records another discovery of this description, which, he says, he fell upon unawares. A woman having brought him a large bunch of balm, he laid it under the tiles, which were yet warm with the summer’s heat, where it dried in the shade. But, it being in the month of September, the cold soon came, and contracted the leaves, without expelling the volatile salts. They lay there till the following June, when he chopped up the balm, put it into a glass retort, poured rain-water upon it, and placed a receiver above. He afterward heated it till the water boiled, and then increased the heat—whereupon there appeared on the water a coat of yellow oil, about the thickness of the back of a knife, and this oil shaped itself into the forms of innumerable balm-leaves, which did not run one into another, but remained perfectly distinct and defined, and exhibited all the marks that are seen in the leaves of the plant. Oetinger says he kept the fluid some time, and showed it to a number of people. At length, wishing to throw it away, he shook it, and the leaves ran into one another with the disturbance of the oil, but resumed their distinct shape again as soon as it was at rest, the fluid form retaining the perfect signature.
Now, how far these experiments are really practicable, I can not say; their not being repeated, or not being repeated successfully, is no very decided argument against their possibility, as all persons acquainted with the annals of chemistry well know; but there is certainly a curious coincidence between these details and the experience of Billing, where it is to be observed that, according to his account—and what right have we to dispute it?—the figure, after being disturbed by Pfeffel, always resumed its original form. The same peculiarity has been observed with respect to some apparitions, where the spectator has been bold enough to try the experiment. In a letter to Dr. Bentley, from the Rev. Thomas Wilkins, curate of Warblington, in Hampshire, written in the year 1695, wherein he gives an account of an apparition which haunted the parsonage-house, and which he himself and several other persons had seen, he particularly mentions that, thinking it might be some fellow hid in the room, he put his arm out to feel it, and his hand seemingly went through the body of it, and felt no manner of substance, until it reached the wall. “Then I drew back my hand, but still the apparition was in the same place.”
Yet this spectre did not appear above or near a grave, but moved from place to place, and gave considerable annoyance to the inhabitants of the rectory.
With respect to the lights over the graves, sufficing to account for the persuasion regarding what are called corpse-candles, they certainly, up to a certain point, afford a very satisfactory explanation, but that explanation does not comprehend the whole of the mystery; for most of those persons who have professed to see corpse-candles, have also asserted that they were not always stationary over the graves, but sometimes moved from place to place, as in the following instance, related to me by a gentleman who assured me that he received the account from the person who witnessed the phenomenon. Now, this last fact—I mean the locomotion of the lights—will, of course, be disputed; but so was their existence: yet they exist, for all that, and may travel from place to place, for anything we know to the contrary.
The story related to me, or a similar instance, is, I think, mentioned by Mrs. Grant; but it was to the effect that a minister, newly inducted in his curé, was standing one evening leaning over the wall of the churchyard which adjoined the manse, when he observed a light hovering over a particular spot. Supposing it to be somebody with a lantern, he opened the wicket and went forward to ascertain who it might be; but before he reached the spot, the light moved onward; and he followed, but could see nobody. It did not rise far from the ground, but advanced rapidly across the road, entered a wood, and ascended a hill, till it at length disappeared at the door of a farmhouse. Unable to comprehend of what nature this light could be, the minister was deliberating whether to make inquiries at the house or return, when it appeared again, seeming to come out of the house, accompanied by another, passed him, and, going over the same ground, they both disappeared on the spot where he had first observed the phenomenon. He left a mark on the grave by which he might recognise it, and the next day inquired of the sexton whose it was. The man said it belonged to a family that lived up the hill (indicating the house the light had stopped at), named M’D——, but that it was a considerable time since any one had been buried there. The minister was extremely surprised to learn, in the course of the day, that a child of that family had died of scarlet fever on the preceding evening.
With respect to the class of phenomena accompanied by this phosphorescent light, I shall have more to say by-and-by. The above will appear a very incredible story to many people, and there was a time that it would have appeared equally so to myself; but I have met with so much strange corroborative evidence, that I no longer feel myself entitled to reject it. I asked the gentleman who told me the story, whether he believed it; he said that he could not believe in anything of the sort. I then inquired if he would accept the testimony of that minister on any other question, and he answered, “Most assuredly.” As, however, I shall have occasion to recur to this subject in a subsequent chapter, I will leave it aside for the present, and relate some of the facts which led me to the consideration of the above theories and experiments.
Dr. S—— relates that a Madame T——, in Prussia, dreamed, on the 16th of March, 1832, that the door opened, and her god-father, Mr. D——, who was much attached to her, entered the room, dressed as he usually was when prepared for church on Sundays; and that, knowing him to be in bad health, she asked him what he was doing abroad at such an early hour, and whether he was quite well again. Whereupon, he answered that he was; and, being about to undertake a very long journey, he had come to bid her farewell, and to intrust her with a commission, which was, that she would deliver a letter he had written to his wife; but accompanying it with an injunction that she (the wife) was not to open it till that day four years, when he would return himself, precisely at five o’clock in the morning, to fetch the answer, till which period he charged her not to break the seal. He then handed her a letter, sealed with black, the writing on which shone through the paper, so that she (the dreamer) was able to perceive that it contained an announcement to Mrs. D——, the wife, with whom, on account of the levity of her character, he had long lived unhappily, that she would die at that time four years.
At this moment, the sleeper was awakened by what appeared to her a pressure of the hand; and, feeling an entire conviction that this was something more than an ordinary dream, she was not surprised to learn that her god-father was dead. She related the dream to Madame D——, omitting, however, to mention the announcement contained in the letter, which she thought the dream plainly indicated was not to be communicated. The widow laughed at the story, soon resumed her gay life, and married again. In the winter of 1835-’6, however, she was attacked by an intermittent fever, on which occasion Dr. S—— was summoned to attend her. After various vicissitudes, she finally sunk; and, on the 16th of March, 1836, exactly at five o’clock in the morning, she suddenly started up in her bed, and, fixing her eyes apparently on some one she saw standing at the foot, she exclaimed: “What are you come for? God be gracious to me! I never believed it!” She then sank back, closed her eyes, which she never opened again, and, in a quarter of an hour afterward, expired very calmly.
A friend of mine, Mrs. M——, a native of the West Indies, was at Blair Logie at the period of the death of Dr. Abercrombie, in Edinburgh, with whom she was extremely intimate. Dr. A. died quite suddenly, without any previous indisposition, just as he was about to go out in his carriage, at 11 o’clock on a Thursday morning. On the night between the Thursday and Friday, Mrs. M—— dreamed that she saw the family of Dr. A. all dressed in white, dancing a solemn funereal dance; upon which she awoke, wondering that she should have dreamed a thing so incongruous, since it was contrary to their custom to dance on any occasion. Immediately afterward, while speaking to her maid who had come to call her, she saw Dr. Abercrombie against the wall, with his jaw fallen, and a livid countenance, mournfully shaking his head as he looked at her. She passed the day in great uneasiness, and wrote to inquire for the doctor, relating what had happened, and expressing her certainty that he was dead; the letter was seen by several persons in Edinburgh on the day of its arrival.
The two following cases seem rather to belong to what is called, in the east, second hearing,—although sympathy was probably the exciting cause of the phenomena. A lady and gentleman in Berwickshire were awakened one night by a loud cry, which they both immediately recognised to proceed from the voice of their son, who was then absent and at a considerable distance. Tidings subsequently reached them, that exactly at that period their son had fallen overboard and was drowned. On another occasion, in Perthshire, a person aroused her husband one night, saying that their son was drowned, for she had been awakened by the splash. Her presentiment also proved too well founded, the young man having fallen from the mast-head of the ship. In both cases, we may naturally conclude that the thoughts of the young men, at the moment of the accident, would rush homeward; and, admitting Dr. Ennemoser’s theory of polarity, the passive sleepers became the recipients of the force. I confess, however, that the opinions of another section of philosophers appear to me to be more germain to the matter; although, to many persons, they will doubtless be difficult of acceptance, from their appertaining to those views commonly called mystical.
These psychologists then believe, as did Socrates and Plato, and others of the ancients, that in certain conditions of the body, which conditions may arise naturally, or be produced artificially, the links which unite it with the spirit may be more or less loosened; and that the latter may thus be temporarily disjoined from the former, and so enjoy a foretaste of its future destiny. In the lowest or first degree of this disunion, we are awake, though scarcely conscious, while the imagination is vivified to an extraordinary amount, and our fancy supplies images almost as lively as the realities. This probably is the temporary condition of inspired poets and eminent discoverers.
Sleep is considered another stage of this disjunction; and the question has ever been raised whether, when the body is in profound sleep, the spirit is not altogether free and living in another world, while the organic life proceeds as usual, and sustains the temple till the return of its inhabitant. Without at present attempting to support or refute this doctrine, I will only observe, that once admitting the possibility of the disunion, all consideration of time must be set aside as irrelevant to the question; for spirit, freed from matter, must move with the rapidity of thought;—in short, a spirit must be where its thoughts and affections are.
It is the opinion of these psychologists, however, that in the normal and healthy condition of man, the union of body, soul, and spirit, is most complete, and that all the degrees of disunion in the waking state are degrees of morbid derangement. Hence it is that somnambulists and clairvoyants are chiefly to be found among sickly women. There have been persons who have appeared to possess a power which they could exert at will, whereby they withdrew from their bodies, these remaining during the absence of the spirit in a state of catalepsy, scarcely if at all to be distinguished from death.
I say withdrew from their bodies, assuming that to be the explanation of the mystery; for, of course, it is but an assumption. Epimenides is recorded to have possessed this faculty; and Hermotinus, of Clazomenes, is said to have wandered, in spirit, over the world, while his body lay apparently dead. At length his wife, taking advantage of this absence of his soul, burned his body and thus intercepted its return: so say Lucien and Pliny the elder;—and Varro relates, that the eldest of two brothers, named Corfidius, being supposed to die, his will was opened and preparations were made for his funeral by the other brother, who was declared his heir. In the meantime, however, Corfidius revived, and told the astonished attendants, whom he summoned by clapping his hands, that he had just come from his younger brother, who had committed his daughter to his care, and informed him where he had buried some gold, requesting that the funeral preparations he had made might be converted to his own use. Immediately afterward, the news arrived that the younger brother was unexpectedly deceased, and the gold was found at the place indicated. The last appears to have been a case of natural trance; but the two most remarkable instances of voluntary trance I have met with in modern times is that of Colonel Townshend, and the dervish who allowed himself to be buried. With regard to the former, he could, to all appearance, die whenever he pleased; his heart ceased to beat; there was no perceptible respiration; and his whole frame became cold and rigid as death itself; the features being shrunk and colorless, and the eyes glazed and ghastly. He would continue in this state for several hours and then gradually revive; but the revival does not appear to have been an effort of will—or rather, we are not informed whether it was so or not. Neither are we told whether he brought any recollections back with him, nor how this strange faculty was first developed or discovered—all very important points, and well worthy of investigation.[[2]]
With respect to the dervish, or fakeer, an account of his singular faculty was, I believe, first presented to the public in the Calcutta papers about nine or ten years ago. He had then frequently exhibited it for the satisfaction of the natives; but subsequently he was put to the proof by some of the European officers and residents. Captain Wade, political agent at Loodhiana, was present when he was disinterred, ten months after he had been buried by General Ventura, in presence of the maharajah and many of his principal sirdars.
It appears that the man previously prepared himself by some processes, which, he says, temporarily annihilate the powers of digestion, so that milk received into the stomach undergoes no change. He next forces all the breath in his body into his brain, which becomes very hot, upon which the lungs collapse, and the heart ceases to beat. He then stops up, with wax, every aperture of the body through which air could enter, except the mouth, but the tongue is so turned back as to close the gullet, upon which a state of insensibility ensues. He is then stripped and put into a linen bag; and, on the occasion in question, this bag was sealed with Runjeet Sing’s own seal. It was then placed in a deal box, which was also locked and sealed, and the box being buried in a vault, the earth was thrown over it and trod down, after which a crop of barley was sown on the spot, and sentries placed to watch it. The maharajah, however, was so skeptical, that, in spite of all these precautions, he had him, twice in the course of the ten months, dug up and examined, and each time he was found to be exactly in the same state as when they had shut him up.
When he is disinterred, the first step toward his recovery is to turn back his tongue, which is found quite stiff, and requires for some time to be retained in its proper position by the finger; warm water is poured upon him, and his eyes and lips moistened with ghee, or oil. His recovery is much more rapid than might be expected, and he is soon able to recognise the bystanders, and converse. He says, that, during this state of trance, his dreams are ravishing, and that it is very painful to be awakened; but I do not know that he has ever disclosed any of his experiences. His only apprehension seems to be, lest he should be attacked by insects, to avoid which accident the box is slung to the ceiling. The interval seems to be passed in a complete state of hibernation; and when he is taken up, no pulse is perceptible, and his eyes are glazed like those of a corpse.
He subsequently refused to submit to the conditions proposed by some English officers, and thus incurred their suspicions, that the whole thing was an imposition; but the experiment has been too often repeated by people very well capable of judging, and under too stringent precautions, to allow of this mode of escaping the difficulty. The man assumes to be holy, and is very probably a worthless fellow, but that does not affect the question one way or the other. Indian princes do not permit themselves to be imposed on with impunity; and, as Runjeet Sing would not value the man’s life at a pin’s point, he would neglect no means of debarring him all access to food or air.
In the above-quoted cases, except in those of Corfidius and Hermotinus, the absence of the spirit is alone suggested to the spectator by the condition of the body; since the memory of one state does not appear to have been carried into the other—if the spirit wandered into other regions it brings no tidings back; but we have many cases recorded where this deficient evidence seems to be supplied. The magicians and soothsayers of the northern countries, by narcotics, and other means, produce a cataleptic state of the body, resembling death, when their prophetic faculty is to be exercised; and although we know that an alloy of imposition is generally mixed up with these exhibitions, still it is past a doubt, that a state of what we call clear-seeing is thus induced; and that on awaking, they bring tidings from various parts of the world of actions then performing and events occurring, which subsequent investigations have verified.
One of the most remarkable cases of this kind, is that recorded by Jung Stilling, of a man, who about the year 1740, resided in the neighborhood of Philadelphia, in the United States. His habits were retired, and he spoke little; he was grave, benevolent, and pious, and nothing was known against his character, except that he had the reputation of possessing some secrets that were not altogether lawful. Many extraordinary stories were told of him, and among the rest, the following: The wife of a ship-captain, whose husband was on a voyage to Europe and Africa, and from whom she had been long without tidings, overwhelmed with anxiety for his safety, was induced to address herself to this person. Having listened to her story, he begged her to excuse him for awhile, when he would bring her the intelligence she required. He then passed into an inner room, and she sat herself down to wait; but his absence continuing longer than she expected, she became impatient, thinking he had forgotten her; and so softly approaching the door, she peeped through some aperture, and to her surprise, beheld him lying on a sofa, as motionless as if he was dead. She of course, did not think it advisable to disturb him, but waited his return, when he told her that her husband had not been able to write to her for such and such reasons; but that he was then in a coffeehouse in London, and would shortly be home again. Accordingly, he arrived, and as the lady learned from him that the causes of his unusual silence had been precisely those alleged by the man, she felt extremely desirous of ascertaining the truth of the rest of the information; and in this she was gratified; for he no sooner set his eyes on the magician than he said that he had seen him before, on a certain day, in a coffeehouse in London; and that he had told him his wife was extremely uneasy about him; and that he, the captain, had thereon mentioned how he had been prevented writing; adding that he was on the eve of embarking for America. He had then lost sight of the stranger among the throng, and knew nothing more about him.
I have no authority for this story, but that of Jung Stilling; and if it stood alone, it might appear very incredible; but it is supported by so many parallel examples of information given by people in somnambulic states, that we are not entitled to reject it on the score of impossibility.
The late Mr. John Holloway, of the bank of England, brother to the engraver of that name, related of himself that being one night in bed with his wife and unable to sleep, he had fixed his eyes and thoughts with uncommon intensity on a beautiful star that was shining in at the window, when he suddenly found his spirit released from his body and soaring into that bright sphere. But, instantly seized with anxiety for the anguish of his wife, if she discovered his body apparently dead beside her, he returned, and re-entered it with difficulty (hence, perhaps, the violent convulsions with which some somnambules of the highest order are awakened). He described that returning, was returning to darkness; and that while the spirit was free, he was alternately in the light or the dark, accordingly as his thoughts were with his wife or with the star. He said that he always avoided anything that could produce a repetition of this accident, the consequences of it being very distressing.
We know that by intense contemplation of this sort, the dervishes produce a state of ecstasy, in which they pretend to be transported to other spheres; and not only the seeress of Prevorst, but many other persons in a highly magnetic state, have asserted the same thing of themselves; and certainly the singular conformity of the intelligence they bring is not a little remarkable.
Dr. Kerner relates of his somnambule, Frederica Hauffe, that one day, at Weinsberg, she exclaimed in her sleep, “Oh! God!” She immediately awoke, as if aroused by the exclamation, and said that she seemed to have heard two voices proceeding from herself. At this time her father was lying dead in his coffin, at Oberstenfeld, and Dr. Fohr, the physician, who had attended him in his illness, was sitting with another person in an adjoining room, with the door open, when he heard the exclamation “Oh, God!” so distinctly, that, feeling certain there was nobody there, he hastened to the coffin, whence the sound had appeared to proceed, thinking that Mr. W——’s death had only been apparent, and that he was reviving. The other person, who was an uncle of Frederica, had heard nothing. No person was discovered from whom the exclamation could have proceeded, and the circumstance remained a mystery till an explanation ensued. Plutarch relates, that a certain man, called Thespesius, having fallen from a great height, was taken up apparently dead from the shock, although no external wound was to be discovered. On the third day after the accident, however, when they were about to bury him, he unexpectedly revived; and it was afterward observed, to the surprise of all who knew him, that, from being a vicious reprobate, he became one of the most virtuous of men. On being interrogated with respect to the cause of the change, he related that, during the period of his bodily insensibility, it appeared to him that he was dead, and that he had been first plunged into the depths of an ocean, out of which however, he soon emerged, and then, at one view, the whole of space was disclosed to him. Everything appeared in a different aspect, and the dimensions of the planetary bodies, and the intervals between them, were tremendous, while his spirit seemed to float in a sea of light, like a ship in calm waters. He also described many other things that he had seen. He said that the souls of the dead, on quitting the body, appeared like a bubble of light, out of which a human form was quickly evolved. That of these, some shot away at once in a direct line, with great rapidity, while others, on the contrary, seemed unable to find their due course, and continued to hover about, going hither and thither, till at length they also darted away in one direction or another. He recognised few of these persons he saw, but those whom he did, and sought to address, appeared as if they were stunned and amazed, and avoided him with terror. Their voices were indistinct, and seemed to be uttering vague lamentings. There were others, also, who floated farther from the earth, who looked bright, and were gracious; these avoided the approach of the last. In short, the demeanor and appearance of these spirits manifested clearly their degrees of joy or grief. Thespesius was then informed by one of them, that he was not dead, but that he had been permitted to come there by a Divine decree, and that his soul, which was yet attached to his body, as by an anchor, would return to it again. Thespesius then observed that he was different to the dead by whom he was surrounded, and this observation seemed to restore him to his recollection. They were transparent, and environed by a radiance, but he seemed to trail after him a dark ray, or line of shadow. These spirits also presented very different aspects; some were entirely pervaded by a mild, clear radiance, like that of the full moon; through others there appeared faint streaks, that diminished this splendor; while others, on the contrary, were distinguished by spots, or stripes of black, or of a dark color, like the marks on the skin of a viper.
There is a circumstance which I can not help here mentioning in connection with this history of Thespesius, which on first reading struck me very forcibly.
About three years ago, I had several opportunities of seeing two young girls, then under the care of a Mr. A——, of Edinburgh, who hoped, chiefly by means of magnetism, to restore them to sight. One was a maid-servant afflicted with amaurosis, whom he had taken into his house from a charitable desire to be of use to her; the other, who had been blind from her childhood, was a young lady in better circumstances, the daughter of respectable tradespeople in the north of England. The girl with amaurosis was restored to sight, and the other was so far benefited that she could distinguish houses, trees, carriages, &c., and at length, though obscurely, the features of a person near her. At this period of the curé she was, unhappily, removed, and may possibly have relapsed into her former state. My reason, however, for alluding to these young women on this occasion is, that they were in the habit of saying, when in the magnetic state—for they were both, more or less, clairvoyantes—that the people whom Dr. A—— was magnetizing, in the same room, presented very different appearances. Some of them they described as looking bright, while others were, in different degrees, streaked with black.
One or two they mentioned over whom there seemed to hang a sort of cloud, like a ragged veil of darkness. They also said, though this was before any tidings of Baron von Reichenbach’s discoveries had reached this country, that they saw light streaming from the fingers of Mr. A—— when he magnetized them; and that sometimes his whole person seemed to them radiant. Now, I am positively certain that neither Mr. A—— nor these girls had ever heard of this story of Thespesius; neither had I, at that time; and I confess, when I did meet with it I was a good deal struck by the coincidence. These young people said that it was the “goodness or badness,” meaning the moral state, of the persons that was thus indicated. Now, surely, this concurrence between the man mentioned by Plutarch, and these two girls—one of whom had no education whatever, and the other very little—is worthy of some regard.
I once asked a young person in a highly clairvoyant state, whether she ever “saw the spirits of them that had passed away;” for so she designated the dead, never using the word death herself, in any of its forms. She answered me that she did.
“Then where are they?” I inquired.
“Some are waiting, and some are gone on before.”
“Can you speak to them?” I asked.
“No,” she replied, “there is no meddling nor direction.”
In her waking state she would have been quite incapable of these answers; and that “some are waiting and some gone on before,” seems to be much in accordance with the vision of Thespesius.
Dr. Passavent mentions a peasant-boy who, after a short but painful illness, apparently died, his body being perfectly stiff. He, however, revived, complaining bitterly of being called back to life. He said he had been in a delightful place, and seen his deceased relations. There was a great exaltation of the faculties after this; and having been before rather stupid, he now, while his body lay stiff and immoveable and his eyes closed, prayed and discoursed with eloquence. He continued in this state for seven weeks, but finally recovered.
In the year 1733, Johann Schwerzeger fell into a similar state of trance, after an illness, but revived. He said he had seen his whole life, and every sin he had committed, even those he had quite forgotten—everything had been as present to him as when it happened. He also lamented being recalled from the happiness he was about to enter into; but said that he had only two days to spend in this valley of tears, during which time he wished everybody that would, should come and listen to what he had to tell them. His before sunken eyes now looked bright, his face had the bloom of youth, and he discoursed so eloquently, that the minister said they had exchanged offices, and the sick man had become his teacher. He died at the time he had foretold.
The most frightful cases of trance recorded are those in which the patient retains entire consciousness, although utterly unable to exhibit any evidence of life; and it is dreadful to think how many persons may have been actually buried, hearing every nail that was screwed into their own coffin, and as perfectly aware of the whole ceremony as those who followed them to the grave.
Dr. Binns mentions a girl, at Canton, who lay in this state, hearing every word that was said around her, but utterly unable to move a finger. She tried to cry out, but could not, and supposed that she was really dead. The horror of finding herself about to be buried at length caused a perspiration to appear on her skin, and she finally revived. She described that she felt that her soul had no power to act upon her body, and that it seemed to be in her body and out of it, at the same time!
Now, this is very much what the somnambulists say: their soul is out of the body, but is still so far in rapport with it, that it does not leave it entirely. Probably magnetism would be the best means of reviving a person from this state.
The custom of burying people before there are unmistakable signs of death, is a very condemnable one. A Mr. M’G—— fell into a trance, some few years since, and remained insensible for five days, his mother being meanwhile quite shocked that the physician would not allow him to be buried. He had afterward a recurrence of the malady, which continued seven days.
A Mr. S——, who had been some time out of the country, died, apparently, two days after his return. As he had eaten of a pudding which his stepmother had made for his dinner with her own hands, people took into their heads she had poisoned him; and, the grave being opened for purposes of investigation, the body was found lying on its face.
One of the most frightful cases extant is that of Dr. Walker, of Dublin, who had so strong a presentiment on this subject, that he had actually written a treatise against the Irish customs of hasty burial. He himself subsequently died, as was believed, of a fever. His decease took place in the night, and on the following day he was interred. At this time, Mrs. Bellamy, the once-celebrated actress, was in Ireland; and as she had promised him, in the course of conversation, that she would take care he should not be laid in the earth till unequivocal signs of dissolution had appeared, she no sooner heard of what had happened than she took measures to have the grave reopened; but it was, unfortunately, too late; Dr. Walker had evidently revived, and had turned upon his side; but life was now quite extinct.
The case related by Lady Fanshawe, of her mother, is very remarkable, from the confirmation furnished by the event of her death. “My mother, being sick of a fever,” says Lady Fanshawe, in her memoirs, “her friends and servants thought her deceased, and she lay in that state for two days and a night; but Mr. Winslow, coming to comfort my father, went into my mother’s room, and, looking earnestly in her face, said, ‘She was so handsome, and looked so lovely, that he could not think her dead;’ and, suddenly taking a lancet out of his pocket, he cut the sole of her foot, which bled. Upon this, he immediately caused her to be removed to the bed again, and to be rubbed, and such means used that she came to life, and, opening her eyes, saw two of her kinswomen standing by her (Lady Knollys and Lady Russell), both with great wide sleeves, as the fashion then was; and she said, ‘Did you not promise me fifteen years, and are you come again already?’—which they, not understanding, bade her keep her spirits quiet in that great weakness wherein she was; but, some hours after, she desired my father and Dr. Howlesworth might be left alone with her, to whom she said: ‘I will acquaint you, that, during my trance, I was in great grief, but in a place I could neither distinguish nor describe; but the sense of leaving my girl, who is dearer to me than all my children, remained a trouble upon my spirits. Suddenly I saw two by me, clothed in long white garments, and methought I fell down upon my face in the dust, and they asked me why I was so troubled in so great happiness. I replied, “Oh, let me have the same grant given to Hezekiah, that I may live fifteen years to see my daughter a woman!”—to which they answered, “It is done!”—and then at that instant I awoke out of my trance!’ And Dr. Howlesworth did affirm that the day she died made just fifteen years from that time.”
I have met with a somewhat similar case to this, which occurred to the mother of a very respectable person now living in Edinburgh. She having been ill, was supposed to be dead, and preparations were making for her funeral, when one of her fingers was seen to move, and restoratives being applied, she revived. As soon as she could speak, she said she had been at the gates of heaven, where she saw some going in, but that they told her she was not ready. Among those who had passed her, and been admitted, she said she had seen Mr. So-and-so, the baker, and the remarkable thing was, that during the time she had been in the trance, this man had died.
On the 10th of January, 1717, Mr. John Gardner, a minister, at Elgin, fell into a trance, and, being to all appearance dead, he was put into a coffin, and on the second day was carried to the grave. But, fortunately, a noise being heard, the coffin was opened, and he was found alive and taken home again, where, according to the record, “he related many strange and amazing things which he had seen in the other world.”
Not to mention somnambules, there are numerous other cases recorded of persons who have said, on awaking from a trance, that they had been in the other world; though frequently the freed spirit—supposing that to be the interpretation of the mystery—seems busied with the affairs of the earth, and brings tidings from distant places, as in the case of the American above mentioned. Perhaps, in these latter cases, the disunion is less complete. Dr. Werner relates of his somnambule, that it was after those attacks of catalepsy, in which her body had lain stiff and cold, that she used to say she had been wandering away through other spheres. Where the catalepsy is spontaneous and involuntary, and resembles death so nearly as not to be distinguished from it, we may naturally conclude, if we admit this hypothesis at all, that the seeing of the spirit would be clear in proportion to its disentanglement from the flesh.
I have spoken above of dream compelling or suggesting, and I have heard of persons who have a power of directing their own dreams to any particular subject.
This faculty may be in some degree analogous to that of the American, and a few somnambulic persons, who appear to carry the recollections of one state into the other. The effects produced by the witch-potions seem to have been somewhat similar, inasmuch as they dreamed what they wished or expected to dream. Jung Stilling mentions that a woman gave in evidence, on a witch-trial, that having visited the so-called witch, she had found her concocting a potion over the fire, of which she had advised her (the visiter) to drink, assuring her that she would then accompany her to the Sâbbath. The woman said, lest she should give offence, she had put the vessel to her lips, but had not drunk of it. The witch, however, swallowed the whole, and immediately afterward sunk down upon the hearth in a profound sleep, where she had left her. When she went to see her on the following day, she declared she had been to the Brocken.
Paolo Minucci relates that a woman accused of sorcery, being brought before a certain magistrate at Florence, she not only confessed her guilt, but she declared that, provided they would let her return home and anoint herself, she would attend the Sâbbath that very night. The magistrate, a man more enlightened than the generality of his contemporaries, consented. The woman went home, used her unguent, and fell immediately into a profound sleep; whereupon they tied her to the bed, and tested the reality of the sleep by burns, blows, and pricking her with sharp instruments. When she awoke on the following day, she related that she had attended the Sâbbath.
I could quote several similar facts; and Gassendi actually endeavored to undeceive some peasants who believed themselves witches, by composing an ointment that produced the same effects as their own magical applications.
In the year 1545, André Laguna, physician to Pope Julius III., anointed a patient of his, who was suffering from frenzy and sleeplessness, with an unguent found in the house of a sorcerer, who had been arrested. The patient slept for thirty-six hours consecutively, and when, with much difficulty, she was awakened, she complained that they had torn her from the most ravishing delights—delights which seem to have rivalled the heaven of the Mohammedan. According to Llorente, the women who were dedicated to the service of the mother of the gods, heard continually the sounds of flutes and tambourines, beheld the joyous dances of the fauns and satyrs, and tasted of intoxicating pleasures, doubtless from a similar cause.
It is difficult to imagine that all the unfortunate wretches who suffered death at the stake in the middle ages, for having attended the unholy assemblies they described, had no faith in their own stories; yet, in spite of the unwearied vigilance of public authorities and private malignity, no such assemblage was ever detected. How, then, are we to account for the pertinacity of their confessions, but by supposing them the victims of some extraordinary delusion? In a paper addressed to the Inquisition, by Llorente, he does not scruple to assert that the crimes imputed to and confessed by witches have most frequently no existence but in their dreams, and that their dreams are produced by the drugs with which they anointed themselves.
The recipes for these compositions, which had descended traditionally from age to age, have been lost since witchcraft went out of fashion, and modern science has no time to investigate secrets which appear to be more curious than profitable; but in the profound sleep produced by these applications, it is not easy to say what phenomena may have occurred to justify, or, at least, account for, their self-accusations.
| [1] | This very curious work I have translated from the German. Published by Moore, London.—C. C. Also republished in this country.—Am. Ed. |
| [2] | Since the above was penned, I find from the account of Dr. Cheyne, who attended him, that Colonel Townshend’s own way of describing the phenomenon to which he was subject, was, that he “could die, or expire, when he pleased; and yet, by an effort or somehow, he could come to life again.” He performed the experiment in the presence of three medical men, one of whom kept his hand on his heart, another held his wrist, and the third placed a looking-glass before his lips; and they found that all traces of respiration and pulsation gradually ceased, insomuch that, after consulting about his condition for some time, they were leaving the room, persuaded that he was really dead, when signs of life appeared and he slowly revived. He did not die while repeating this experiment, as has been sometimes stated. This reviving “by an effort or somehow,” seems to be better explained by the hypothesis I have suggested, than by any other—namely, that, as in the case of Mr. Holloway (mentioned on page 120), his spirit, or soul, was released from his body, but a sufficient rapport was maintained to reunite them. |