Such an hypothesis curiously agrees in part with the one put forth by our seer-witness, the Irish mystic (p. [60 ff.]). He would probably agree as to the visualization process in most types of ordinary apparitions. In addition, he holds that Nature herself has a memory: there is some indefinable psychic element in the earth’s atmosphere upon which all human and physical actions or phenomena are photographed or impressed. These records in Nature’s mind correspond to mental impressions in us. Under certain inexplicable conditions, normal persons who are not seers may observe Nature’s mental records like pictures cast upon a screen—often like moving pictures. Seers can always see them if they wish; and uncritical seers frequently mistake these phantom records or pictures existing on the psychical envelope of the planet for actual events now occurring, and for actual beings—fairies of various kinds and the dead. A recent book entitled An Adventure, by Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont (pseudonyms), adequately illustrates what we mean by such phantom pictures. During the year 1901 these two cultured ladies saw at le petit Trianon of Marie Antoinette records in the mind of Nature of past historical events dating from about 1789. Of this there seems not to be the slightest doubt. The fairy boat-race on Lough Gur, as described by Count John de Salis (p. [80]), and the procession seen on Tara Hill of fairies ‘like soldiers of ancient Ireland in review’ (p. [33]), probably illustrate the same kind of phenomena (cf. pp. [55-7], [68], [74], [123], [126], &c.).
But in visions by natural seers, following again the theory of our Irish seer-witness, there is present not only an outside force (as seems to be the case when ordinary apparitions are seen) but also a veridical being with a form and life of its own in a world of its own. Such a real entity is as distinct from a picture in the memory of Nature as a living person is distinct from the mental picture which his friend holds and projects as a visualized image when responding to a telepathic stimulus sent by him. The natural seer, not being obliged to see with his normal sense of vision, need not use the normal method (namely, visualization) of responding to the outside telepathic stimulus, and so does not see the ordinary apparitional ghost or fairy. He exercises ‘second-sight’ or ecstatic vision, and while so doing is in the same plane of consciousness and under the same conditions of perception as the intelligence which projects upon him the stimulus inducing automatically such ‘second-sight’ or ecstatic vision. Therefore, if the intelligence has a form and nature of its own, the seer and not the non-seer will perceive them in their own world while his consciousness is temporarily functioning there and out of the normal plane of mental action. In other words, in the normal plane the non-seer reacts normally upon the same stimulus upon which the seer reacts abnormally. The former percipient sees a non-real apparition, a visualized image out of his own experience; the latter claims to see a real being. The real being exists normally under conditions which are abnormal to the non-seer, but which to the seer become normal. The visualization of the non-seer is a makeshift, a psycho-physical reaction to a purely psychical stimulus.
It is mathematically possible to conceive fourth-dimensional beings, and if they exist it would be impossible in a third-dimensional plane to see them as they really are. Hence the ordinary apparition is non-real as a form, whereas the beings, which wholly sane and reliable seers claim to see when exercising seership of the highest kind, may be as real to themselves and to the seers as human beings are to us here in this third-dimensional world when we exercise normal vision.
Concerning actual demon-possession, which among spiritualists and psychical researchers would be called spirit phenomena through ‘mediums’, and which, as we have elsewhere pointed out (pp. [249 ff.]), offers the most rational explanation for the changeling belief and related Celtic beliefs about fairies, Dr. J. L. Nevius, in his Demon Possession, offers very important scientific data relating to China. Dr. F. F. Ellinwood, who like that authority studied strange psychical phenomena in the interior districts of the Shantung Province (China) for many years, says in an introductory note to that work:—‘Antecedently to any knowledge of the New Testament’ (so full of cases of demon-possession) ‘the people of North China believed fully in the possession of the minds and bodies of men by evil spirits.... It has always been understood that the personality of the evil spirit usurped, or for the time being supplanted, that of the unwilling victim, and acted through his organs and faculties. Physical suffering and sometimes violent paroxysms attended the presence and active influence of the spirit.’ In the face of so many cases of such phenomena observed in China by the same authorities, Dr. Ellinwood adds, as Dr. Nevius’s conclusion, that ‘no theory has been advanced which so well accords with the facts as the simple and unquestioning conclusion so universally held by the Christians of Shantung, viz. that evil spirits do in many instances possess or control the mind and will of human beings’. Hypnotism shows how one strong and magnetic human will can control the mind and will of its subject; the scientific results attained by the Society for Psychical Research in its study of spiritualism show a disembodied will or intelligence controlling and using the body of a living human being; and Dr. Nevius writes:—‘Now may not demon-possession be only a different, a more advanced form of hypnotism?’ Criminal records of Europe and America show many examples of condemned criminals who confessed in all sincerity that some invisible or outside influence led them against their better judgement to commit crime; and very often in such examples the past lives of the condemned are so good as to set up a strong probability in favour of their belief in possession. And altogether in accord with the evidence of modern mediumship, as well as that of mediumship among the ancients, Dr. Nevius says of Chinese demon-possession:—‘When normal consciousness is restored after one of these attacks, the subject is entirely ignorant of everything which has passed during that state. The most striking characteristic of those cases is that the subject evidences another personality, and the normal personality for the time being is partially or wholly dormant. The new personality presents traits of character utterly different from those which really belong to the subject in his normal state, and this change of character is, with rare exceptions, in the direction of moral obliquity and impurity. Many persons while “demon-possessed” give evidence of knowledge which cannot be accounted for in ordinary ways.... They sometimes converse in foreign languages of which in their normal states they are entirely ignorant. There are often heard, in connexion with “demon possessions”, rappings and noises in places where no physical cause for them can be found; and tables, chairs, crockery, and the like are moved about without, so far as can be discerned, any application of physical force, exactly as we are told is the case among spiritualists.’[607]
Conclusion
Our investigations (and far more exhaustive ones than ours touching similar psychical phenomena) show, when applied to the residuum or x-quantity, these chief results: (1) The Materialistic and the Delusion and Imposture Theories can be dismissed as not affecting it. (2) Authorities do not agree in their opinions as to the pathological and psychological processes with which we are directly concerned; they are quite uncertain how to explain the human brain in all its more subtle functions, or the sympathetic nervous system and nervous states generally, in relation especially to human consciousness under various abnormal but not diseased conditions of the organism; and they do not propose any conclusions as final, but only as very weakly tentative, though some of these are in favour of a psycho-physical view of man in which there is a close approach to the present more advanced position of psychical research. (3) Psychical research has furnished proof sufficient to convince such first-class scientists as Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, William James, M. Camille Flammarion, and others, that states of consciousness exist in nature outside of, though probably connected with, the consciousness of incarnate human beings, and that these intelligences can produce effects on matter and on the psychical constitution of man; and some of these scientists consider certain of such intelligences to be discarnate men and women. (4) Scientific proof has been adduced that there are genuine hallucinations—like those relating to fairies—of human-like forms, seen by single percipients, or collectively; and such collective hallucinations are incapable of being explained away, which is equally true of apparitions seen by a single percipient to move physical objects. (5) Many of the foremost psychical researchers, including those named above, accept ‘mediumship’ or spirit-possession as the best working hypothesis to explain automatism. (6) In the accepted theory of telepathy we have support for assuming that, like hypnosis, it is a psychical process, and can be carried on either by two embodied spirits or human beings, or by a disembodied spirit and one still incarnate. Myers’s theories, including that of the Subliminal Self, embody all the preceding ones and agree in details with them. (7) The results taken together harmonize with those attained in our study of psychical phenomena attributed by the Celtic peoples to fairies; and, if they be accepted, older psychological and pathological theories must be thoroughly revised in many cases, or else cast aside as worthless. Finally, since we have demonstrated that the background of the Fairy-Faith, and hence the residuum or x-quantity of it, is like the background of all religious and mystical beliefs, being animistic, and like them has grown up in ancient times out of definite psychical phenomena identical in character with those now studied by science, and is kept alive by an unbroken succession of ‘seers’ and percipients, we have a clear right to set up under scientific authority these tentative conclusions: (1) Fairyland exists as a supernormal state of consciousness into which men and women may enter temporarily in dreams, trances, or in various ecstatic conditions; or for an indefinite period at death. (2) Fairies exist, because in all essentials they appear to be the same as the intelligent forces now recognized by psychical researchers, be they thus collective units of consciousness like what William James has called ‘soul-stuff’, or more individual units, like veridical apparitions. (3) Our examination of living children said to have been changed by fairies shows (see pp. [250-1]) (a) that many changelings are so called merely because of some bodily deformity or because of some abnormal mental or pathological characteristics capable of an ordinary rational explanation, (b) but that other changelings who exhibit a change of personality, such as is recognized by psychologists, are in many cases best explained on the Demon-Possession Theory, which is a well-established scientific hypothesis.
Therefore, since the residuum or x-quantity of the Fairy-Faith, the folk-religion of the Celtic peoples, cannot be explained away by any known scientific laws, it must for the present stand, and the Psychological Theory of the Nature and Origin of the Belief in Fairies in Celtic Countries is to be considered as hypothetically established in the eyes of Science. Hence we must cease to look upon the term fairy as being always a synonym for something fanciful, non-real, absurd. We must also cease to think of the Fairy-Faith as being no more than a fabric of groundless beliefs. In short, the ordinary non-Celtic mind must readjust itself to a new set of phenomena which through ignorance on its part it has been content to disregard, and to treat with ridicule and contempt as so much outworn ‘superstition’.