THE POWER OF WILL.
THE power, be it what it may, whether of dressing up an ethereal visible
form, or of acting on the constructive imagination of the seer, which
would enable a spirit to appear “in his habit as he lived,” would also
enable him to present any other object to the eye of the seer, or
himself in any shape, or fulfilling any function he willed; and we thus
find in various instances, especially those recorded in the Seeress of
Prevorst, that this is the case. We not only see changes of dress, but
we see books, pens, writing materials, &c., in their hands; and we find
a great variety of sounds imitated—which sounds are frequently heard,
not only by those who have the faculty of “discerning of spirits,” as
St. Paul says, but also by every other person on the spot, for the
hearing these sounds does not seem to depend on any particular faculty
on the part of the auditor, except it be in the case of speech. The
hearing the speech of a spirit, on the contrary, appears in most
instances to be dependent on the same conditions as the seeing it, which
may possibly arise from there being, in fact, no _audible_ voice at all,
but the same sort of spiritual communication which exists between a
magnetizer and his patient, wherein the sense is conveyed without words.
This imitating of sounds I shall give several instances of in a future
chapter. It is one way in which a death is frequently indicated. I could
quote a number of examples of this description, but shall confine myself
to two or three.
Mrs. D——, being one night in her kitchen, preparing to go to bed,
after the house was shut up and the rest of the family retired, was
startled by hearing a foot coming along the passage, which she
recognised distinctly to be that of her father, who she was quite
certain was not in the house. It advanced to the kitchen-door, and she
waited with alarm to see if the door was to open; but it did not, and
she heard nothing more. On the following day, she found that her father
had died at that time; and it was from her niece I heard the
circumstance.
A Mr. J—— S——, belonging to a highly respectable family, with whom I
am acquainted, having been for some time in declining health, was sent
abroad for change of air. During his absence, one of his sisters, having
been lately confined, an old servant of the family was sitting half
asleep in an arm-chair, in a room adjoining that in which the lady
slept, when she was startled by hearing the foot of Mr. J—— S——
ascending the stairs. It was easily recognisable, for, owing to his
constant confinement to the house, in consequence of his infirm health,
his shoes were always so dry that their creaking was heard from one end
of the house to the other. So far surprised out of her recollection as
to forget he was not in the country, the good woman started up, and,
rushing out with her candle in her hand, to light him, she followed the
steps up to Mr. J—— S——’s own bed-chamber, never discovering that he
was not preceding her till she reached the door. She then returned,
quite amazed, and having mentioned the occurrence to her mistress, they
noted the date; and it was afterward ascertained that the young man had
died at Lisbon on that night.
Mrs. F—— tells me that, being one morning, at eleven o’clock, engaged
in her bed-room, she suddenly heard a strange, indescribable, sweet, but
unearthly sound, which apparently proceeded from a large open box which
stood near her. She was seized with an awe and a horror which there
seemed nothing to justify, and fled up stairs to mention the
circumstance, which she could not banish from her mind. At that precise
day and hour, eleven o’clock, her brother was drowned. The news reached
her two days afterward.
Instances of this kind are so well known that it is unnecessary to
multiply them further. With respect to the mode of producing these
sounds, however, I should be glad to say something more definite if I
could; but, from the circumstance of their being heard not only by one
person, who might be supposed to be _en rapport_, or whose constructive
imagination might be acted upon, but by any one who happens to be within
hearing, we are led to conclude that the sounds are really reverberating
through the atmosphere. In the strange cases recorded in “The Seeress of
Prevorst,” although the apparitions were visible only to certain
persons, the sounds they made were audible to all; and the seeress says
they are produced by means of the nerve-spirit, which I conclude is the
spiritual body of St. Paul and the atmosphere, as we produce sound by
means of our _material_ body and the atmosphere.
In this plastic power of the spirit to present to the eye of the seer
whatever object it wills, we find the explanation of such stories as the
famous one of Ficinus and Mercatus, related by Baronius in his annals.
These two illustrious friends, Michael Mercatus and Marcellinus Ficinus,
after a long discourse on the nature of the soul, had agreed that, if
possible, whichever died first should return to visit the other. Some
time afterward, while Mercatus was engaged in study at an early hour in
the morning, he suddenly heard the noise of a horse galloping in the
street, which presently stopped at his door, and the voice of his friend
Ficinus exclaimed: “Oh, Michael! oh, Michael! _vera sunt illa!_—those
things are true!” Whereupon Mercatus hastily opened his window and
espied his friend Ficinus on a white steed. He called after him, but he
galloped away out of his sight. On sending to Florence to inquire for
Ficinus, he learned that he had died about that hour he called to him.
From this period to that of his death, Mercatus abandoned all profane
studies, and addicted himself wholly to divinity. Baronius lived in the
sixteenth century; and even Dr. Ferrier and the spectral illusionists
admit that the authenticity of this story can not be disputed, although
they still claim it for their own.
Not very many years ago, Mr. C——, a staid citizen of Edinburgh—whose
son told me the story—was one day riding gently up Corstorphine hill,
in the neighborhood of the city, when he observed an intimate friend of
his own, on horseback also, immediately behind him; so he slackened his
pace to give him an opportunity of joining company. Finding he did not
come up so quickly as he should, he looked round again, and was
astonished at no longer seeing him, since there was no side road into
which he could have disappeared. He returned home, perplexed at the
oddness of the circumstance, when the first thing he learned was that
during his absence this friend had been killed, by his horse falling, in
Candlemaker’s row.
I have heard of another circumstance, which occurred some years ago in
Yorkshire, where, I think, a farmer’s wife was seen to ride into a
farm-yard on horseback, but could not be afterward found, or the thing
accounted for, till it was ascertained that she had died at that period.
There are very extraordinary stories extant in all countries, of persons
being annoyed by appearances in the shape of different animals, which
one would certainly be much disposed to give over altogether to the
illusionists; though, at the same time, it is very difficult to reduce
some of the circumstances under that theory—especially one mentioned
page 307 of my “Translation of the Seeress of Prevorst.” If they are not
illusions, they are phenomena, to be attributed either to this plastic
power, or to that magico-magnetic influence in which the belief in
lycanthropy and other strange transformations have originated. The
multitudes of unaccountable stories of this description recorded in the
witch-trials, have long furnished a subject of perplexity to everybody
who was sufficiently just to human nature to conclude, that there must
have been some strange mystery at the bottom of an infatuation that
prevailed so universally, and in which so many sensible, honest, and
well-meaning persons were involved. Till of late years, when some of the
arcana of animal or vital magnetism have been disclosed to us, it was
impossible for us to conceive by what means such strange conceptions
could prevail; but since we now know, and many of us have witnessed,
that all the senses of a patient are frequently in such subjection to
his magnetiser, that they may be made to convey any impressions to the
brain that magnetiser wills, we can without much difficulty conceive how
this belief in the power of transformation took its rise; and we also
know how a magician could render himself visible or invisible at
pleasure. I have seen the sight or hearing of a patient taken away, and
restored by Mr. Spencer Hall in a manner that could leave no doubt on
the mind of the beholder—the evident paralysis of the eye of the
patient testifying to the fact. Monsieur Eusèbe Salverte, the most
determined of rationalistic skeptics, admits that we have numerous
testimonies to the existence of an art, which he confesses himself at
some loss to explain, although the opposite quarters from which the
accounts of it reach us, render it difficult to imagine that the
historians have copied each other. The various transformations of the
gods into eagles, bulls, &c., have been set down as mere mythological
fables; but they appear to have been founded on an art, known in all
quarters of the world, which enabled the magician to take on a form that
was not his own, so as to deceive his nearest and dearest friends. In
the history of Gengis Khan, there is mention of a city which he
conquered—“in which dwelt,” says Suidas, “certain men, who possessed
the secret of surrounding themselves with deceptive appearances,
insomuch that they were able to represent themselves to the eyes of
people quite different to what they really were.” Saxo Grammaticus, in
speaking of the traditions connected with the religion of Odin, says
that “the magi were very expert in the art of deceiving the eyes, being
able to assume, and even to enable others to assume, the forms of
various objects, and to conceal their real aspects under the most
attractive appearances.”
John of Salisbury, who seems to have drawn his information from sources
now lost, says that Mercury, the most expert of magicians, had the art
of fascinating the eyes of men to such a degree as to render people
invisible, or make them appear in forms quite different to what they
really bore. We also learn from an eye-witness that Simon, the magician,
possessed the secret of making another person resemble him so perfectly
that every eye was deceived. Pomponius Mela affirms that the druidesses
of the island of Sena could transform themselves into any animal they
chose, and Proteus has become a proverb by his numerous metamorphoses.
Then, to turn to another age and another hemisphere, we find Joseph
Acosta, who resided a long time in Peru, assuring us that there existed
at that period magicians who had the power of assuming any form they
chose. He relates that the predecessor of Montezuma, having sent to
arrest a certain chief, the latter successively transformed himself into
an eagle, a tiger, and an immense serpent; and so eluded the envoys,
till, having consented to obey the king’s mandate, he was carried to
court and instantly executed.
The same perplexing exploits are confidently attributed to the magicians
of the West Indies; and there were two men eminent among the natives,
the one called Gomez and the other Gonzalez, who possessed this art in
an eminent degree; but both fell victims to the practice of it, being
shot during the period of their apparent transformations.
It is also recorded that Nanuk, the founder of the Sikhs—who are not
properly a nation, but a religious sect—was violently opposed by the
Hindoo zealots; and at one period of his career, when he visited Vatala,
the Yogiswaras—who were recluses, that, by means of corporeal
mortifications, were supposed to have acquired command over the powers
of nature—were so enraged against him, that they strove to terrify him
by their enchantments, assuming the shapes of tigers and serpents. But
they could not succeed, for Nanuk appears to have been a real
philosopher, who taught a pure theism, and inculcated universal peace
and toleration. His tenets, like the tenets of the founders of all
religions, have been since corrupted by his followers. We can scarcely
avoid concluding that the power by which these feats were performed is
of the same nature as that by which a magnetiser persuades his patient
that the water he drinks is beer, or the beer wine; and the analogy
between it and that by which I have supposed a spirit to present
himself, with such accompaniments as he desires, to the eye of a
spectator, is evident. In those instances where female figures are seen
with children in their arm, the appearance of the child we must suppose
to be produced in this manner.
Spirits of darkness, however, can not, as I have before observed, appear
as spirits of light; the moral nature can not be disguised. On one
occasion, when Frederica Hauffe asked a spirit if he could appear in
what form he pleased, he answered “No”—that if he had lived as a brute,
he should appear as a brute: “as our dispositions are, so we appear to
you.”
This plastic power is exhibited in those instances I have related, where
the figure appeared dripping with water, indicating the kind of death
that had been suffered; and also in such cases as that of Sir Robert H.
E——, where the apparition showed a wound in his breast. There are a
vast number of similar ones on record in all countries;—but I will here
mention one which I received from the lips of a member of the family
concerned, wherein one of the trivial actions of life was curiously
represented.
Miss L—— lived in the country with her three brothers, to whom she was
much attached, as they were to her. These young men, who amused
themselves all the morning with their out-door pursuits, were in the
habit of coming to her apartment most days before dinner, and conversing
with her till they were summoned to the dining-room. One day, when two
of them had joined her as usual, and they were chatting cheerfully over
the fire, the door opened, and the third came in, crossed the room,
entered an adjoining one, took off his boots, and then, instead of
sitting down beside them as usual, passed again through the room,
went out, leaving the door open, and they saw him ascend the
stairs toward his own chamber, whither they concluded he was gone
to change his dress. These proceedings had been observed by the whole
party: they saw him enter—saw him take off his boots—saw him ascend the
stairs,—continuing the conversation, without the slightest suspicion of
anything extraordinary. Presently afterward the dinner was announced;
and as this young man did not make his appearance, the servant was
desired to let him know they were waiting for him. The servant answered
that he had not come in yet; but, being told that he would find him in
his bed-room, he went up stairs to call him. He was, however, not there
nor in the house; nor were his boots to be found where he had been seen
to take them off. While they were yet wondering what could have become
of him, a neighbor arrived to break the news to the family that their
beloved brother had been killed while hunting, and that the only wish he
expressed was that he could live to see his sister once more.
I observed in a former chapter, while speaking of wraiths, now very
desirable it would be to ascertain whether the phenomenon takes place
before or after the dissolution of the bond between soul and body: I
have since received the most entire satisfaction on that head, so far as
the establishing the fact that it does sometimes occur after the
dissolution. Three cases have been presented to me, from the most
undoubted authority, in which the wraith was seen at intervals varying
from one to three days after the decease of the person whose image it
was; very much complicating the difficulty of that theory which
considers these phenomena the result of an interaction, wherein the
vital principle of one person is able to influence another within its
sphere, and thus make the organs of that other the subjects of its
will—a magical power, by the way, which far exceeds that which we
possess over our own organs. There is here, however, where death has
taken place, no living organism to produce the effect, and the
phenomenon becomes, therefore, purely subjective—a mere spectral
illusion, attended by a coincidence, or else the influence is that of
the disembodied spirit; and those who will take the trouble of
investigating this subject will find that the number of these
coincidences would violate any theory of probabilities, to a degree that
precludes the acceptance of that explanation. I do not see, therefore,
on what we are to fall back, except it be the willing agency of the
released spirit, unless we suppose that the operation of the will of the
dying person travelled so slowly, that it did not take effect till a day
or two after it was exerted—an hypothesis too extravagant to be
admitted.
Dr. Passavent, whose very philosophical work on this occult department
of nature is well worth attention, considers the fact of these
appearances far too well established to be disputed; and he enters into
some curious disquisitions with regard to what the Germans call
_far-working_, or the power of acting on bodies at a distance without
any sensible conductor, instancing the case of a gymnotus, which was
kept alive for four months in Stockholm, and which, when urged by
hunger, could kill fish at a distance without contact, adding that it
rarely miscalculated the amount of the shock necessary to its purpose.
These and all such effects are attributed by this school of
physiologists to the supposed imponderable—the nervous ether I have
elsewhere mentioned—which Dr. Passavent conceives, in cases of
somnambulism, certain sicknesses, and the approach of death, to be less
closely united to its material conductors, the nerves, and therefore
capable of being more or less detached, and acting at a distance,
especially on those with whom relationship, friendship, or love,
establishes a rapport, or polarity; and he observes that intervening
substances or distance can no more impede this agency than they do the
agency of mineral magnetism. And he considers that we must here seek for
the explanation of those curious so-called coincidences of pictures
falling, and clocks and watches stopping, at the moment of a death,
which we frequently find recorded.
With respect to the wraiths, he observes that the more the ether is
freed, as by trance or the immediate approach of death, the more easily
the soul sets itself in rapport with distant persons; and that thus it
either acts magically, so that the seer perceives the real actual body
of the person that is acting upon him, or else that he sees the ethereal
body, which presents the perfect form of the fleshly one, and which,
while the organic life proceeds, can be momentarily detached and appear
elsewhere; and this ethereal body he holds to be the fundamental form,
of which the external body is only the copy, or husk.
I confess, I much prefer this theory of Dr. Passavent’s, which seems to
me to go very much to the root of the matter. We have here the
“spiritual body” of St. Paul, and the “nerve-spirit” of the
somnambulists, and their magical effects are scarcely more
extraordinary, if properly considered, than their agency on our own
_material_ bodies. It is this ethereal body which obeys the intelligent
spirit within, and which is the intermediate agent between the spirit
and the fleshly body. We here find the explanation of wraiths, while
persons are in trance, or deep sleep, or comatose, this ethereal body
can be detached and appear elsewhere; and I think there can be no great
difficulty for those who can follow us so far, to go a little further,
and admit that this ethereal body must be indestructible, and survive
the death of the material one; and that it may, therefore, not only
become visible to us under given circumstances, but that it may, also,
produce effects bearing some similarity to those it was formerly capable
of, since, in acting on our bodies during life, it is already acting on
a material substance in a manner so incomprehensible to us, that we
might well apply the word _magical_ when speaking of it, were it not
that custom has familiarized us to the marvel.
It is to be observed, that this idea of a spiritual body is one that
pervaded all Christendom in the earlier and purer ages of Christianity,
before priestcraft—and by priestcraft I mean the priestcraft of all
denominations—had overshadowed and obscured, by its various sectarian
heresies, the pure teaching of Jesus Christ.
Dr. Ennemoser mentions a curious instance of this _actio in distans_, or
far-working. It appears that Van Helmont having asserted that it was
possible for a man to extinguish the life of an animal by the eye alone
(_oculis intentis_), Rousseau, the naturalist, repeated the experiment,
when in the East, and in this manner killed several toads; but on a
subsequent occasion, while trying the same experiment at Lyons, the
animal, on finding it could not escape, fixed its eyes immovably on him,
so that he fell into a fainting fit, and was thought to be dead. He was
restored by means of theriacum and viper powder—a truly homeopathic
remedy! However, we here probably see the origin of the universal
popular persuasion, that there is some mysterious property in the eye of
a toad; and also of the so called, superstition of the _evil eye_.
A very remarkable circumstance occurred some years ago, at Kirkaldy,
when a person, for whose truth and respectability I can vouch, was
living in the family of a Colonel M——, at that place. The house they
inhabited was at one extremity of the town, and stood in a sort of
paddock. One evening when Colonel M—— had dined out, and there was
nobody at home but Mrs. M——, her son (a boy about twelve years old),
and Ann the maid (my informant), Mrs. M—— called the latter, and
directed her attention to a soldier, who was walking backward and
forward in the drying ground, behind the house, where some linen was
hanging on the lines. She said she wondered what he could be doing
there, and bade Ann fetch in the linen, lest he should purloin any of
it. The girl, fearing he might be some ill-disposed person, felt afraid;
Mrs. M——, however, promising to watch from the window, that nothing
happened to her, she went; but still apprehensive of the man’s
intentions, she turned her back toward him, and hastily pulling down the
linen, she carried it into the house; he continuing his walk the while,
as before, taking no notice of her whatever. Ere long the colonel
returned, and Mrs. M—— lost no time in taking him to the window to
look at the man, saying she could not conceive what he could mean by
walking backward and forward there all that time; whereupon Ann added,
jestingly, “I think it’s a ghost, for my part!” Colonel M—— said “he
would soon see that,” and calling a large dog that was lying in the
room, and accompanied by the little boy, who begged to be permitted to
go also, he stepped out and approached the stranger; when, to his
surprise, the dog, which was an animal of high courage, instantly flew
back, and sprung through the glass-door, which the colonel had closed
behind him, shivering the panes all around.
The colonel, meantime, advanced and challenged the man, repeatedly,
without obtaining any answer or notice whatever, till, at length,
getting irritated, he raised a weapon with which he had armed himself,
telling him he “must speak or take the consequences,” when, just as he
was preparing to strike, lo! there was nobody there! The soldier had
disappeared, and the child sunk senseless to the ground. Colonel M——
lifted the boy in his arms, and as he brought him into the house, he
said to the girl, “You are right, Ann; it _was_ a ghost!” He was
exceedingly impressed with this circumstance, and much regretted his own
behavior, and also the having taken the child with him, which he thought
had probably prevented some communication that was intended. In order to
repair, if possible, these errors, he went out every night, and walked
on that spot for some time, in hopes the apparition would return. At
length he said that he had seen and conversed with it; but the purport
of the conversation he would never communicate to any human being, not
even to his wife. The effect of this occurrence on his own character was
perceptible to everybody that knew him. He became grave and thoughtful,
and appeared like one who had passed through some strange experience.
The above-named Ann H——, from whom I have the account, is now a
middle-aged woman. When the circumstance occurred, she was about twenty
years of age. She belongs to a highly-respectable family, and is, and
always has been, a person of unimpeachable character and veracity.
In this instance, as in several others I meet with, the animal had a
consciousness of the nature of the appearance, while the persons around
him had no suspicion of anything unusual. In the following singular case
we must conclude that attachment counteracted this instinctive
apprehension. A farmer in Argyleshire lost his wife, and a few weeks
after her decease, as he and his son were crossing a moor, they saw her
sitting on a stone, with their house-dog lying at her feet, exactly as
he used to do when she was alive. As they approached the spot the woman
vanished, and supposing the dog must be equally visionary, they expected
to see him vanish, also; when, to their surprise, he rose and joined
them, and they found it was actually the very animal of flesh and blood.
As the place was at least three miles from any house, they could not
conceive what could have taken him there. It was, probably, the
influence of her will.
The power of _will_ is a phenomenon that has been observed in all ages
of the world, though of late years much less than at an earlier period;
and, as it was then more frequently exerted for evil than good, it was
looked upon as a branch of the art of black magic, while the philosophy
of it being unknown, the devil was supposed to be the real agent, and
the witch, or wizard, only his instrument. The profound belief in the
existence of this art is testified by the twelve tables of Rome, as well
as by the books of Moses, and those of Plato, &c. It is extremely absurd
to suppose that all these statutes were enacted to suppress a crime
which never existed: and, with regard to these witches and wizards, we
must remember, as Dr. Ennemoser justly remarks, that the force of will
has no relation to the strength or weakness of the body: witness the
extraordinary feats occasionally performed by feeble persons under
excitement, &c.; and, although these witches and wizards were frequently
weak, decrepit people, they either believed in their own arts, or else
that they had a friend or coadjutor in the devil, who was able and
willing to aid them. They, therefore, did not doubt their own power, and
they had the one great requisite, _faith_. To _will and to believe_, was
the explanation given by the Marquis de Puységur of the cures he
performed; and this unconsciously becomes the recipe of all such men as
Greatrix, the Shepherd of Dresden, and many other wonder-workers, and
hence we see why it is usually the humble, the simple and the
child-like, the solitary, the recluse, nay, the ignorant, who exhibit
traces of these occult faculties; for he who can not believe can not
_will_, and the skepticism of the intellect disables the magician; and
hence we say, also, wherefore, in certain parts of the world and in
certain periods of its history, these powers and practices have
prevailed. They were believed in because they existed; and they existed
because they were believed in. There was a continued interaction of
cause and effect—of faith and works. People who look superficially at
these things, delight in saying that the more the witches were
persecuted the more they abounded; and that when the persecution ceased
we heard no more of them. Naturally, the more they were persecuted the
more they believed in witchcraft and in themselves; when persecution
ceased, and men in authority declared that there was no such thing as
witchcraft or witches, they lost their faith, and with it that little
sovereignty over nature that that faith had conquered.
Here we also see an explanation of the power attributed to blessings and
curses. The Word of God is creative, and man is the child of God, made
in his image; who never outgrows his childhood, and is often most a
child when he thinks himself the wisest, for “the wisdom of this world,”
we can not too often repeat, “is foolishness before God”—and being a
child, his faculties are feeble in proportion; but though limited in
amount, they are divine in kind, and are latent in all of us; still
shooting up here and there, to amaze and perplex the wise, and make
merry the foolish, who have nearly all alike forgotten their origin, and
disowned their birthright.