Planchette, the "sacred tripod" of the ancients, uses language of various styles. Sometimes it will not deign to speak at all; sometimes its answers are vague and unmeaning; sometimes singularly concise and pertinent.
A very striking point of similarity is the occasional irrelevancy of the answers. Tisamenus, soothsayer to the Greek army, consulted the oracle at Delphi concerning his lack of offspring, when he was told by the Pythia that he would win five glorious combats; and when Battus asked about his voice he was told "to establish a city in Libya abounding in fleeces." Such freaks are common with the modern Pythia. The resemblance is complete.
It is to the development of psychical force, as shown by Planchette, that the phenomena known as mesmerism and the so-called spiritualism are undoubtedly due. In some persons this force is found to exist abnormally, when its manifestations are certainly extraordinary. The trouble is that we are not always satisfied with its feeble and uncertain utterances, and are too often impelled by cupidity or other equally unworthy motive to practise the charlatanism of the crafty priests of old.
In the time of Nebuchadnezzar the Chaldean priesthood, the magicians and astrologers, and those who had understanding in all visions and dreams, possessed all the learning of the known world. Much of their learning was transmitted to Egypt and thence to Greece, but much of it we know was lost to the world. From all that we can gather now, however, we may feel assured that they were not ignorant of the existence of what has been termed psychic force, or a sixth sense, or unconscious cerebration (for our terminology in all speculations bordering: on the "unknowable" must necessarily be uncertain), and as a neighboring people, the Israelites, communicated with their God through that medium, they supposed, as was natural, that they could communicate with their gods in the same way. And they were perfectly sincere in that belief. But in the process of time and migration the theology of the Greeks came to bear little resemblance to that of the Chaldeans. The dignity of the priestly office and the influence of the priesthood became greatly diminished. That the religion of these several nations had one common origin, and that the priests and prophets of God's chosen people had many imitators among other nations, there is abundant proof.
The story of the origin of the Pythia, for example, contains points not without resemblance to certain passages in our own early sacred history. The Son of God is at enmity with the serpent; the serpent pursues a woman, and is trodden under foot by the Son. Zeus is the god of the Greeks; Apollo is his son; Leto—or Latona—is pursued by Python, the serpent, and is slain by Apollo. To commemorate this deed a temple was erected at Delhi to Apollo, and the priestess was called the Pythia. Regarded as the symbol of wisdom by the Egyptians, the serpent came to be considered by the Greeks as representing the principle of evil.[8] Ages before this, however, the history of our first parents, the temptation, and the fall, and the prophecy that the Son should bruise the serpent's head, had been recorded. The wonderful Chaldeans too had mapped out the same story among the eternal stars, their great designs being still traceable on the celestial globes of our common schools.
But the intellectual Greek was not long to be imposed upon. Men who could discourse on the immortality of the soul had not much faith in the nonsense often put forth by a priestess of Apollo. Themistocles made a tool of the oracle in order to serve his own purposes, and Demosthenes publicly denounced it. Convinced that the oracle was subsidized by Philip of Macedon, and instructed to speak in his favor, he boldly declared that the Pythia philippized, and bade the Athenians and Thebans remember that "Pericles and Epaminondas, instead of listening to the frivolous answers of the oracle, the resort of the ignorant and cowardly, consulted only reason in the choice of their measures."
Had there been a London magistrate at hand in the days of the great Athenian orator, it would certainly have gone hard with the poor Pythia.
No observer of human nature can doubt that we are bound by an "electric chain," and that we are liable to impressions, the sources of which are often unknown to us. Nor can we doubt that there have been abnormally sensitive persons, like Swedenborg, whose receptivity was such that the brain could be impressed by means which would entirely fail with the normal brain. But in respect to the professional mediums, notwithstanding the antiquity of the class and their many advocates, it remains to be shown where they have been of the slightest practical utility, or served any good or useful end. Nay more. It remains to be shown wherein the modern medium is entitled to a particle more of respect than the medium of Endor.
S. B. Luce.