Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and
punctuation remains unchanged.
Italics are represented thus _italic_, bold thus bold.
YIEGER’S CABINET.
SPIRITUAL VAMPIRISM:
THE HISTORY
OF
ETHERIAL SOFTDOWN,
AND
Her Friends of the “New Light.”
BY C. W. WEBBER,
AUTHOR OF
“OLD HICKS THE GUIDE,” “CHARLES WINTERFIELD PAPERS,”
“THE HUNTER-NATURALIST,” “TALES OF THE SOUTHERN BORDER,” ETC.
A heavy, hell-like paleness loads her cheeks,
Unknown to a clear heaven.
JOHN MARSTON.
O vulture-witch, hast never heard of mercy?
ENDYMION.
PHILADELPHIA:
LIPPINCOTT, GRAMBO & CO.
1853.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by
LIPPINCOTT, GRAMBO & CO.,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States,
in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
STEREOTYPED BY J. FAGAN. T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS, PRINTERS.
INTRODUCTION.
On page 392 of the concluding sketch of a late series, the “Tales of
the Southern Border,” occurs the following passage:—
“THE ESCRITOIRE.
“The author, being a resident of New York during the period of the
leading incidents narrated as occurring in that city, had formed the
acquaintance of the principal personage. Himself a Southerner, he
had, from the natural affinities of origin, inevitably been attracted
toward Carter. The intercourse between them, at first reserved, had
imperceptibly warmed into a degree of intimacy, which, however, had
by no means been such as to render him at all cognisant, beyond
the merest generalities, of the progress of his private affairs.
He was not a little surprised, therefore, at finding, one day, an
elegant escritoire or cabinet, of dark, rich wood, heavily banded in
the old-fashioned style with silver, which had been placed, in his
absence, on the table of his sanctum. A note, in a sealed envelope,
lay upon it. He instantly recognised the handwriting of the address as
that of Mr. Carter, and broke the seal.
“It was evidently written in great haste, but without any sign of
trepidation. It ran thus:—
“MY DEAR FRIEND:
“I have no time for explanations, as I am in the midst of hurried
preparations for an unexpected yacht-voyage—upon which I set sail in a
few minutes. I send you an escritoire, which was left in my charge by
a highly valued friend. He was an extraordinary man; and its contents
will be, I doubt not, of great value to the world.
“It was given me, with the injunction that it should not be opened
until six months after his death. The six months were up some weeks
since, but I have lately been too much otherwise absorbed to think of
making use of the privilege of the key. I now therefore transfer to
you this bequest in full, with the proviso that you will not open it
for six months. If at the end of that time I have not been heard from,
please open, and without reserve make what use of it your excellent
sense may justify. Please take charge of whatever correspondence may
arrive to my address for the same length of time, at the expiration of
which you will also please to consider yourself as my executor—open
my correspondence and proceed as you may think best. Pardon this
unceremonious intrusion of responsibilities upon an intimacy, the
terms of which I hardly feel would strictly justify me; but the plea
that I know no one else whom I can trust, and have no time for further
explanation, will I am sure justify me in the eyes of a brother
Southron.
“Yours truly,
“FRANK CARTER.
“Six months having elapsed, and still no news of my singular friend
Carter, the fulfilment of the important duties of executor, thus
unexpectedly devolved upon him, were deferred by the narrator as long
as his sense of duty would possibly admit. At last, when longer delay
would have seemed to assume almost the aspect of criminality, the duty
of opening the cabinet was unwillingly entered upon.”
* * * * *
On my next meeting with my friend Carter, who proved still to be in the
land of the living, I spoke to him of the cabinet and its remarkable
contents, which had so unexpectedly been left in my charge; offering to
resign to him my trusteeship. To this, however, he would by no means
consent, but continued to insist, as in his original letter, that I
should without reserve make what use of it my sense of propriety might
dictate. I was finally overruled into undertaking the mere arrangement
and editorship of its contents—for the revelations there made are
in many respects so strangely horrifying and unusual, that I fear
the world will be little disposed to pardon my agency in giving them
publicity. However, as I believe them to be, in every respect, genuine
life-experiences, I have determined to make the venture, come what will
of it. We shall therefore give, as proper introduction to the singular
narrative which we have selected from beneath the blood-stained seals
of the cabinet it has been our fate to open, the following singular
paper, which we found lying separately above the folds of the MS. which
constitutes the History of Etherial Softdown.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MESMERIC IMPOSITION.
TO BE READ BY PHILOSOPHERS ONLY.[1]
The existence of what may be called the nervous or Odic fluid—the
sympathetic element—has been partially known to all ages. The knowledge
of this powerful secret, in moving and controlling mankind, has been
professionally and almost exclusively confined to the adepts of all
sects, religions, and periods; though it has occasionally, in various
ways, leaked out of the penetralia, principally through its forms,
accompanied with little or no apprehension of their vital meaning. It
is in this way that a series of scientific phenomena, the discovery of
which probably originated with a remote priestcraft, and had been made
to subserve exclusive ends, has gradually been fragmented among the
people, and in many imperfect, ignorant, and vitiated forms has now
become the common property of science.
[1] The Story begins at Chapter I.—ED.
When it is understood that this nervous fluid is nothing more nor
less than that force—whether electrical, magnetic, odic, or otherwise
named—which, lubricating the nervous system in man, produces all vital
phenomena—is, in a word, the vital force—the active principle of
life—it will not be difficult to comprehend how important a knowledge
of its laws may be rendered to even those relations of life not
exclusively physical.
Mesmer promulgated, under his own name, as a new and astounding
discovery in science, something of the sympathetic laws to which
this nervous or Odic fluid is subject, and by which the vital and
spiritual relations of man to the external universe are in a great
measure modified, and even controlled. This was no discovery of his,
but had been the mainly exclusive secret of the ancient priesthood;
employed alike in the ceremonies of the novitiate in the Thibetian
temples of Buddha, in the Egyptian Initiation, and in Grecian Pythism.
But the particular reason why his announcements caused such prodigious
excitement, in 1784, as to run all Paris mad, even including the
court of the wary Louis XVI., and still continue to excite and
madden mankind, is, that, as the sympathetic ecstacies and furors,
superinduced by the mummeries of his famous “vat,” were called by a
new name, the people failed to recognise them, although they had been
familiarised with, and even acting habitually under their influence,
while surrounded by accessories of a more sacred character. The
immediate success of Mesmer’s experiments amazed men. He, in fact,
little knew what he was doing himself; the effects he understood how to
produce, because accident had furnished him with the formulas. Having
gone through these, which, though most grotesque and preposterous,
later experience has shown, really included all the “passes” and other
conditions necessary to establish sympathy through the nervous fluid
with the victims of his delusion, he proceeded to produce exhibitions
the most extraordinary the world ever saw, except in the hideous and
frantic orgies of some wild, barbaric creed, and the parallels to
which, in this country, are to be found in the shrieks and bellowings
of a fanatic camp-meeting, Miller ascension-tent, Mormon rite, or
hard-cider political mass-meeting.
Beginning with the postulate that “Nature abhors a vacuum,” it does not
seem difficult to understand something, at least, of the rationale
of this sympathetic influence of one man over another. The laws of
the distribution of this Odic force seem to bear a somewhat general
affinity to those of electricity. The surcharged cloud discharges
its superfluous fluid into the cloud more negatively charged. The
man holding a superfluous amount of vital or Odic force, can dismiss
a portion of this—along the course of its proper lightning-rods, or
conveyers, the nerves—into the organisation of a being more negatively
charged, or, in other words, of a weaker man. As electricity can only
act upon inert matter through its proper media, the elements, so
the Odic fluid can only act upon organised matter normally through
its proper medium, the nerves of vitality. This communication of
the Odic fluid, by which sympathy between the two beings has been
established, can be, to a certain degree, regulated and controlled by
manipulations which bring the thumbs and fingers of the hand, which are
properly Odic poles, in contact with certain great nerves, or centres
of nerves, along which the influence can be readily communicated.
These manipulations, the vital and original meanings of which these
Mesmer agitators have betrayed, may be traced very clearly through
the most important ceremonies of religion, and the secret orders of
fraternisation in the world. From this point of view, how significant
the “laying-on of hands” in ordination, the “joining of hands” in the
marriage ceremony, &c.
Here let us remark, that we would no more be understood as accusing
a Christian Priesthood, in modern times, of having made an improper
use, either inside or out of their profession, of the manipulations
mentioned above, than we would think of accusing them of having, as
a class, any special knowledge of their significance beyond that of
ceremonial forms, set down in the discipline. It has been to the
Heathen Priesthood that we have consistently attributed a knowledge of
the psychological meaning of these ceremonials, which have descended
through the Hebrew and Christian churches as avowedly divested of vital
significance, and intended, in their arbitrary exaction, as, to a
certain degree, ordained tests of Christian faith and obedience.
But it is by no means indispensable to the exhibition of the Odic
phenomena, that the processes of manipulation should have been
literally gone through with in all cases—nor, indeed, in the majority
even—for some of the most apparently inexplicable and extraordinary
of them all are brought about without such intervention. Take, as
comparatively “modern instances,” such effects as those produced by
the preaching of Peter the Hermit, when not only vast armies of men
were moved like flights of locusts toward the Desert, on the breeze of
his fiery breath, to disappear, too, as they, within its bosom, and
never be heard from again, but even great armies of children rushed
in migratory hordes to the sea-ports, to ship for the Holy Land!—and
those produced by the crusade of Father Mathew against intemperance, in
our time, when all Ireland lay wailing at his feet. These great furors
were precisely identical with those already enumerated, so far as the
sympathetic or motive power went. So with the story of the rise of
Mahomet, Joe Smith, Miller, and all such agitators. They are usually
men of prodigious vital power, and of course surcharged with the Odic
fluid, who begin these great movements; and they possess, beside,
vast patience and endurance. They begin by filling the individuals in
immediate contact with them, as Mahomet did his own family, with the
superfluity of the Odic force in themselves, and having thus obtained
a single medium by this immediate contact—which, although it may not
imply the formal manipulations with preconceived design, implies the
accidental equivalents—the circle gradually enlarges through each
fresh accession, in much the same way that it began, until, after a
few patient years of unshaken endurance, the apostle finds himself
surrounded by thousands and thousands of human beings, whose volition
is swayed through this Odic force—this sympathetic medium—by his own
central, resolute, and self-poised will, as if they were but one man.
His moveless volition has been, from the beginning, the base and axis
of the vast sympathetic movement going on around him, and upon the
single strength of the Odic force within him, all depends, until,
through a thorough organisation of ceremonial laws and observances, the
system of which he was the vital centre assumes a corporate existence,
and can stand alone.
This is about the method in which all such organisations, radiating
from the _one man_ power or centre, widen their circles to an extreme
circumference, until the force of the pebble thrown into the great
lake is exhausted. So it is with all sympathetic excitements—from
the Dancing Dervishes, the Shaking Quakers, or the Barking Brothers,
to the vast Empire of France, led frenzied over the world in the
will-o’-the-wisp chase of universal sovereignty, by the fantastic will
of a Napoleon. These are some of the general phenomena of sympathy,
and there are many quite as extraordinary, if not as broad in what
are called atmospheric or epidemic conditions, which go to prove the
universality of this sympathetic law.
The distinctions between Od and Heat, Od and Electricity, as well as Od
and Magnetism, have been so clearly demonstrated by the investigations
of Baron Reichenbach as to leave at present no choice between the
terms. Od expresses that force which, differing in many essential
properties from the other two, can alone through its phenomena be
reconciled with what we know of the Sympathetic or Nervous Fluid.
It is therefore used as a synonym of this mysterious agency, and as
conveying a far higher definition and significance than either the term
Electricity or Mesmerism.
The worst and the best that the agitation begun by Mesmer has
accomplished, is, to have stripped old Necromancy of its mysterious
spells, by revealing something of the rationale of them, while at the
same time, in unveiling its processes to the sharp eyes of modern
knaves, they have been enabled to appropriate and practise them again
with even more than the old success, under the new christening of
“scientific experiment.” It is, I think, easily enough shown, by a
minute and circumstantial comparison of the cotemporary history of
the dark age of black art ascendancy in Europe, which was literally
the dark age of chivalry, with that of Cotton Mather witch-burning
enlightenment in New England, that the arts practised by the accused
in both these countries, and at all other such periods in all
other countries, were nearly identical with each other; and those
familiarised to us through the doings of mesmeric manipulation,
revelation, clairvoyance, spiritual knockings, &c., &c., are generally
the very same, though assuming slight shades of difference, indicating
some progressive development. A partial knowledge of psychological
laws, which was formerly, and with great plausibility, considered
altogether too dangerous pabulum for the vulgar mind, has been sown
broadcast by the empiricism of this mesmeric movement, the principal
oracles and expounders of which have been clearly as ignorant of the
causes with which they agitated, as ever wrinkled crone of peat-smoked
hovel was of the true laws of that occult palmistry, through the
practice, or vague traditions of which, she finally prophesied
herself into the martyrdom of the “red-hot ploughshares,” or the warm
resting-place of the pot of boiling pitch. They only know that certain
formulas produce certain results, and as they are blundering entirely
in the dark, they mix those which have a basis in science with the
crude and meaningless forms which ignorance, with its abject cunning,
easily supplies. From such amalgamations have arisen the mummeries of
conjuration in whatever form, and by the imprudent use of which, the
credulous, simple and superstitious, are so easily “frightened from
their propriety,” and thus made easy victims of more dangerous arts.
But it is a study of the fearful uses which have been made by the
evil-disposed, of this _partial_ knowledge of the laws of relation
of soul to the body, that is more interesting now than these olden
disguises of the same evil in more helpless forms; as now, through
the mesmeric agitation, it has really attained to some gleam of
causes—has now something of scientific illumination to steady and
give direction to its reckless and deadly aim. In the radius of its
hurtful circumference, the vicious power of the witch, fortune-teller
or conjuror, was as much more circumscribed than that of the
semi-scientific charlatan of clairvoyance, as the vision of the mole
is less than that of the viper, which, at least, looks out into the
sunshine though every cloud may impede its malignant gaze.
The relative degrees in which the Odic or sympathetic fluid may be
found exhibited in the different individuals of our race, have been
previously remarked in general terms. In the sexes, we most usually
find the positive pole in man, who gives out, and the negative in
woman, who receives and absorbs from him, the dispenser. Though this
be the general rule so far as the sexes are concerned, it is by no
means the universal rule for the race—since there are among men but
few positive poles, or fixed centres of Odic radiation; and where such
are found, they are observed to possess much of what we commonly call
“influence” with or upon others. All the parties, therefore, within the
circle of this sympathetic radiation, or “magnetic attraction,” as it
is popularly termed, must necessarily be, relatively to this positive
pole, negative poles, without regard to sex—while each of these
comparatively negative poles may in turn be a positive pole, or Odic
centre, to those below or of weaker nature than himself.
Those men who have been known to all humanity as prophets, poets,
law-givers, discoverers, reformers, &c., are, and have been, what we
mean by positive Odic poles; for while they have seemed to stand in
immediate and direct communion with the spiritual source of all wisdom,
they have at the same time given out the impulse thus granted, to the
people by whom they are surrounded, thus acting as the chosen media of
divine revelation, and from the cloudy summits of Sinais handing down
the tables of the law to all the tribes.
Now there is a mighty radiation of the Odic force from these men,
through which the love, wisdom, or rather will in them—or sent through
them—is made operative upon the great masses of mankind; and this
same radiation, in the greater or less degrees, is found emanating
from a thousand different sources at the same time, affecting man
for evil as well as for good; for, when we comprehend that this
Odic or sympathetic force is the sole medium of communication with
the spiritual and invisible world, as well as with the visible and
material world, it can then be easily understood how what are called
“evil” and “good spirits” should through it affect mankind. This will
be fully illustrated when we observe the common conditions of health
and disease. Health is good and disease is evil; and these are the
two eternally antagonistic chemical forces in the universe. Health is
that normal condition of the body which enables it to resist evil and
maintain the proper balance of the spiritual and material elements.
Disease is that abnormal condition of the body in which the integrity
of the spiritual and organic functions has been destroyed through the
sympathetic media by evil, and good overcome.
In either case, the balance is destroyed, and the immediate consequence
may be, in the one, sudden paroxysms of fearful insanity, or in the
other, sudden death, as in common apoplexy.
Thus the popular fallacy, that all things having a source in the
spiritual, or rather the invisible, must of necessity be good, is
in a very simple way exposed. We see there may be what are called
evil, as well as good spirits, which hold communion with us; and the
safest and only true general rule with regard to such matters is,
that, while the good spirits are those propitious chemical forces
which make themselves known to us in love, and joy, and peace, through
the unbounded happiness of the normal conditions of health, the evil
spirits are those vicious chemical forces, morbid delusions, and
malign revelations, which are made known to us through all other
diseased conditions as well as that of Clairvoyance. Remember that no
such being has yet been known throughout the whole range of Mesmeric
experiment as a healthy Clairvoyant, or a “subject” who has attained to
the super-eminence of Clairvoyance, who was not what they fancifully
term “delicate”—that is, liable to those diseases which are well known
to supervene upon nervous weakness, exhaustion, or emasculation.
This condition of nervous exhaustion renders them, of course, the
very negation of the negative pole of sympathy, and the first person
approaching them, who possesses the ordinary Odic conditions of health,
is clutched hold of by their famine-struck vitality, in the agonised
plea for life! life!
“Give! give!” is still the insatiable cry. They must have the Odic
fluid restored, and that, in taking from your “enough,” they exhaust
and undermine the holy purposes of your life to make up that deficit
in their own—which loathsome vice has brought about—the “hideous
selfishness of weakness” rather rejoices. The sympathetic _rapporte_
being once established, they can at least, through this dangerous
medium, live in the integrities of your life, and enjoy, both
physically and spiritually, a surreptitious vitality, which, while it
reflects the prevailing phenomena of your own mind and spiritual being,
has, in addition, some approximation even to the physical exaltation of
your higher health.
These human vampires or sponges may be, therefore, as well absorbents
of the spiritual as animal vitality. Their parasitical roots may strike
into the very centres of life, and their hungry suckers remorselessly
draw away the virility of manhood, or the spiritual strength.
They seem to be mainly divided into two classes, one of which, born,
seemingly, with but a rudimentary soul, attains to its apparent
spiritual though merely mental development, by absorption of the
spiritual life in others, through the Odic medium. Another class,
born with a predominating spirituality based upon a feeble physique,
is ravenous of animal strength, and can only live by its sympathetic
absorption of the same from others, through the same pervading medium.
Of the two, the first is the evil type; for, born in the gross sphere
of the passions, with a vigorous organisation, but faintly illuminated
at the beginning with that golden light of love which is spiritual
life, the fierce half-monkey being is propelled onwards, and even
upwards, by the basest of the purely animal instincts, appetites, and
lusts. If such beings strive towards the light of the harmonious and
the beautiful, it is not because they yearn for either the holy or the
good, but because it lends a lurid charm to appetite and glorifies a
lust.
The other character, in whom the spiritual predominates, whether
from a natal inequality, as is very frequently the case, or from the
sheer exhaustion of the physical powers, through emasculating vices,
is yet, in itself, good, so far as its morbid conditions leave it an
unaccountable being; but, as its revelations and utterings depend
entirely upon the Odic characters and will of those from whom its
strength may be derived, it can only be regarded, whether used for
evil or good, as a medium. This character is the common Clairvoyant,
to whom we are indebted for those strangely-mingled gleams of remote
truth, with errors the most grave and injurious, which have so
tended to confuse the judgment of mankind in regard to the phenomena
of Clairvoyance. Such persons can be made as readily the medium of
any falsehood which the knavish passions of their “Mesmerisers” may
dictate, as they can be caused to announce, by a will as strong, but
soul more pure, the disconnected myths of science and of history, which
have so surprised the world in what are called the “Revelations” of
Andrew Jackson Davis. This man belongs to our second class, and is
purely “a medium” of the sympathetic fluid. His organisation is most
sensibly sympathetic and delicately responsive, but is too feeble
to balance his spiritual development. His case stands, therefore,
as the most remarkable modern instance of what the ancients termed
“_vaticination_;” but, as has been the case with other false prophets,
his “gifts” have proved of no value, except to knaves. He was
undoubtedly practised upon by a choice set of such characters; and, now
that he has found in marriage a sympathetic restoration, through the
physical, of its needed balance with the spiritual, he has lost his
“lying gift” of prophecy.
* * * * *
We have examined this man carefully, and are convinced that the
whole mystery of his revelations and character may be contained in a
nut-shell. He is to the sphere of intellectual and spiritual sympathy,
and in a lower sense, precisely an analogous case with that of Mozart
in the sphere of the musical and spiritual. When the great soul of
humanity has been long—say one generation—in travail with a great
thought in art, science, music, or mechanics, there is sure to be
somebody born in the succeeding generation who is physically, mentally,
and spiritually, the impersonation and embodiment of this thought, of
which the age is in labor, and who must of necessity become, solely and
singly, the expression and embodiment thereof. Thus Mozart, the infant
prodigy in music, who at five years old was the pet of monarchs and
the miracle of his age, continued, with no signs of precociousness, a
steady and consistent development, which showed him to be indeed the
embodiment of the musical inspirations of his age. His revelations in
music were just as prodigious as even the rabid worshippers of the
Davis revelations would imagine those to be; yet there are some most
essential differences between the results of the two.
Davis, born amidst the travail of this new Mesmeric agitation, became
the most sensitive organ of the sympathetic fluid in intellect, as the
other had been in music; but as, in the case of Mozart, the exciting
cause came from Nature, and constituted her purest and most sacred
inspirations, so the inspiration of Davis came from man, with all his
imperfections and subjective tendencies. The sequel has been, the
inspirations of Mozart are considered now by mankind as only second
to the Divine, while those of Davis are justly regarded as morbid,
fragmentary, incomplete, and worthless.
The organisation of Mozart was equally sympathetic with that of Davis;
but it was of that healthy tone which could only respond to nature
and the natural; while the organisation of Davis belongs to that much
inferior type, which, from its morbid and unbalanced conditions,
can respond only to the human as the representative of nature. Such
persons receive nothing direct from nature, but only through its
representative, man.
It would seem as if the world were absolutely divided into two
classes—the radiating and the absorbing; the first receiving from
nature, and the second from man. In the first, are the holy brotherhood
of prophets and the poets, and in the second, the poor slaves of
sympathy—the knaves and fools—the impostors who play upon its
well-known laws, and, deceiving themselves as well as others, may well
be said to “know not what they do.”
We are convinced that no man, who has kept himself informed of the
psychological history and progress of his race, can by any means fail
to recognise at once, in the pretended “Revelations” of Davis, the
mere _disjecta membra_ of the systems so extensively promulgated by
Fourier and Swedenborg. When you come to compare this fact with the
additional one, that Davis, during the whole period of his “utterings,”
was surrounded by groups, consisting of the disciples of Fourier and
Swedenborg; as, for instance, the leading Fourierite of America was,
for a time, a constant attendant upon those mysterious meetings, at
which the myths of innocent Davis were formally announced from the
condition of Clairvoyance, and transcribed by his _keeper_ for the
press, while the chief exponent and minister of Swedenborgianism in New
York was often seated side by side with him.
Can it be possible that these men failed to comprehend, as thought
after thought, principle after principle, was enunciated in their
presence, which they had previously supposed to belong exclusively
to their own schools, that the “revelation” was merely a sympathetic
reflex of their own derived systems? It was no accident; for, as often
as Fourierism predominated in “the evening lecture,” it was sure
that the prime representative of Fourier was present; and when the
peculiar views of Swedenborg prevailed, it was equally certain that
he was forcibly represented in the conclave. Sometimes both schools
were present; and on that identical occasion we have a composite
metaphysics promulgated, which exhibited, most consistently, doctrines
of Swedenborg and Fourier, jumbled in liberal and extraordinary
confusion. This is, in epitome, about the whole history of such
agitations. The weak Clairvoyant falls naturally into the hands of
knaves who are superior to him in physical vitality. He becomes,
first, the medium of their vague and feeble intellection; and then, as
attention is attracted by the notoriety they know well how to produce,
the “_medium_” becomes gradually surrounded by the enthusiasts of
every school; and as he is brought into their various Odic spheres, he
pronounces the creed of each in his morbidly illuminated language, and
it sounds to the mob like inspiration.
There is no greater nonsense; men are inspired through natural laws.
But this comparatively innocuous character, which we have thus far
stepped aside to indicate, is nothing compared to the first specimen
of this Clairvoyant type which we have classified. This, it will be
remembered, is the animal born with feeble spirituality, but vigorous
physique, which is, at the same time, intensely sympathetic. These, as
we have said, are the infernal natures; for, possessing no life outside
the lower animal passions, self is to them the close centre of all
being, and their Odic sensitiveness a vampire-absorption, the horrible
craving of which, not content with the mere exhaustion of the animal
life of the victim, by wanton provocations, drinks up soul and mind to
fill the beastly void of their own. These worse than ghouls, that live
upon the dying rather than the dead, possess some fearfully dangerous
and extraordinary powers.
Vampirism, as a superstition, prevailed, not many years ago, like a
general pestilence, throughout the countries of Servia and Wallachia.
Whole districts, infected by this horrible disease, were desolated;
people grew wild with terror, and, in their savage ignorance, committed
monstrous sacrilege upon the sanctities of burial. Bodies that had
rested quietly in their graves for ten, twenty, and even eighty days,
were dragged forth, to have stakes driven through their chests; and if
any blood was found, they were burned to ashes.
The belief was, that the deceased, when living, had been bitten by a
human vampire, which, coming forth from its grave by night, had sunk
its white teeth in his throat, and drunk his blood, thereby causing a
lingering death; in which he was also doomed to the hideous fate of
becoming a vampire, after his burial.
The bodies of vampires, when dug up, presented a perfectly natural
appearance; and, even in those cases where the scarfskin peeled off,
a new skin was found underneath, and new nails formed on the fingers.
The vital blood was found in the heart, lungs, and viscera, exhibiting
the conditions of perfect health. How the vampire got out of his grave,
without scratching a hole, does not appear.
Thus we find, in modern vampirism, a strange compound of ancient
superstition with well-known scientific truths. The vampire is the
counterpart of the ancient ghoul, with the simple transfer of the
habits of the vampire-bat to its identity. These are then connected
with the fact, well known to the medical profession, that persons have
been buried, supposed to be dead, who, in reality, had only fallen into
what is called the death-trance; and who, had they been left above
ground for a sufficient period, would have probably resuscitated of
themselves. That they have done so after burial, is a familiar fact;
since bodies exhumed, long after, have been found to have changed their
position in the coffin. How long bodies, thus inconsiderately buried,
retain a resemblance to the normal conditions of life, has not been
fully ascertained.
We have here the historical origin of what is called vampirism; but
there are certain phenomena of this fearful infection, closely
resembling those which we have attributed to the Spiritual Vampire.
Vampirism is clearly a disease of the nervous system; it being first
excited through the imagination of ignorance and superstition. The
nerves, then affected through the odic medium, lose their balance, and
the mind constantly playing within the circle of the one thought of
horror, a rapid and premature decline is the immediate consequence.
The infection of which the victim died remaining still within the odic
medium of the sphere it occupied, passes into the nerves of others, who
die also; and thus the disease spreads like any other epidemic. But
mark—whence the true origin of this superstition of the ghoul and the
vampire, so universal in the world? Is it not that mankind, everywhere,
has felt, with an unconscious shuddering, the presence of the spiritual
vampire? The instincts of the masses have, in their superstitions,
foreshadowed all the great discoveries of science. Has it not been,
that they have felt the hideous incubus always; but not being able,
through any connected series of observations, to discover the real
cause of their dread and suffering, have given its nearly identical
attributes a “local habitation and a name” among their superstitions?
What we have termed the Spiritual Vampire, is a scientific fact—we
believe as much so as the bat-vampire; and that it feeds, not alone
upon the living, but upon the spiritually dead; that originally, so
far as its spiritual entity is concerned, it too comes forth from its
sensual charnal to feed upon the soul-blood of mankind. This may seem a
horrible picture, but we cannot consent to withdraw it. These records
were made under a sense of duty to mankind; and if they should ever see
the light, it must be as they have been written. We dare not reveal
all that we know of this thing—we can only venture to say enough to
arouse men in amazement, at the realisation of what they have always
known and felt to exist, without having expressed it. No mortal mind
could have conceived such possibilities, even in hell, much less in
actual life.
Amidst the profound securities of the best-ordered households in the
world, unless a strict eye be had to such facts and phenomena as we
have adverted to and shall describe, the most insidious and fatal
corruptions of the bodies and souls of your children, your wives, and
your sisters, may creep in, while there is no dream of wrong or danger.
If we shock you, it is to put you somewhat upon your guard against the
many evils, concealed under the apparent harmless approaches of the
viciously-purposed manipulator, or the covert practiser upon the odic
or sympathetic vitality of the pure and unsuspecting.—We will abide the
issue.
Milton clearly had vampirism in his thought when he wrote—
“Clotted by contagion,
Imbodied and imbruited, till quite lost
The divine property of their first being—
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp,
Oft seen, in charnal-vaults and sepulchres,
Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave.”
SPIRITUAL VAMPIRISM;
OR,
THE HISTORY OF ETHERIAL SOFTDOWN.
CHAPTER I.
THE GIRLHOOD OF ETHERIAL.
“Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned?”
In a mean and sterile district of Vermont, which shall be nameless,
but which exhibits on every side stretches of bare land, with here
and there the variety of clumps of gnarled and stunted oaks, Etherial
Softdown was born. If mountains give birth to heroes, what ought to
have been the product of a low-lying land like this, on whose dreary
basins the summer’s sun wilted the feeble vegetation, and the bleak
winds of winter wrestled fiercely with the scrubby oaks, whose crooked
and claw-like limbs seemed talons of some hideous, gaunt and reptile
growth?
On the edge of one of the most desolate of these stretches, and beneath
the shelter of the most ugly of these demonised oaks, were scattered
the storm-blackened sheds of a miserable hamlet, in one of which, for
there were no degrees in their comfortless dilapidation, the family
of our heroine, the Softdowns, resided, and another yet smaller and
at some distance apart from the rest, was occupied by her father,
who was a shoemaker, as a workshop. This was one of those strange,
out-of-the-way, starved and dismal looking places that you sometimes
stumble upon in our prosperous land—which ought long since to have been
deserted with the vanished cause of the temporary prosperity which had
given it birth—but in which the people seem to be petrified into a
morbid serenity of endurance, and look as if under the spell of some
great Enchanter they awaited his awakening touch.
The child, which was the birth of a coarsely organised mother, was as
drolly deformed with its squint eye and stooping shoulders as fancy
could depict the elfin genius of such a scene. Dirty, bedraggled and
neglected, with unkempt locks tangled and writhing like snakes about
her face, and sharp, gray animal eyes gleaming from beneath, the
ill-conditioned creature darted impishly hither and yon amidst the
hamlet hovels, or peering from some thicket of weird oaks, started the
stolid neighbors with the dread that apparitions bring.
Indeed, so wilful, unexpected and eccentric were her movements, that
the people, in addition to regarding the oaf-like child with a half
feeling of dread, gave her the credit of being half-witted as well.
There was a hungry sharpness in her eye that made them shrink; a
furious, raging, craving lust for something, they could not understand
what, which startled them beyond measure; for, as in their stagnant
lives, they had never been much troubled with souls themselves, they
could not understand this soul-famine that so whetted those fierce
eager eyes.
The father, Softdown, who appears to have been something more developed
than the mother, and to have possessed a grotesque and rugged wit,
more remarkable for its directness than its delicacy, became the sole
instructor and companion of the distraught child, who readily acquired
from him an uncouth method of enouncing trite truisms unexpectedly,
which was to constitute in after life one of her chief, because most
successful weapons.
Etherial early displayed a passion for acquiring not knowledge, but a
facility of gibberish, which proved exhausting enough to the shallow
receptacles around her, especially as her mode of getting at the names
and properties of things so closely resembled the monkey’s method of
studying physical laws. She had first to burn her fingers before she
could be made to comprehend that fire was hot, but that was enough
about fire for this wise child; she remembered it ever after as a
physical sensation, and therefore it had ever after a name for her;
and so with all other experiences, they were to her sensational, not
spiritual or intellectual. The name of a truth could come to her with
great vividness through a blow or pain of whatever character that might
be purely physical, but through no higher senses, for these she did
not yet possess. Of a moral sense she seemed now to develop no more
consciousness than any other wild animal, but in her the _memory of
sensation_ took the place of mind and soul.
Thus passed the girlhood of our slattern oaf—shy and sullen—avoiding
others herself, and gladly avoided by them, with the single exception
of her father, from whom her strong imitative or sympathetic faculty
was daily acquiring a rough, keen readiness of repartee, in the use of
which she found abundant home-practice in defending herself against the
smarting malignity of the matron Softdown, who charmingly combined in
her person and habits all and singly the cleanly graces of the fishwife.
At sixteen, with no advance in personal loveliness, with passions
fiercely developed, a mind nearly utterly blank, a taste for tawdry
finery quite as drolly crude as that displayed by the plantation
negresses of the South, and manners so fantastically awkward and
eccentric as to leave the general impression that she was underwitted,
Etherial suddenly married a lusty and good-looking young Quaker, threw
off her bedraggled plumes, and became a member of that prim order.
Now her career commences in earnest, for this was the first great
step in her life in which she seems to have attained to some gleams
of the knowledge of that extraordinary power of Odic irradiation and
absorption which was afterwards to be exercised with such remarkable
results.
She did not make her great discovery without comprehending its meaning
quickly. She first perceived that, day by day, she grew more comely
to look upon—that her figure was becoming erect, and losing its harsh
angularities—the pitiless obliquity of her features growing more
reconciled to harmonious lines—and last, and most astounding, that the
immediate result of the contact of marriage had been a rapid increase
of her own spiritual and mental illumination, accompanied as well by a
corresponding decline on the part of the husband in both these respects.
Here was a secret for you with a vengeance! Like an electric flash,
a new light burst upon Etherial; and, as there was only one feeling
of which her being was capable towards man, she chuckled over the
delicious secret which now opened out before her with a terrible
gloating.
Glorious discovery! Hah! the spiritual vampire might feed on his
strength—might grow strong on this cannibalism of the soul! and what
of him if she dragged him down into idiocy? Served him right! Did
Etherial care that his spiritual death must be her life? She laughed
and screamed with the joy of unutterable ferocity! Eureka! Eureka! They
shall all be my slaves! They taunt me with being born without a soul,
with being underwitted! I shall devour souls hereafter by the hundreds!
I shall grow fat upon them! We shall see who has the wit! Their
thoughts shall be my thoughts, their brains shall work for me, their
spirits shall inform my frame! Ah, glorious! glorious! I shall live on
souls hereafter! I shall go up and down in the land, seeking whom I may
devour! Delicious! Delectable Etherial!