The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II

by Various

From the Dublin University Magazine.

It seems strange that so obvious a case as that of Barlaam and the monks of Mount Athos has not been brought into the mesmerical collection of pièces justificatives. The first compiler of the authorities on which it rests is Ughelli. The story is told in modern language by Mosheim, by Fleury, and by Gibbon at the years 1341-51. In taking the version of it by the last (Decline and Fall, c. 63,) we shall run least risk of being imposed on by over-credulity.

"The Fakirs of India and the monks of the Oriental Church," says the complacent philosopher of Lausanne, "were alike persuaded that in total abstraction of the mind and body, the purer spirit may ascend to the enjoyment and vision of the Deity. The opinions and practices of the monasteries of Mount Athos will be best represented in the words of an abbot who flourished in the eleventh century. 'When thou art alone in thy cell,' says the ascetic teacher, 'shut thy door and seat thyself in a corner: raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory; recline thy beard and chin on thy breast; turn thine eyes and thy thoughts towards the middle of thy belly, the region of the naval; and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first all will be dark and comfortless; but if you persevere day and night you will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart, than it is involved in a mystic and etherial light.' This light, the production of a distempered fancy, the creature of an empty stomach and an empty brain, was adored by the Quietists as the pure and perfect essence of God himself; and as long as the folly was confined to Mount Athos, the simple solitaries were not inquisitive how the divine essence could be a material substance, or how an immaterial substance could be perceived by the eyes of the body. But in the reign of the younger Andronicus these monasteries were visited by Barlaam, a Calabrian monk, who was equally skilled in philosophy and theology. The indiscretion of an ascetic revealed to the curious traveller the secrets of mental prayer, and Barlaam embraced the opportunity of ridiculing the Quietists who placed the soul in the naval; of accusing the monks of Mount Athos of heresy and blasphemy. His attack compelled the more learned to renounce or dissemble the simple devotion of their brethren; and Gregory Palamas introduced a scholastic distinction between the essence and operation of God."

Gregory illustrated his argument by a reference to the celestial light manifested in the transfiguration of our Lord on Mount Thabor. On this distinction issue was taken by the disputatious Calabrian, and the result was the convocation of a synod at Constantinople, whose decree "established as an article of faith the uncreated light of Mount Thabor; and, after so many insults, the reason of mankind was slightly wounded by the addition of a single absurdity."

Of the truth of facts so long and openly discussed, there can be no question. The monks of Mount Athos did indeed put themselves into a state which may with safety be called one of mental lucidity, by fixing their eyes intently on a point. Mr. Robertson, who[pg 199] used to induce the mesmeric sleep by causing his votaries to fix their eyes on a wafer, had better precedent than he supposed for his practice; and Miss Martineau, who, in her artificial trances, saw all objects illuminated has been unconsciously repeating a monastic method of worship. The contemptuous indifference of Gibbon for once arises from defect of information; and when in a note he observes that Mosheim "unfolds the causes with the judgment of a philosopher," while Fleury "transcribes and translates with the prejudices of a Catholic priest," himself gives a luculent example of the errors of philosophy, and of the often unsuspected approach of prejudice to truth. Mosheim's observation, notwithstanding the damaging approval of Gibbon, is not without its value. "There is no reason," he says, "for any to be surprised at this account, or to question its correctness. For among the precepts and rules of all those in the East who teach men how to withdraw the mind from the body, and to unite it with God, or inculcate what the Latins call a contemplative and mystic life, whether they are Christians, or Mohammedans, or Pagans, there is this precept, viz., that the eyes must be fixed every day for some hours upon some particular object, and that whoever does this will be rapt into a kind of ecstasy. See what Engelbert Kempfer states concerning the monks and mystics of Japan; and the account of those of India by Francis Bernier." Strange that Mosheim, observing the uniformity both of the process and of its results in so many different parts of the world, should not have suspected that there was something more in this species of lucidity than the merely casual effects of a distempered imagination. By fixing the gaze even of the lower animals on an immovable point, they fall into a condition equally unnatural, and which, if they had language to express their visions, would probably be found equally clairvoyant.

A favorite subject of mediæval art is the life of the Christian ascetic in the Desert. In these representations a human skull may generally be seen placed before the eyes of the devotee. Such an object would fix the gaze and induce the ecstasy as well as any other. The charm of this species of contemplation must have been intense, since in search of its exaltations and illuminations the very convents were deserted; and during the fourth and fifth centuries the deserts of Idumea, of Egypt, and of Pontus, swarmed with anchorites, who seemed to live only for the sake of escaping from life, and in their fasts and mortifications rivalled, if they did not for a time even surpass, the Fakirs of the East. To such an extent was this religious enthusiasm carried, that in Egypt the number of the monks was thought to equal that of the rest of the male population. Strange consideration, if it be the fact, that a few passes of a mesmeric operator should produce the same effects which these multitudes procured through toils so painful and sacrifices to themselves and to society so costly.

The Egyptian method of inducing clairvoyance in boys, by causing them to gaze on a pool of ink in the palm of the hand, has already been identified with the practice of Dr. Dee, whose blank spherical mirror is now said to be in the possession and use of a distinguished modern mesmeriser. Divination by the crystal is a well-known mediæval practice; and from the accounts of it which Delrio and others have handed down it appears to have resembled, in some remarkable particulars, the method now in use among the soothsayers of Cairo. It does not appear to make any difference whether the polished object be black or white, a mirror, a solid ball, or a transparent globe containing water: the same extraordinary series of appearances is alleged to follow an earnest inspection of it. Before proceeding to Delrio's singular corroboration of this use of the crystal, it will be well to state what is known of divination by the phial and by the mirror. Divination by the phial is technically known as gasteromancy. "In this kind of divination," says Peucer, "the response is given by pictures, not by sounds. They procured glass vessels of a globular shape, filled with fair water, and set round them lighted tapers; and after invoking the demon with a muttered incantation, and proposing the question, they brought forward a pure boy-child, or a pregnant woman, who, gazing intently on the glass, and searching it with their eyes, called for, and demanded, a solution of the question proposed. The devil then answered these inquiries by certain images, which, by a kind of refraction, shone from the water on the polished and mirror-like surface of the phial."

Catoptromancy, or divination by the mirror, is as old as the time of the Roman Emperors. In one of the passages relating to this method of inducing what is called clairvoyance, we have an illustration of the early acquaintance of mankind with some of the forms of mesmerism. The passage is found in Spartian's life of Ditius Julian, the rich Roman who purchased the Empire when it was put up to auction by the Prætorian guards. "Julian was also addicted to the madness of consulting magicians, through whom he hoped either to appease the indignation of the people, or to control the violence of the soldiery. For they immolated certain victims (human?) not agreeable to the course of Roman sacrifice; and they performed certain profane incantations; and those things, too, which are done at the mirror, in which boys with their eyes blindfolded are said, by means of incantations, to see objects with the top of the head, Julian had recourse to. And the boy is said to have seen (in the mirror) both the approach of Severus and the death of Julian."

The passage may be variously rendered, according to different readings and punctuations, either as "boys, who can see with their[pg 200] eyes blindfolded, by reason of incantations made over the top of the head;" or, "boys, who, having their eyes blindfolded, can see with the top of the head, by reason of incantations;" or, "boys, who, having their eyes blindfolded, can see with the top of the head, it being operated on by way of incantation." This seeing, or seeming to see, with the top of the head, is one alleged variety of the modes of modern clairvoyance. It seems difficult to imagine that the boy Horner, whose case is related by Mr. Topham, in a letter to Dr. Elliotson, dated May 31, 1847, could have heard any thing of these pagan practices. Mr. Topham, a barrister and man of credit, states: "After five or six weeks' mesmerism, he began spontaneously to exhibit instances of clairvoyance. The first occasion was on the 11th of September. It was in the dusk of the evening, so that the room where he was mesmerised was nearly dark. My previous mode of mesmerising him had been by pointing at his eyes, but on this occasion I began by making passes over the top of his head, and continued them after he was in the sleep. In the course of five or six minutes after the sleep was induced, he suddenly exclaimed that he could see into the room above us (the drawing-room). I said, 'Your eyes are closed; how can you see?' And he replied, 'I don't see with my eyes; I see from the top of my head. All the top of my head seems open.' He then described, &c. I found every thing as he had described, &c." Mr. Topham, it need scarcely be added, does not appear to have been at all aware of the passage in Spartian, which, indeed, has not been cited or referred to in any published work for nearly two hundred years back.

A like use of the suspended ring, indicating the early acquaintance of practitioners in these arts with one of the alleged evidences of the so-called odylic force, is thus described by Peucer among various modes of hydromancy: "A bowl was filled with water, and a ring suspended from the finger was librated in the water; and so, according as the question was propounded, a declaration or confirmation of its truth, or otherwise, was obtained. If what was proposed was true, the ring, of its own accord, without any impulse, struck the sides of the goblet a certain number of times. They say that Numa Pompilius used to practise this method, and that he evoked the gods, and consulted them in water, in this way."