Experimental Investigation of the Spirit Manifestations / Demonstrating the existence of spirits and their communion with mortals. Doctrine of the spirit world respecting heaven, hell, morality, and God. Also, the influence of Scripture on the morals of Christians.

by Robert Hare

OF MEDIUMSHIP.

806. The facts which I have noticed in relation to mediumship, are certainly among the most inexplicable in nature.

807. There are two modes in which spiritual manifestations are made through the influence or sub-agency of media. In the one mode, they employ the tongue to speak, the fingers to write, or hands to actuate tables or instruments for communication; in the other, they act upon ponderable matter directly, through a halo or aura appertaining to media; so that although the muscular power may be incapacitated for aiding them, they will cause a body to move, or produce raps intelligibly so as to select letters conveying their ideas, uninfluenced by those of the medium.

808. Even where they act through the muscular frame of the media, their vision may be intercepted by a screen, so that they cannot influence the selection of the letters requisite to a communication. ([Plate I].)

809. Rappings or tappings are made at the distance of many feet from the medium, and ponderable bodies, such as bells, are moved or made to undergo the motion requisite to being rang.

810. It will be perceived that my spirit father, in reply to the queries put in relation to this mystery, asks, “How do you move your limbs—carry the body wheresoever it goeth? how does God cause the movements of astronomical orbs?” ([457].)

811. Evidently some instrument must intervene between the divine will and the bodies actuated thereby, and in humble imitation between the human will and the limbs. Upon the viscera our will has no influence. The heart moves without the exercise of volition.

812. As there is an ethereal medium by means of which light moves through space from the remotest visible fixed star to the eye, at the rate of two hundred thousand miles per second; as through an affection of the same ether frictional electricity moves, according to Wheatstone’s estimate, with a velocity exceeding that of light,—so may we not infer that the instrument of Divine will acts with still greater velocity, and that in making man in this respect after his own image, so far as necessary to an available existence, gives him one degree of power over the same element while in the mortal state, and another higher degree of power in the spiritual state. But if there be an element through which a spirit within his mortal frame is capable of actuating that frame, may not this element of actuation be susceptible of becoming an instrument to the will of another spirit in the immortal state?

813. The aura of a medium which thus enables an immortal spirit to do within its scope things which it cannot do otherwise, appears to vary with the human being resorted to; so that only a few are so endowed with this aura as to be competent as media. Moreover, in those who are so constituted as to be competent instruments of spiritual actuation, this competency is various. There is a gradation of competency, by which the nature of the instrumentality varies from that which empowers violent loud knocking and the moving of ponderable bodies without actual contact, to the grade which confers power to make intellectual communications of the higher order without that of audible knocking. Further, the power to employ these grades of mediumship varies as the sphere of the spirit varies.

814. It has been stated that mortals have each a halo perceptible to spirits, by which they are enabled to determine the sphere to which any individual will go on passing death’s portal. Spirits cannot approach effectively a medium of a sphere much above, or below that to which they belong.

815. As media, in proportion as they are more capable of serving for the higher intellectual communication, are less capable of serving for mechanical demonstration, and as they are more capable of the latter are less competent for the former, spirits likewise have a higher or lower capacity to employ media. It has been mentioned that having made a test apparatus, my spirit sister alleged that it could not be actuated by her without assistance of spirits from a lower sphere. I inquired whether she could not meet me again, accompanied by the requisite aid. The reply was in the affirmative, and accordingly she met me at an appointed hour, and my apparatus was actuated effectually under test conditions. ([Plate 4], dd, ii, kk.)

816. After I had read over an exposition of my information respecting the spirit world to the spirit of the illustrious Washington, I requested him to give me a confirmation while the medium should be under test conditions. ([Plate 4], kk.) I placed the hand of the medium upon the board lever of the instrument, of which a representation has been given, ([Plate I], [Plate 4],) so as to be on the outer side of the fulcrum, and requested him to attest the reliability of the medium during the previous intercommunion. In reply it was alleged not to be within his power to give me that test; I urged that this test had been given in his presence. “We had an employee, then,” was his rejoinder. Fortunately I had contrived a test instrument requiring less of the mechanical power, so that by means of it he was enabled to perfect the evidence by bringing the index to the affirmative, under conditions which put it out of the power of the medium to produce that result. (See [Plate 4] and description.)

817. These facts make the subject of mediumship a most complicated mystery; but the creation teems with mystery, so that inscrutability cannot be a ground for disbelief of any thing. The only cases wherein there is absolute incredibility, are those in which the definition of the premises contradicts those of the inferences or conclusions.

818. It is evident from the creative power which the spirits aver themselves to possess, that they exercise faculties which they do not understand. Their explanation of the mysteries of mediumship only substitutes one mystery for another.

819. If we undertake to generalize, it must come pretty near what I have said above, that spirits are endowed, as my spirit father alleges, with a “magic will,” capable of producing, as they allege, wonderful results within their own world, ([452];) nevertheless that this will does not act by itself directly on mundane bodies. An intermedium is found in the halo or aura within or without certain human organizations. The halos thus existing are not all similarly endowed; some having one, some another capability. Some are better for one object, some for another object. Again, the will-power varies as the sphere of the spirits is higher or lower, so that the medium suited for one is not suited for another.

820. Thus the means by which they are capable of communicating is various, and moreover precarious, according to the health and equanimity of the mortal being under whose halo they may strive to act.

821. Evidently, the ponderable elements recognised by mundane chemists cannot contribute to any of the bodies of the spirit world, since their gravity must disqualify them for use in a world where every thing is, in comparison with them, weightless. Accordingly, one of the queries put by me to the convocation of spirits ([574]) was, whether any of our elements, being ponderable, could act as such in the imponderable spiritual creation. The reply was, Not without undergoing a transformation. This would be equivalent to annihilating them first, and recreating them afterward, when the process of creating alone would be sufficient. But manifestly it is of no importance, whether their adaptation to the spirit world be the result of creation or of transformation.

822. Concerned in the processes of mediumship, it is manifest that there is none of that kind of electricity or magnetism of which the laws and phenomena have been the subject of Faraday’s researches, and which are treated of in books, under the heads of frictional or mechanical electricity, galvanism, or electro-magnetism.

823. Frictional electricity, such as produced usually by the friction of glass in an electrical machine, or of aqueous globules generated by steam escaping from a boiler, is always to be detected by electrometers, or the spark given to a conducting body when in communication with the earth; the human knuckle, for instance. When not sufficiently accumulated to produce these evidences of its presence, it must be in a very feeble state of excitement. But even in the highest accumulation by human means, as in the discharge of a powerfully charged Leyden battery, it only acts for a time inconceivably brief, and does not move ponderable masses as they are moved in the instance of spiritual manifestation. It is only in transitu, that frictional electricity displays much power, and then its path is extremely narrow, and the duration of its influence inconceivably minute. According to Wheatstone’s experiments and calculations, it would go round the earth in the tenth part of a second.

824. How infinitely small, then, the period required to go from one side of a room to another! Besides, there are neither means of generating such electricity, nor of securing that insulation which must be an indispensable precursor of accumulation.

825. Galvanic or voltaic electricity does not act at a distance so as to produce any recognised effects, except in the case of magnetic metals, or in the state of transition produced by an electric discharge. In these phenomena the potent effects are attainable only by means of perfect insulated conductors, as we see in the telegraphic apparatus. No reaction with imperfect conducting bodies competent to toss them to and fro, or up and down, can be accomplished. The decomposing influence, called electrolytic, is only exhibited at insensible distances, within a filament of the matter affected.

826. It has appeared to me a great error on the part of spirits, as well as mortals, that they should make efforts to explain the phenomena of the spirit world by the ponderable or imponderable agents of the temporal world. The fact that the rays of our sun do not affect the spirit world, and that there is for that region an appropriate luminary whose rays we do not perceive, ([415]) must demonstrate that the imponderable element to which they owe their peculiar light differs from the ethereal fluid which, according to the undulatory theory, is the means of producing light in the terrestrial creation.

827. In one of the replies made by the convocation, ([571],) the idea was sanctioned of the effulgence of the spirit being due to an appropriate ethereal fluid, analogous to that above alluded to. But it has, I think, been shown by me, that as light is due to the undulations of our ether, so electricity is due to waves of polarization. But if undulations produce light in the ether of the spiritual universe as well as in ours, why may not polarization produce in the ether of the spirit world an electricity analagous to ours? Thus, although in spiritual manifestations our electricity takes no part, their electricity may be the means by which their will is transmitted effectually in the phenomena which it controls.

828. The words magnetism and magnetic are used in this world in two different senses. In one, it signifies the magnetism of magnets or electromagnets; in the other, the animal magnetism of which the existence was suggested by Mesmer, and which is commonly called Mesmerism.

829. This mesmerical magnetism seems to be dependent rather on properties which we have as immortals, encased in a corporeal clothing, than as mortals owing our mental faculties to that frame. If it be the spiritual portion of our organization which is operative in clairvoyancy, spiritual electricity may be the intermedium both of that faculty and of mesmeric influence.

830. All spirits are clairvoyant more or less, and where this faculty is exercised, it seems to be due to an unusual ascendancy of the spiritual powers over the corporeal, so that clairvoyants possess some of the faculties which every spirit, after shuffling off the mortal coil, must possess to a greater or less extent.

831. In striving to make a test apparatus by which the communication should be uninfluenced by the muscular power of the medium, through which alone her will could modify the ideas communicated, an interesting fact was ascertained. The nullifying of the power of muscular control, which it is the object of this contrivance to accomplish, is obtained unexceptionally by means of two balls and a plate, as already illustrated, ([Plate 2],) or by placing the hands of the medium exterior to the fulcrum of the lever-board, as described in the instance of testing the communication received from the convocation. But these methods requiring that the conditions should be favourable, both, as respects the spirit communicating and the medium, are liable to fail. It struck me that the distance between the hands and the surface of the table or tray to be moved, by lessening the influence of the medium on the table or tray, lessened the power of actuation. My efforts were therefore directed to contrive to have the hand of the medium near the surface to be moved, without the possibility of contact.

832. With this view I placed a board for receiving the hands of the medium upon delicate rollers, so that no horizontal movement would affect the base board supporting the rollers and actuating the index. To give greater efficacy to the aura, a plate of glass was supported in a wooden frame or sash by means of four screw rods fixed upright on the base board, each furnished with two screw nuts. The screw rods passed through four suitable holes, so as to have one nut beneath, the other above, the sash. Thus situated, by adjusting the nuts, the sash could be regulated to any horizontal level, so as to be near the upper surfaces of the hands without any contact therewith.

833. On trying this arrangement, it was found as difficult for a spirit to actuate it as if the glazed sash had not been employed.

834. Under these circumstances, I had the glass plate or pane slit lengthwise into two equal strips. These being restored to the position previously occupied in the sash, I interposed between their edges a piece of sheet-tin, with teeth cut in one of its edges, ([Plate 4], kk,) so as to make it look like a long narrow saw, such as are used by sawyers in frames. With the aid of a leaden joint, (such as is used by glaziers to join glass panes,) to which the saw was soldered, the teeth of this projected about the eighth of an inch below the glass, so as to be near the upper surface of any hand, resting on the sliding board.

835. It was with no small degree of satisfaction that I found the apparatus now sufficiently susceptible of actuation by my spirit friends.

836. From this result it would seem that the saw-shaped metallic conductor, operated precisely as it would have acted had it been necessary to impart to the pane those means of electric discharge of which, as at first used, it was deficient.

837. As soon as I had introduced the serrated conductor, my spirit father corroborated the impression that it promoted the influence of the medium.

838. This was the first instance in which I have discovered any analogy between the laws governing the communication of the medium of the spirit will-power, and those obeyed by electrical phenomena.

839. An account is given in my narrative of an experiment in which a board, suspended at one end from a spring-balance, was made to descend with a force of three pounds, through the instrumentality of a medium who had no connection with the board, excepting water which was interposed. Hence, as the hook screwed into the board, by which it was secured to the hook of the balance, was six times as far from the fulcrum as the hands of the medium, the force exerted by the officiating spirit was equal to 3 × 6 = 18 pounds. (See [Plate 3], and description.) Nevertheless, no upward reaction was perceptible to me, nor was any experienced by the medium, Henry Gordon, as he declared.

840. In the case of the boy ([Plate 3],) a downward action of seven pounds was observed, which, multiplied by the difference of distance, amounted to 7 × 6 = 42 pounds, and yet the boy was not perceptibly impelled in the opposite direction. Nor, when through the same juvenile mediumship, the whole of the apparatus was thrown upon the floor, did the boy appear to be impelled in the opposite direction. Nor was there any reaction when the apparatus was thrown down. Now, agreeably to the laws of nature, as established by human experience, in all cases of motion or momentum, there must be an equal force exercised in the opposite direction by the vis inertiæ of some other matter endowed with that attribute. Hence Archimedes said, “Give me but where to stand, and I will move the world.” A point of support, a place of resistance, however, was held to be indispensable.

841. The only explanation of which I can conceive is, that spirits, by volition, can deprive bodies of vis inertiæ, and move bodies, as they do themselves, by their will. But the necessity of the presence of a medium to the display of this power, granting its existence, is a mystery.

842. That the spirit should, by its “magic” will-power, take possession of the frame of a human being, so as to make use of its brain and nervous system, depriving its appropriate owner of control, is a wonderful fact sufficiently difficult to believe, yet, nevertheless, intelligible. The aura which surrounds a medium must be imponderable. No volition of the medium can, through its instrumentality, move ponderable bodies, nor cause raps or consequent vibrations in the wooden boards. Hence, the presence of a medium imparts power to spirits which the medium does not possess.

843. The aura on the one side, and the spirit on the other, are inert unless associated. Thus the volition of the spirit gives activity to an effluvium, by itself, so devoid of efficacy that it wholly escapes the perception of the possessor or the observation of his mundane companions. It has been already alleged, that the usual reference to mundane electricity must be wholly unsatisfactory to all acquainted with the phenomena and laws associated under that name; since no such movements have ever been produced by such electrical means, nor is it consistent with those mundane electrical laws, nor the facts which electricians have noticed, that such movements should be produced. Those movements which have been produced by electricity have never been effected without surfaces oppositely charged, nor, of course, without the means of charging them. Neither are there associated with the spiritual manifestations means at hand of creating nor of holding charges either much more minute than those which display perceptible force or cause audible sound.

844. Electro-magnetic phenomena require the use of powerful galvanic batteries or magnetic metals. Galvanic series, of the most powerful kind, do not act at the minutest distance without contact.

845. Even lightning could not move a table backward and forward, though it might shatter it into pieces, if duly interposed in a circuit.

846. Electrical sparks produce snapping sounds in the air, not knockings or rappings upon sonorous solids.

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