Of equal interest is the discovery that clairvoyance may be manifested in the state of trance-umbra. Major Buckley is spoken of by Professor Gregory as a gentleman possessing mesmerising force of a remarkable quality and degree. It appears that he had been long in the habit of producing magnetic sleep, and clairvoyance in the sleep, before he discovered that, in his subjects, the sleep might be dispensed with. Dr. Gregory gives the following account of his present method:—
“Major B. first ascertains whether his subjects are susceptible, by making, with his hand, passes above and below their hands, from the wrist downwards. If certain sensations, such as tingling, numbness, &c., are strongly felt, he knows that he will be able to produce the magnetic sleep. But to ascertain whether he can obtain conscious clairvoyance, he makes slow passes from his own forehead to his own chest. If this produce a blue light in his face, strongly visible, the subject will probably acquire conscious clairvoyance. If not, or if the light be pale, the subject will only become clairvoyant in the sleep, (that is, when in perfect trance.) Taking those subjects who see a very deep blue light, he continues to make passes over his own face, and also over the object—a box or a nut, for instance—in which written or printed words are enclosed, which the clairvoyante is to read. Some subjects only require a pass or two to be made: others require many. They describe the blue light as rendering the box or nut transparent, so that they can read what is inside. This reminds us of the curious fact mentioned by Von Reichenbach, that bars of iron or steel, seen by conscious sensitives, without any passes, shining in the dark with the Od glow, appeared to them transparent like glass. If too many passes are made by Major B., the blue light becomes so deep that they cannot read, and some reverse passes must be made to render the colour of the light less deep. Major Buckley has thus produced conscious clairvoyance in eighty-nine persons, forty-four of whom have been able to read mottoes contained in nutshells purchased by other parties for the experiments. The longest motto thus read contained ninety-eight words.” “A lady, one of Major Buckley’s waking clairvoyantes, read one hundred and three mottoes contained in nuts in one day, without a pass being made on that occasion. In this and in many other cases, the power of reading through nuts, boxes, and envelopes, remained, when once induced, for about a month, and then disappeared. The same lady, after three months, could no longer read without passes; and it took five trials fully to restore the power. This may be done, however, immediately by inducing the mesmeric sleep and clairvoyance in that state, when the subjects, in the hands of Major Buckley, soon acquire the power of waking clairvoyance.”
But stranger things remain behind—corollaries, however, of the preceding, yet which eclipse these wonders, if possible. For a knowledge of these, I am exclusively indebted to Professor Gregory’s recent publication, and I give them on his authority.
If the looking intently upon a piece of metal will produce trance and trance-umbra, why should not the account of the Egyptian boy-seers be correct? If their performance be often a trick, may not the protracted gaze on the black spot in their hand sometimes render them waking clairvoyantes? and why, on the same showing, might not the gazing upon magic crystals or mirrors of jet occasionally have thrown the already awe-struck and fitly disposed lookers on them into the state in which either the magician at their side might compel suggestively images into their fancy, or they, acting for themselves, have exercised independent ultravision, retrovision, prevision? Why, again, should not simple concentration of thought upon one uninteresting idea convert a susceptible subject into a soothsayer? Then read the following facts recorded by Dr. Gregory; I at least do not question their fidelity.
“Mr. Lewis possesses at times the power of spontaneous clairvoyance, by simple concentration of thought. He finds, however, that gazing into a crystal substance produces the state of waking clairvoyance in him much sooner and more easily. On one occasion, being in a house in Edinburgh with a party, he looked into a crystal, and saw in it the inhabitants of another house at a considerable distance. Along with them he saw two strangers, entire strangers to him. These he described to the company. He then proceeded to the other house, and there found the two strangers whom he had described.”
“On another occasion he was asked to inspect a house and family, quite unknown to him, in Sloane Street, Chelsea, he being in Edinburgh with a party. He saw in the crystal the family in London; described the house, and also an old gentleman very ill or dying, and wearing a peculiar cap. All was found to be correct, and the cap was one which had lately been sent to the old gentleman. On the same occasion Mr. Lewis told a gentleman present that he had lost or mislaid a key of a very particular shape, which he, Mr. L., saw in the crystal. This was confirmed by the gentleman, a total stranger to Mr. Lewis.”
“Sistimus hic tandem.”
I think that I have tolerably succeeded in establishing the thesis with which these Letters started, that every superstition is based on a truth; and I am in hopes that the mass of evidence which I have adduced—the very variety of the phenomena described, joined to their mutual coherence—the theoretical consistency of the whole, as if it were truly a vast body of living science, and not the “disjecta membra” of a dream—will remove every remaining shade of doubt among candid readers, that these inquiries are not less sound than they are curious.