But it is a study of the fearful uses which have been made by the evil-disposed, of this partial knowledge of the laws of relation of soul to the body, that is more interesting now than these olden disguises of the same evil in more helpless forms; as now, through the mesmeric agitation, it has really attained to some gleam of causes—has now something of scientific illumination to steady and give direction to its reckless and deadly aim. In the radius of its hurtful circumference, the vicious power of the witch, fortune-teller or conjuror, was as much more circumscribed than that of the semi-scientific charlatan of clairvoyance, as the vision of the mole is less than that of the viper, which, at least, looks out into the sunshine though every cloud may impede its malignant gaze.
The relative degrees in which the Odic or sympathetic fluid may be found exhibited in the different individuals of our race, have been previously remarked in general terms. In the sexes, we most usually find the positive pole in man, who gives out, and the negative in woman, who receives and absorbs from him, the dispenser. Though this be the general rule so far as the sexes are concerned, it is by no means the universal rule for the race—since there are among men but few positive poles, or fixed centres of Odic radiation; and where such are found, they are observed to possess much of what we commonly call “influence” with or upon others. All the parties, therefore, within the circle of this sympathetic radiation, or “magnetic attraction,” as it is popularly termed, must necessarily be, relatively to this positive pole, negative poles, without regard to sex—while each of these comparatively negative poles may in turn be a positive pole, or Odic centre, to those below or of weaker nature than himself.
Those men who have been known to all humanity as prophets, poets, law-givers, discoverers, reformers, &c., are, and have been, what we mean by positive Odic poles; for while they have seemed to stand in immediate and direct communion with the spiritual source of all wisdom, they have at the same time given out the impulse thus granted, to the people by whom they are surrounded, thus acting as the chosen media of divine revelation, and from the cloudy summits of Sinais handing down the tables of the law to all the tribes.
Now there is a mighty radiation of the Odic force from these men, through which the love, wisdom, or rather will in them—or sent through them—is made operative upon the great masses of mankind; and this same radiation, in the greater or less degrees, is found emanating from a thousand different sources at the same time, affecting man for evil as well as for good; for, when we comprehend that this Odic or sympathetic force is the sole medium of communication with the spiritual and invisible world, as well as with the visible and material world, it can then be easily understood how what are called “evil” and “good spirits” should through it affect mankind. This will be fully illustrated when we observe the common conditions of health and disease. Health is good and disease is evil; and these are the two eternally antagonistic chemical forces in the universe. Health is that normal condition of the body which enables it to resist evil and maintain the proper balance of the spiritual and material elements. Disease is that abnormal condition of the body in which the integrity of the spiritual and organic functions has been destroyed through the sympathetic media by evil, and good overcome.
In either case, the balance is destroyed, and the immediate consequence may be, in the one, sudden paroxysms of fearful insanity, or in the other, sudden death, as in common apoplexy.
Thus the popular fallacy, that all things having a source in the spiritual, or rather the invisible, must of necessity be good, is in a very simple way exposed. We see there may be what are called evil, as well as good spirits, which hold communion with us; and the safest and only true general rule with regard to such matters is, that, while the good spirits are those propitious chemical forces which make themselves known to us in love, and joy, and peace, through the unbounded happiness of the normal conditions of health, the evil spirits are those vicious chemical forces, morbid delusions, and malign revelations, which are made known to us through all other diseased conditions as well as that of Clairvoyance. Remember that no such being has yet been known throughout the whole range of Mesmeric experiment as a healthy Clairvoyant, or a “subject” who has attained to the super-eminence of Clairvoyance, who was not what they fancifully term “delicate”—that is, liable to those diseases which are well known to supervene upon nervous weakness, exhaustion, or emasculation. This condition of nervous exhaustion renders them, of course, the very negation of the negative pole of sympathy, and the first person approaching them, who possesses the ordinary Odic conditions of health, is clutched hold of by their famine-struck vitality, in the agonised plea for life! life!
“Give! give!” is still the insatiable cry. They must have the Odic fluid restored, and that, in taking from your “enough,” they exhaust and undermine the holy purposes of your life to make up that deficit in their own—which loathsome vice has brought about—the “hideous selfishness of weakness” rather rejoices. The sympathetic rapporte being once established, they can at least, through this dangerous medium, live in the integrities of your life, and enjoy, both physically and spiritually, a surreptitious vitality, which, while it reflects the prevailing phenomena of your own mind and spiritual being, has, in addition, some approximation even to the physical exaltation of your higher health.
These human vampires or sponges may be, therefore, as well absorbents of the spiritual as animal vitality. Their parasitical roots may strike into the very centres of life, and their hungry suckers remorselessly draw away the virility of manhood, or the spiritual strength.
They seem to be mainly divided into two classes, one of which, born, seemingly, with but a rudimentary soul, attains to its apparent spiritual though merely mental development, by absorption of the spiritual life in others, through the Odic medium. Another class, born with a predominating spirituality based upon a feeble physique, is ravenous of animal strength, and can only live by its sympathetic absorption of the same from others, through the same pervading medium. Of the two, the first is the evil type; for, born in the gross sphere of the passions, with a vigorous organisation, but faintly illuminated at the beginning with that golden light of love which is spiritual life, the fierce half-monkey being is propelled onwards, and even upwards, by the basest of the purely animal instincts, appetites, and lusts. If such beings strive towards the light of the harmonious and the beautiful, it is not because they yearn for either the holy or the good, but because it lends a lurid charm to appetite and glorifies a lust.
The other character, in whom the spiritual predominates, whether from a natal inequality, as is very frequently the case, or from the sheer exhaustion of the physical powers, through emasculating vices, is yet, in itself, good, so far as its morbid conditions leave it an unaccountable being; but, as its revelations and utterings depend entirely upon the Odic characters and will of those from whom its strength may be derived, it can only be regarded, whether used for evil or good, as a medium. This character is the common Clairvoyant, to whom we are indebted for those strangely-mingled gleams of remote truth, with errors the most grave and injurious, which have so tended to confuse the judgment of mankind in regard to the phenomena of Clairvoyance. Such persons can be made as readily the medium of any falsehood which the knavish passions of their “Mesmerisers” may dictate, as they can be caused to announce, by a will as strong, but soul more pure, the disconnected myths of science and of history, which have so surprised the world in what are called the “Revelations” of Andrew Jackson Davis. This man belongs to our second class, and is purely “a medium” of the sympathetic fluid. His organisation is most sensibly sympathetic and delicately responsive, but is too feeble to balance his spiritual development. His case stands, therefore, as the most remarkable modern instance of what the ancients termed “vaticination;” but, as has been the case with other false prophets, his “gifts” have proved of no value, except to knaves. He was undoubtedly practised upon by a choice set of such characters; and, now that he has found in marriage a sympathetic restoration, through the physical, of its needed balance with the spiritual, he has lost his “lying gift” of prophecy.