THE POWER OF WILL.
The power, be it what it may, whether of dressing up an ethereal visible form, or of acting on the constructive imagination of the seer, which would enable a spirit to appear “in his habit as he lived,” would also enable him to present any other object to the eye of the seer, or himself in any shape, or fulfilling any function he willed; and we thus find in various instances, especially those recorded in the Seeress of Prevorst, that this is the case. We not only see changes of dress, but we see books, pens, writing materials, &c., in their hands; and we find a great variety of sounds imitated—which sounds are frequently heard, not only by those who have the faculty of “discerning of spirits,” as St. Paul says, but also by every other person on the spot, for the hearing these sounds does not seem to depend on any particular faculty on the part of the auditor, except it be in the case of speech. The hearing the speech of a spirit, on the contrary, appears in most instances to be dependent on the same conditions as the seeing it, which may possibly arise from there being, in fact, no audible voice at all, but the same sort of spiritual communication which exists between a magnetizer and his patient, wherein the sense is conveyed without words.
This imitating of sounds I shall give several instances of in a future chapter. It is one way in which a death is frequently indicated. I could quote a number of examples of this description, but shall confine myself to two or three.
Mrs. D——, being one night in her kitchen, preparing to go to bed, after the house was shut up and the rest of the family retired, was startled by hearing a foot coming along the passage, which she recognised distinctly to be that of her father, who she was quite certain was not in the house. It advanced to the kitchen-door, and she waited with alarm to see if the door was to open; but it did not, and she heard nothing more. On the following day, she found that her father had died at that time; and it was from her niece I heard the circumstance.
A Mr. J—— S——, belonging to a highly respectable family, with whom I am acquainted, having been for some time in declining health, was sent abroad for change of air. During his absence, one of his sisters, having been lately confined, an old servant of the family was sitting half asleep in an arm-chair, in a room adjoining that in which the lady slept, when she was startled by hearing the foot of Mr. J—— S—— ascending the stairs. It was easily recognisable, for, owing to his constant confinement to the house, in consequence of his infirm health, his shoes were always so dry that their creaking was heard from one end of the house to the other. So far surprised out of her recollection as to forget he was not in the country, the good woman started up, and, rushing out with her candle in her hand, to light him, she followed the steps up to Mr. J—— S——’s own bed-chamber, never discovering that he was not preceding her till she reached the door. She then returned, quite amazed, and having mentioned the occurrence to her mistress, they noted the date; and it was afterward ascertained that the young man had died at Lisbon on that night.
Mrs. F—— tells me that, being one morning, at eleven o’clock, engaged in her bed-room, she suddenly heard a strange, indescribable, sweet, but unearthly sound, which apparently proceeded from a large open box which stood near her. She was seized with an awe and a horror which there seemed nothing to justify, and fled up stairs to mention the circumstance, which she could not banish from her mind. At that precise day and hour, eleven o’clock, her brother was drowned. The news reached her two days afterward.
Instances of this kind are so well known that it is unnecessary to multiply them further. With respect to the mode of producing these sounds, however, I should be glad to say something more definite if I could; but, from the circumstance of their being heard not only by one person, who might be supposed to be en rapport, or whose constructive imagination might be acted upon, but by any one who happens to be within hearing, we are led to conclude that the sounds are really reverberating through the atmosphere. In the strange cases recorded in “The Seeress of Prevorst,” although the apparitions were visible only to certain persons, the sounds they made were audible to all; and the seeress says they are produced by means of the nerve-spirit, which I conclude is the spiritual body of St. Paul and the atmosphere, as we produce sound by means of our material body and the atmosphere.
In this plastic power of the spirit to present to the eye of the seer whatever object it wills, we find the explanation of such stories as the famous one of Ficinus and Mercatus, related by Baronius in his annals. These two illustrious friends, Michael Mercatus and Marcellinus Ficinus, after a long discourse on the nature of the soul, had agreed that, if possible, whichever died first should return to visit the other. Some time afterward, while Mercatus was engaged in study at an early hour in the morning, he suddenly heard the noise of a horse galloping in the street, which presently stopped at his door, and the voice of his friend Ficinus exclaimed: “Oh, Michael! oh, Michael! vera sunt illa!—those things are true!” Whereupon Mercatus hastily opened his window and espied his friend Ficinus on a white steed. He called after him, but he galloped away out of his sight. On sending to Florence to inquire for Ficinus, he learned that he had died about that hour he called to him. From this period to that of his death, Mercatus abandoned all profane studies, and addicted himself wholly to divinity. Baronius lived in the sixteenth century; and even Dr. Ferrier and the spectral illusionists admit that the authenticity of this story can not be disputed, although they still claim it for their own.
Not very many years ago, Mr. C——, a staid citizen of Edinburgh—whose son told me the story—was one day riding gently up Corstorphine hill, in the neighborhood of the city, when he observed an intimate friend of his own, on horseback also, immediately behind him; so he slackened his pace to give him an opportunity of joining company. Finding he did not come up so quickly as he should, he looked round again, and was astonished at no longer seeing him, since there was no side road into which he could have disappeared. He returned home, perplexed at the oddness of the circumstance, when the first thing he learned was that during his absence this friend had been killed, by his horse falling, in Candlemaker’s row.
I have heard of another circumstance, which occurred some years ago in Yorkshire, where, I think, a farmer’s wife was seen to ride into a farm-yard on horseback, but could not be afterward found, or the thing accounted for, till it was ascertained that she had died at that period.
There are very extraordinary stories extant in all countries, of persons being annoyed by appearances in the shape of different animals, which one would certainly be much disposed to give over altogether to the illusionists; though, at the same time, it is very difficult to reduce some of the circumstances under that theory—especially one mentioned page 307 of my “Translation of the Seeress of Prevorst.” If they are not illusions, they are phenomena, to be attributed either to this plastic power, or to that magico-magnetic influence in which the belief in lycanthropy and other strange transformations have originated. The multitudes of unaccountable stories of this description recorded in the witch-trials, have long furnished a subject of perplexity to everybody who was sufficiently just to human nature to conclude, that there must have been some strange mystery at the bottom of an infatuation that prevailed so universally, and in which so many sensible, honest, and well-meaning persons were involved. Till of late years, when some of the arcana of animal or vital magnetism have been disclosed to us, it was impossible for us to conceive by what means such strange conceptions could prevail; but since we now know, and many of us have witnessed, that all the senses of a patient are frequently in such subjection to his magnetiser, that they may be made to convey any impressions to the brain that magnetiser wills, we can without much difficulty conceive how this belief in the power of transformation took its rise; and we also know how a magician could render himself visible or invisible at pleasure. I have seen the sight or hearing of a patient taken away, and restored by Mr. Spencer Hall in a manner that could leave no doubt on the mind of the beholder—the evident paralysis of the eye of the patient testifying to the fact. Monsieur Eusèbe Salverte, the most determined of rationalistic skeptics, admits that we have numerous testimonies to the existence of an art, which he confesses himself at some loss to explain, although the opposite quarters from which the accounts of it reach us, render it difficult to imagine that the historians have copied each other. The various transformations of the gods into eagles, bulls, &c., have been set down as mere mythological fables; but they appear to have been founded on an art, known in all quarters of the world, which enabled the magician to take on a form that was not his own, so as to deceive his nearest and dearest friends. In the history of Gengis Khan, there is mention of a city which he conquered—“in which dwelt,” says Suidas, “certain men, who possessed the secret of surrounding themselves with deceptive appearances, insomuch that they were able to represent themselves to the eyes of people quite different to what they really were.” Saxo Grammaticus, in speaking of the traditions connected with the religion of Odin, says that “the magi were very expert in the art of deceiving the eyes, being able to assume, and even to enable others to assume, the forms of various objects, and to conceal their real aspects under the most attractive appearances.”
John of Salisbury, who seems to have drawn his information from sources now lost, says that Mercury, the most expert of magicians, had the art of fascinating the eyes of men to such a degree as to render people invisible, or make them appear in forms quite different to what they really bore. We also learn from an eye-witness that Simon, the magician, possessed the secret of making another person resemble him so perfectly that every eye was deceived. Pomponius Mela affirms that the druidesses of the island of Sena could transform themselves into any animal they chose, and Proteus has become a proverb by his numerous metamorphoses.
Then, to turn to another age and another hemisphere, we find Joseph Acosta, who resided a long time in Peru, assuring us that there existed at that period magicians who had the power of assuming any form they chose. He relates that the predecessor of Montezuma, having sent to arrest a certain chief, the latter successively transformed himself into an eagle, a tiger, and an immense serpent; and so eluded the envoys, till, having consented to obey the king’s mandate, he was carried to court and instantly executed.
The same perplexing exploits are confidently attributed to the magicians of the West Indies; and there were two men eminent among the natives, the one called Gomez and the other Gonzalez, who possessed this art in an eminent degree; but both fell victims to the practice of it, being shot during the period of their apparent transformations.
It is also recorded that Nanuk, the founder of the Sikhs—who are not properly a nation, but a religious sect—was violently opposed by the Hindoo zealots; and at one period of his career, when he visited Vatala, the Yogiswaras—who were recluses, that, by means of corporeal mortifications, were supposed to have acquired command over the powers of nature—were so enraged against him, that they strove to terrify him by their enchantments, assuming the shapes of tigers and serpents. But they could not succeed, for Nanuk appears to have been a real philosopher, who taught a pure theism, and inculcated universal peace and toleration. His tenets, like the tenets of the founders of all religions, have been since corrupted by his followers. We can scarcely avoid concluding that the power by which these feats were performed is of the same nature as that by which a magnetiser persuades his patient that the water he drinks is beer, or the beer wine; and the analogy between it and that by which I have supposed a spirit to present himself, with such accompaniments as he desires, to the eye of a spectator, is evident. In those instances where female figures are seen with children in their arm, the appearance of the child we must suppose to be produced in this manner.
Spirits of darkness, however, can not, as I have before observed, appear as spirits of light; the moral nature can not be disguised. On one occasion, when Frederica Hauffe asked a spirit if he could appear in what form he pleased, he answered “No”—that if he had lived as a brute, he should appear as a brute: “as our dispositions are, so we appear to you.”
This plastic power is exhibited in those instances I have related, where the figure appeared dripping with water, indicating the kind of death that had been suffered; and also in such cases as that of Sir Robert H. E——, where the apparition showed a wound in his breast. There are a vast number of similar ones on record in all countries;—but I will here mention one which I received from the lips of a member of the family concerned, wherein one of the trivial actions of life was curiously represented.
Miss L—— lived in the country with her three brothers, to whom she was much attached, as they were to her. These young men, who amused themselves all the morning with their out-door pursuits, were in the habit of coming to her apartment most days before dinner, and conversing with her till they were summoned to the dining-room. One day, when two of them had joined her as usual, and they were chatting cheerfully over the fire, the door opened, and the third came in, crossed the room, entered an adjoining one, took off his boots, and then, instead of sitting down beside them as usual, passed again through the room, went out, leaving the door open, and they saw him ascend the stairs toward his own chamber, whither they concluded he was gone to change his dress. These proceedings had been observed by the whole party: they saw him enter—saw him take off his boots—saw him ascend the stairs,—continuing the conversation, without the slightest suspicion of anything extraordinary. Presently afterward the dinner was announced; and as this young man did not make his appearance, the servant was desired to let him know they were waiting for him. The servant answered that he had not come in yet; but, being told that he would find him in his bed-room, he went up stairs to call him. He was, however, not there nor in the house; nor were his boots to be found where he had been seen to take them off. While they were yet wondering what could have become of him, a neighbor arrived to break the news to the family that their beloved brother had been killed while hunting, and that the only wish he expressed was that he could live to see his sister once more.
I observed in a former chapter, while speaking of wraiths, now very desirable it would be to ascertain whether the phenomenon takes place before or after the dissolution of the bond between soul and body: I have since received the most entire satisfaction on that head, so far as the establishing the fact that it does sometimes occur after the dissolution. Three cases have been presented to me, from the most undoubted authority, in which the wraith was seen at intervals varying from one to three days after the decease of the person whose image it was; very much complicating the difficulty of that theory which considers these phenomena the result of an interaction, wherein the vital principle of one person is able to influence another within its sphere, and thus make the organs of that other the subjects of its will—a magical power, by the way, which far exceeds that which we possess over our own organs. There is here, however, where death has taken place, no living organism to produce the effect, and the phenomenon becomes, therefore, purely subjective—a mere spectral illusion, attended by a coincidence, or else the influence is that of the disembodied spirit; and those who will take the trouble of investigating this subject will find that the number of these coincidences would violate any theory of probabilities, to a degree that precludes the acceptance of that explanation. I do not see, therefore, on what we are to fall back, except it be the willing agency of the released spirit, unless we suppose that the operation of the will of the dying person travelled so slowly, that it did not take effect till a day or two after it was exerted—an hypothesis too extravagant to be admitted.
Dr. Passavent, whose very philosophical work on this occult department of nature is well worth attention, considers the fact of these appearances far too well established to be disputed; and he enters into some curious disquisitions with regard to what the Germans call far-working, or the power of acting on bodies at a distance without any sensible conductor, instancing the case of a gymnotus, which was kept alive for four months in Stockholm, and which, when urged by hunger, could kill fish at a distance without contact, adding that it rarely miscalculated the amount of the shock necessary to its purpose. These and all such effects are attributed by this school of physiologists to the supposed imponderable—the nervous ether I have elsewhere mentioned—which Dr. Passavent conceives, in cases of somnambulism, certain sicknesses, and the approach of death, to be less closely united to its material conductors, the nerves, and therefore capable of being more or less detached, and acting at a distance, especially on those with whom relationship, friendship, or love, establishes a rapport, or polarity; and he observes that intervening substances or distance can no more impede this agency than they do the agency of mineral magnetism. And he considers that we must here seek for the explanation of those curious so-called coincidences of pictures falling, and clocks and watches stopping, at the moment of a death, which we frequently find recorded.
With respect to the wraiths, he observes that the more the ether is freed, as by trance or the immediate approach of death, the more easily the soul sets itself in rapport with distant persons; and that thus it either acts magically, so that the seer perceives the real actual body of the person that is acting upon him, or else that he sees the ethereal body, which presents the perfect form of the fleshly one, and which, while the organic life proceeds, can be momentarily detached and appear elsewhere; and this ethereal body he holds to be the fundamental form, of which the external body is only the copy, or husk.
I confess, I much prefer this theory of Dr. Passavent’s, which seems to me to go very much to the root of the matter. We have here the “spiritual body” of St. Paul, and the “nerve-spirit” of the somnambulists, and their magical effects are scarcely more extraordinary, if properly considered, than their agency on our own material bodies. It is this ethereal body which obeys the intelligent spirit within, and which is the intermediate agent between the spirit and the fleshly body. We here find the explanation of wraiths, while persons are in trance, or deep sleep, or comatose, this ethereal body can be detached and appear elsewhere; and I think there can be no great difficulty for those who can follow us so far, to go a little further, and admit that this ethereal body must be indestructible, and survive the death of the material one; and that it may, therefore, not only become visible to us under given circumstances, but that it may, also, produce effects bearing some similarity to those it was formerly capable of, since, in acting on our bodies during life, it is already acting on a material substance in a manner so incomprehensible to us, that we might well apply the word magical when speaking of it, were it not that custom has familiarized us to the marvel.
It is to be observed, that this idea of a spiritual body is one that pervaded all Christendom in the earlier and purer ages of Christianity, before priestcraft—and by priestcraft I mean the priestcraft of all denominations—had overshadowed and obscured, by its various sectarian heresies, the pure teaching of Jesus Christ.
Dr. Ennemoser mentions a curious instance of this actio in distans, or far-working. It appears that Van Helmont having asserted that it was possible for a man to extinguish the life of an animal by the eye alone (oculis intentis), Rousseau, the naturalist, repeated the experiment, when in the East, and in this manner killed several toads; but on a subsequent occasion, while trying the same experiment at Lyons, the animal, on finding it could not escape, fixed its eyes immovably on him, so that he fell into a fainting fit, and was thought to be dead. He was restored by means of theriacum and viper powder—a truly homeopathic remedy! However, we here probably see the origin of the universal popular persuasion, that there is some mysterious property in the eye of a toad; and also of the so called, superstition of the evil eye.
A very remarkable circumstance occurred some years ago, at Kirkaldy, when a person, for whose truth and respectability I can vouch, was living in the family of a Colonel M——, at that place. The house they inhabited was at one extremity of the town, and stood in a sort of paddock. One evening when Colonel M—— had dined out, and there was nobody at home but Mrs. M——, her son (a boy about twelve years old), and Ann the maid (my informant), Mrs. M—— called the latter, and directed her attention to a soldier, who was walking backward and forward in the drying ground, behind the house, where some linen was hanging on the lines. She said she wondered what he could be doing there, and bade Ann fetch in the linen, lest he should purloin any of it. The girl, fearing he might be some ill-disposed person, felt afraid; Mrs. M——, however, promising to watch from the window, that nothing happened to her, she went; but still apprehensive of the man’s intentions, she turned her back toward him, and hastily pulling down the linen, she carried it into the house; he continuing his walk the while, as before, taking no notice of her whatever. Ere long the colonel returned, and Mrs. M—— lost no time in taking him to the window to look at the man, saying she could not conceive what he could mean by walking backward and forward there all that time; whereupon Ann added, jestingly, “I think it’s a ghost, for my part!” Colonel M—— said “he would soon see that,” and calling a large dog that was lying in the room, and accompanied by the little boy, who begged to be permitted to go also, he stepped out and approached the stranger; when, to his surprise, the dog, which was an animal of high courage, instantly flew back, and sprung through the glass-door, which the colonel had closed behind him, shivering the panes all around.
The colonel, meantime, advanced and challenged the man, repeatedly, without obtaining any answer or notice whatever, till, at length, getting irritated, he raised a weapon with which he had armed himself, telling him he “must speak or take the consequences,” when, just as he was preparing to strike, lo! there was nobody there! The soldier had disappeared, and the child sunk senseless to the ground. Colonel M—— lifted the boy in his arms, and as he brought him into the house, he said to the girl, “You are right, Ann; it was a ghost!” He was exceedingly impressed with this circumstance, and much regretted his own behavior, and also the having taken the child with him, which he thought had probably prevented some communication that was intended. In order to repair, if possible, these errors, he went out every night, and walked on that spot for some time, in hopes the apparition would return. At length he said that he had seen and conversed with it; but the purport of the conversation he would never communicate to any human being, not even to his wife. The effect of this occurrence on his own character was perceptible to everybody that knew him. He became grave and thoughtful, and appeared like one who had passed through some strange experience. The above-named Ann H——, from whom I have the account, is now a middle-aged woman. When the circumstance occurred, she was about twenty years of age. She belongs to a highly-respectable family, and is, and always has been, a person of unimpeachable character and veracity.
In this instance, as in several others I meet with, the animal had a consciousness of the nature of the appearance, while the persons around him had no suspicion of anything unusual. In the following singular case we must conclude that attachment counteracted this instinctive apprehension. A farmer in Argyleshire lost his wife, and a few weeks after her decease, as he and his son were crossing a moor, they saw her sitting on a stone, with their house-dog lying at her feet, exactly as he used to do when she was alive. As they approached the spot the woman vanished, and supposing the dog must be equally visionary, they expected to see him vanish, also; when, to their surprise, he rose and joined them, and they found it was actually the very animal of flesh and blood. As the place was at least three miles from any house, they could not conceive what could have taken him there. It was, probably, the influence of her will.
The power of will is a phenomenon that has been observed in all ages of the world, though of late years much less than at an earlier period; and, as it was then more frequently exerted for evil than good, it was looked upon as a branch of the art of black magic, while the philosophy of it being unknown, the devil was supposed to be the real agent, and the witch, or wizard, only his instrument. The profound belief in the existence of this art is testified by the twelve tables of Rome, as well as by the books of Moses, and those of Plato, &c. It is extremely absurd to suppose that all these statutes were enacted to suppress a crime which never existed: and, with regard to these witches and wizards, we must remember, as Dr. Ennemoser justly remarks, that the force of will has no relation to the strength or weakness of the body: witness the extraordinary feats occasionally performed by feeble persons under excitement, &c.; and, although these witches and wizards were frequently weak, decrepit people, they either believed in their own arts, or else that they had a friend or coadjutor in the devil, who was able and willing to aid them. They, therefore, did not doubt their own power, and they had the one great requisite, faith. To will and to believe, was the explanation given by the Marquis de Puységur of the cures he performed; and this unconsciously becomes the recipe of all such men as Greatrix, the Shepherd of Dresden, and many other wonder-workers, and hence we see why it is usually the humble, the simple and the child-like, the solitary, the recluse, nay, the ignorant, who exhibit traces of these occult faculties; for he who can not believe can not will, and the skepticism of the intellect disables the magician; and hence we say, also, wherefore, in certain parts of the world and in certain periods of its history, these powers and practices have prevailed. They were believed in because they existed; and they existed because they were believed in. There was a continued interaction of cause and effect—of faith and works. People who look superficially at these things, delight in saying that the more the witches were persecuted the more they abounded; and that when the persecution ceased we heard no more of them. Naturally, the more they were persecuted the more they believed in witchcraft and in themselves; when persecution ceased, and men in authority declared that there was no such thing as witchcraft or witches, they lost their faith, and with it that little sovereignty over nature that that faith had conquered.
Here we also see an explanation of the power attributed to blessings and curses. The Word of God is creative, and man is the child of God, made in his image; who never outgrows his childhood, and is often most a child when he thinks himself the wisest, for “the wisdom of this world,” we can not too often repeat, “is foolishness before God”—and being a child, his faculties are feeble in proportion; but though limited in amount, they are divine in kind, and are latent in all of us; still shooting up here and there, to amaze and perplex the wise, and make merry the foolish, who have nearly all alike forgotten their origin, and disowned their birthright.