It is known that gifts pass between friends or lovers, to cause the receiver to think of the giver, thus they are in a sense amulets. If we believe, as HEINE prettily suggests, that something of the life or the being of the owner or wearer has passed into the talisman, we are not far off from the suggestion that our feelings are allied. All over Italy, or over the world, pebbles of precious stone, flint or amber, rough topaz or agate, are esteemed as lucky; all things of the kind lead to suggestiveness, and may be employed in suggestion.
What was originally known as Fascination, of which the German, FROMANN, wrote a very large volume which I possess, is simply Hypnotism without the putting to sleep. It is direct Suggestion. Where there is a natural sympathy of like to like, soul answering soul, such suggestion is easily established. Among people of a common, average, worldly type who are habitually sarcastic, jeering, chaffing, and trifling, or those whose idea of genial or agreeable companionship is to "get a rise" out of all who will give and take irritations equally, there can be no sympathy of gentle or refined emotions. Experiments, whose whole nature presupposes earnest thought, cannot be tried with any success by those who live habitually in an atmosphere of small talk and "rubbishy" associations. Fascination should be mutual; to attempt to exert it on anyone who is not naturally in sympathy is a crime, and I believe that all such cases lead to suffering and remorse.
But where we perceive that there is an undoubted mutual liking and good reason for it, fascination, when perfectly understood and sympathetically used, facilitates and increases love and friendship, and may be most worthily and advantageously employed. Unto anyone who could, for example, merely skim over all that I have written, catching an idea here and there, and then expect to master all, I can clearly say that I can give him or her no definite idea of fascination. For Fascination really is effectively what the old philosophers, who had given immense study and research to the subject in ages when susceptibility to suggestiveness went far beyond anything now known, all knew and declared; that is to say, it existed, but that it required a peculiar mind, and very certainly one which is not frivolous, to understand its nature, and much more to master it.
He who has by foresight, or previous consideration of a subject or desire, allied to a vigorous resolution (which is a kind of projection of the mind by will—and then submitting it to sleep), learned how to bring about a wished-for state of mind, has, in a curious manner, made as it were of his hidden self a conquest yet a friend. He has brought to life within himself a Spirit, gifted with greater powers than those possessed by Conscious Intellect. By his astonishing and unsuspected latent power, Man can imagine and then create, even a spirit within the soul. We make at first the sketch, then model it in clay, then cast it in gypsum, and finally sculpture it in marble.
I read lately, in a French novel, a description of a young lady, by herself, in which she assumed to have within her two souls, one good, of which she evidently thought very little, and another brilliantly diabolical, capricious, vividly dramatic and interesting esprit—to which she gave a great deal of attention. He who will begin by merely imagining that he has within him a spirit of beauty and light, which is to subdue and extinguish the other or all that is in him of what is low, commonplace, and mean, may bring this idea to exert a marvelous influence. He can increase the conception, and give it reality, by treating it with forethought and will, by suggestion, until it gives marvellous result. This better self may be regarded as a guardian angel, in any case it is a power by means of which we can learn mysteries. It is also our Conscience, born of the perception of Ideals.
The Ideal or Spirit thus evolved should be morally pure, else the experimenter will find, as did the magicians of old, that all who dealt with any but good spirits, fell into the hands of devils, just as ALLAN KARDEC says is the case with Spiritualists. But to speak as clearly as I can, he who succeeds in winning or creating a higher Self within himself, and fascinating it by sympathy, will find that he has, within moral limits, a strange power of fascinating those who are in sympathy with him.
Whereupon many will say "of course." Like and like together strike. Birds of a feather flock together. Similis similibus. But it often happens in this life, though they meet they do not pair off. Very often indeed they meet, but to part. There must be, even where the affinity exists, consideration and forethought to test the affinity. It requires long practice even for keen eyes to recognize the amethyst or topaz, or many other gems, in their natural state as sea-worn pebbles. Now, it is not a matter of fancy, of romance, or imagination, that there are men and women who really have, deeply hidden in their souls, or more objectively manifested, peculiar or beautiful characteristics, or a spirit. I would not speak here merely of naïveté or tenderness—a natural affinity for poetry, art, or beauty, but the peculiar tone and manner of it, which is sympathetic to ours. For two people may love music, yet be widely removed from all agreement if one be a Wagnerian, and the other of an older school. Suffice it to say that such similarities of mind or mood, of intellect or emotion do exist, and when they are real, and not imaginary, or merely the result of passional attraction, they suggest and may well attract the use of Fascination.
Those who actually develop within themselves such a spirit, regarding it as one, that is a self beyond self, attain to a power which few understand, which is practical, positive, and real, and not at all a superstitious fancy. It may begin in imagining or fancy, but as the veriest dream is material and may be repeated till we see it visibly and can then copy it, so can we create in ourselves a being, a segregation of our noblest thoughts, a superb abstraction of soul which looks from its sunny mountain height down on the dark and noisome valley which forms our worldly common intellect or mind, or the only one known to by far the majority of mankind, albeit they may have therein glimpses of light and truth. But it is to him who makes for himself, by earnest Will and Thought, a separate and better Life or Self that a better life is given.
Those who possess genius or peculiarly cultivated minds of a highly moral caste, gifted with pure integrity, and above vulgarity and worldly commonplace habits, should never form a tie in friendship or love without much forethought. And then if the active agent has disciplined his mind by self-hypnotism until he can control or manage his Will with ease, he will know without further instruction how to fascinate, and that properly and legitimately.
Those who now acquire this power are few and far between, and when they really possess it they make no boast nor parade, but rather keep it carefully to themselves, perfectly content with what it yields for reward. And here I may declare something in which I firmly believe, yet which very few I fear will understand as I mean it. If this fascination and other faculties like it may be called Magical (albeit all is within the limits of science and matter), then there are assuredly in this world magicians whom we meet without dreaming that they are such. Here and there, however rare, there is mortal who has studied deeply—but