Practical Psychomancy and Crystal Gazing

by William Walker Atkinson

The following, related by Mrs. Crowe, is interesting, particularly in its aspect as a warning:

"A few years ago, Dr. Watson, now residing at Glasgow, dreamt that he received a summons to attend a patient at a place some miles from where he was living; that he started on horseback, and that as he was crossing a moor, he saw a bull making furiously at him, whose horns he escaped only by taking refuge on a spot inaccessible to the animal, where he waited a long time till some people, observing his situation, came to his assistance and released him. While at breakfast the following morning the summons came, and smiling at the odd co-incidence (as he thought it), he started on horseback. He was quite ignorant of the road he had to go, but by and by he arrived at the moor, which he recognized, and presently the bull appeared, coming full tilt towards him. But his dream had shown him the place of refuge, for which he instantly made, and there he spent three or four hours besieged by the animal, till the country people set him free. Dr. Watson declared that but for the dream he should not have known in what direction to run for safety."

This case is an instance of Future Time Psychomancy, as the student will readily see. Here is another case coming under the same classification. It is related by Dr. Lee:

Mrs. Hannah Green, the housekeeper of a country family in Oxfordshire, dreamt one night that she had been left alone in the house on a Sunday evening, and that hearing a knock at the door of the chief entrance, she went to it and found confronting her an ugly tramp, armed with a big club, who forced himself into the house in spite of her struggles, striking her insensible with his club during the conflict. She awoke at this point. A considerable period of time elapsed, and she had almost forgotten her dream until it was recalled in a startling manner. She was then in charge of an isolated mansion at Kensington, and on a Sunday afternoon, when the servants had taken a holiday, leaving her alone, she was startled by a loud knock at the door. At once the memory of her dream flashed before her with singular vividness and remarkable force. She knew that she was alone, but for the purpose of frightening away the intruder she lighted a lamp on the hall table, and afterward in other places in the house, and also rang the bells violently in different parts of the house. She also made sure that the doors and windows were fastened. She succeeded in scaring off the man, by making him believe that the house was occupied by the family, or several people at least, but not until she had thrown up the window over the stair landing, and there to her intense terror saw the identical man of her dream, armed with the same club, and demanding an entrance. Had she not been warned by the dream of several years previous, she would have met with a fate such as she had dreamed of.

The following case of Dream Psychomancy, which is a good example of Astral Projection during sleep, is related by a correspondent of the Psychical Research Society, as follows:

"One morning in December, 1836, he had the following dream, or, he would prefer to call it, revelation. He found himself suddenly at the gate of Major N. M.'s avenue, many miles from his home. Close to him was a group of persons, one of whom was a woman with a basket on her arm, the rest men, four of whom were tenants of his own, while the others were unknown to him. Some of the strangers seemed to be assaulting H. W., one of his tenants, and he interfered. 'I struck violently at the man on my left, and then with greater violence at the man's face on my right. Finding, to my surprise, that I had not knocked down either, I struck again and again with all the violence of a man frenzied at the sight of my poor friend's murder. To my great amazement I saw my arms, although visible to my eye, were without substance, and the bodies of the men I struck at and my own came close together after each blow through the shadowy arms I struck with. My blows were delivered with more extreme violence than I ever think I exerted, but I became painfully convinced of my incompetency. I have no consciousness of what happened after this feeling of unsubstantiality came upon me.' Next morning A. experienced the stiffness and soreness of violent bodily exercise, and was informed by his wife that in the course of the night he had much alarmed her by striking out again and again with his arms in a terrific manner, 'as if fighting for his life.' He, in turn, informed her of his dream, and begged her to remember the names of those actors in it who were known to him. On the morning of the following day (Wednesday) A. received a letter from his agent, who resided in the town close to the scene of the dream, informing that his tenant had been found on Tuesday morning at Major N. M.'s gate, speechless and apparently dying from a fracture of the skull, and that there was no trace of the murderers. That night A. started for the town, and arrived there on Thursday morning. On his way to a meeting of magistrates he met the senior magistrate of that part of the country, and requested him to give orders for the arrest of the three men whom, besides H. W., he had recognized in his dream, and to have them examined separately. This was at once done. The three men gave identical accounts of the occurrence, and all named the woman who was with them. She was then arrested, and gave precisely similar testimony. They said that between eleven and twelve on the Monday night they had been walking homewards altogether along the road, when they were overtaken by three strangers, two of whom savagely assaulted H. W., while the other prevented his friends from interfering. H. W. did not die, but was never the same man afterwards; he subsequently emigrated."

Stead relates the following case, which was imparted to him as a truthful and correct account of the vision of a murder seen in all of its details by a brother of the murdered man. It is a case of Astral Projection, undoubtedly:

"St. Eglos is situated about ten miles from the Atlantic, and not quite so far from the old market town of Trebodwina. Hart and George Northey were brothers, and from childhood their lives had been marked by the strongest brotherly affection. Hart and George Northey had never been separated from their birth until George became a sailor, Hart meantime joining his father in business. On the 8th of February, 1840, while George Northey's ship was lying in port at St. Helena, he had the following strange dream:

"'Last night I dreamt my brother was at Trebodwina Market, and that I was with him, quite close by his side, during the whole of the market transactions. Although I could see and hear everything which passed around me, I felt sure that it was not my bodily presence which thus accompanied him, but my shadow, or rather my spiritual presence, for he seemed quite unconscious that I was near him. I felt that my being thus present in this strange way betokened some hidden danger which he was destined to meet, and which I knew my presence could not avert, for I could not speak to warn him of his peril.'"

The brother having collected considerable money then started on his ride homeward. The story then continues: