The Philosophy of Mystery

by Walter Cooper Dendy

Astr. But the magnetizer, as they said, was not always in a state to operate, and required a certain training. So it was observed that Casper Hauser’s cat did not follow him after he had eaten meat; his magnetic and somnambulant qualities were destroyed by animal food, although they were so abundant in his wilder state,—as his history will thus illustrate to those who believe it:

“As I came into the room, and the door of the deceased person was opened, which I did not know, I felt a sudden dragging on both sides of my breast, as if any one wished to pull me into the room. As I went on and proceeded towards the sick person, a very strong breath blew on me from behind, and the pulling which I felt before in my breast I now felt in my shoulders. I went towards the window; the sick person followed me. At the time that I wished to ask a question of Mr. Von Gutter, I felt a trembling in my left foot, and it became unwell. She went back again, and that trembling left me. She seated herself under the canopy and said, ‘Will not the gentleman sit down?’ Hereupon Mr. Professor Hensler said to her, she should see me. So as she drew nigh to me, within two or three steps, I was still more unwell than before, and I felt pains in all my limbs. Mr. Professor Hensler told her that I was the man who had been wounded (that is, by the attempt which had been made to assassinate him); at the same time she noticed my scar, and pointed towards it; then came the air strong upon my forehead, and I felt pain in it, also my left foot began to tremble greatly. The sick person seated herself under the canopy, and said that she was ill; and I also said that I was so unwell that I must sit down. I sat down in the other room: now the other foot began to twitter. Although Mr. Von Gutter held my knees, I could not keep them still. Now a violent beating of my heart came on me, and there was a heat in all my body: that beating of the heart left me afterwards; and I had a twittering in my left arm, which ceased after some minutes, and I was again something better. This condition lasted until the next morning, then I had a headache again and a twittering in all my limbs, still not so violent. In the afternoon, about three o’clock, it came again something less, and left me earlier: then I was quite well again.”

“The Somnambulist was greatly affected by the presence of Hauser. I heard that, afterwards, when she was asleep, she had said these words,—‘That was a hard struggle for me.’ She felt indisposition from this process even on the next day.”

Ev. The first sensation from magnetism is usually that of slight vertigo,—a state of musing or reverie succeeding, the mind being lulled into abstraction, as it is by the rippling of water, the busy hum of bees, or the murmuring of the Æolian-harp. I would explain this feeling by the term, confusion of the senses; for a certain period must elapse ere an external object make an impression on the mind. When, therefore, objects or sounds become extremely rapid, the perception is confused, and the mind, left as it were to itself, cannot follow the impressions so as to associate them, and thus the magnetic ecstacy ensues.

Astr. But Monsieur de Paysegur, who first excited magnetic somnambulism, magnetized trees and ropes, by which he converted those who clung to them into sleep-walkers. Dr. Elliotson, also, mesmerized a sovereign, by merely looking on it; and a girl, who intuitively selected it from a heap of others, was instantly struck with coma.

Ev. The last is a very frail experiment. Paysegur often failed in his illustrations, and then the cunning juggler explained this, by affirming that the trees counter-magnetized each other. Now, whatever may be the influence imparted by this traction, the phenomena of excited somnambulism are similar precisely to those spontaneously occurring. Magnetic sleep, or ecstasis, is its precursor; and there is a total unconsciousness of it when awake. Here is one of those close analogies that are the most potent arguments on which the question of magnetism rests. For, in all the states alluded to, the interval of ecstacy is a blank. And, as in the cases of intense alarm, as you remember, the mesmeric ecstacy will cause a sensitive girl to forget the present, while the scenes of youth and infancy pass vividly before her memory.

Now the effects of the passes of magnetism are referred to six degrees,—the chief conditions being those of sleep, somnambulism, and clairvoyance. The essence of the last, it seems, is combined with a blending of one’s own feeling and nature with those of others;—a reuniting, in fact, of body and soul once separated from that individual whole, which some philosophers, as Hecker, believed the whole human race to be. You observe my fidelity, Astrophel.

It must be confessed, that some of the experiments at which I have myself assisted exhibit very strange results. In some, there is the propensity to chatter nonsense,—a system of one form of hysteria, of which the analogy is perfect. One little jade created much amusement, by inserting supernumerary syllables, thus—opporwaytuniwhatsty.

The insensibility of the nostril to the most powerful ammonia is a very imposing fact; one which must strike us more than that of insensibility of the eye to light, or the ear to sounds. For the faculty of perception may be often suspended in either of those organs of sense, if attention be powerfully diverted to another point, or, as it is by the abstraction of magnetic ecstacy, not directed to any.

So that I do not wonder when thoughtless proselytes believe these effects to be miraculous, or credit the assertions of Pereaud, in his “Antidæmon of Mascon,” that,—“The devil causeth witches to fall into ecstacies, so that a man would say their souls were out of their body.” Or those of Bodin, in his “Theatre of Universal Nature,” that “those that are rapt of the devil feel neither stripes nor cuttings.”