Ghosts and Hobgoblins.
The Hindus of the Malibar coast said they had ghosts, but they knew them
to be bad spirits, for good ones can hardly ever appear at all. Apuleius
says the human soul is a demon or genius, an immortal god. According to
Philo Judaeus, the air is filled with an invisible host of spirits, the
bad ones are mortal, and the good ones are immortal. The soul, upon the
death of the body, transforms into a lemure (phantom). If it is wicked,
it is called a larvae. The ghosts who, through vice, fearful crimes and
animal passions, are confined to the eighth sphere immediately
surrounding the earth, are the magnetic vampires and demons so well
known to mediaeval ecstatics, nuns, monks and witches, the blood demons
of Porphery. They may be cast out by powerful magicians, but if a
sorcerer is not available, you can take a saucer containing two ounces
of nitre and pour over it one ounce of vitrol and place it under the bed
of the obsessed, and the devil will take to his heels.
Paracelsus says: “It is possible that my spirit, without the aid of the
body and through a fiery will alone, and without a sword, can stab and
wound others. I can also bring the spirit of my adversary into an image,
and then double him up and lame him.” According to Cotton Mather some
young girls had become mediums by sitting with a West Indian negro
woman. They declared that the spectres of various witches appeared to
them and bit and pinched and stuck pins into them. Some of the witches
confessed that they did afflict these girls by sticking pins into
manikins made of wax or rags, and by clutching and pinching their hands
together and wishing in what part and after what manner they would have
the girls afflicted, and it was done.
If you are haunted by an objectionable ghost, provide yourself with a
sword or a dagger and stab him when he makes his appearance. They are
awfully afraid of swords, although if you cut one in two, he will join
together again, or if you cut his head off or leg off, he will put the
member right on again. But he does not like it, and will thereafter
leave you severely alone. Bodin says that in 1557 an elementary,
thundering demon fell down with the lightning into the house of one
Poudot and kept throwing stones all about the room for several days. The
magistrate came to investigate, and the spirit knocked his hat off and
drove him out of the house. At last Poudot got a sword and slashed all
around the room, whereupon the spirit disappeared.
Where the ghosts are real troublesome, you can drive them away by
distributing holy medallions around the house where the ghosts can see
them. As the medallions have been blessed or magnetized, God has been
injected into them, and they consequently are gods, and mischievous
spirits who cut up capers around the house are afraid of these deities.
I have a blessed idol of Buddha on my desk to keep the ghosts out of the
office and prevent them from interfering with the composition of this
pious work.
Modern spirits are often lying spirits. They are ever on hand to humor
the respective hobbies of the persons who communicate with them at
circles, and deceive them. When Luther, the sorcerer, evoked the demon,
he was told that he should not worship the Virgin. But when St. Dominic
called upon the devils, they told him that nobody was damned that
persevered in her holy worship. The golden legend of James de Viragine
shows that the Virgin gave to St. Dominic a miraculous rosary, by which
he could perform greater miracles than Christ. But a certain abandoned
sinner was bold enough to doubt the virtues of the rosary, and
immediately fifteen thousand devils took possession of him, and being
questioned by St. Dominic, they emitted flames from the nostrils, eyes
and ears of the demoniac and certified to the virtues of the rosary.
Over a hundred angels appeared in golden armor, together with the
blessed Virgin herself bearing a golden rod, with which she administered
a sound thrashing to the demoniac. The numerous theological truths
uttered by St. Dominic’s devils were embodied in so many articles of
faith, according to Isis Unveiled, 2-76.
One who is unprotected, the tricky powers of the air but too often
delude with the semblance of voices. In all the Mysteries, strong drink
or anaesthetics were administered to the initiates to sunder the soul
from the body and produce visions. The Sankhya system teaches that the
ghost, or astral body, can shrink to such a minute space that it can
penetrate anything, or enlarge to a gigantic body, or float through
space, or standing on the earth can reach the moon, that its will is
irresistible, having dominion over all things and the ability to attain
every desire.
It is claimed that phantom hands have appeared at seances under test
conditions and written messages on a table in broad daylight, when the
medium was six or eight feet away, but the theory is that the
materialized hand is an emanation from the medium, the astral hand of
the medium. Madam Blavatsky says that “this is the spiritual or astral
body that is raised in incorruption. It is useless to argue that these
are spirit hands. To make hands or faces objective, they are compelled
to use either the astral limb of the medium, or material furnished by
the elementals, or the aural emanation of all persons present. Pure
spirits will not and cannot show themselves objectively. Those that do
are elementary spirits.”
Madam Blavatsky tells of the following wonderful manifestations that
occurred in Thibet. A body of traveling Bikshus, or monks, claimed the
power to reincarnate the Buddha in any infant. A child four months old
was brought to their cave and set down in the middle of the room, while
the monks sat in a circle around it at some distance. A skeptic minister
sat close to the child to expose the trickery. The chief Pase Budha went
into a trance, and his astral and spiritual body took possession of the
child and made it walk and talk, saying “I am Buddha, I am the old Lama,
I am his spirit in a new body.” The minister said: “The baby looked at
me with an expression of intelligence that was simply awful. It sent a
chill through me, I felt a real terror, my hair rose upon my head, and
my blood ran cold. The eyes seemed to search my very soul with an
expression that made me think that it was the face of the Superior
himself, his eyes, his very look that was gazing upon me.”
If you wish to conjure up or materialize a spirit, purchase from the
Yogis some ancient blood of a black cat, which comes in powdered form.
This, together with a sparrow’s brain, burnt upon the altar will produce
a smoke or vapor of peculiar odor and a color unknown and unnamed by
human beings, being a combination of many colors. From the smoke of this
magic altar it is possible for spirits to materialize, so that even
persons without the astral vision can see them.
Sometimes a band of occultists will meet around their altar fire, which
is kindled between the horns of the goat and fed with the ancient blood
of a black cat and other material from which ghosts can materialize. The
occultists stand in a row hand in hand, the Grand Master at the head by
the altar, and all strongly command that a spirit shall manifest. As the
command passes from one brother to another it gains force, and the power
of the will is enormously augmented, and after a time there issues from
the floor a thread of astral matter, which ascends perpendicularly and
widens out as it ascends, assuming a human form, but weak, wavering and
limp, bending this way and that on every breath of air. But after the
circle has pumped the power into him for a while, he becomes
sufficiently strong to walk or glide about and take a seat in the circle
and talk to the members. The materialized body is soft and moist and
cold as a corpse. When they wish him to disappear they stand again hand
in hand, the Grand Master next to the spirit, and send the command from
one to the other ordering the ghost to depart, and he will again become
weak and wabbly and sink down to the floor and disappear through the
same nail hole from which he emerged.
If the company wishes to engage in a dangerous experiment, one half of
them will occupy one side of the hall and the other half the other side.
They must first erect between them a circle of sheet lead, over which
the devil cannot jump to attack any of the members. Then each bunch will
think evil vindictive and murderous thoughts of the other bunch, and
conjure up dire monsters to attack them, and soon a horrible, gigantic
and vicious thought-monster, part beast, part devil and part human, will
materialize and rush at the members and endeavor to attack them, but
fortunately for them, he cannot pass the leaden circle, for if he could
reach those that made him, he would strike them dead with a charge of
electricity through the heart. In order to lay this devil they have
conjured up, they have to clothe themselves entirely in silver-colored
garments. They then enter the circle from both sides and close in on the
monster. These silver-colored beings scare the devil to death, and he
crawls back in his hole.
A man, named B, built a house with second-hand lumber from an old
building that had been torn down. The old building was reputed to be
haunted by the former owner, who was murdered there. The ghost was very
mad because B took his lumber, and, in order to be revenged, he went
with the lumber to the new house and haunted that. B says that the ghost
would appear to him when he was going to sleep and jab him in the eye
with his finger and seize his arm and hurl it against the wall. When B
was half asleep one night, the ghost appeared with a pail of water and
threw it all over him. The dog could see the ghost even when B could
not, and would bark and show his teeth and propose to fight the phantom.
B sold the house to some colored folks. They were scared white by the
skilligin, gave up the property and demanded their money back, because
the ghost was an incumbrance on the estate and a legal defect in title,
he being in possession, claiming ownership.
St. Clemens Romanus says that Simon Magus (Paul), of the New Testament,
could make himself invisible when and to whom he pleased. He created a
man out of air, who passed through the rocks and mountains and flew
along through the air. He threw himself from precipices without being
injured and flung himself into the fire without being burned, he
animated statues, he walked through the streets attended by strange
figures, which he said were the souls of people departed.