Human Animals

by Frank Hamel

"I tell you you will be frightened," repeated her husband.

She did not take his threats seriously and went out in spite of them.

Hardly had she taken her place at the washing-tub, however, before she saw an animal moving here and there in front of her. It was not yet daylight, and she could not clearly make out its shape, but she thought it was a kind of a dog. Annoyed by its restless movements and not being able to scare it away, she threw her wooden clothes-beater at it, and the tool hit the animal in the eye. Immediately the creature disappeared and at the same moment Bigot's children heard him utter a cry of pain from his bed and shout out, "Ah! the wretch! She has destroyed my eye." From that day he was blind in one eye, so that undoubtedly this animal was not an animal double, but the miller's double in animal form.

D'Assier describes an epidemic of "obsession," or possession by demons, which occurred in 1857 at Morzine, in Savoy, and lasted until 1863, many young women and animals being attacked by a peculiar affliction. The atmosphere of Morzine, he says, "was impregnated with a foreign fluid (aura) since all that was required was to give change of air to ensure escape from the clutches of the disease. In certain families the domestic animals ate nothing, or satisfied themselves by gnawing the wood of their mangers; at other times it was the cows, goats, or sheep which gave no more milk, and what little some yielded was unfit for making into butter. These phenomena especially showed themselves in families where there were patients. Occasionally the sickness was transferred from persons to animals, and vice versa. If a young girl was relieved, a beast in the stable fell sick; and if the latter was cured the young girl relapsed into her former state. In face of such facts it was no longer possible to talk about obsession. The pest bursting forth simultaneously in houses and cattle-sheds, could only be ascribed to a physical cause, and the disorders that it provoked in persons attacked showed clearly that these phenomena were due to an excess or a degeneration of the mesmeric fluid...."[171] As a remedy, d'Assier suggests that "Obsession being an abnormal afflux of magnetic fluid upon the nervous system of the patient, the direct remedy is naturally the neutralisation of this fluid by a current of cerebral ether turned in the opposite direction and emanating from an energetic will."

Paracelsus, meaning probably much the same thing, declared that the astral currents produced by the imagination and will of man produced certain states in external Nature. The vehicle through which the will acts for effectuating good or evil he calls the living Mumia. The Mumia of a thing is its life-principle, a vehicle containing the essence of life. Exerting great power, it can be used in witchcraft and sorcery. "Witches," he says in "De Pestilitate," "may make a bargain with evil spirits, and cause them to carry the Mumia to certain places where it will come into contact with other people, without the knowledge of the latter, and cause them harm." Thus diseases are spread, milk spoilt and cattle infected, the injured people not knowing the cause of the evils with which they are afflicted.

A curious story of bewitched cattle and "blue milk" is told by Franz Hartmann in his "Life of Paracelsus,"[172] in which a kind of animal demon appears to have "possessed" the cattle.

At a farmhouse not far from Munich the milk turned blue. It had been deposited in the usual place and darkened gradually, appearing first a light blue, and becoming of inky hue, while the layer of cream exhibited zigzag lines and shortly the whole mass began to putrefy and to emit a horrible smell. This occurred for many days running, and the farmer began to despair, for he could not discover the cause of the trouble. The stable was thoroughly cleansed, the place where the milk was kept was changed, a different food was given to the cattle, and samples of the milk were sent to Munich to be examined by chemists; the old milk-pots were replaced by new ones, and so on, but nothing produced an improvement in the existing state of affairs.

At last a Countess who resided in the neighbourhood hearing about the matter, went to the farmhouse. She took with her a clean new bottle, and filled it with the milk as it came from the bewitched cows. She placed the bottle in her own pantry, and from that day the trouble at the farm ceased, but all the milk at her own house turned blue.

This went on for three months, during which time everything that could possibly be done was done to discover the cause of the milk being in this condition. Then an old lady who lived hundreds of miles off, having been appealed to, laid a spell by her own occult powers, writing certain incantations on slips of paper which effected a cure of the trouble. But before it ceased, a strange thing happened. As one of the milkmaids was about to enter the stable before daybreak, a huge black demon, in animal form, rushed out of the half-opened door, knocked the milk-pail and lantern out of her hands, and disappeared before she could awaken the household. After this all went well again. An apparition of this character may be regarded as belonging to the familiars or elementals rather than to the animal-ghosts.