[575] In order to avoid being contradicted by some spiritualists we give verbatim the language in question, as a specimen of the unreliability of the oracular utterances of certain “spirits.” Let them be human or elemental, but spirits capable of such effrontery may well be regarded by occultists as anything but safe guides in philosophy, exact science, or ethics. “It will be remembered,” says Mrs. Cora V. Tappan, in a public discourse upon the “History of Occultism and its Relations to Spiritualism” (see “Banner of Light,” Aug. 26, 1876), “that the ancient word witchcraft, or the exercise of it, was forbidden among the Hebrews. The translation is that no witch should be allowed to live. That has been supposed to be the literal interpretation; and acting upon that, your very pious and devout ancestors put to death, without adequate testimony, numbers of very intelligent, wise, and sincere persons, under the condemnation of witchcraft. It has now turned out that the interpretation or translation should be, that no witches should be allowed to obtain a living by the practice of their art. That is, it should not be made a profession.” May we be so bold as to inquire of the celebrated speaker, through whom or according to what authority such a thing has ever turned out?
[576] Mr. Cromwell F. Varley, the well-known electrician of the Atlantic Cable Company, communicates the result of his observations, in the course of a debate at the Psychological Society of Great Britain, which is reported in the “Spiritualist” (London, April 14, 1876, pp. 174, 175). He thought that the effect of free nitric acid in the atmosphere was able to drive away what he calls “unpleasant spirits.” He thought that those who were troubled by unpleasant spirits at home, would find relief by pouring one ounce of vitriol upon two ounces of finely-powdered nitre in a saucer and putting the mixture under the bed. Here is a scientist, whose reputation extends over two continents, who gives a recipe to drive away bad spirits. And yet the general public mocks as a “superstition” the herbs and incenses employed by Hindus, Chinese, Africans, and other races to accomplish the self-same purpose.
[577] “Art-Magic,” p. 97.
[578] This phantom is called Scin Lecca. See Bulwer-Lytton’s “Strange Story.”
[579] In the Strasbourg edition of his works (1603), Paracelsus writes of the wonderful magical power of man’s spirit. “It is possible,” he says, “that my spirit, without the help of the body, and through a fiery will alone, and without a sword, can stab and wound others. It is also possible that I can bring the spirit of my adversary into an image, and then double him up and lame him ... the exertion of will is a great point in medicine.... Every imagination of man comes through the heart, for this is the sun of the microcosm, and out of the microcosm proceeds the imagination into the great world (universal ether) ... the imagination of man is a seed which is material.” (Our atomical modern scientists have proved it; see Babbage and Professor Jevons.) “Fixed thought is also a means to an end. The magical is a great concealed wisdom, and reason is a great public foolishness. No armor protects against magic, for it injures the inward spirit of life.”
[580] “Salem Witchcraft; With an Account of Salem Village,” by C. W. Upham.
[581] “Odyssey,” A. 82.
[582] “Æneid,” book vi., 260.
[583] “De Dæmon,” cap. “Quomodo dæm occupent.”
[584] Numquid dæmonum corpora pulsari possunt? Possunt sane, atque dolere solido quodam percussa corpore.
[585] Ubi secatur, mox in se iterum recreatur et coalescit ... dictu velocius dæmoni cus spiritus in se revertitor.
[586] A magistrate of the district.
[587] This appalling circumstance was authenticated by the Prefect of the city, and the Proconsul of the Province laid the report before the Emperor. The story is modestly related by Mrs. Catherine Crowe (see “Night-Side of Nature,” p. 335).
[588] Pliny, xxx., 1.
[589] T. Wright, M.A., F.S.A., etc.: “Sorcery and Magic,” vol. iii.
[590] “Art-Magic,” pp. 159, 160.
[591] “Art-Magic,” p. 28.
[592] Fakir, beggar.
[593] A juggler so called.
[594] “Mœurs et Pratiques des Demons.”
[595] “Histoire du Merveilleux dans les Temps Modernes,” vol. ii., p. 262.
[596] Ibid.
[597] Ibid., p. 265.
[598] Ibid., pp. 267, 401, 402.
[599] Ibid., pp. 266, etc., 400.
[600] Ibid., p. 403.
[601] “Histoire du Merveilleux,” vol. i., p. 397.
[602] Ibid., pp. 26-27.
[603] Ibid., p. 238.
[604] Des Mousseaux: “Magie au XIXme Siècle,” p. 452.
[605] Hume: “Philosophical Essays,” p. 195.
[606] “Histoire du Merveilleux,” p. 401.
[607] Ibid.
[608] Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 410, 411.
[609] Ibid., p. 407.
[610] Villecroze: “Le Docteur H. d’Alger,” 19 Mars, 1861. Pierrart: vol. iv., pp. 254-257.
[611] Bruce: “Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile,” vol. x., pp. 402-447; Hasselquist: “Voyage in the Levant,” vol. i., pp. 92-100; Lemprière: “Voyage dans l’Empire de Maroc, etc., en 1790,” pp. 42-43.
[612] Salverte: “La Philosophie de la Magie. De l’Influence sur les Animaux,” vol. i.
[613] Thibaut de Chanvallon: “Voyage à la Martinique.”
[614] Salverte: “Philosophy of Magic.”
[615] Forbes: “Oriental Memoirs,” vol. i., p. 44; vol. ii., p. 387.
[616] Stedmann: “Voyage in Surinam,” vol. iii., pp. 64, 65.
[617] See “Edinburgh Review,” vol. lxxx., p. 428, etc.
[618] Elam: “A Physician’s Problems,” p. 25.
[619] The “Immortality of the Soul,” by Henry More. Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge.
[620] Dr H. More: “Immortality of the Soul,” p. 393.
[621] “Transactions of the Medical Society of N. Y.,” 1865-6-7.
[622] “Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science,” vol. xv., p. 263, 1853.
[623] “Recherches d’Anatomie transcendante et Pathologique, etc.,” Paris, 1832.
[624] “Silliman’s Journal of Science and Art,” vol. x., p. 48.
[625] “Precis Elementaire de Physiologie,” p. 520.
[626] Ibid., p. 521.
[627] “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie,” p. 175.
[628] “Transactions of Medical Society, etc.,” p. 246.
[629] Fournié: “Physiologie du Système Nerveux, Cerebro-spinal,” Paris, 1872.
[630] Ibid.
[631] “Night-Side of Nature,” by Catherine Crowe, p. 434, et seq.
[632] Henry More: “Immortality of the Soul,” p. 399.
[633] By the word soul, neither Demokritus nor the other philosophers understood the nous or pneuma, the divine immaterial soul, but the psychè, or astral body; that which Plato always terms the second mortal soul.
[634] Balfour Stewart, LL.D., F.R.S.: “The Conservation of Energy,” p. 133.
[635] Fournié: “Physiologie du Système Nerveux,” p. 16.
[636] “A System of Logic.” Eighth ed., 1872, vol. ii., p. 165.
[637] Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 22.
[638] Edward L. Youmans, M.D.; “A Class-book of Chemistry,” p. 4.
[639] Sprengel, in his “History of Medicine,” makes Van Helmont appear as if disgusted with the charlatanry and ignorant presumption of Paracelsus. “The works of this latter,” says Sprengel, “which he (Van Helmont) had attentively read, aroused in him the spirit of reformation; but they alone did not suffice for him, because his erudition and judgment were infinitely superior to those of that author, and he despised this made egoist, this ignorant and ridiculous vagabond, who often seemed to have fallen into insanity.” This assertion is perfectly false. We have the writings of Helmont himself to refute it. In the well-known dispute between two writers, Goclenius, a professor in Marburg, who supported the great efficacy of the sympathetic salve discovered by Paracelsus, for the cure of every wound, and Father Robert, a Jesuit, who condemned all these cures, as he attributed them to the Devil. Van Helmont undertook to settle the dispute. The reason he gave for interfering was that all such disputes “affected Paracelsus as their discoverer and himself as his disciple” (see “De Magnetica Vulner.,” and l. c., p. 705).
[640] Demokritus said that, as from nothing, nothing could be produced, so there was not anything that could ever be reduced to nothing.
[641] J. Le Conte: “Correlation of Vital with Chemical and Physical Forces,” appendix.
[642] The date is incorrect; it should be 1784.
[643] Ecclesiastes i. 10.
[644] Ibid., i. 6.
[645] Ibid., i. 7.
[646] Siljeström: “Minnesfest öfver Berzelius,” p. 79.
[647] “Séance de l’Academie de Paris,” 13 Août, 1807.
[648] Mollien: “Voyage dans l’interieur de l’Afrique,” tome ii., p. 210.
[649] “The Popular Science Monthly,” May, 1876, p. 110.
[650] Malte-Brun, pp. 372, 373; Herodotus.
[651] “The Popular Science Monthly,” Dec., 1874, p. 252, New York.
[652] The “Periplus of Hanno.”
[653] The original was suspended in the temple of Saturn, at Carthage. Falconer gave two dissertations on it, and agrees with Bougainville in referring it to the sixth century before the Christian era. See Cory’s “Ancient Fragments.”
[654] Professor Jowett.
[655] “On the Atlantic Island (from Marcellus) Ethiopic History.”
[656] “Alchemy, or the Hermetic Philosophy.”
[657] See “Revue Encyclopédique,” vol. xxxiii., p. 676.
[658] “Bulletin de la Soc. Geograph,” vol. vi., pp. 209-220.
[659] See “Revue Encyclopédique,” vols. xxxiii. and xxxiv., pp. 676-395.
[660] Porphyry: “Epistola ad Anebo., ap. Euseb. Præp. Evangel,” v. 10; Iamblichus: “De Mysteriis Ægypt.; “Porphyrii: “Epistola ad Anebonem Ægyptium.”
[661] “Porphyry,” says the “Classical Dictionary” of Lemprière, “was a man of universal information, and, according to the testimony of the ancients, he excelled his contemporaries in the knowledge of history, mathematics, music, and philosophy.”
[662] “On the Scientific Use of the Imagination.”
[663] Epes Sargent. See his pamphlet, “Does Matter do it All?”
[664] In his “Essay on Classification” (sect. xvii., pp. 97-99), Louis Agassiz, the great zoölogist, remarks: “Most of the arguments in favor of the immortality of man apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other living beings. May I not add that a future life in which man would be deprived of that great source of enjoyment and intellectual and moral improvement, which results from the contemplation of the harmonies of an organic world would involve a lamentable loss? And may we not look to a spiritual concert of the combined worlds and all their inhabitants in the presence of their creator as the highest conception of paradise?”
[665] “Diog. in Vita.”
[666] See the works of Robertus de Fluctibus; and the “Rosicrucians,” by Hargrave Jennings.
[667] Professor B. Stewart: “Conservation of Energy.”
[668] Cabanis: “Histoire de la Medecine.”
[669] “De Vatibus in Problemate,” sect. 21.
[670] See Max Müller: “The Meaning of Nirvana.”
[671] “The Lankâvatâra,” transl. by Burnouf, p. 514.
[672] “Classical Dictionary.”
[673] See Cabanis, “Histoire de la Medecine.”
[674] “Le Lotus de la bonne Loi,” by E. Burnouf, translated from the Sanscrit.
[675] “Cosmos,” vol. iii., part i., p. 168.
[676] “Lecture on the Vedas.”
[677] “The Classical Journal,” vol. iv., pp. 107, 348.
[678] See “Mosheim.”
[679] “New Platonism and Alchemy.”
[680] Origen: “Contra Celsum.”
[681] “Fatti relativi al Mesmerismo,” pp. 88, 93, 1842.
[682] “Leonard de Vair,” l. ii., ch. ii.; “La Magie au 19me Siècle,” p. 332.
[683] “The Tinnevelly Shanars,” p. 43.
[684] Pierart: “Revue Spiritualiste,” chapter on “Vampirism.”
[685] Maimonides: “Abodah Sarab,” 12 Absh, 11 Abth.
[686] Pierart: “Revue Spiritualiste.”
[687] Dr. Pierart: “Revue Spiritualiste,” vol. iv., p. 104.
[688] See “Hauts Phen.,” p. 199.
[689] “Huetiana,” p. 81.
[690] Dom Calmet: “Apparitions,” etc. Paris, 1751, vol. ii., p. 47; “Hauts Phen. de la Magie,” 195.
[691] “Hauts Phen.,” p. 196.
[692] Ibid.
[693] See the same sworn testimony in official documents: “De l’Inspir. des Camis,” H. Blanc, 1859. Plon, Paris.
[694] Dom Calmet: “Apparit.,” vol. ii., chap, xliv., p. 212.
[695] Pierart: “Revue Spiritualiste,” vol. iv., p. 104.
[696] “Sadducismus Triumphatus,” vol. ii., p. 70.
[697] Görres: “Complete Works,” vol. iii., ch. vii., p. 132.
[698] “Ashes to Ashes,” London: Daldy, Isbister & Co., 1875.
[699] The author refers all those who may doubt such statements to G. A. Walker’s “Gatherings from Graveyards,” pp. 84-193, 194, etc.
[700] Horst: “Zauber Bibliothek,” vol. v., p. 52.
[701] See Eliphas Levi: “La Science des Esprits.”
[702] Henry Maudsley: “Body and Mind.”
[703] Josiah Cooke, Jr.: “The New Chemistry.”
[704] Henry Maudsley: “The Limits of Philosophical Inquiry,” p. 266.
[705] “Scientific American,” August 12, 1868.
[706] Le Conte: “Correlation of Vital with Chemical and Physical Forces.”
[707] The wood-apple.
[708] Incorrect; the Hindustani word for monkey is rūkh-charhä. Probably chokra, a little native servant is meant.
[709] “Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., pp. 306, 307.
[710] Delrio: “Disquis. Magic,” pp. 34, 100.
[711] Col. H. Yule: “The Book of Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i., p. 308.
[712] Edward Melton: “Engelsh Edelmans, Zeldzaame en Geden Kwaardige Zee en Land Reizen, etc.,” p. 468. Amsterdam, 1702.
[713] “Memoirs of the Emperor Jahangire,” pp. 99, 102.
[714] J. Hughes Bennett: “Text Book of Physiology,” Lippincott’s American Edition, pp. 37-50.
[715] “Curiosités Inouïes.”
[716] “Thoughts on the Birth and Generation of Things.”
[717] C. Crowe: “Night-Side of Nature,” p. 111.
[718] Pliny: “Hist. Nat.,” vii., c. 52; and Plutarch: “Discourse concerning Socrates’ Dæmon,” 22.
[719] “De Res. Var.,” v. iii., i., viii., c. 43. Plutarch: “Discourse concerning Socrates’ Dæmon,” 22.
[720] Nasse: “Zeitschrift fur Psychische Aerzte,” 1820.
[721] Osborne: “Camp and Court of Rundjit Singh;” Braid: “On France.”
[722] Mrs. Catherine Crowe, in her “Night-Side of Nature,” p. 118, gives us the particulars of a similar burial of a fakir, in the presence of General Ventura, together with the Maharajah, and many of his Sirdars. The political agent at Loodhiana was “present when he was disinterred, ten months after he had been buried.” The coffin, or box, containing the fakir “being buried in a vault, the earth was thrown over it and trod down, after which a crop of barley was sown on the spot, and sentries placed to watch it. The Maharajah, however, was so skeptical that in spite of all these precautions, he had him, twice in the ten months, dug up and examined, and each time he was found to be exactly in the same state as when they had shut him up.”
[723] Todd: Appendix to “Occult Science,” vol. i.
[724] “A Cornel. Cels.,” lib. ii., cap. vi.
[725] “Hist. Nat.,” lib. vii., cap. lii.
[726] “Morning Herald,” July 21, 1836.
[727] “La Science des Esprits.”
[728] “Vit. Apollon. Tyan.,” lib. iv., ch. xvi.
[729] Salverte: “Sciences Occultes,” vol. ii.
[730] “La Science des Esprits.”
[731] It would be beneficial to humanity were our modern physicians possessed of the same inestimable faculty; for then we would have on record less horrid deaths after inhumation. Mrs. Catherine Crowe, in the “Night-Side of Nature,” records in the chapter on “Cases of Trances” five such cases, in England alone, and during the present century. Among them is Dr. Walker of Dublin and a Mr. S——, whose stepmother was accused of poisoning him, and who, upon being disinterred, was found lying on his face.