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. |