that have at times decided the fate of the world. Thus Pausanias already
tells us ("Attica," 32), and so do other historians of Greece, how the
Plain of Marathon resounded for nearly four centuries every year with
the clash of arms and the cries of soldiers. It was evidently the deep
and lasting impression made upon a highly sensitive nation, which here
was bequeathed from generation to generation, and on the day of the
battle, when all was excitement, resulted in the perception of sounds
which had no real existence. Events of such colossal proportions, which
determine in a few hours the fate of great nations, leave naturally a
powerful impress upon contemporaries not only, but also upon the
children of that race. Such was, among others, the fearful battle on the
Catalaunian Fields, in which the Visi-Goths and Aetius conquered Attila,
and one hundred and sixty-two thousand warriors were slain. It was at
the time reported that the intense bitterness and exasperation of the
armies continued even after the battle, and that for three days the
spirits of the fallen were contending with each other with unabated
fury. The report grew into a legend, till a firm belief was established
that the battle was fought year after year on the memorable day, and
that any visitor might behold the passionate spirits as they rose from
their graves, armed with their ancient weapons and filled with
undiminished fury. One by one the soldiers of the two armies, it was
said, leave their lowly graves, rise high into the air, and engage in
deadly but silent strife, till they vanish in the clouds. It is well
known how successfully the great German painter, Kaulbach, has
reproduced the vision in his magnificent fresco of the "Hunnenschlacht."
In other countries these ghostly visions assume different forms. Thus
the neighborhood of Kerope, in Livonia, is in like manner renowned for a
long series of fearful butcheries during the wars between the German
knights and the Muscovites. There also, night after night, the shadowy
battle is fought over again; but the clashing of arms and the hoarse
war-cries are distinctly heard, and the pious traveler hastens away from
the blood-soaked plains, uttering his prayers for the souls of the
slain. In the Highlands of Scotland also, and on the adjoining islands,
most weird and gruesome sights have been watched by young and old in
every generation. The dark, dismal atmosphere of those regions, the
dense fogs and impenetrable mists, now rising from the sea, and now
descending from the mountains, and the fierce, inclement climate, have
all combined for ages to predispose the mind for the perception of such
strange and mysterious phenomena. Nearly every clan and every family has
its own particular ghost, and besides these the whole nation claims a
number of common visions and prophetic spirits, whose harps and wild
songs are heard faintly and fearfully sounding on high. A friend of Mr.
Martin, the author of a work on "Second Sight," used to recite several
stanzas belonging to such a prophetic song, which he had heard himself
on a sad November day, as it came to him through the drooping clouds and
sweeping mists from the summit of a lonely mountain. At funerals also,
wonderful voices were heard high in the air, as they accompanied the
chanting of the people below, with a music not born upon earth, and
filling the heart with strange but sweet sadness. Nearly the same
visions are seen and the same songs are heard in Sweden and Norway,
proving conclusively that like climatic influences produce also a
similar magic life, in individuals not only, but in whole nations. For
even if we are disposed to look upon these phenomena as merely strange
appearances of clouds and mists, accompanied by the howling and
whistling of the wind and the tumbling down of rocks and gravel, there
remains the uniformity with which thousands of every generation
interpret these sights and sounds into weird visions and solemn
chantings.
It is, however, not quite so evident why the peculiar class of visions
which is often erroneously called second sight--the beholding of a
"double"--should be almost entirely confined to these same northern
regions. It is, of course, not unknown to other lands also, and even
Holy Writ seems to justify the presumption that the idea of a "double"
was familiar to the people of Palestine. For the poor damsel Rhoda, who
"for gladness" did not open the door at which Peter knocked, after he
had been miraculously liberated, but ran to announce his presence to the
friends who were assembled at the house of Mark's brother, was first
called mad, and then told: "It is his angel" (Acts xii. 13). They
evidently meant, not that it was the spirit of their deceased friend,
since they would have been made aware of his death, but a phantom
representing his living body. But the number of authentic cases of
persons who have seen their own form, is vastly greater at the North
than anywhere else. The Celtic superstition of the "fetch," as the
appearance of a person's "double" is there called, is too well known to
require explanation. But the vision itself is one of the most
interesting in the study of magic, since it exhibits most strikingly the
great power which the human soul may, under peculiar circumstances,
gain and exercise over its own self, leading to complete self-delusion.
A case in which this strange abdication of all self-control led to most
desirable consequences, is mentioned by Dr. Mayo. A young man recently
from Oxford once saw a friend of his enter the room in which he was
dining with some companions. The new comer, just returning from hunting,
seemed to them to look unusually pale and was evidently in a state of
great excitement. After much urging he at last confessed that he had
been seriously disturbed in mind by a man who had kept him close company
all the way home. This stranger, on horseback like himself, had been his
exact image, down to a new bridle, his own invention, which he had tried
that day for the first time. He fancied that this "double" was his own
ghost and an omen of his impending death. His friends advised him to
confer with the head of his college; this was done, and the latter gave
him much good advice, adding the hope that the warning would not be
allowed to pass unimproved. It is certain that the apparition made so
strong an impression upon the young man as to lead to his entire
reformation, at least for a time.
It is claimed by many writers that there are persons who continually
have visions, because they live in constant communication with spirits,
although in all cases they have to pay a fearful penalty for this sad
privilege. They are invariably diseased people, mostly women, who fall
into trances, have cataleptic attacks, or suffer of even more painful
maladies, and during the time of their affliction behold and converse
with the inmates of another world. The most renowned of these seers was
a Mrs. Hauffe, who has become well known to the reading world through
Dr. J. Kerner's famous work, "The Seeress of Prevorst." A peculiar
feature in her case was the fact that the visions she had were
invariably announced to bystanders by peculiar sounds, heard by all who
were present. The forms assumed by her mysterious visitors varied almost
infinitely; now it was a man in a brown gown, and now a woman in white.
Often, when the spirits appeared in the open air, and she tried to
escape from them by running, she was bodily lifted up and hurried along
so fast that her companions could not keep pace with her. It was only
later in life that she fell as a patient into the hands of Dr. Kerner,
who was quite distinguished as a poet, and had a great renown as a
physician for insane people of a special class. His house at Weinsberg
in Wuertemberg, was filled to overflowing with persons of all classes of
society, from the highest to the lowest, and all had visions. Nor was
the doctor himself excluded; he also was a seer, and has given in the
above-mentioned book a full and most interesting account of the diseases
in connection with which magic phenomena are most frequently observed.
By the aid of careful observation of actual facts, and using such
revelations vouchsafed to him and others as he believed fully
trustworthy, he formed a regular theory of visions. First of all he
admits that the privilege of communing with spirits is a grievous
affliction, and that all of his more thoughtful patients continually
prayed to be delivered of the burden. It is evident from all he states
that not only the body, but the mind also suffers--and in many cases
suffers unto destruction--under the effects of such exceptional powers;
that in fact the lines of separation between this life and another life
can never be crossed with impunity. His most interesting patient, Mrs.
Hauffe, presents the usual mixture of mere fanciful imagery with
occasional flashes of truth; her genuine revelations were marvelous, and
can only be explained upon the ground of real magic; but with them are
mixed up the most absurd theories and the most startling contradictions.
She insisted, however, upon the fact that only those spirits could
commune with mortal man who were detained in the middle realm--between
heaven and hell--the spirits of men who were in this life unable, though
not unwilling, to believe that "God could forgive their sins for the
sake of Christ's death." She was often tried by Dr. Kerner and others;
she was told that certain still living persons had died, and asked to
summon their spirits, but she was never misled. There can be no doubt
that the poor woman was sincere in her statements; but she was
apparently unable to distinguish between real visions in a trance and
the mere offspring of her imagination. That her peculiarities were
closely connected with her bodily condition is, moreover, proved by the
fact that her whole family suffered in similar manner and enjoyed
similar powers; a brother and a sister, as well as her young son, all
had visions and heard mysterious noises. The latter were, in fact,
perceptible to all the inmates of the strange house; even the great
skeptic, Dr. Strausz, who once visited it, heard "long, fearful
groanings" close to his amiable hostess, who had fallen asleep on her
sofa. Nor were the ghosts content with disturbing the patients and their
excellent physician; they made themselves known to their friends and
neighbors, also, and even the good minister in the little town had much
to suffer from nightly knockings and strange utterances.
Dr. Kerner himself heard many spirits, but saw only one, and that only
as "a grayish pillar;" on the other hand he witnessed countless
mysterious phenomena which occurred in his patients' bedrooms. Now he
beheld Mrs. Hauffe's boots pulled off by invisible hands, while she
herself was lying almost inanimate, in a trance, on her bed, and now he
heard her reveal secrets which, upon writing to utterly unknown persons
at a great distance, proved to be correctly stated. What makes a
thorough investigation of all these phenomena peculiarly difficult, is
the fact that Dr. Kerner's house became an asylum for somnambulists as
well as for real patients, and that by this mixture the scientific value
of his observations, as regards their psychological interest, is
seriously impaired. He himself was a sincere believer in magic
phenomena; almost all of his friends and neighbors, from the humblest
peasant to the most cultivated men of science, believed in him and his
statements, and there can be no doubt that astonishing revelations were
made and extraordinary powers became manifest in his house. But here,
also, the difficulty of separating the few grains of truth from the
great mass of willful, as well as of unconscious delusion, is almost
overwhelming, and our final judgment must be held in suspense, till more
light has been thrown on the subject. Dr. Kerner's son, who succeeded
his father at his death in 1862, still keeps up the remarkable
establishment at Weinsberg; but exclusively for the cure of certain
diseases by magnetism.
VI.
DIVINATION.
"There shall not be found among you any one that useth divination."
--DEUT. xviii. 9.
The usual activity of our mind is limited to the perception of the world
around us, and its life, as far as the power of our senses reaches; it
must, therefore, necessarily be confined within the limits of space and
time. There are, however, specially favored men among us who profess an
additional power, or even ordinary men may be thus endowed under
peculiar circumstances, as when they are under the influence of nervous
affections, trances, or even merely in an unusual state of excitement.
Then they are no longer subject to the usual laws of distance in space,
or remoteness in time; they perceive as immediately present what lies
beyond the reach of others, and the magic power by which this is
accomplished is called Divination. This vision is never quite clear, nor
always complete or correct, for even such exceptionable powers are in
all cases more or less subject to the imperfections of our nature;
habitual notions, an ill-executed imagination, and often a disordered
state of the system, all interfere with its perfect success. These
imperfections, moreover, not only affect the value of such magic
perceptions, but obscure the genuine features by a number of false
statements and of erroneous impressions, which quite legitimately excite
a strong prejudice against the whole subject. Hence, especially, the
rigor of the Church against divination in every form; it has ever
ascribed the errors mixed up with the true parts of such revelations to
the direct influence of the Evil One. The difficulty, however, arises
that such magic powers have nothing at all to do with the question of
morality; the saint and the criminal may possess them alike, since they
are elements of our common nature, hidden in the vast majority of cases,
and coming into view and into life only in rare exceptional instances.
Divination, as freed from the ordinary limits of our perceptions,
appears either as clairvoyance, when things are seen which are beyond
the range of natural vision, or as prophecy, when the boundary lines of
time are overstepped. The latter appears again in its weakest form as a
mere anticipation of things to come, or rises to perfection in the
actual foretelling of future events. It is sad enough to learn from the
experience of all nations that the occurrences thus foreseen are almost
invariably great misfortunes, yet our surprise will cease if we remember
that the tragic in life exercises by far the greatest influence on our
mind, and excites it far beyond all other events. Nor must we overlook
the marvelous unanimity with which such magic powers are admitted to
exist in Man by all nations on earth. The explanation, also, is
invariably the same, namely, that Man possessed originally the command
over space and time as well as God himself, but that when sin came into
the world and affected his earth-born body, this power was lost, and
preserved only to appear in exceptional and invariably most painful
cases. So thought the ancients even long before revelation had spoken.
They believed that Man had had a previous god-like existence before
appearing upon earth, where he was condemned to expiate the sins of his
former life, while his immortal and divine soul was chained to a
perishing earthy body. Plato, Plutarch, and Pythagoras, Cicero (in his
book _De Divinatione_), and even Porphyrius, all admit without
hesitation the power of divination, and speak of its special vigor in
the moments preceding death. Melanchthon ascribed warning dreams to the
prophetic power of the human soul. Brierre de Boismont also is forced to
admit that not all cases of clairvoyance and prophesying are the results
of hallucination by diseased persons; he speaks, on the contrary, and in
spite of his bitter skepticism, of instances in which the increased
powers of perception are the effect of "supernatural intuition."
One of the most prolific sources of error in Divination has ever been
the variety of means employed for the purpose of causing the preparatory
state of trance. It is well known in our day that the mind may be most
strangely affected by innumerable agencies which are apparently purely
mechanical, and often utterly absurd. Such are an intent gazing at
highly-polished surfaces of metal, or into the bright inside of a gold
cup, at the shining sides of a crystal, or the varying hues of a glass
globe; now vessels filled with pure water, and now ink poured into the
hand of a child, answer the same purpose. Fortune-telling from the lines
of the hand or the chance combinations of playing-cards are, in this
aspect, on a par with the prophecies of astrologers drawn from the
constellations in the heavens. It need hardly be added that this almost
infinite variety of more or less absurd measures has nothing at all to
do with the awaking of magic power, and continues in use only from the
prestige which some of the means, like the cup of Joseph and the mirror
of Varro, derive from their antiquity. Their sole purpose is uniformly
to withdraw the seer's attention from all outward objects, and to make
him, by steadily gazing at one and the same object, concentrate his
thoughts and feelings exclusively upon his own self. Experience has
taught that such efforts, long continued, result finally in utter loss
of feeling, in unconsciousness, and frequently even in catalepsy. It is
generally only under such peculiarly painful circumstances that the
unusual powers of our being can become visible and begin to operate.
While these results may be obtained, as recent experiments have proved,
even by mere continued squinting, barbarous nations employ the most
violent means for the same purpose--the whirling of dervishes, the
drumming and dancing of northern shamans, the deafening music of the
Moors, are all means of the same kind to excite the rude and fierce
nature of savages to a state of excessive excitement. In all cases,
however, we must notice the comparative sterility of such divination,
and the penalty which has to be paid for most meagre results by injuries
inflicted upon the body, and by troubles caused in the mind, which, if
they do not become fatal to life, are invariably so to happiness and
peace. That the sad privilege may have to be paid for with life itself,
we learn already from Plutarch's account of a priestess who became so
furious while prophesying, that not only the strangers but the priests
themselves fled in dismay, while she herself expired a few hours later
(II. p. 438).
The state in which all forms of divination are most apt to show
themselves is by theologians called _ecstasis_, when it is caused by
means specially employed for the purpose and appears as a literally
"being beside one's self"; by its side they speak of _raptus_, when the
abnormal state suddenly begins during an act of ordinary life, such as
walking, working, or even praying. The distinction is of no value as to
the nature of the magic powers themselves, which are in all cases the
same; it refers exclusively to the outer form.
One of the simplest methods is the Deasil-walking of the Scotch
Highlanders: the seer walks rapidly three times, with the sun, around
the person whose future is to be foretold, and thus produces a trance,
in which his magic powers become available. Walter Scott's "Chronicles
of the Canongate" gives a full account of this ceremony. Robin Oig's
aunt performs the ceremony, and then warns him in great terror, that she
has seen a bloody dagger in his hand, stained with English blood, and
beseeches him to stay at home. He disregards the omen, kills the same
night an Englishman, a cattle-dealer, and pays for the crime with his
life.
In the East, on the contrary, the usual form is to employ a young boy,
taken at haphazard from the street, and to force him to gaze intently at
Indian ink poured into the hollow of the hand, at molten lead, wax
poured into cold water, the paten of a priest or a shining sword, with
which several men have been killed. General readers will recall the
famous boy of Cairo, who saw thus, in the dark, glittering surface of
ink, the great Nelson--curiously enough as in a mirror, for he reported
the image to be without the left arm and to wear the left sleeve across
the breast, while the great admiral had lost his right arm and wore the
right sleeve suspended. Burke, in his amusing "Anecdotes of the
Aristocracy," etc. (I. p. 124), relates how the "magician" Magraubin in
Alexandria appeared with a ten-year-old Coptic boy before the officers
of H. M's. ship _Vanguard_. After burning much incense and uttering many
unintelligible formulas he rolled a paper in the shape of a cornucopia,
filled it with ink, and bade the boy tell them what he saw. As usual, he
saw first a broom sweeping, and was thoroughly frightened. When a young
midshipman asked him to inquire what would be his fate, he described
instantly a sailor with gold on the shoulders, fighting against Indians
till he fell dead; then came friends and buried him under a tree on a
hill. The midshipman, Croker, returned home, abandoned the sea, and
became a landowner in one of the midland counties of England, where he
often laughed at the absurd prediction. Long years afterwards, however,
when there was a sudden want of seamen, he was recalled into service and
sent on a long cruise. He rose to become a captain, and while in command
of a frigate fell, upon the island of Tongataboo, in a skirmish with the
natives, whereupon he was interred there under a lofty palm-tree which
stood on a commanding eminence. The same author repeats (I. p. 357) the
well-known story of Lady Eleanor Campbell, which is in substance as
follows: